I find that the most interesting topic.
Linux iptables
Learning that in detail was one of the top skills ever.
Cord Cutters: How much do you save?
I pay only for unlimited fiber (via ADSL/phoneline) but I get free sky apart from sports n cinema.
Initially i won sky free for the boxset package, and even before going for fiber, it was extended! Basically it seems, so long as I keep paying g for fiber, I get sky free. So, won’t be going back to freeview anytime soon! … Apart from the bedroom
Your are lucky.
Here in Germany you HAVE to pay fees, even if you don’t have a TV.
I would call this “bondage fees”. 
My wife has a TV. I do’nt.
We have an antenna at the roof of our house so we some recieve TV stations via DVBT. Thats all.
If we would change to a rooftop dish we had to change all cables in the house.
But this is not necessary as the TV-programs are mainly unsubstantial.
There is a cable junction in the basement (sealed). So let it be sealed forever)
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In the UK we have sky costs £38 a month for all channels (Except Sports and Movies) but includes HD and box sets. Ive also got Netflix £10, currently in the middle of Designated Survivor (someone on here recommended it). It’s goooooood. And an android box with Kodi 
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Cable costs around $70 in my area. Instead, monthly I pay about $60 for internet, $8 for Netflix, $8 for Amazon Prime and $15 for HBO Go. I also have digital antenna that allows me to get NBC, Fox, PBS, ABC, CW, and some others. So I assume I’m saving that $70/month, and my TV service goes with me wherever I go (gym, travel, friends’ houses, etc). I also control when shows come on rather than arrange my life around the schedule of the cable channels. It’s totally worth it.
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The economy varies greatly with the type of content you consume. If you watch a lot of series and need to watch everything as it happens, you won’t save as much as if you don’t have a problem always watching last season’s episodes.
I did the math for my case, and found out that even if I purchased every series I liked, with some spare series, I could still save about 300$/year, while maintaining two subscription services - Netflix and Crave.
But I don’t watch sports, and I get my news from the internet, so I never bothered with OTA.
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We are in the middle of cutting the cord. For us its a little harder. We live in the country and have limited internet services.
We are on a horrible satellite internet service. We pay over about 65 a month for 20 down and 1 up. Data capped at 10 gigs but unlimited phone line speeds after that (to slow to use most of the time). From midnight to 5 am they have free zone where they take the cap away. But they tend to shut your internet down or slow it down if you download and stream to much during the free zone. Just received a letter that they raising our rates by $15 and changing the free zone to 3 am to 6 am.
We are on direct TV plan and pay about 80 a month.
There’s a new rural internet provider in our area that does point-to-point microwave. The price per month is cheaper by $15. its about 25 down and 5 up with true unlimited. I told them that I would be streaming movies and shows all day/night they were fine with it. The catch is due to our geographic profile (very low level and the tower is on the other side of a hill) we have to install a 60 ft HAM radio style tower on our property for about 2k (that should get us in the line of site of the receiving tower). Most users need a 10 foot pole on their roof. But myself and our neighbors we have to stall these towers.
Once we get that pole installed, we are going to have them install a HDTV antenna and Cell phone booster antenna as well.
After that its buying the tech to make it work for us. We will still have slower speed and streaming during peak hrs may not be ideal. So we will use playon to download our shows. After watching them delete them.
New NightHawk Router for streaming/gaming
Plex Service
Playon Life time membership
DirectTV Now -with a 4 month of service they will give you a free apple 4k TV box
Hulu
Netflix - use my parents accounts
Amazon Prime - use my parents accounts
HDTV Antenna
TV Tunner
8 TB external hard drive or streaming NAS system
Media computer to run the media server and iTunes server
But once we have the tech in place our TV monthly bill should go down to about 45 to 50.
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Wow, tough situation. It’s a shame that infrastructure is slow to reach rural areas. I understand the ROI standpoint - there are fewer clients, after all - but the government should subsidize more infra to those places. I’m sure more people would be OK moving to rural areas if they had better internet access - I know a lot of people who would, specially those whose work doesn’t demand on-site presence every day. This movement would decrease city density and, ultimately, would be better for everyone.
It’s good that you have options, but I wish you wouldn’t need to shell out 2K to access it.
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been very tempted to cut the cords but with 2 kids who still watch disney channel I just haven’t found a way to do it. And there is now a monthly cap on bandwidth with my internet so it make it extremely harder. But lucky with directv you can always call in and try to get a deal so I was able to bring down my tv down to 60 a month for a year instead of 120 or so but I won’t be counting on that going on forever.
You could always get a sling box so you can stream the Disney Channel and get away from cable. My sister did this for my niece
@TechnicallyWell as a moderator you know how to make polls, would this have suited a poll?
(and wondering when how to do polls becomes public currently it is just a limited few know how)
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I have used Slingbox for about 8 years now. What it primarily solves is bad Internet, it adapts to slower network and presents a watchable experience. Good example locations is when on free hotel wifi and the guests are watching p…n sports.
Slingbox has got smaller and faster over the years.
Now you mention it… it makes me think I may do myself a service via connecting it to the HDMI output of a Raspberry Pi type server which is running a desktop, because that could solve a few problems.
However, the ability to download media is your friend, I barely ever watch streaming media now with network hiccups, I download to offline then view from offline, it just helps through Wifi hiccups etc. All my devices have 64GB minimum storage. I am usually at 90% full and delete that 2 year old series I never had the mood to watch.
To make downloaded media work well I sometimes I post-process the media using ffmpeg to slowly shrink the MP4 without losing noticeable quality. What that means even in 64GB I’ll have weeks worth of stuff with me for any situation of bored in a bad/no network.
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What kids tend to do is repeat watch, the TV channels just repeat the same thing many times. So what you can do is download something and then recode it to a smaller MP4 and put on a NAS which then is streamed locally. It reduces kids Internet bandwidth a lot.
I also know it involves you being a geek.
Even here in Munich we mostly use the old copper cables for telefon and internet connections. Only some small parts of the city have glass fibre connections.
It’s really a shame that our lousy government is using public money for many tasks which are really not useful for the Germans 
I have to stop, not to start a political discussion!
Save tons of money. Use Internet as cable because I am a savage 
Aren’t you a teacher? Use that school .edu email address and get Prime for $49.99 a year. I use my old .edu and it has worked going on 3 years now
[quote=“TechnicallyWell, post:1, topic:58980, full:true”]
I now pay:
- $35 for YouTube TV
- $10 for Netflix
- I also have Amazon Prime, but I subscribed to that even when I had cable, so I did not include that in my cost.[/quote]
We started YouTube TV 11 months ago (on day 1 in the Los Angeles market). Just added Netflix last month. Been Amazon Prime member since forever ago. Zero regrets.
What I love most about YouTube TV:
I can control almost everything through Google Home. “Hey Google, play The Voice on Living Room” and it will turn on my TV, and play the latest unwatched episode of NBC’s The Voice through Chromecast. My 3 year old crappy Vizio TV will power on when the signal comes through Chromecast. I can also FF/REW/Pause/Play through voice commands.
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True, a poll could have worked. However, I was interested in each person’s story and cost breakdowns of cutting the cord.
Pretty sure the disney app will be out soon enough here. Have heard rumors of netflix pricing, while I also heard a rumor they will try and pull away from traditional tv in favor of pushing their app hard.