How many of you have gotten rid of cable...?

[RegGuheert]

We do have a big antenna in the attic - not even HD, the old-fashioned analog kind.

All antennae are analog. It is the modulation of the signal that is digital in the new system. Your old antenna works fine because the digital channels are a subset of those used in the past. Missing are 2-6 (which were a pain since they required gigantic antennae) and the UHF channels above 69. As a result, the new "HD" antennae can be made much smaller.

Our friend told my dh about some site that tells what channels you ought to get at exactly the point where you live, and which angle to point your antennae.

TV Fool?

Ours works great although I think we would get one more channel if we raised it up a certain # of feet--but that is not possible in our attic and our HOA prohibits them on top of the house.

No HOA can legally create or enforce such a restriction. This is because wireless communications is under the jurisdiction of the FCC and they specifically prohibit such limitations. The main reason for the prohibition is that television transmission is a key part of the emergency response system in the U.S.

 

ETA: FYI, here is a link to the Over-the-Air Reception Devices Rule from the FCC.

Edited October 8, 2010 by RegGuheert

[Wyndie]

We ditched cable years ago. Streaming netflix and hulu keep hubby happy. I don't miss tv one bit myself. :)

[Mejane]

He would miss Comedy Central

 

Do you have Netflix? CC is available on instant, and is one of the things my family watches most.

[Word Nerd]

We've been without cable since January and do Netflix, Hulu, etc. instead. Sometimes I do miss it, though.

[nmoira]

We've been about 10 years without cable, and haven't missed it. We don't even use Hulu (and there's no tuner in our TV, so we don't get broadcast TV), just Netflix.

[Pretty in Pink]

We have been without cable for 5 or 6 years now. The only time I miss it is during severe weather, but that's what weather radios are for.

[BikeBookBread]

We have been without cable for 5 or 6 years now. The only time I miss it is during severe weather, but that's what weather radios are for.

 

Our local network affiliates have their own 24 hour weather stations without commercials, so we do get weather. There's no commentary like The Weather Channel, but we see the forecast anytime we want and the National Weather Service warnings are broadcast in the cool red crawl that gives me a secret thrill :) (I'm a weather junkie.)

[Nature]

DH loves TV and it’s so easy to get hooked into these shows. . . .a big time waster in my opinion. I finally convinced DH to get rid of cable with all the channels, so now we just have the basic channels. Sometimes I miss history channel and TLC, but overall it’s not that big of a deal for me. DH also agreed to take the TV our of the bedroom, so now we only have one in our house. We do have netfilx which has a lot of great documentaries. I'm content with that, but we'll see about DH . . .

[RegGuheert]

 

Sometimes I miss history channel and TLC, but overall it’s not that big of a deal for me.

History channel is available using a cheap Free-to-Air (FTA) satellite receiver. Not so for TLC or TDC.

[OnTheBrink]

We dumped it several years ago. Netflix and watching our favorite shows on-line works just fine for us.

 

:iagree:

[FO4UR]

We haven't had cable in over 10 years. We don't miss it. We don't even have a TV now (wasn't worth putting on the moving truck), and are just fine.

 

Everything we want/need we can get from the internet.

[KidsHappen]

My hubby is seriously considering it. I would miss be able to watch Fringe and House but I can wait until they come out on DVD. No one else would even care and it sertainly isn't worth the price just to watch two shows.

[ktwensel]

i would LOVE to get rid of our satellite! but im not sure how to go about it.... we have att-uverse and it has our phone line, internet and satellite all in one :confused:

 

what do u guys do then for home phone (which i actually could get rid of lol! and just use our cells) and then internet service???

 

:lurk5:

 

I don't know how to quote, so I don't know if I did this right. We too have a bundled deal and our supplier said that as long as we kept phone and internet, we could drop cable. You may want to check with them.

[RegGuheert]

 

My hubby is seriously considering it. I would miss be able to watch Fringe and House but I can wait until they come out on DVD. No one else would even care and it sertainly isn't worth the price just to watch two shows.

Fringe and House are broadcast in high definition. You wouldn't need cable to see them unless you are in an area where you cannot receive the broadcasts. I think the episodes are also available online.

[atara]

We dropped our cable today! Thanks to this thread - I was able to give my DH lots of great alternatives! We signed up for Netflix and we are saving SO much money! DirecTV was $92.00 per month! AAHH!!

 

I think TV and Internet are becoming like home phones vs. cell phones. Nearly everything I watched on TV is available online or via Netflix.

[Sophia]

Got rid of it a couple years ago. We don't miss it.

[LibraryLover]

We dropped our cable today! Thanks to this thread - I was able to give my DH lots of great alternatives! We signed up for Netflix and we are saving SO much money! DirecTV was $92.00 per month! AAHH!!

 

I think TV and Internet are becoming like home phones vs. cell phones. Nearly everything I watched on TV is available online or via Netflix.

 

 

$92/mo?! Money is not the reason we do not have cable, but wow! I didn't realize it was that costly. What is the differenece between Dirrect TV & Cable?

[MeaganS]

We did right after our daughter was born. We just couldn't afford it anymore. And frankly, it's very rare that I miss it. We can watch almost anything we want online now, so it just wasn't worth it.

[vettechmomof2]

10 years now with no tv service but we do have Netflix now.

