Cutting the cord? (Hulu)

We have an Xfinity premium package that covers our computers, fax/printer, four TV's, land line home phone, two cell phones with unlimited minutes at a bundled cost of around $150/mo.

Patrick, How did you do with cutting the cord? We have a cell phone, landline, internet, Roku, Netflix, and CBS All Access. It comes to $139.00. Glenn

Patrick,

I just found this guy's site. He has scads of videos on YouTube that look to be helpful, but I haven't had a chance to check it out yet.

www.cordcuttersnews.com/

Also, just found this. It says "cancel anytime", so all we have to lose is ten bucks, I guess?

www.directvnow.com/thegoodstu
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More coming!

Edited by: NITEMAN3D at: 2/6/2018 (02:11)

You touch an excellent point and I guess it's probably our solution as well. Just try others while the Xfinity is still in place. Unlike Xfinity, it's pretty easy to cancel all the streaming services if you want. I've read of people hopping around and only having one of them in place at a time until they tire of it and move on to the next, rinse, repeat.

Regarding Fire TV, we have the "stick" and another with voice remote (haven't even figured out much use for that yet). We also have Roku on a couple TVs. I really like Fire and Roku as it's mostly older stuff that I enjoy. Roku has lots of other content as well, much of it free. There's a "Ted Talks" channel I like. Chromecast and Apple TV must be very similar. All these are devices that plug into an HDMI port on your TV and you can either power them by plugging into a USB port on the TV or into a wall converter. Fire/Prime has some original content and Netflix streaming has even more of it. They all offer something a little different from one another, but all are very similar.

I don't know if you have Centurylink or another provider to fall back on if you just cancel Xfinity altogether, but that too would be an option and then when you call to bargain with Xfinity you have some bargaining power. The Centurylink internet is only 25 meg, but that's more than fast enough unless they're telling stories about their speed. It's $45 a month "for life". Don't know about data caps or device limits with them either. Therein lies my problem. Xfinity is expensive, but it works mostly without flaw. On it goes....




Edited by: NITEMAN3D at: 2/5/2018 (20:30)

I truly appreciate the "what if"! I've been giving this some thought since November, and really could test drive it even while having the full boat of xFinity services still in place. Today we have TV / Internet / Phone / Security. We get all that for $363 / month (as of 1/1/18). Since everything except for Security is bundled, I don't have an exact amount if we dropped TV and Phone, but it appears just Internet @ 150 Mbps (which is what we have right now) runs around $83 for a new subscriber, so maybe a little more for us, but at least it gives me a #. Security run $50, and just Hulu unlimited runs $40, so that totals $173 and includes 50 hours of cloud storage. I am pretty certain we'd need their enhanced cloud storage but can't figure out how much that costs.

My biggest question: What benefits do we get with either Apple TV or Amazon Fire TV? We can get to Hulu via our Blu Ray players and / or a Smart TV.

We're poised on the edge of the building with our toes hanging over the edge and getting ready to jump... and have been for months. Every time I'm ready to jump, I think, "what if". For me the big "what if " is that I still need internet to do all these other things. As the tide of cord cutters grows, what's to stop the cable companies from just simply raising the price of internet service to compensate for the loss of TV and phone revenue?

As regards who to use if we do it, we're really already in pretty good shape with Netflix streaming, Amazon Prime, Xbox Gold, and Roku. They probably already account for twenty percent (at least) of what we watch and all have been pretty problem free. Network TV is another fifty percent via cable. The remaining twenty-five percent is the sticky point with the cable channels. There are so many to choose from now. Hulu, Sling, youTube, DirectTV Now, Xbox and PlayStation, and several more.

So, our phones will actually work with a cell phone which I can basically get free from Comcast. My guesstimate is that it will cost me around $90 monthly or less for internet and another $70 or less for a collection of services to replace the TV channels. So now I'm at $160 monthly or less vs the existing $255 a month or more. Probably about a $1200 a year or more in savings. I have another alternative with Centurylink ADSL internet, but that will be slower. It's supposed to be $45 monthly guaranteed for life (with a whole bucket of caveats).

So Patrick, call me "undecided in PA" and let us all know what you come up with as I'm pretty sure there are more people than just me interested in this.

Gentlemen, last year there was some discussion about "cutting the cord" (cable) options. I really want to look into this, as my cable bill seems so unreasonable.

One that seems to be a good fit for us in Hulu. Local TV, cloud storage, etc. I'm interested to know if anyone is using / has used Hulu? Is it worth the change? Drawbacks?