This will be continually updated through my experiences attempting to cut the cord and be happy.
I had mentioned before that I wanted to look at cutting the cord. I picked up a Amazon Fire Stick on Black Friday as a way to start the process. I know there are plenty of ways to get everything I want to watch and then some on the Fire Stick for free, but for this (and the way i’m actually doing it), we will stick to the legal route.
Why I’m Cutting The Cord
It’s really simple, I’m tired of paying Xfinity the amount of money I pay them, for the few channels my wife and I watch. I currently pay $247.00 a month for my triple play package. I have
To start off, the Fire Stick I picked up is not the 4K version as we have an older Plasma HD TV with no need for 4K resolution. In the future, when our Samsung TV finally goes to that big HDTV sky ( in China some where as i’m sure that’s where the recycling company will probably send it), we will upgrade to a 4K TV and a newer Fire Stick.
Being new to the cord cutting experiment I wasn’t exactly sure if I would be happy, as I do like the on screen guide that Xfinity offers. I didn’t know ( cause I hadn’t looked yet to see) if any of the streaming services offered on screen guides, or if it would just be flipping through a bunch of app’s to find something I wanted to watch.
The big names in cord cutting I have heard of up till this point are Sling, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu, and Disney +. I have heard good and bad about all of those option. I currently use Amazon, Netflix, and the basic Disney + package offered free to my through my Verizon Wireless account.
So, looking into Sling, I was happy to see that they offer and on screen guide, as well as 10 hours of DVR service with their plan. The Sling package I am looking into getting is the Sling Orange + Sling Blue. This package should run me $45 per month. I’m going to start out with just the included DVR service and see how that works. My wife and I tend to have busy work schedules, so we use our DVR a lot. If that isn’t enough space for us, Sling offers 50 hours of DVR for an extra $5 per month.
At our house, we watch about 5-10 main cable channels, HGTV, Discovery, Science, History, ID Network, Motortrend, ABC, CBS, and NBC. I’m sure if you have Sling, or are now looking to see if I made a huge mistake, but yes I know that some of my channels I like are not on there. I’ll look in the near future to see what cost and options are for adding the app’s to watch what I want to see.
So now that I have sat down and looked over both SlingTV and Hulu, I’m very conflicted. They both have good and bad, Hulu has live local channels, that it doesn’t look like I can get on SlingTV. Sling TV is cheaper, but I can spend a little more to get a One AirTV and have local channels integrated with my Sling, . Due to where I live, I’m on the side of HULU and the local channels are streamed and would have better quality than with a OTA antenna due to my distance from Pittsburgh.
Update 1
Trying out HULU now. They have a week free trial, so I thought that was a good option to start with. I like the on screen guide as it is similar to Xfinity, i’m just not used to having that few channels to choose from. Granted 90% of the channels on Xfinity I never used.
I still find myself tempted to use my cable box but I stop myself. I’ve told myself that I need to save money and cutting the cord is what I need to do. So far though, I’m quite happy with what Hulu has to offer.
Update 2
Just got done talking with Comcast/Xfinity. I decided to go the online route to cancel my services. The lady who I spoke with (we shall name her M, since that’s the first letter of her name and I love James Bond) was very helpful. She asked what I needed today, offered me a plan to save me some money from what I was paying. I then asked for prices for standalone internet service. She came back with 3 different speed tiers and the pricing for them. I let her know I would like to switch to their middle internet tier. She said ok, sent me a conformation text, I agreed to the service change, and we were done with our chat session.
After reading all the horror stories I have seen on the internet about trying to cancel services with Xfinity, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was pleasently surprised with how quick and easy this went.
Update 3
After using just the FireStick with Hulu Plus Live TV, Can’t say as I’m upset getting rid of Cable. So far, everything I watched on cable, I have on HULU. Granted, I haven’t be able to test the Cloud DVR service as the shows I record are having new episodes right now. We will come to that part of the review when we get to it. It is nice that I get to be able to use HULU on my TV as well as on the tablet or my phone, just like i could with Xfinity. Also all the on demand shows I can still get.
So I would say that I am completely happy with not only the service i am getting with HULU, but also the money I’m saving on just having internet.
Note to self. Don’t forget to take back all of the cable boxes before they charge you for them