[atara]

$92/mo?! Money is not the reason we do not have cable, but wow! I didn't realize it was that costly. What is the differenece between Dirrect TV & Cable?

 

It's basically the same thing. DirecTV is uses a satellite dish. We had the works: DVR, HD channels, etc. Well, we didn't have the premium channels.

 

Money was the main factor, but a strong secondary factor was the toil I felt it was taking on our family time. This might sound weird, but it's like my husband and I were using our downtime with TV and it was getting out of hand now the we have a little one. Not to mention the junk was just out of control. Everything I watched I could find online.

[Ellie]

My dd got rid of satellite but not TV. She and her dh use Netflix and Internet to watch all their favorite shows.

 

We're thinking about doing the same thing. We enjoy TV so we won't get rid of it altogether, but doing Neflix and Internet will be WAY cheaper than DishNetwork.

[LuvToRead]

We've never had it. Neither DH nor I grew up with it, so when we got married, it just wasn't something we wanted. We have Netflix. I do have to admit, I would love to get Food Network. I watch it at my mom's.

[amydavis]

We went cable free 2 years ago. The month prior to canceling, we kept a log of what we watched and how long we watched. Basically, we were paying for History Channel, Discovery Channel, and Food Network. We were a bit nervous too about dropping it. I missed it quite a bit during the holidays actually - all the cooking, decorating, made-for-TV movies.

 

But, we do have Netflix, the library, hulu, and many channels let you watch the current episodes. I did purchase some of our favorite christmas movies Netflix does not carry. Our TV gets 3 PBS channels, ABC, and CBS.

 

We don't have cable, either and I found that I missed it most during the holiday season. I mean, when we first gave it up I had withdrawals for HGTV, the Food Network, and Comedy Channel. But, once I got over that, I was fine. Then came the holidays...LOL. I noticed that my kids had really watched the ABC Family Channel a lot in the past, since they play so many made-for-tv holiday specials, holiday movies, etc. There were also a couple of movies that we didn't own, and didn't get to catch on one of the cable channels like we did in the past.

 

History channel is available using a cheap Free-to-Air (FTA) satellite receiver. Not so for TLC or TDC.

 

The History channel is probably what we miss the most (except at Christmas, LOL). I don't know anything about the FTA satellite receiver, or picking up channels this way. We have some digital antennae, that gets us the basics, but can you explain this? Thanks!

[Medieval Mom]

No cable, no tv. We just use our dvd collection and Netflix, or any online streaming from PBS, youtube, etc.

 

:)

[tearose]

No cable, no Netflix. We do, however, have a wonderful library system, and we can pretty much get almost any movie or TV show (and we don't mind sometimes waiting a while in the queue). We also use Hulu for one TV show (Burn Notice). Like other posters, we like to watch sports, and we finally got a little portable TV (that came with an antenna) just for that purpose, since we had some airline miles that had to be used before they expired). We only get the broadcast games, but it's enough for us.

[Jlynn]

Too expensive and we simply didn't watch it. We do like several tv shows, but are willing to wait for them to come out on dvd and rent from netflix. I'm assuming you mean tv cable...we have kept our internet cable! With sites like Hulu you can keep up on currents shows, so you really don't have to miss much anymore...plus most of tv is just a huge waste of time!

[cyndi60]

We havent ever had cable. We watch movies on the tv screen about once every 2wks. We havent missed anything. I, my husband and kids are the better because of it and we are much! closer because of it.

Enjoy..

Cyndi

Wife to dh of almost 30 yrs.

Homeschool since 1986 6 children ages 28-11

[kokotg]

We pay for the most basic, just the networks cable. The way it works out, they give us a discount on our cable modem for being cable subscribers, so the cable TV is essentially free. We have netflix and use that much more than network TV. We used to watch Lost, and now we watch The Amazing Race. We don't seem to be able to keep up with more than one show at a time. It kind of makes me sad sometimes, because I wish I found the Entertainment Weekly website more relevant (yes, I'm serious. I kind of love Entertainment Weekly).

[StephanieZ]

We've never had 'real TV'. Right now, and for the last couple years, we technically have the very cheap very basic cable, but we don't actually have our TVs attached to the cable wires, lol.

 

(We have it b/c the cable TV comes free w/ our cable internet the way to evil cable company prices cable. . .)

 

We have used Netflix for years, and now that you can stream it through the Wii, watch hulu, etc. . . I watch much more TV than I have since I was a kid (as I've never had 'real' TV since I lived with my mom. . . To think of the $$ we have saved over the decades!!)

 

Life w/o TV is grand.

 

We just got back from a month at the beach in a rental house that has monster-cable with tons of channels. We did not turn it on once. Not once. A friend's husband who was visiting with us turned on some sporting event on the kids' playroom TV once for a couple hours and I think my son watched for a little while. That was it! Over the month, we watched two DVD documentaries together from Netflix, I streamed a movie for all of us once, the kids streamed movies maybe two other times. . . and I watched some junk on hulu & netflix some in the evenings when kids were in bed and dh was back home working. . . but that was it. Kids probably got 4-6 hours total video time over the month, none of which included advertising. It never occurred to the kids to even turn on one of the TVs. They never asked. It just didn't come up! 30 days! There are so many better things to do than watch little screens! Once your kids are unplugged, the issue will go away.

 

Just do it!!!!!!

[bbsweetpea]

no cable here. We have netflix that we watch though.