Cord cutting: A beginner's guide

I can't stress enough that you should try YouTube TV before making a choice of streaming services. If DVR functionality matters to you, it's the one to get. FYI, I did the free trial on all of them.

 

I thought about it but with what I pay for just internet (I need high speeds my wife and I both work from home plus wifi/streaming to a lot of devices) so if I were to pay for Youtube TV, I might as well have just stayed with Comcast bundles.

 

Kodi is the Napster of yesteryear. Great idea, I have it on my firestick but afraid to use it all the time. It's like the man won't be watching me at 1:00am streaming Billy Jack. Alas he will.

 

We have Spectrum, and I believe the cheapest cable tv bundling you can get even with an introductory offer is $90. YTTV and Philo combined are $60 and you don't have to pay for a bunch of garbage you don't want including equipment fees.

 

I just heard that 5G will be the fatal blow to cable. I'm not tech savvy enough to know if that's a real possibility. Any thoughts?

 

Another win, The Criterion Channel is starting a channel on April 8th. Their movie collection is second to none. I signed up about three months ago in order to get that sweet charter member deal.

 

I was listening to a program the other day stating that the US is in a 5G infrastructure race (like the Space Race) with China. I guess we have told our allies that if they utilize the Huawei tech, that they won't be able to have intelligence sharing with the US.

 

I just finished a 2 year contract with Directv where I was paying $50ish/month for the whole 2 years. It includes HBO. They were going to increase my rate to $110. I obviously decided to cancel and go to YouTube TV. When I called they said they had no deals so I went ahead and canceled. Two days later they called me back and offered 1 year at the same $50 rate and also threw in a $300 gift card and NFL Direct ticket for free. So I guess they have me for another year.

I did try YouTube TV and thought it was a good option, but it had 1 weird quirk. On ABC prime-time programming only, you could not hear the voices, just the background music. This didn't occur on any other channel or network. I do have an OTA antenna so I could still utilize that, but it is less convenient.

 

My wife used to love that stuff too. I always teased her that I could see her taking notes!

Anyway, there is another app that might get you that, and it is 100% free. It is called Pluto TV. It is much like cable TV in that you have a bunch of channels (60 or so) that you can flip through, but you have no control over what to watch on those channels. They have various movie channels running old movies, kind of like what TBS might run, and also have at least one detective ID like channel.

My buddies favorite channel is the streaming equivalent of the babes thread. Non stop Hot young women working the camera while soft music plays. lol... don't tell your wife about that channel.

 

Yeah I'm familiar with Pluto, it wouldn't work. The shows they watch are specific shows. I got rid of DirecTvNow and picked up Spectrum TV at a good price.

 

For some reason, my You Tube TV subscription allowed me to log into the Spectrum app which gives me some “missing” cable channels.

 

I don't have the article handy but Spectrum just released a national program for 14.99/month. You have to call and ask for it. It gives you all the crap channels. They advertise it as, for those who are not interested in news or sports.

I wish they would do the opposite. Put a package together that is nothing but sports and the local channels.


Personally I cut the cord over the summer and adjusted nicely. But jonesing for UF and other college games. I signed up for youtube TV. The plan is to cancel after the season.

 

That's what I do: First football game thru end of NCAA tournament.

 

YoutubeTV

I have all the major networks
ESPN, 2, U, news
SECN
ACCN
BTN
CBSN
NBCSN
FS1. FS2
Fox Florida, Fox Sun

All the CFB I could want

 

Do any of these cover how to get the SEC alternate channel