“So it may seem that the cable and satellite TV industry is in deep trouble. People are getting more and more disgusted with paying up to $150 or more each month for a bucket of channels, many of which they don’t even watch,” Gene Steinberg writes for The Tech Night Owl. “Even when you want to get a cheaper deal, in order to get a good cross-section of the content you want, you may have to buy several tiers — or higher tiers — of service. You cannot choose from Column A and Column B. So you’re stuck!”
“It never seems to get any better, so jumping ship [cutting the cord] may seem an attractive way to reduce your expenses,” Steinberg writes. “If you try it, however, and you try a little too hard to replace what you lost, you may find that it’s not really so cheap after all.”
“Does this mean that cord cutting is a bad idea? Not at all. If you are judicious about how many programming options you select, you can keep your costs down, and don’t forget your ISP’s limitations,” Steinberg writes. “You might find, at the end of the day, that you want to keep around a basic cable package with local stations and some of the cable channels. Flesh it out with Netflix and that might be more than sufficient to meet your needs. Besides, you won’t have to mess with a TV antenna, and you can still rent a DVR for time shifting.”
Much more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’re still on cable for TV and Internet, but the allure of cord-cutting is very intriguing. One problem is, as Gene mentions, availability: “Netflix and Amazon do offer a fair number of traditional TV shows, with no guarantee how long they’ll be available. As content deals change, the shows come and go.” We’ve thought about cutting the cable cord, though: We’re able to receive all four major U.S. networks plus PBS over-the-air with an antenna. We have Apple TV units on every screen, so we suppose supplementing over-the-air with buying season passes via iTunes Store, Netflix, and some other services might be able satisfy everyone in the family.
Cord-cutters, how are you doing it? How’s it working for you? If there are other family members, how do they like it?