As a rather lazy person, I’m usually late to the trend. One thing I’ve been hating is paying for over 100 cable TV channels that I never watch. I tend to watch only about 3 channels on a regular basis: CNN, Golf Channel and National Geographic.
I’ve recently purchased a 55" LG Oled and this gave me a needed incentive to finally cut the Comcast Xfinity cable cord and promptly tried a free 7-day trial with Sling a la carte TV. It’s “Blue” package + Sports ($10 additional) gave me and my family all the channels that we watch, so just the solution I needed while cutting the cost. My older son who’s away at his college can watch his favorites: Tennis and Comedy channels just by logging in on his laptop. The “Blue” package offers up to 3 simultaneous streaming. I also downgraded the Xfinity Internet from 150mbps to 60mbps, thinking that’s plenty. One thing I’m not happy with Xfinity’s policy is that, if you downgrade the Internet choice, they’ll punish you for it by raising the price to about double what would a new customer be paying. So, I’m paying $67 a month for 60mbps. I can get a better deal elsewhere; however, I’m staying with Xfinity for now, because I get an excellent “Xfinity wi-fi” at places where there are no wi-fi hotspots available.
Sling TV now has a promotional thing going. By subscribing and paying two months of fees in advance, they throw in a free Roku Express, which is worth about $25 and which I do need to bring back to life my non-smart TV in my kitchen. Decided to also order a Roku Ultra from Amazon for my LG Oled. I’m not sure whether this device will make a difference in the quality of Oled performance (I can only assume it does), but if not, it will go to my other non-smart HDTV in the basement, the furthest from the wi-fi router in the upper floor. While Sling TV does not offer any 4K contents, I still can use a device that’d allow me to view such contents from other apps.
So, what’s your streaming service, what do you like about it?
My H would never do this, but my D is very resentful about paying for cable that she hardly watches since she can watch Netflix and Hulu. But she can’t find cheap internet that isn’t bundled with cable.
So question to those of you who have cut the cord - what are you doing for internet?
I would like to try Britt Box and Acorn and hinted about them for Christmas, but no bites. Maybe Mother’s Day.
Check Yelp for Internet service providers in your specific area. They should be cheaper than the big name companies. Also, if you’re interested in fiber optic Internet, check Verizon and CenturyLink to see whether it’s available through either of these in your area. Although more expensive, I’m going to continue to keep Xfinity Internet because of their widely available wi-fi. When and if a fiber optic Internet service comes to my city, then I’ll have to reassess my needs.
Wave, Comcast, Century are the big ones here. Kiddos have Wave. We are too lazy to ditch Comcast.
We use Sling Blue (no extras), and the built in Sling app in our LG TV (it sounds like we have the same TV as the OP) was a total disappointment. Too little buffer memory or something like that. Getting a Roku stick solved the issue. We got the Roku Streaming Sick+ from Amazon.
Sling’s great but anyone tried to unhook from cable entirely? Try using your TV antenna with one of the new tiny ones ( which you can buy for about $20 to attach to the TV). Turns out we can get about 30 channels including the major networks without paying a dime. Who knew?
We do add sling. With blue sling you can share the watching with offspring in college cause you can watch on 3 devices at the same time. You won’t get the ESPN related channels on the Blue package. The orange package has those but only allows one device at a time. If you do both you pay something like $40 and can have 3 devices for Blue and one for orange so one of you can watch sports and the other 3 can watch other things. But when you have 4 in your family and are paying only $40 total-not bad!
We have all of our TVs outfitted with those pancake antennas. They are $20 or less at Amazon etc. The digital channel quality is excellent. We could have probably used only one antenna and wired all of the TVs to it… but for $20 a pop, buying an extra antenna was a no brainer and so much less hassle.
I would love to ditch my cable, so I love reading about other people’s experiences. This may be my summer project. Ditch my verizon bundle, find a different ISP, get a satellite antenna and subscribe to SlingTV or YouTube TV (I need a service with ESPN and CBSsports for sure).
In my house, getting all the football games is essential, as are premier soccer and rugby. So far, I’ve found our options to be nonexistent, except for our $200++ monthly cable company. But I’m all ears!
Holy! That’s a lot of money to cough up for a cable! You might want to take a look at Sling TV’s “Orange” ($25 and has ESPN 1, 2, 3, ACC ESPN Extra) or “Blue” ($25 and has NBC Sports Select Markets, NFL Network, FS1, FS2, NBC SN) or both “Orange” and “Blue” for $40. Then, you can also add its Sports package ($5 or $10 additional for lot more football and other sports channels). I chose the additional $10 sports package that gives me: Tennis, Golf and Olympics channels among others). A la carte TV is great.
yourmomma, I suppose it can but not if you are careful. And for me, part of the joy was fueled by anger towards the greedy cable companies. So for $40/month plus one time expense of say $20 on an antenna and another one time expense to buy Apple TV or some other sort of receiver for each device, I can watch what I want and 3 others living at a distance (with only one-at a time- getting sports) can watch simultaneously. Four for a total monthly charge of $40 isn’t bad.
My total monthly subscription fee for Sling TV comes to $35 (“Blue” + “Sports”). Unless ALL streaming services decide to raise the price together at the same time, a robust market competition itself will keep them all in line to keep their customers. A customer can cancel the subscription with a simple online click with absolutely no penalty attached to it.
What I’m hoping to see happen is that Xfinity wise up and provide an a la carte TV service themselves and offer a bundle pricing. My total Internet service + live stream TV fees then will be cheaper. I’m sure Xfinity has been losing lots of cable TV customers recently, so an a la carte TV might be in the work.
We have a digital antenna. A while back we did three months of sling to get a free Apple TV but we didn’t keep asking after the three months. We’re happy with broadcast TV, Netflix, and amazon Prime TV. We really don’t watch sports so we’re fine without cable.
I’ve had Sling for about 2 years. Price has held steady. And they’ve added channels.
Sling doesn’t have contracts either. I like football, especially college, so I add the sports package during football season then drop it. When you add an option it’s available within minutes. When I first cancelled cable the cable company didn’t actually shut it off for a few months. I had signed up for Sling but I cancelled it while I was getting free cable. It was quick and easy to reactivate.
We cut the cord with Directv over a year ago when Hurricane Irma removed our dish. My husband had wanted to for awhile, but I was resistant. We did a trial of Hulu Live and YouTubeTV. We much preferred YouTubeTV for their interface as well as the unlimited DVR. I absolutely love it. Though we have smart TVs , we find everything streams better with our AppleTV and Google Chromecast.
This fall, we added Sling Orange with Red Zone just for football season. We will probably do that again next football season. I watched enough HGTV and Food Network through Sling while he watched football that I won’t miss them until next football season! I love no contracts!
Internet is through the cable company (Spectrum). Hate how much it costs but only other choices are not fast enough to support streaming services well so we are stuck with it for now.
I pay $196 for triple play, I have 150 internet speed, which I love. I think just for that, it’s around $100. So, I’m not sure I’ll be saving tons getting both sling packages and one premium channel. I’ll save, but not worth it yet for me to change.
