Just saw that Amazon is offering the Chromecast for $30 for Black Friday Today and giving $6 in Google Play Store Credits making the Chromecast an absolute no brainer steal stocking stuffer- Here’s the Deal At Amazon
For $30 this is something that will have huge impact. I freakin love mine!
My guess is that anyone under the age of 30 either laughs or looks puzzled at why anyone would pay for a Land Line telephone or cable.
Reading the last couple years about online services like Hulu for $8/mo and Netflix for $8/mo there are whole slews of great television programming for tiny fractions of what you pay for traditional Comcast cable.
Yesterday I got the $35 Chromecast which plugs into the HDMI port on the back of your TV. It allows for wifi streaming Television programming from your smartphone or tablet of Netflix or Hulu Plus programming to your TV.
The amount of network and cable shows that are available through these two services are astounding and way more than I’d ever be able to watch.
The one thing that you don’t get is local cable which admittedly is a big deal for a lot of people (not for me though and I suspect not for a lot of younger people who laugh at the idea of being tied to the exorbitant cable tv package plans).
I used The Chromecast with Netflix yesterday. It took me less than two minutes to set up and was set up in three crazy simple steps. I mean so easy my mom could figure it out.
I was always skeptical of these things because the video streams wirelessly from your internet and I figured that the picture would be compromised but the picture was insanely clear. The show I watched was crystal clear. I could pause and resume using my iPad as the remote and watch without commercials. And it remembers where you left off watching a show and you can pick it up watching it on your iPad, smartphone or on your TV.
So if you buy the $35 Chromecast (one time purchase) and sign up for $8/mo Netflix and $8/mo Hulu Plus. You could completely kick your cable bill to the curb. Of course you still need internet service.
As for local cable channels which I recognize is hugely important to some people there are still OTA (over the air) antenna sold that will pick up local channels. I don’t know how effective they are and I’d love to hear from people that have gone this route. These over the air antenna are smaller and sleeker and look like mini sculptures-
Here’s an example of one of these OTA antenna, the Mohu curve–
So if you can pay $35 once for the Chromecast and $16 a month for Netflix and Hulu Plus and $52 for the Mohu Curve which gets you local OTA channels and after that one initial outlay you’re only into it for $16 a month.
To me it’s a no brainer because I get my news on the internet.
Click here to read about Chromecast
Click here to read about the Mohu Curve
Do you know people who have eliminated home phone line and/or cable tv in favor of cell phones and/or streaming tv services like netflix or hulu plus?
Good Morning Gloucester 
Great question, Joe. We cut our landline completely and our cable way back and now use Hulu. It puts you back in control of what you want to watch and when you watch it, instead of being a slave to the networks’ schedule and all their countless commercials and reruns. (What do they film, like 12 original episodes a year?) The Globe did a story on this a few months back with a funny-looking Gloucester family in it: http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/05/15/rise-cord-cutters/CWuXxXNSdcsBUPQwZiz81O/story.html
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We still have landline but dropped our ComCast Triple Play, cutting it back to internet only. We have Verizon for a landline (need a fax, for instance, and they still don’t make cell phones that can share a number).
As for TV, we tried the Mohu Leaf ($40 for the simple version) which was good but could only handle one TV. So for $149 we got a Mohu Sky. It sits on the attic wall, will handle any number of TVs (certainly two, probably as many as 3 or 4, using splitters. (www.gomohu.com).
Pros: The HD picture quality is fabulous, much better than cable. We get 62 stations, as far away as Providence, 92 miles away (how can this be, since the signal is supposedly line of sight? Never mind; live with it). The cost of the antenna is a one time outlay; after that it’s free.
Cons: Of course, you don’t get cable shows, just the standard broadcast channels (but many of them have multiple substations carrying different programming). No HBO, no CNN, no MSNBC, no ESPN. But we all have computers now, and can stream many of their shows to our TVs through our Apple TV. Again, no monthly subscriptions.
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I agree with John. Great question. I’m interested to see how your poll shakes out. We cut our landline a while ago, but kept the most basic cable possible–for PBS and MeTV (the kids are nuts about Lost in Space). Most of that is available now online. So the cable is about to go. Finally.
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Been cut off from THE CABLE for over 2years, Hulu plus, Amazon Prime instant video, over the air – up to 25channels, and many .com video sites were you can see videos plus Playing channels. And computer has been connected to T.V. for six years. Not bad for a 62 year old fisherman.
