Life, Technology

How to cut the cord from Cable TV | Audit your program viewing habits

I chose Roku over Amazon Fire and Chromecast
I chose Roku over Amazon Fire and Chromecast

One of the popular things the media world has been talking about over the last couple of years is “cord cutting” or people cancelling their cable TV and satellite subscriptions and moving to online streaming services such as Hulu Plus, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Redbox Streaming and others.

For a while I wanted to cancel my AT&T U-verse service to save money but I didn’t want my wife and daughter to disown me as that evil villain who took away their television.  In trying to figure out how I could save money I started looking at my DVR and the family viewing habits and I found something very interesting.  About 75% of the shows my wife and I recorded were on the major broadcast networks such as ABC, NBC and CBS.  The other 25% of the shows that we were watching could be found on Amazon prime and purchased for $20 to $40 per season depending on how many episodes and what season we were watching.

In doing the math, I found that I could reduce my cable subscription down to basic HD cable and in the process remove $130 per month from my monthly spending.  I already had subscriptions with Netflix and Amazon Prime, so I still had plenty of other options of shows to watch outside of cable networks that I was no longer subscribing to.  If I really wanted to watch the shows I could purchase the shows the next day for $2 to $3 per episode.

Something else happened when I stopped subscribing to other channels…we found out we didn’t really need to watch those shows!

I did end up spending $50 on a Roku to upgrade my bedroom’s streaming abilities.  With that I was able to get access to a few networks by getting my mom’s login to her Charter Cable account and using her account to gain access to History Channel, Disney Channel, HBO Go, and other channels.

Now that you’ve read this post, go and do an audit on your TV viewing habits and the chances are that you’ll be able to save a ton of money by reducing your cable bill to basic cable and move to streaming services on devices like Roku, PS3, PS4, Chromecast, Amazon Fire, and other devices!