is cutting the cord worth it anymore?

It seems like the ala carte streaming service options are getting out of control… You want to watch this show? Well you need this streaming service… You want to watch that show? Well you need that other streaming service… A few years ago when there were only a couple streaming services, it made financial sense to cut the cord from cable/satellite.

If you have youtube tv plus you want to watch the wild, you’re paying about as much as it costs for some of the satellite/cable packages, if not more. Throw in a netflix/hulu/peacock on top of that and I don’t even know if its worth it to cut the cord anymore. Youtube tv + bally + netflix = $100/month + tax

It also made more sense when you could share subscriptions across a couple friends/households to share the cost, but now they’re cutting down on that.

What do you guys do at home? which services to do go with? I’m debating going back to satellite – the intro deals you can lock in for a couple years are tempting

I agree, seems like almost every streaming service has something big ticket, whether it’s sports or a show, that makes it worth looking into. There’s talk the Twins might have their own network too, or at least something that’s not Bally.

I don’t watch much myself with 2 young kids and my busy schedule so I’m not an expert on all the options. I will say that my siblings and I have been able to make shared accounts with YouTube tv work. Many streaming platforms are starting to get more aggressive with password sharing but so far our sharing of YouTube tv has allowed us 4 bothers to operate off 2 paid accounts, so I split the bill with one of them. Otherwise YouTube tv itself is getting more expensive. Really the only drawback is that one person is designated the account holder and you’ve gotta be signed to his/her area. I don’t get to Rochester much at all but if I don’t get there and sign in (on my phone) once every 3 months I can’t watch. If possible I’d recommend trying that with a neighbor or relative close by.

Hulu pretty much covers it for us. College Football games are extremely well covered. The NFL slate is available in the same way as traditional cable.

Bally Sports is bad. I’ll listen to the Twins on the radio when I want.

We keep Netflix all the time, because wife watches stuff on there constantly, but subscribe to one other thing as needed if there is something we want to watch. When we’re out of things we’re actively watching we cancel it. I don’t see any need to have multiple services all the time personally.

My wife is a TV addict so we subscribe to a lot. I dont even bother suggesting alternatives. That’s an argument I want win.

For sports I’ve mentioned this site many times – check out streameast. Can watch any major sports broadcast for free

crappie55369 wrote:

For sports I’ve mentioned this site many times – check out streameast. Can watch any major sports broadcast for free

Thanks crappie, I will check this out! I’ve never heard of it before. Are there any catches? Sounds too good to be true

Gitchi Gummi wrote:

Thanks crappie, I will check this out! I’ve never heard of it before. Are there any catches? Sounds too good to be true

Well technically I think it’s illegal but as a user you aren’t going to get in any trouble. I assume the site is hosted overseas. Using the site you just need to remember a few things. There are a few copycat sites that you don’t want to visit. Go to the first one in a Google search which should be streameast.to

When you click on the link for the game you want to watch the website is going to try to redirect you to a different site or ad page. Simply press back on your browser and you will be on the page with the video. When you click play it will do the same thing. Once again click back on your browser and then click play again. You will then be watching the game

Gitchi Gummi wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>crappie55369 wrote:</div>
For sports I’ve mentioned this site many times – check out streameast. Can watch any major sports broadcast for free

Thanks crappie, I will check this out! I’ve never heard of it before. Are there any catches? Sounds too good to be true

there are hundreds of sites like streameast that show any game on the planet. been sailing the high seas for around 10 years. right now I am watching NFL Redzone at my desk in perfect HD. want it on your big screen? cast it.
streams go down all the time so you need to refresh. we only pay for Peacock and I will probably drop it once NFL is done. there are apps legal and questionable that play any movie/show you can think of and all you need is a high speed internet connection. I also cast free content off my phone a lot. You can basically watch free episodes from CBS, NBC, Discovery, History, you name it! Been paying $39 a month for internet. cable is basically dead already.

What works for me is a mix of Hulu, Disney/Paramount and Netflix/Starz. I only have two active at once and rotate every few months.
I was a big Amazon prime fan but they are now forcing ads and ad supported services on you so I deep sixed them. Walmart Plus is cheaper and faster for shopping anyway and includes Disney/Paramount.

