[Note: I go off on a few tangents in this article. You can always just skip to the next section when I’m deep in the rabbit hole.] I’m often both ahead of the curve and far, far behind the curve. I write about an idea when only a few people are considering it, but I […] The post I Finally Cut the Cable (after Two Decades) appeared first on Lazy Man and Money.
[Note: I go off on a few tangents in this article. You can always just skip to the next section when I’m deep in the rabbit hole.]
I’m often both ahead of the curve and far, far behind the curve. I write about an idea when only a few people are considering it, but I only execute on it long after everyone else has. I wrote about Bitcoin in 2011, but didn’t buy any until 2022.
I wrote about cutting cable television in 2007, but didn’t actually do it until last month. In both cases, tens of millions of people jumped in while I waited on the sidelines.
Why It Took So Long to Cut the Cord
The California Era
When I first considered cutting the cable, I had just moved from Boston to California. My brother had set up a Slingbox, so I could watch local Red Sox and Patriots’ games. Slingbox was a piece of hardware that took a TV signal and made it available over the internet. The picture was grainy for sports – you couldn’t see which football player just made the tackle. (This was before HD was common.)
I just bought the MLB.tv package. For the Patriots’ games, I had to go to a bar to watch their Sunday ticket, since we were renting and not allowed to get DirecTV. That was expensive, because I didn’t like to milk a drink for a three-hour game.
I also became accustomed to having a DVR. I had one of the first DVRs with ReplayTV (it was better, but less popular than TiVo). Without cable, there was no DVR, and it was literally like 1985 when you had to be there to watch a TV show.
I did give it a try, though, with a Mohu Leaf. That got a lot of channels, which I’ll circle back to later in the article.
Owning The Content Era
In 2011, I discovered that it was possible to create my own cable box and DVR. It used a CableCard, which is a standard created by law largely so that cable companies couldn’t own the cable box and kill off companies like TiVo selling DVR service. I bought a device called the HD HomeRun Prime, put in a cable card, hooked it up to a computer running Microsoft Windows 7 and enjoyed no DVR fees. It required Windows 7 because it had Windows Media Center(WMC), which had approval to work with CableCards to unscramble the paid TV channels. WMC included TV listings (the cable guide), which was also a key component.
I used this solution for 14 years, but it wasn’t easy. In 2009, Windows stopped developing Windows Media Center. I have a conspiracy theory that they were paid off by cable companies. Over time, Microsoft stopped supporting Windows 7. A big blow was shutting off the TV listing service. Fortunately, one person created some software to make it work. I still had to subscribe to a service and pay $20 a year. The software was extremely difficult to set up, but fortunately it worked well after that.
Somewhere in 2023, the TV listing service changed in my local area. I couldn’t get it set up after that. For a couple of years, I just recorded things like an old VCR, setting the time and channel to record. These were almost always just Patriots’ games when I had to be elsewhere. By this time, I was already paying for a lot of streaming services.
Sounds like a lot of hassle, right? Yep. However, it saved me about $25 a month. That’s $300 a year… and over $4,000 over 14 years.
Just as importantly, I OWNED the content. Hard drive space over the years has gotten cheaper and cheaper, so I have a collection of so much. It would most pay off in the:
Kids Era
We had our first boy in late 2012 and our second in early 2014. It was extremely helpful to be able to replay episodes of shows like Blaze and the Monster Machines. It was great to copy the files over to a tablet or phone to help with those times in public when you just have to keep them busy while you tend to adult stuff (like have a conversation with a friend).
Fast forward to today, and I have episodes of Adam Ruins Everything that are finally age appropriate for them. You can’t stream it on any subscription service. You can’t even buy a DVD. You can “buy” the episodes on Amazon, but that isn’t really ownership. (In case you are curious, Amazon argued that specifically in court and the fight continues today.)
Resistance to Change
Last year, I decided to get a cable box. With the TV listings broken, watching cable was something that I rarely did anyway. I decided to give it a try – with TV listings and DVR back, would I watch more cable? I watched a little more cable, at first, but then stopped. My kids only watch YouTube and streaming channels. (My 12-year-old learned the other day that streaming TV doesn’t work when the internet is down – LOL).
