Rising food prices. Skyrocketing gas prices. Your home is worth 2o% less. These are real life issues that we face every day of our lives. Consuming media is one of those luxuries we cannot live without. Unfortunately, the cost of consuming that media is rising with little benefit to the customer. Cable television can cost your $80 to $100 a month. That payment can go towards 2 tanks of gasoline, a utility bill or food on your table. Here is your guide to cutting the cord and freeing yourself of your monthly cable TV subscription.
1. Get rabbit ears
The digital transition of 2009 was a complete mess, but it brought some benefits. Over the air broadcasts provide brilliant, uncompressed HD quality. Your cable company compresses HD through their subpar equipment. It may fill your screen, but the quality of the picture is destroyed by their outdated equipment. I have a 720p Vizio utilizing rabbit ears that shows significantly better picture quality than using Comcast’s Motorola HD DVR hooked up to a Sharp Aquos 1080p television.
There are dozens of channels available at your disposal for absolutely free of cost. Your only investment to gain access to these channels would be obtaining an indoor antenna. For less than $9 on Amazon you can buy the same basic indoor antenna
2. Launch your browser
There are several websites that offer full episodes online for completely free. You can watch on your laptop computer. Here are some options to improve your online viewing experience:
- Does your laptop have HDMI output? Hook it up to your television and go fullscreen.
- For most modern day gaming devices (Xbox, PS3 or Wii), you can set up PlayOn and stream pretty much anything from your computer to your gaming device.
3. Get Netflix and/or Hulu!
Really, you should have Netflix anyway. I will leave it up to you to decide whether you want Hulu or not. I feel Hulu is due for a price drop. Netflix on the other hand, well, you’ll never find a better deal in the history of man than what Netflix streaming can provide for $7.99 a month.
- Have a gaming console? Netflix is available natively on all major gaming consoles.
- XBox 360 requires a Gold Membership to gain access to Netflix. Get your Xbox 360 12 Month Live Gold Card
card from Amazon for $20 cheaper than available in brick and mortar stores.
- Have an Xbox 360, but don’t have an Xbox Live Gold membership? You can set up Windows Media Center Extender for free and watch the selected content on your television.
4. Consider a set top box.
Gaming consoles can only take you so far. While I have been critical of the device, I still recommend getting a Roku box. As I have spent time with the device, I can see its potential. The content available is expansive and affordable. Many of the “channels” available for you to access are free of charge. If you are an Amazon prime member you can gain instant access to thousands of movies available to stream to your Roku for free. It is included with your Amazon Prime membership. Crackle is also available on the Roku which offers many movies and TV shows free of charge.
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Cutting the cord and freeing yourself of cable television is easy enough if you take the steps to set yourself up for the future. Dumping cable television doesn’t mean you’re completely free of the cable company unless your Internet service provider is not the cable company. Your monthly cost for Internet service will rise, but do the math and you will see a tremendous savings by dumping the television portion of your subscription.
By dumping cable television you can control what you want to watch and when you want to watch it with minimal commercial interruption. It puts the control back into your hands and out of the hands of the cable television companies.
Have you been thinking about canceling cable? What is your game plan?
Further reading: Roku HD Review