I supplement this with a dual tuner OTA PVR (six channels) and record the shows I want to watch on my schedule. My PVR has a commercial skip feature.
I tried a lot of OTA antennas and This outdoor Omni (no rotating) antenna is great. https://xrplovemk.life/product_details/8039497.html

I’ve talked to so many people and they have in upwards of 10 subscriptions to manage to watch what they used to always watch. One buddy I just talked to this weekend is paying triple what I am and getting less. I switched to DirecTV stream from their satellite service all the channels I’m used to which is what he switched from but he lost a ton and is paying more.

The thing that burns my britches is that I am not a pro sports guy and any of the cable services most of the costs are to pay for the sports networks. The $150 contracts would be $40 if you could opt out of sports.
I used to work for a cable provider and ESPN required that 80% of cable subscribers paid for ESPN otherwise they would blacklist the provider.
Because of that the cable providers force the sports networks on everybody.
It is much like cities and states forcing taxpayers to fund sports arenas and other facilities whether the citizens vote for them or not. Someone should be in prison for that.

For TV, we’ve eliminated everything but basic cable. There’s plenty of time wasters between cable and internet videos. Our cable is bundled with internet and phone land line. We don’t use use smart cell phones either. We’ve gotten by all these years without it just fine, I’m sure we can go the rest of the way without one just fine too. I do have to call the cable company once a year and fuss at them about how high the bill is, otherwise they keep jacking it up way too high.

so here is the thing. I’ve gone through this whole thing. luckily we get deals through other services like verizon but we run:

netflix
prime
hulu+espn+disney
peacock (my daughter is a college student and gets it for 1.99)
Sling (in truth we share this with my parents) they like a few channels and I use it for espn.

its not crazy expensive yet but I see how some might be irritated.

But here is the thing. My inlaws have dish. 90% of the dish channels are pure garbage channels you would never watch in a million years. dish/direct tv is so overbloated with crap that it makes almost 0 sense in my opinion.

We have recently discovered all of the xtra channels on Roku TV and my kids love them. they’ll watch 4 hours of bob ross, 80’s price is right, cooking shows, etc if we let them.

So for us if we didn’t get special deals on most of these streaming platforms they’d be gone.

Roku TV is cool

We have started looking into getting rid of cable all together and just use our streaming services and the one thing that has helped me is I force myself to just use those and not watch cable so when the time comes it should be easier to cut the cord. We don’t watch the news and I don’t watch sports so that helps also.

Gitchi Gummi wrote:

It seems like the ala carte streaming service options are getting out of control… You want to watch this show? Well you need this streaming service… You want to watch that show? Well you need that other streaming service… A

Exactly what I found when I did all the numbers exactly a year ago. Unless you have very narrow TV viewing wants in your household, you can’t come out ahead. And if you want sports… Forget about simple or cheap entirely.

Ended up getting Xfinity cable. We have to have Amazon Prime so more options there. And then Mrs Grouse is a rugby fan, so add on Disney plus. That’s as simple as I could keep it.

For us we are still saving about $40-60 a month by cutting the cord. Cable/internet with HBO thru Xfinity was about $220 a month. We were finally able to get rid of Comcast/Xfinity when our neighborhood got MetroNet Fiber, which has been fine, a few buffering issues occasionally but not really better or worse than Xfinity was, but cheaper.

The issue with streaming cost is going to get a lot worse, I was just reading how most of them are losing their pants while trying to maintain and grow market share, so a lot of streaming costs will be increasing in the very near future. Nice thing is there’s no contracts so if/when that happens we can drop whatever we don’t use…although we don’t use a few of them very often as it is now…

crappie55369 wrote:

For sports I’ve mentioned this site many times – check out streameast. Can watch any major sports broadcast for free

I have been using this for a few years now to watch the majority of the sports. Make sure you have a decent size router and not to many things are connected to the wifi and it works great.

Family password sharing guys, Each of has 2 streaming services and the 3 of us share. I get Hulu, Disney + and ESPN free with my Version cell plan so cost me nothing to have 6 streaming services plus digital TV.

bigcrappie wrote:

Family password sharing guys

how do you get around the verify your household crap they have you do now to cut down on password sharing? or do you just pay for the subscription that allows multiple home locations?