I kept this up until last month. What changed? Our “bundle” (internet/cable) savings with Cox Communications (our cable provider) had expired. The bill exploded by another $40 or so. I could subscribe to a new bundle, but it would only save me about $15. I’d still pay $25 more than before. At this point, our bill was around $225 a month. That included our internet service.
My Solution to Cutting the Cable
I started to research how to cancel cable completely. I didn’t know where our old Mohu Leaf was (affiliate link), so I put one in my Amazon cart. I found that there are similar devices to my HDHomeRun Prime to record over-the-air TV. It looked like I’d get all the Patriots games with the exception of the ESPN ones. We’d still get the ones on Amazon Prime and Netflix. (The system of watching sports nowadays is an unmitigated disaster.)
The more I went down the over-the-air path, the more I realized it looked like my FrankenBox that I had for 14 years. Also, there’s the important point that my wife watches a few cable shows every night before bed. That never needed to be a DVR, so a $4/mo. The box was good enough.
There are a lot of streaming services that give you access to those cable shows. Some examples are Hulu TV, YouTube TV, Sling TV, and Fubo. DirecTV even offers a subscription for people who don’t want to install a dish on their roof. They typically run $45 to $70 and include a pseudo-DVR function. You can watch recordings later, but they expire, and you certainly don’t OWN them.
I looked into all of these and decided that YouTube TV made the most sense. It had all my local channels, so I had sports, and it had all the channels that my wife watches. Long-term, it is around $83 a month, but I might be able to get a plan with fewer channels for closer to $65. We’re getting a promotional plan now, so we’ll see what we really use.
Our Internet connection is still with Cox. I downgraded from 500Mbps to 300Mbps, which is still more than fast enough for everything we do. I didn’t need the 500Mbps speed before, but that was the bundle that saved us money. Going with the slower speed would have actually cost more.
The price for that internet service is $70/month. With YouTube’s $85, we’re at around $155. That’s a savings of about $75 a month. If we find we don’t need all the channels, it could be $90/month. My wife found that YouTube TV is actually a little easier to use than Cox. Our TV handles it natively through an app, so it’s one fewer remote control. She doesn’t have to think about how to switch from cable to streaming.
It’s worked perfectly for the last month. It turns out that I still don’t watch live TV. That will change when it comes to football season.
There is one “gotcha” that I glossed over. Watching the Red Sox has become a challenge. A subscription to MLB.tv like I had in California is $150/year, which comes to $12.50 a month. However, they are blocked from showing Red Sox games in Rhode Island where we live now. To get the games, we have to subscribe to New England Sports Network, which is largely owned by the Red Sox. (They have 80%, and the Boston Bruins’ parent company owns 20%.) That subscription runs $30/month. Ouch! There’s really nothing else of interest on the channel for me, so it feels like PPV of $1+ per game. I can usually catch about 2 games a week, so it realistically turns out to be $4/game. In contrast, my Disney+/Hulu subscription is about $5 a month (on their annual Black Friday deal). Both have ads.
It’s crazy to me that I can watch almost all the Patriots’ games for free, over-the-air, or included with local channels, and the Red Sox cost so much money. The demand for the NFL completely dwarfs the MLB.
Final Thoughts
I hope I didn’t get too far off-track. In the end, I found that watching television is personal. My tastes are very different from my wife’s. My kids’ tastes changed over time. There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to television.
Additionally, where you are in life matters. We were far more frugal in our early 30s than we are now at 50. Back then, I wanted to save money and invest as much as possible. A dollar invested in the S&P 500 in February 2007 has grown to $6.86 today. I’ve got less patience to jump through hoops, but it works out because we can pay for convenience. While that may sound like we shouldn’t have cut cable at all, it barely took any time and is essentially the same. The $70/mo. will more than pay for our streaming services, especially on their annual Black Friday deals.
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