Who here is a cable "cord cutter" ? And: What is your download Mbps?

[culturejam]

We cut the cord here at the 'Jam household back in June, and frankly I'm not really missing anything. We signed up for PlayStation Vue and generally like it. It's not perfect, but we get almost everything we were watching on cable (all the "critical" content, with the exception of The Daily Show) and we're saving about $60 a month...and that includes HBO as an add-on. What's more, the HBO on-demand catalog is so much deeper on Vue than what we had with our cable box. Also, having Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and PBS Kids all integrated into the same device with PS Vue is just so convenient.

The biggest gripe we have is that the way the DVR works is not all that awesome. It's not really DVR in the traditional sense, actually. You can add a specific show that you want to record, but it will record ALL of that show. You can't just record one episode. Also, if you want to start watching from the beginning of a show that is being recorded (live), you first have to go to the current time and then you can play from the beginning. This sucks for sports or anything with spoilers (ie - any show with any sort of plot).

Maybe the worst is that you can only pause live TV for 4 minutes. That's nearly a useless amount of time for pause, at least for people with small children.    My cable box could pause for 2 hours, and it was 8 years old. But, I'm doing all the PS Vue stuff through a Roku, which has no local hard drive to dump on.

My internet is 65Mbps down and about 25Mbps up. The cost is ~$65 a month. I ask about this because I'm curious what others are getting / paying. Once you cut the chord, MB is the name of the game.

[alanp]

I haven't lived in a house with TV since I moved out of Mum and Dad's place.

Cable TV in NZ is like rocking horse shit. Everyone is on satellite, or DVB-S, here.

While I was at Mum and Dad's, I set up a MYTH TV Linux media PC, with three Technisat DVB-S cards. Absolute utter brilliance. The worst part was getting XWindows Linux (not MythTV, but Linux itself) to work with a 1366x768 TV. The initial impetus for building it was an utter, complete, and absolute hatred of advertising.

[jubal81]

Can't help with the DVR conundrum, but my world changed with a new router. Had long wait times, stutters, loading and didn't realize it was because I was still using an "N" router.

Got a new "AC" router and, whew, it was on.

[peAk]

I cut the cord about a year ago and haven't looked back

I use Sling and Netflix now. I occasionally use Amazon Prime too.

I tried YouTube TV for a while as well.

Yes, the cloud dvr sucks on all of them but it's better than nothing.

Overall, I am happy and I am saving money.

I think my line is between 150-200mbs

[matmosphere]

We haven't had cable in at least 5 years. Don't miss it a bit.

Honestly, the way we get around the DVR thing is that we just don't follow any shows anymore. We just watch stuff on Netflix and Amazon. Every few months the pickings get slim but that not bad cause we'll stop watching so much tv for a while. doesn't bother me much.

We use a program called Plex for our media library, it's mostly just movies for the kids. It is a great program though. Apparently they added some type of dvr feature recently but I haven't tried it yet.

There are a very few options for OTA dvr but they do actually exist.

https://www.cnet.com/products/channel-master-stream-plus/preview/

[culturejam]

I think my line is between 150-200mbs

Damn, that's fast. I'm not even sure how I would use that kind of speed. It's only so often I need to download the latest Linux ISOs... like right now.

[Betty Wont]

I live in an urban area and recently cut my comcast cable and went local dsl and my speeds and connectivity improved greatly. I usually have hd streaming on a ps4, and multiplayer gaming on switch and pc going on at the same time with no issues. And no more throttling and kick offs.

[alanp]

https://www.mythtv.org

There's the MythTV link, btw. I used the MythBuntu version, nice and easy. When I moved out, Dad refused to let me take my media pc unless I built him one first.

[bsoncini]

I rarely watch tv but I have no need to cut the cord.  Opposed to the US, France has much more competition and the prices are lower.  We have the choice of 4 high speed fibre providers.  I pay 15 a month which includes speeds of about 85 mbps down and 45 upload.  And the cable box comes free with the package. The cable box is an android box so there are all the google apps to download, I've been using Kodi a lot lately. If you have a cell phone with the same company they throw in even more goodies.  In the bedroom we use the DVB-T (Aerial) signal which is free.  But French tv is mostly crap.  As with as telecom companies after you've been with them a few years they don't care anymore and start raising prices.  Then you just need to change providers to get a better deal again.

[thesmokingman]

I've been weaning the family over to cord cutting a little at a time ... it took a while for Netflix to get good enough to get rid of some of the premium movie channels ... same for hulu and sling with regards to getting rid of the rest of cable tv. hardware has gotten better too ... our older smart tv is not nearly as good at streaming as our blue ray player or roku box. living somewhere that doesn't have bad storms and tornadoes that all but necessitate having cable just for the local channels has eased the transition as well. also helps if you have a family member to split the cost with ... for instance, we pay for hulu and they pay for netflix
my cable is asynchronous 100 megabit service ... real deal download speeds of something around 11-12 megabytes per second over bit torrent ... which is a lot closer to the advertised speed than I was ever expecting to get.

[EBK]

I would gladly cut the cord, but Comcast is unfortunately the only provider of reliable high speed Internet where I live.  DSL is sort of available in the sense that Verizon would happily take my money for it, but I'm too far away from their hub (or whatever it's called) for it to be usable.  All other providers in my area are just Verizon resellers.

[sjaustin]

We've been cord cutters for a long time, just going with Netflix and a digital antenna for years until last year, when I got a really sweet intro deal on DIRECTV Now. So we basically get everything now, although we still watch very little live TV. I'm on a beta for the DVR service, which is sort of handy. I never had one when we had cable, so I guess I don't know what I'm missing. Ha.

There is an awesome local fiber provider expanding bit by bit in Rochester. We got it last year, and it's amazing. 100x20 for $50/month, all inclusive. And I hit those speeds very consistently. Was super fun to kick Spectrum (then Time Warner) to the curb.

[culturejam]

I would gladly cut the cord, but Comcast is unfortunately the only provider of reliable high speed Internet where I live.

What I meant by cord-cutting is getting rid of cable TV. That's where the greatest cost is. I still have Optimum (Cablevision) for my internet. So technically, I have not cut *their* cord, it's just that a lot less is coming through it now. 

[EBK]

I would gladly cut the cord, but Comcast is unfortunately the only provider of reliable high speed Internet where I live.

What I meant by cord-cutting is getting rid of cable TV. That's where the greatest cost is. I still have Optimum (Cablevision) for my internet. So technically, I have not cut *their* cord, it's just that a lot less is coming through it now. 

Well, Comcast carefully keeps us bundled to their TV service because they always seem to have some sort of promotion that is somehow cheaper than Internet access by itself.  They tend to recover my savings in the bill after the promotion ends, as I accidentally end up paying full package price for a month before we jump onto the next promotion.

[somnif]

Well, Comcast carefully keeps us bundled to their TV service because they always seem to have some sort of promotion that is somehow cheaper than Internet access by itself.  They tend to recover my savings in the bill after the promotion ends, as I accidentally end up paying full package price for a month before we jump onto the next promotion.

See, here on Cox, the promotions are ONLY for new customers. You get 1, then tough, deal with it.