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… plus Playon……
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WOW! thank you so much!! I am an Xfinity hater and they just scrambled my tv. when I reset the channels all I got was this Xfinity dude telling me I needed to buy some dongle to get cable again. Now I get basic (included in rent) and I have an almost brand new tv and STILL spend most of my time on my laptop watching Netflix. So this is perfect!!! Thank you so much for sharing this info – and to address the phone issue, I have not had a landline in almost 9 years. Unless you count Skype. My equivalent of a land line.
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Chromecast sounds pretty fabulous. I think we’re going to be making the cut. We haven’t had a landline for the phone in years. I’m just going to need to find somewhere to stream the BBC.
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I am VERY interested in hearing more reaction to ways to cut out cable and people’s experiences with this. I didn’t have a land line for years BUT we are currently roped into a bundle.
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I use Magic Jack – about $20 a year for all phone service but you do have to be hooked into wifi for it to work.
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Once you get used to viewing ad-free movies and tv shows, you can never go back. If you see “real” TV at a friends house or a bar it seems hard to believe that it is the norm.
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In Rockport, at least the part of town where I live, you need to have a land line for 911, should you ever need it, which I have. Cell phone service is unreliable.
I’m about to go Roku-bought the box, just need to set it up.
Comcast kept cutting down my cable plan & now I pay the basic only to get a signal.
I really hate cable companies.
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In 1988, when the cable company at the time decided to “enhance” the basic cable service and add MTV to the basic package, we cancelled the cable service and went without television altogether. My children grew up reading and being involved with many challenging activities and are now successful proffesionals in their choices of life. The majority of their liesure time and motivation to be involved was not stolen by the mind and culture destroying hours of addiction to the sexually pervese and socially corrupting culture of American TV in the last decades.
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What’s an HDMI connection 😉 My TV only has RCA connectors and a big freaking tube that the pictures show up on.
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we have an upgraded internet connection…..and watch things on hulu (standard), tv.com etc…..
Roku 2xd shows LOTS of things on the telly….including our Amazon Prime videos….
and then three cell phones in the house and multiple tablets that have google hangouts and skype…..
cuts our bills a lot….
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About 2 years ago, I got this Antennae Guy named Scott from Hamilton to come to my house in East Gloucester and he put an antennae in my attic for $150 and connected it to my household TV network. I canceled direct TV. For my older TV I have a converter box, but for the 2 newer flat screen TV’s the cable to the antennae just plugs into the TV. I get 18 CRYSTAL clear channels including 6 PBS channels and all the local stuff. I have an apple TV set up on one of my flat screens and we watch Netflix and Hulu all the time. Netflix is only $7.95 a month and has NO COMMERCIALS. My husband and I had a summer long Breaking Bad festival and now we are into Sons of Anarchy. SOOOO UPSHOT….My Reg 18 stations is FREE FREE FREE and I saved $2400 so far in 2 years. The Netflix is dirt cheap and you can watch stuff with it on your iPad and Laptop too. I also watch some PBS shows on my iPad in my office for Free sometimes from http://www.pbs.org. I honestly don’t miss the BILL…. I also canceled my phone line with Verizon but enabled a $29.95 A YEAR IP phone system that let me keep my old phone number. People can leave a message and I get an email and I can play the message. I get very few phone calls on the land line but kept the number. I figure that little Telephone line adjustment has saved me at least $1200 in 2 years. I Skype and use the cell phone for relatives who live far away and we even open Christmas presents together on Skype, so it’s way better then paying for long distance phone calls. So yeah…Anyone who is still paying cable bills and high household land line bills is nuts…
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We have been Roku people for over two years and are still as psyched about it as the day we got the box. It’s been great. And with Netflix, hulu, Amazon Prime, pbs.org — I could watch awesome, commercial-free programming every minute of my life and still not run out of things to look at on our various devices, all for relatively little money. (But of course most of my time is spent reading books and thinking deep thoughts, NOT watching four seasons of Sons of Anarchy in a row.)
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Hold the phone, folks! (pun sort of intended)… Someone mentioned 911. In my area (south of Boston), cell phones bounce to the nearest State Police barracks, whereas land lines bounce to a local pd/fire. So there’s that. But the bigger question – which no one has answered — what about local sports? I enjoy watching my Bruins & Red Sox games on NESN. I’ve yet to find a way to watch live in-market games online. I have Chromecast, and rarely use my cable outside of watching sports. But, SPORTS! Until there’s a legitimate way to watch hockey & baseball (in-market) on the web, I’m reluctantly keeping the cable.
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