A year without cable TV

26 October 2012

It’s been just about a year when we took the plunge and canceled our subscription to cable TV. I wrote about it a couple of months into the experiment in a post called Life without cable TV and again seven months later in a post entitled Update on the cable-free life. On this one-year anniversary, I thought I’d give you the latest.

The most important thing to know is that I love TV. And I watch a lot of it. That was true before we canceled cable and is still true today.

In the July post, I mentioned that the thing I missed most is a DVR. Well, I took are of that. Shortly after I wrote that post, I took advantage of a special offer from TiVo for a TiVo Premiere, for only $50. And they offered six months free Hulu Plus (which we were already paying for), which essentially made the device free. We do pay $15 a month for the service, but to me it’s so worth it.

Having a DVR has made a big difference. I no longer have to sit in front of the TV at a designated time to watch the network shows that don’t replay on Hulu live. And I don’t have to watch as many commercials. (Hulu has commercials that you can’t fast forward over.) I love the Instant Replay button. And I love that I can record Jeopardy every day and watch it in the evening with my husband.

Another little glitch we had was that our $50 indoor antenna stopped working well. I don’t know why, but suddenly PBS was not coming in at all and FOX was pixelating like crazy, which was especially bad during post-season baseball. As it got worse, even our beloved Jeopardy became almost unwatchable, due to the pixelation. So Barry went out and bought a bunch of different potential antenna solutions, including boosters and so forth, and the very first of these solutions that I tried, this $20 RCA indoor antenna, worked like a dream, on the first try. All six of our network stations (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS & the CW) come in clearly. Our long pixelation nightmare is over.

So a year in, I can say that I’m really glad we gave up cable. I do miss my HBO and Showtime shows, but I sure don’t miss spending $135 a month on cable TV!

Tagged with: money, savings, television