Satelite/cable Vs Web

[craww]

       Been married for 3 years now and the wife and I have never felt like we needed cable/dish. The whole "wants" and "needs" thing. We could afford it, just didn't do it as we're not huge TV people. My wife is now staying home with the kids, and I'm also home a great deal more now thinks to my awesome job and it would be nice for there to be something on TV once in a while. I currently have an aircard for the laptop, so we have internet but the 5gigs a month is no good for streaming. We're considering either getting cable/dish OR high speed internet and doing Netflix or hulu or whatnot.

 

    I've been looking over direct dish/direct tv/comcast and I feel like after the intial promos wear off, they kind of rip you off (it would be cool to have nfl network and outdoor channel though )

 

     What do you do? If you do use the interwebs for your TV, what do you use (netflix, hulu, something else?) Just trying to weigh the options.

 

[Raider Nation Fisher]

We get basic/expanded through our HOA. Other than that we dont have cable internet or digital. I have subscription through an English cable company that lets me stream my Chelsea games. We use netflix via mail. Thats mainly it.

[craww]

Man I didn't know Netflix still did mail order lol.

[QUAKEnSHAKE]

I dumped cable 15 years ago and went Over-The-Air antenna route. I have DSL for internet. I dont pay for any other services. A few  stations put their programming online for free after it airs so watch those like History Channnel A&E most of the Networks. Ive thought of going paid HULU/Netflix but with my service Im limited to 150gigs/month and wouldnt get full use out of it would go over that limit. I stick with HULUs free content and Youtube free movies.

 

Oh with my ISP I get ESPN3 free and get many sports on there college football & racing thats a plus.

[Raider Nation Fisher]

Man I didn't know Netflix still did mail order lol.

Yup. Getting three disc at a time. For 10 bucks a month.

[Bankbeater]

We have expanded cable.  Over the past year, the cable co. has dropped channels.  Two or three channels every six months or so.  Then comes the rub.  They start calling asking how we like the service and if there is anything they can do for us.  We gripe about the channels we lost, and the cable rep. tells us that for an upgraded package we can have those channels back.  I am leaning toward dish.

[Hanover_Yakker]

Have had all three and can say that DirecTV has the best qualtiy and customer service.  DISH is second and traditional cable is third.  I just switched from satellite to cable for cost reasons, but I am real close to cutting it off and switching back.  The inconveniences of storms in VA all year long knock out the satellite signal more than I prefer but the picture quality is so much better.  With cable, the package I paid for is supposed to include certain channels yet multiple calls cannot resolve this issue.  I was so ticked that the NFL Network was not coming in and I missed the Scouting Combine this past weekend.  I know they replay it several times before the draft, but it should have worked to start with.  There answer to this problem was boosting the signal?  Really?  You mean all the other channels in HD for the same package work fine but somehow the NFL requires the signal to be boosted.  Pretty poor answer in my opinion.

 

The rub with the satellite package is that they make you lock in for 2 years and only discount the first year.  The cable packages have nice bundles but again after the first year the cost increases significantly.  They get you coming and going.

 

For OTA, we are basically screwed, because all of our cable outlets are on the north facing walls, but the satellites are all to our SSW.  I tried a surface top OTA antenna and was only able to pull in 8 channels.  I could install a big antenna inside the attic, but that defeats the purpose from a cost persepctive.  I'll probably end up switching back to DTV here in the next month or so if my experiences with cable do not improve.

[BrianinMD]

Went to FIOS about a year and a half ago, will never go back to cable until forced to. Service has been great, internet speeds are blazing.

[kadas]

We just dropped cable--got tired of prices constantly increasing---made me upset to see them constantly offering great rates to sign up but once you were with  them rates kept increasing with no breaks--they all do it so I can not point my frustration at just one provider--Dish,Direct TV or cable -all do it---wife and I decided we really do not watch TV enough to justify paying as much as they wanted every month---cancelled about 6 months ago--so far have not missed it--enjoy the "extra" money each month--JMO|

[MCS]

Me and my family have been doing web only now for about a year. My wife is a stay at home with 3 kids. Down stairs we have a bluray with wifi, and an HD antenna which gets u all the major sporting events, local news public tv etc. up stairs my computer is hooked to my 27" LCD. You can get pretty much any cable tv show via web, network tv is also on the web. We have Netflix, who just got a big disney contract, and that takes care of the kids. We pay 50 plus 8.99 for Netflix compared to my parents that are 130 something with std cable/Internet/phone, some of the guys at work pay 180 for premium packages. It save us a good bit of money every month.

[craww]

Thanks guys. Seems like the majority of cable/dish customers have negative experiences. Really leaning toward fios, it would be nice to be able to use my tablet anywhere around the house over wifi.

It would also be nice if you could cherry pick just a handful of channels that u want via the web and be done with the cable providers.

[jhoffman]

I have high speed cable and roku boxes in every tv room, roku does the netflix/hulu thing and has its own channels though most suck.

 

I told cable id come back if they ever offer alacarte channels. I pay $49.99 a month for high speed internet and tv, plus $8 for netflix and $8 for hulu plus so $66 a month

[John Hensley]

did u know Netflix offers 8 different people on one account , my sister pays for the Netflix and I'm hooked though in her account ,, .

I pay like 76 buck for expanded cable and 10 gigs though cable, thought about going to dish because it has WFN the world fishing network its a cool channel but a lot of repeats like the outdoor channel. 

wanted to go to dish but wife really got tee off , because if we dropped cable and kept internet then would be paying more for dish ,you know the 2 year deal really isn't a good deal ,, my buddy is finding out the hard way after the 1st year its like 90 bucks ,, the hole darn thing is a rack it ,,,,,,and the outdoor channel is really going down hill with all the repeats and hunting shows ,,, needs to be more fishing shows JMO