Tremulously Thinking About Cutting Cable
After doing some research, my sisters and I purchased ST a Roku 2 XS for his birthday recently. I hate spending money to save money and ST and I had discussed purchasing a Roku so it all worked out. I like giving practical gifts that mutually benefit me… hehe.
I think it would be fair to say that ST and I are addicted to TV. Our idea of a perfect evening is pizza and clicking through our DVR. So, we definitely did not cancel cable just because we bought a Roku. We’ve used the Roku for about two weeks now and have compiled a list of pros and cons.
Pros
- No monthly cost. Currently we pay $92 per month for a bundled package and that price is locked for two years. That’s a savings of $1,104 per year!
- Lots of free channels. Here and here.
- Very kid friendly. Tons of cartoons on Hulu Plus, which we use for free courtesy of my little sister.
- It’s fun discovering new shows. For example, I found “Once Upon a Time” and watched all ten episodes with Mel this past week. It’s a pretty cute concept and made for fun sister times.
Cons
- No live TV channels. We’d have to purchase an additional HD antenna for basic channels. This one costs $38. I really despise spending money to save money.
- Poor viewing quality. Most channels have very poor viewing quality. For example, we have the Justin TV and CNN channels and it’s so pixelated at times we just have to change it.
- No sports. This is the crux of the issue. ST is a sports FANATIC. Oftentimes he will watch soccer on the TV, stream another game online, and be reading game highlights all at the same time. Anyway, there are no sports no Hulu, Netflix, or anything else you can purchase.
- More stuff to buy. Like I said, I despise spending money to save money. We have two TVs, so we’d have to purchase an additional Roku and two HD antennas, bringing our investment costs to $210, plus the cost of Internet. I understand the cost of the equipment is a fraction of what it would cost us in the long run but we can’t pull the trigger until we’re 100% sure that this will be the right decision for us.
While the Roku is a nifty little gadget, we are still waiting for the development of better channels and hopefully, a sports viewing option. Perhaps warmer weather will lure us off the couch and inspire us to cut cable. For now, we are still weighing our options.
Re: HD antennas, it really doesn’t seem to matter if you get an expensive one or not. Our friend has one from Walmart that she got for like $10 and her reception is as good as ours (and we got an expensive one because we didn’t know any better).
As for sports, we watch live sports via internet streaming, mostly from European sites that offer live streams of American sports. (The best way to find these sites is by browsing fan forums of our favorite teams.) The quality is not great, but it’s better than nothing!
Is the internet streaming for live sports reliable? It would be so much easier if we could subscribe to a sports package. Hulu Plus is really great though -- I’ve found so many gems! Daria, My So-Called Life… and we even got into cheesy/campy stuff like Grimm
i dunno. i would like to rid the house of all tvs but i am the minority in this house. we had time warner cable and it was expense for cable and internet. the man works at home so he needed fast internet and wireless stuff. i also like checking my email and uploading stuff for class so we need our internet. kids also do a lot of projects that require the internet. i looked into fios and for $117/month, we get internet, cable (the man is loving the nfl and espn channels which we didn’t have w/time warner) and basic phone service (landline -- he won’t get rid of it cause it does the 911 thing) w/unlimited long distance in the u.s. and canada (mil has a sis in canada). saved us about $30/month just to switch. no hbo but we can live w/o that cause i don’t even have time to watch any tv to be honest.
it would be about $99/mo but we have the cantonese channel for my mil.
There are no HD antennas -- a regular antenna will do. You can even make your own on the cheap: out of wire hangers and a few other materials. The key to good reception, as with old analog OTA waves, is to place the antenna as high as you can.
Channel quality is determined by the channel ‘broadcasters.’ The quality is further limited (if applicable) by your internet bandwidth. All other things equal, the channel will look the same even on a different device/service.
Local sports or international broadcast sports?
Determine what you want to watch first.
You might also want to try boxee
http://www.boxee.tv/make
We compared Boxee, Apple TV and Roku. Of the three, Roku has the best reviews, price, and flexibility in terms of channels. Boxee and Apple TV don’t have channels yet. One advantage Apple TV has over Roku is that you can use your iPhone apps on Apple TV so ST could use his baseball app. But still no ESPN 3
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