Gitchi Gummi wrote:

how do you get around the verify your household crap they have you do now to cut down on password sharing? or do you just pay for the subscription that allows multiple home locations?

I had a post earlier on this thread about sharing Youtube TV accounts. My brother lives in Rochester and I live closer to Red Wing. He’s the account holder, the one who set it up. I’m not sure how it all works on Youtube TV’s end, but they do allow for travel so you can watch on your phone while away, they just require that you sign in to the “home area” of the account holder. I’m not sure the exact timeline but I think we have to be in the Rochester area at least once every 3 months to sign in from there.

Ive never had issues with sharing. The only issue I ran into was over Christmas when I wanted to watch the Wild and I logged into Directv Stream and it wouldnt allow me to watch the game in Houston for some dumb reason. Ive watched it in other locales before, but never out of state. Shouldnt have shared my location I guess.

YouTube TV allows something like 6 accounts and they do not have to be in the same “home” location (as far as I know).

Netflix on the other hand is much different. If I’m not the account holder, eventually it will lock me out until I re-confirm the account (which has to be done by the account holder).

Gitchi Gummi wrote:

Netflix on the other hand is much different. If I’m not the account holder, eventually it will lock me out until I re-confirm the account (which has to be done by the account holder).

Or just get on the horn with the account holder and get the code that is sent to their email.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Ive never had issues with sharing. The only issue I ran into was over Christmas when I wanted to watch the Wild and I logged into Directv Stream and it wouldnt allow me to watch the game in Houston for some dumb reason. Ive watched it in other locales before, but never out of state. Shouldnt have shared my location I guess.

You don’t have any choice with DirectTV. They have a market restriction, you either have to be in the local market or I believe there are “no market zones” where subscribers can watch any team, but you can’t disable the location or it won’t let you watch anything and you can’t do the fakey-fakey with VPN because they can sense you’re VPNing and you get nothing.

What you can do (or could do as of the last time I knew) was record the game and then watch the recording. I can’t recall, though, how long you had to wait to roll the recording, I believe it had to be after the game ended.

ESPN+, last I heard, still allows you to use VPN to fake your market and watch games. I cannot believe that BSN hasn’t gotten this shut down because as of now it is still possible to use ESPN+ to avoid subscribing to BSN.

Is it worth it? Absolutely! At least if you don’t NEED “live” TV. Which We don’t.
FWIW
I’m Subscribed to:
Peacock (can watch live NBC programming)
Paramount+ (can watch live CBS programming)
Hulu/Disney+/ESPN+
Discovery+
BSN (cancel when Wild season is over/renew in Oct.)
Amazon Prime
& Netflix

All that for a hair over $70. When I had direct TV I was paying close to $200 for a bunch of Sh!t I never watched. Now I have it all at my fingertips and can watch at my convenience. Some new episodes of shows I have to wait a day before they can be streamed, but so what..

Also, The Roku Channel & Tubi are great freebies.

What do you use to get “local” news? I still like to watch local news/weather/sports. I live too far away and way too many trees so when I tried a digital antenna it didn’t work.

For you streamers, I wonder how much you’re paying for high speed connection itself. Many of you conveniently do not list that when you indicate how much you’re paying for streaming services.

riverbassman wrote:

What do you use to get “local” news? I still like to watch local news/weather/sports. I live too far away and way too many trees so when I tried a digital antenna it didn’t work.

Haven’t watched local news since BLM was all over it years ago.. Plus, anything important usually will show up on my phone in some manner.

gimruis wrote:

For you streamers, I wonder how much you’re paying for high speed connection itself. Many of you conveniently do not list that when you indicate how much you’re paying for streaming services.

Paying $38 a month for 20MBPS with century link.
Wasn’t conveniently leaving it out, I assume everyone on here pays for internet whether they are streaming or not. Just like Electricity these days..
Still a buttload cheaper than cable or satellite.

IceNEyes1986 wrote:

Paying $38 a month for 20MBPS with century link.

Thanks. I wasn’t specifically referring to you but I appreciate the info.

I also have centurylink and mine bundles with direct tv. I pay $25/month for 1 GBPS. Its the fastest speed available I think.