Cable Free?
When I was on Block Island the hotel we stayed in didn’t have TVs in the rooms. Now I would never knowingly book a room without a TV but being stuck in that situation wasn’t so bad. Now before you ask me how I managed such a feat let me be up front, I didn’t have a TV but I still watched television shows online. There are a couple sites that you can watch streaming prerecorded TV shows and some other sites that offer real time channels (just not the ones you and I are used to). One of the most commonly known is Itunes and I suppose as an occasional fix paying $1-$2 for this seasons episodes isn’t to bad but if I did that with all the shows I watch it would cost way more then cable. Besides I’m cheap and I prefer getting things for free 
. I used www.surfthechannel.com when I wanted to watch Criminal Minds (I watched an entire seasons worth in the past two days) but they have a bunch of different shows. Another one is fancast.com those two you don’t need to download anything but there are others that are free but require you to download programs that then monitor everything you do online. I don’t want to invite someone to spy on me so I don’t use them.
Has anyone cut the cable cord? Do you still rent movies/use netflix or watch stuff online? Did you do it to save money or just to do it?
Mr Chiot’s and I cancelled our cable last year (we had basic with 1 tier, no movie channels). We could never go back. We feel like we have so much more time, all those things on our growing to-do lists have been getting finished. We now don’t feel like we have to watch bad shows to get our money’s worth of our cable. We now get shows on DVD from the library or netflix (we have the 1 at a time netflix). We much prefer watching shows through instead of waiting a week to watch the next episode. We are also reading more books (from the library of course)
We definitely will never have cable again, we have a small antenna in the attic and we get better HD network channels that our friends that have Dish HD. We rarely watch TV though, even with the antenna.
My advice – just do it. You’ll be glad you did, and you’ll be saving $50 a month on cable and a few $’s on electric! We didn’t do it to save money, we did it one night when were watching a show and said, “this is terrible, why do we watch this?” We realized we were just watching since cable costed so much. Next day we called & cancelled.
Try rabbit ears. With the new digital channels the picture quality is great and you have a lot of new channels. As long as you have a relatively new TV the cost is a mere $14.99 for a set of ears – and this willl work post Feb. 2009 as well.
We could never afford the local equivalent anyhow so we only watch the free stuff on the computer when we feel like it.
I used to be an addict at one point but I can’t say I bother much now. There’s so much else to do.
viv in nz
My husband would never go for cutting the cable but I’d sure like to. Whenever he travels, I revel in the silence.
Before we moved here, we had cut our cable to basic minimum where we just got network channels.
When we moved here, we became too rural for the cable company so we got DTV. We were lied to when we signed up and once the contract ended, we got rid of it.
We found a local cable company and after a month or two with them, we got rid of them as well. We have rabbit ears on our little 9″ TV and for the children, we occasionally put a movie in. (Bob the Builder, Veggi-Tales, etc.)
For us, the antenna works fine for our purposes. News at night and having the TV on in the morning for a few minutes to see the weather as I’m getting dressed.
We don’t miss it. The children don’t know different or seem to care.
oh I love this blog. This blog gives me good lessons in life.
y
Mr Chiot’s and I cancelled our cable last year (we had basic with 1 tier, no movie channels). We could never go back. We feel like we have so much more time, all those things on our growing to-do lists have been getting finished. We now don’t feel like we have to watch bad shows to get our money’s worth of our cable. We now get shows on DVD from the library or netflix (we have the 1 at a time netflix). We much prefer watching shows through instead of waiting a week to watch the next episode. We are also reading more books (from the library of course)
We definitely will never have cable again, we have a small antenna in the attic and we get better HD network channels that our friends that have Dish HD. We rarely watch TV though, even with the antenna.
My advice – just do it. You’ll be glad you did, and you’ll be saving $50 a month on cable and a few $’s on electric! We didn’t do it to save money, we did it one night when were watching a show and said, “this is terrible, why do we watch this?” We realized we were just watching since cable costed so much. Next day we called & cancelled.
I still stick with cable TV, because I’m not an internet savvy ;P