Sling TV can be a bit glitchy, so an optimal broadband connection is a must. It hangs occasionally but reseting the Menu button usually solves the problem. It is on a 4 or 5 second delay from your live TV, which you might not consider to be a problem. I have a fairly powerful desktop and the performance of Sling TV has been o.k. I did encounter problems trying to watch it on my less powerful Android Tablet.
I have managed to keep my total digital services bill at about $120 for Internet, land-line phone and “Cable TV.”
here is the site where you can put in your address and find out what digital antenna signals you might receive in your home for free.
Interestingly the HD through the air is supposed to be better than through your cable as the cable company has not altered it.
we bought a cheap window antenna from walgreens and tried it out. worked great and then we bought a better one and a booster (around $75 total?) and it works excellent.
Get TV when the cable is out too which is nice.
Here is the rub…if you want most sports…it’s going to cost you big time to get them.
We tried Sling…not impressed.
Next up for us is an antenna. Supposedly we will get as many channels as we get with our basic cable. Networks, and PBS. Since we aren’t huge sports fanatics, it’s ok NOT to get the sports channels for us.
I will say…the channel I miss the most from when we got a bunch of channels is The Weather C
Channel. But it wasn’t worth almost $100 a mont just for that!
@sax: I entered my address on the web site you posted and it provides a list of callsigns that are strong signals to my house. But I don’t understand what that means.
Here is our setup: We cut the cable cord one year ago and now use TWC for internet only, which costs us $39.77/month. (They just tried to increase to $57+ and DH called TWC, successfully negotiating for better price.) We have no landline, but 2 cell phones through Republic Wireless. These phones work through Wifi when we are home and switch to cellular when we are out and about. I have their $10/mo plan and DH has the $25/mo plan. Big difference is I don’t get cellular internet when out of the house. Plenty of places offer Wifi though so it’s not a problem for me.
For TV we have a Leaf for over-the-air and get all the local stations plus a few others. 3 different PBS stations, which is all I care about. We also have a Roku. Tried Netflix for a few months and got bored, so went with Amazon Prime. We’re currently enjoying some of their original series. Finally, we signed up for Sling ($21/mo) in August, but only for the ESPN during football season. We’ll cancel it next week. No issues with it freezing, and the only channel I will personally miss is Bloomberg.
We used to spend $200+ on everything, but decided it wasn’t worth it. I made it my mission last January to whittle it all down. I am SO glad we did. We don’t miss the 500+ channels one bit.
It means that its highly likely that the strong signals are easily receivable with a decent antenna at your location. The site tells you the network affiliation of the stations.
Using my own location, and some experience from using an antenna, I was able to get all the strong and moderate stations, listed, plus some of the weaker ones.
@VeryHappy . Exactly what dadx states. If you buy an indoor antenna (a booster would help too) you can hook it up to your tv and get all those stations for free. You can even get a daily guide on the Internet telling you what’s on. http://tvlistings.aol.com/listings/
We have ours in the window its flat and about 12 x12 inches with antenna that pull out. We get 50 stations.
So you can get most of the basic cable channels and some others ( we get very cool foreign stations) for FREE.
We bought a super cheap antenna at Walgreens, of all places, and it psyched us up to get a better one.
Would be worth buying a cheap one just for fun. As low as $12.
We got 20 stations with the cheap antenna and 50 when we bought a better one $60 with a booster.
@shellfell - Yes, but for me, I don’t need to because the antenna is hooked up to my TIVO and then I use a mini-Tivo on the second TV which gets it’s signal from the main TIVO. But if I was just putting antennas directly I would need one for both TVs.
I also still have an antenna on the roof of my house (remember those?). So I actually hooked that up to my TV to get the best signals. Oddly, there is one channel that doesn’t come in well, so I have one of those indoor flat antennas inside and both are hooked up to my TIVO. This did the trick for me.
For fun and giggles, I decided to call Time Warner Cable earlier this week to see if I could get a better deal on my triple play. I was able to get another $6 off and I now pay $127 per month, including tax. In my area, we have both TWC and U-Verse. Once a year I call TWC about pricing, and almost always can get a decent rate. You don’t even have to threaten to quit. All you need is to talk with the customer retention people. They told me the deals change every 3 months.
I live about 2 miles from the tv transmission towers and so, I get an excellent signal.
Honestly sometimes I think they purposely make it confusing. So many different plans and options your head is spinning, so you just sign on the dotted line to get it the hell over with. H refuses to deal with cable companies or our cell service provider and just pays the bills which seem astronomical to me.
I saw the cell phone bill and mentioned to H that there must be a better deal out there - he said “be my guest and good luck with that.” So one afternoon I marched into Verizon with the bill in hand. I swear the rep twisted my brain up in knots with all these deals, plans and promotions. I wanted to strangle him.
H had made me promise that if I made any changes to the cell plan that it would not result in the loss of the free unlimited data that we are grandfathered in on by an old plan on 2 of our phones. Trying to explain the value of this to the rep (we have 2 teenagers) was like talking to a wall. He just kept going on and on about this new program that would let us upgrade our phones at any time and how that was more valuable than free data. After an hour of wasted time I walked out defeated. And H was nice enough** not** to say “I told you so.”
I can’t talk to cell or cable, but we have had Vonage for years and it has saved us a bundle on our land line. I pay $33 a month and can call everywhere. Plus I can take the number with me when we go on vacation.
Well there is probably an asterisk next to our account in comcast’s computer because my wife likes to negotiate.
Over a year ago, my wife called comcast and told comcast we are going to leave comcast unless there is a price deduction.
Then my wife was passed on and on between different people with nothing happening until she reached the cancellation department. That’s when she negotiated a price reduction for two years. We were supposed to be locked in at a lower rate for two years. We committed for two years. After a year, our rates went up though not as high as the original pricing. My wife called again and said we were locked in for two years. Comcast said 1 year.
So we called uverse and direct tv but we didnt really see better pricing so we stayed with comcast.
So, I’ve been procrastinating way too long in finding ways to tackle my cable/phone/internet bill and want to work on it this week.
Right now, we have Xfinity and pay wayyy too much. I’m jealous of those packages they offer for new customers. Has anyone had success negotiating a much lower rate? Tell me your tricks. Or any alternative ideas you have.
I’ve thought about completely dropping the landline but our cell phone reception can be pretty spotty at home (Verizon network which is actually the best coverage around me).
I’ve thought about getting rid of cable and just doing streaming (we have apple tv as well and netflix) but my husband is big on watching soccer (mainly european) and tennis so we’d need to have a way for him to have that available.
At a mimimum, I just want to negotiate a much better price for what I already have. Open to other suggestions, though.
