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I live in NJ and the only service company in my area is Comcast. I watch netflix allot, and I need good internet connection for when I have to work from home. The high speed internet costs around $60. My cable bill is $100 that includes basic cable with some premium channels, that I don't watch. I use a cell and don't have a land line. In theory I could cut cable television since I don't watch it. But every time I call the cable company to cancel Cable TV they give some crazy discount. Last time I watched cable TV, it was the Olympics.
Now, I could buy a phone line and then DSL connection, then I would not need cable company at all. Only phone line with DSL will cost the same $60.
So it's just that, explore your needs and your available options. Do you need telephone service, do you need cable tv ?
In my area, If I was in your situation, I could look at the bill, call the cable company and cancel stuff that I don't use. That will cut your bill to $100 a month. That should cover 2-3 premium channels.
Netflix, costs like $25 a month, you could just keep the internet connection. But if you watch and enjoy your cable TV, then keep it.
You could buy an internet amplifying antenna, and look for free internet connection in your area. So an WHI FI amplifying antenna will cost you $100 to buy (research your available connections first), and the you subscribe to netflix instant and only have to pay $25 a month.
Where do you recommend shopping for the internet amplification antenna? Thanks
Cable was a huge source of money drain for me. This is what i did to reduce the cost (some of these ideas have already been said throughout this thread):
1) Removed all cable channels except for the very basic (top 13 channels)
2) Got a decent speed internet package
3) Hooked up an HTPC (similiar to roku box, amazon fire, googlecast, etc) and watch most of my shows over the internet for free.
4) Got rid of the land line and reduced my cell phone bill by going with Boost mobile ($35/month).
My cable bill is now $51/month. So much better than the 125+ i was paying! And i did not lose much at all - it's amazing what is out there streamable over the net!
Is there anyway to get a card to install into your computer that you can hook a coax cable to and decodes and displays the programming like a box would? We have cable but it is $10 per box per month for rental so there isn't one in my room. I do have a large monitor.
Didn't see anyone mention Ceton, so I'll throw that one out there. They've got a 6 tuner model out now for about $200. I paid $180 for their 4 tuner model 2 years ago before they had a 6 tuner one.
Their card installs in your desktop, you slap a cable card from your cable company in the slot in the Ceton card (just tell your cable company you have a Tivo, saves trying to explain), run Windows Media Center, hit next a couple times, call your cable company to pair the Ceton card and the cable card, and that's about it. All this is in a step by step guide that comes with the Ceton card.
Where Ceton shines though is that by using Windows Media Center it can stream to as many used xBoxs as you want to hook in to your router. We already had a used xBox laying around, so our only cost to get the living room TV up and running was a $20 xBox remote from Amazon. This is one of the few ways I know of to hook up multiple TVs to the same DVR without paying per TV every month to your cable or satellite company. Get your own cable modem on Amazon or ebay and the only equipment you'll have to rent is that cable card (Comcast first offered it free, then started charging $2 a month).
but used xBox 360s online can be had cheaper than $99, and with a used xBox you can also do Netflix. MS finally quit requiring you to pay for xBox Live simply to watch the Netflix you were already paying for
Basically what I ended up with was a xBox 360 hooked to my living room TV via HDMI & a handy remote that is worlds better than the crappy DVR I used to rent from the cable company and I can watch Netflix on it too
Caveat: all this assumes you already have a gigabit router. It also assumes you already have a desktop with available PCI slots and a gigabit network card.
Last edited by happygeek; 01-25-2015 at 09:05 PM..
Oh, I hadn't seen anyone mention Magic Jack either. Assuming you already have Internet and a cordless phone laying around Magic Jack lets you make unlimited nationwide calls for $2 a month by simply plugging your standard phone into a USB dongle that uses your Internet. As a bonus, Magic Jack works OCONUS just fine as long as you set it up stateside before you leave. You basically get a stateside phone # and can call anyone in the US for $2 a month while OCONUS as long as you do have Internet access. Magic Jack worked quite well on some crappy overseas Internet connections too.
And presumably superior-quality, wired connections. Wireless streaming is subject to interference from obstructions and signal strength compromises.
You can get away with running it over a dual band 5 GHz/2.4 GHz router, I did initially until too many of my neighbors went out and bought their own 5 GHz routers (I live in an apartment). After that I went to Lowes, made cables, and was good.
You raise a really good point - it pays for folks to keep it in mind as time goes on. Often people ascribe the failure of some service or another to something that the service provide changed in the service, when often the failure is due to changes in their own environment, changes that they're not even aware of.
^ Yup, very true. A nice wired network (cat 5e or higher) with gig networking hardware (modem, router, etc) will take all the guesswork out of streaming performance.
Check with your cable provider to see what modems they have available and what is compatible. I ended up purchasing my own modem, which not only got rid of the lease costs, but gave me a faster connection on both ends (coming in from the coaxial and the gig port out to my router).
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