Getting rid of Dish, Cable. Directv?

[FastFinger]

Our Dish bill just went up from $85 to $110. Talking to a buddy about that and he mentione that he's dumping his DirecTV, and not getting Dish or Cable. His thinking is that it cheaper to just get a Netfix account, and that pretty much every worthwhile series is available over the net.

No I understand that whatever plan I get must fit my particular viewing patter. Which is that I can go years w/o watching any sports, I seldom watch news, and we usually don't "surf", we have a few shows that we target TIVO, and hardly ever plop ourselves in front of the TV and just watch the least objectionable show.

We do like Breaking Bad - HBO programming, movies, a few cable reality shows, an an occasional network show. Probaly 10 or so hours per week.

A problem is that we have a large screen with HDMI, but so far I don't even have internet access in my living room (which is where our only tv is located).

He has Apple TV, a home server, Apple WiFi etc.

I'm thinking of building a server/pc with hefty HT support.

What are you doing for TV access - can you live w/o cable or sat?

[Kali-Jax]

I just did the same thing. Except I have a laptop in my living room to get the streamin shows.

We were sitting and watching 4 hours of nothing every night.
Its amazing. What you can do with that time.

13.00 Netflicks
35.00 Intraweb.

[lazyworm]

a coworker of mine doesn't even have a TV at home. The family got by on watching movies and hulu on the computer.

[smird]

No cable or direct tv for about 8 years, and I don't miss it. I use netflix, and have a boxee pc that I've ripped all my dvds to. There's also the Hulu pay service that I haven't tried out yet, but hear good things about.

If you get your tv shows from netflix, you'll be about a season behind. But many of them you can watch on the networks or other site as little as a week after air date.

Nice thing now is I don't "surf" or watch nothing like Kali says. I either watch something I want to see or the TV is off and I'm doing something else.

Now the really cool thing is I have 4 and 6 y.o. girls. They only watch what I want them to. They haven't seen a bazillion commercials. I asked the 6 y.o. what she want for her birthday and she told me "a nice dress" instead of the latest greatest boo boo wonder pet or whatever is the hot ticket right now.

[CSACANNONEER]

I just use DTV and pay about $25/month.

[winnre]

I signed up for DISH because they gave me all channels for 3 months then top 120 for 9 months at $20 a month, plus a $50 sign up bonus and no sign up fee. So, 120 channels for $190. for a year. Still gonna drop at the end though.

[45R]

No DISH, CABLE TV or Direct TV

Hulu, Netflix

and FTW!

http://www.tv-dome.net/

[Digital_Boy]

I cut the cord several years ago, and I use a combination of bit torrent, hulu, netflix and a Popcorn Hour networked media tank for content and playback capability.

Check out the Popcorn Hour media streamers, along with the Western Digital settop boxes. They support all the major codec formats and wrappers (H264, X264, MPEG4 codec, Matroksa (.mkv extension) wrapper, WMV format, etc).

The Popcorn Hour has a 10/100 network interface, HDMI and electrical and optical S/PDIF outputs to hook into your AV receiver or directly into your TV, so you get full 1080p playback without any intervening D/A or A/D conversions between your playback device and your monitor.

[Satex]

If you don't watch TV, how do you find about the shows?
Also, how do you get affordable internet only service?

[Tanner68]

I got rid of Dish and never looked back. No TV for me. Netflix and the internet provide plenty of entertainment options.

[kapache]

No matter how expensive my cable gets I can't let go of cable TV, I must watch my regular shows. I spend 15 hours a day on a computer the least thing I want to do is watch Videos through a Computer, besides my Son must watch his TU TU show (Thomas and friends ).

[Vacaville]

Dish sucks. We kept having problems outside, and Dish charges $100 to come out whether it's their fault or yours. Problem was always faulty equipment or connections on the roof. Changed back to basic cable after a few years of their crap.

[sholling]

I pay a small fortune for Verizon's Ultimate FIOS package with 35/35mb internet access and Showtime. It's a lot of money but the picture quality and sound are awesome. What I gave up to save money was $30 month of land line.

[kapache]

What I love about Satellite TV(Dish) is that you can hack the HU card, and program your own channels as well open every single channel possible.

[2DoorImpala]

Im paying 40 bucks and i got most channels minus hbo/and a few other movie ones, which i have no need for.