Cable vs Internet TV?

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Ok, I’m considering ditching dish/cable and going to an internet TV option. Has anyone here considered this or can offer advice? I feel like I’m flushing money with DirecTV, used to have Time Warner. Bottom line is I rarely watch TV and our family usually watches movies and TV on DVD! I like sports but not for $40 a month and I don’t have time to usually watch them. I figure I can catch big events on regular/free TV.

I’m thinking about Roku, Chrome Cast, and anything without a monthly subscription. Netflix used to sound good but once again I don’t think I’d have time to watch it and make it worth it: we have small children. I’d rather read and do fun stuff with my family than watching TV. Help!
 
I recently got a Roku box and find that I’m watching the free Roku channels a lot more than cable, so I’m thinking of ditching cable too, and just keeping the internet connection. Not all internet TV is free; some things require a monthly subscription, some are pay per view, but a lot is not. And cable took away my EWTN and put it on a higher priced tier. With Roku, I get it and it’s free.
 
If I had it my way, I would dump cable but my husband is big into sports so that’s just not an option.

ETA: Sorry forgot to state why I feel this way:

–Secular media/tv shows are pretty much **** nowadays. If they’re not outright immoral (pushing nudity/fornication/homosexuality), they’re pushing some sort of left-left-left-of-center agenda. Not interested so why pay for that?

Too much great quality entertainment available on the internet nowadays.
 
I ditched cable almost 20yrs ago. Kept seeing my bill go up in price and my access to channels shrink. We still have free TV. When TV broadcasts went digital I had to buy a converter box, but now we have a TV that received the signals. I have more than enough channels, living in between two big cities I have access to more PBS station offerings. We supplement with streaming Netflix, so I pay less than $10 a month. Leaves us extra money to catch a movie once in awhile.
 
I have Dish and pay just under $30. I have EWTN, a must, and a few other favorite channels.
I do not get my favorite cable news. They have a few movie channels and I DVR some of
my favorite programs to view at leisure. I was about to give up Dish, but I don’t think I can
get anything better for the price and convenience.
When I got out of my intro offer (contract), I called to cancel, but their “retention” dept,
found the above offer without having to go into another contract period. May not work for you,
but you might call them.
 
Roku and Netflix here. Netflix mostly for the TV shows. We get EWTN and PBS Masterpiece and Nova on the Roku. We don’t watch that much regular TV for the same reasons others have mentioned. Also, even when I blocked the porn channels the titles were still on the grid and I had to look at them and cringe when looking for something else.:mad:
 
With a digital antenna, we would get a grand total of one station that would come in some of the time. If I lived in an area that picked up more, I would definitely go that route. As it is, I just have the most basic package available which includes the major network channels, C-Span, a few PBS stations, the Weather Channel, and some home shopping channels. That’s it.

I’m not sure about Roku and Chromecast, but you’d just need to look into exactly what you get for free out of the box. Some of those types of devices are only as useful as the paid subscription/packages you already have. Some of the networks now are asking you to log in and verify your cable provider before they let you watch programs online of through streaming services. My hunch is that this is the direction things are heading (pretty much because the cable companies don’t want you to do what you’re thinking of doing).

I think the industry is in need of a major overhaul. For years and years, you could pick up channels via antenna for free and TV stations got along fine on ad revenue. I cannot figure out how they haven’t figured out how to monetize the digital avenues. I mean, over the internet, they can basically make it impossible for you to skip past the commercials. I don’t see how they cannot make money off of that but instead force people into cable packages. 🤷

To me, it would make sense for them to offer pretty much any TV show available for anyone to watch for free over the internet (and through apps on mobile devices and streaming machines like Roku and Chromecast). And in exchange, there are commercials you cannot skip past. If you want to watch programs without the ads, then you could pay for certain packages with such privileges (with varying price models for varying numbers of channels). But then, I guess I just don’t understand how the industry works. 🤷
 
TexCatholic4JMJ said:
I have Dish and pay just under $30. I have EWTN, a must, and a few other favorite channels.
I do not get my favorite cable news. They have a few movie channels and I DVR some of
my favorite programs to view at leisure. I was about to give up Dish, but I don’t think I can
get anything better for the price and convenience.
When I got out of my intro offer (contract), I called to cancel, but their “retention” dept,
found the above offer without having to go into another contract period. May not work for you,
but you might call them.
Click to expand...
Yes, I’ve been doing this but they only go down to $40-45 (and give me extra channels I don’t want). They advertised $30 but with all the fees and taxes it went up (and keeps going up).
 
katy said:
Roku and Netflix here. Netflix mostly for the TV shows. We get EWTN and PBS Masterpiece and Nova on the Roku. We don’t watch that much regular TV for the same reasons others have mentioned. Also, even when I blocked the porn channels the titles were still on the grid and I had to look at them and cringe when looking for something else.:mad:
Click to expand...
Thank you. This sounds like a winning combo for me. I’ll have to look into what TV shows are offered through Netflix or Hulu. Didn’t realize EWTN was on Roku! Score.
 
john1513 said:
Yes, I’ve been doing this but they only go down to $40-45 (and give me extra channels I don’t want). They advertised $30 but with all the fees and taxes it went up (and keeps going up).
Click to expand...
Is that with Dish? My total includes fees, etc. I checked with Direct Tv and it would not have
been possible and it was a lot more and didn’t include the channels I wanted. Don’t remember what those were now. I did it about a year or more ago. And, I have NOT had
increases.
 
I have 60 local channels and I almost never even watch the (name removed by moderator)ut that carries them. The only pay service I have is Netflix, and beware you will be mostly offered TV shows and movies after they are a year old. I usually cancel it 3 months out of the year.
 
RosyAnne said:
If I had it my way, I would dump cable but my husband is big into sports so that’s just not an option.

ETA: Sorry forgot to state why I feel this way:

–Secular media/tv shows are pretty much **** nowadays. If they’re not outright immoral (pushing nudity/fornication/homosexuality), they’re pushing some sort of left-left-left-of-center agenda. Not interested so why pay for that?

Too much great quality entertainment available on the internet nowadays.
Click to expand...
The nice thing about Internet TV is that, like another poster mentioned, it is on a subscription basis. So you only have to pay for the programming you want and can throw out all the garbage out there.

As for your husband being into sports, I’m pretty sure that a couple of years ago the radio show I used to listen to was talking about how major league baseball was collaborating with Roku. I don’t watch sports so I wouldn’t know, but maybe there are viable options for sports programming on Roku? Actually, I just looked and there is an official MLB channel on Roku. It looks like you have to do some computer magic to get the NFL through NFL Rewind and the Roku Plex Channel, but it looks like it’s do-able.
 
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