My Name is Bert…and I am a Cord Cutter

Not many peo­ple know that Amy and I are “cord cutters”.

My father and I had this con­ver­sa­tion last night and a friend of mine just posted a sur­vey on face­book whether to get cable or dish.

We don’t have Cable in our house, other than for phone and inter­net. We do have a dig­i­tal antenna to get any local chan­nels, which we really only use for any news or weather announce­ments. We use other options, some of which are like hav­ing Tivo, with­out need­ing to really pay for it!

Talk about free­ing. Pay­ing less for TV shows that I actu­ally want to watch, instead of pay­ing a bunch of money and not find­ing a thing to watch! You don’t real­ize how much TV can really enslave you, until you stop pay­ing for it.

For me, it felt like I was sub­con­sioun­sly forc­ing myself to watch tv, because I was pay­ing so much for it. It was like order­ing a large steak and fin­ish­ing it all off, because “I can’t let it go to waste!”

Since cut­ting the cord, I have picked up a few hob­bies that I have always wanted to try, I spend more time with my fam­ily and friends and I don’t feel “tied” to my TV anymore.

Now, this isn’t to say that I don’t watch TV any­more. I do…but it’s on my terms now.

Watch­ing TV with the fam­ily while I knit had become fun again, because it’s shows we actu­ally want to watch, WHEN we actu­ally want to watch them. I know you can do that with Tivo or other DVRs, but I still hear com­plaints from friends when they go to watch a show, and it didn’t record right or was mis­named. I don’t have those issues.

So, what exactly do we use? Well, I’d be happy to tell you.

First, the equipment:

• Internet-Capable TV: We have a Sony Bravia, but there are many other brands out there. This TV comes with Apps, like: Hulu, Net­flix, Ama­zon Video On Demand, Vudu, Pan­dora, Cin­e­maNow, and can stream any video off my main com­puter using Win­dows Media Player. (And, an inter­net capa­ble TV is not required, as long as you have a com­puter that can hook up to it, or other devices, like the ones below.)
• PlaySta­tion 3: (or, from what I have heard, an Xbox can do this too.) This lets me stream stuff from my com­puter as well and also have apps. This isn’t nec­es­sary if you have an internet-capable TV, but if you don’t, this make it eas­ier than need­ing to hook your com­puter up to your TV.
• AppleTV (optional): I use this for all my iTunes Con­tent. And I can rent and Pur­chase movies and TV sea­sons through that.
• Com­puter: This I mainly use for any of my already purchased/owned con­tent, and for a ser­vice called PlayOn and TVMobili

Soft­ware:

• PlayOn: This has channels/plugins that let me access any­thing on Hulu, Net­flix (with paid Net­flix account) or most video streams from chan­nels like SyFy, TNT, CNN, SpikeTV, Nick­elodeon, Dis­ney, etc.). There is a monthly fee to use this app. Or you can pay for it all in one shot and be done. This works by installing a lit­tle pro­gram on your PC and run­ning it in the back­ground (so your PC needs to be on, for the TV to see the video streams) and then streams the con­tent to your Inter­net TV or Device.
• Play­Later: In tan­dem with PlayOn, this lets me “record” cer­tain “shows” so that I can play them later, even “offline” (I have inter­net con­nec­tion issues from time to time, so this ensures that my TV won’t stop and “buffer” a show I am try­ing to watch thru PlayOn.
• TVMo­bili: This lets me access all my con­tent on my com­puter (Movies, TV shows, etc. And I can share my library with other friends that have TVMo­bili on their com­put­ers. (There is a cost involved with the “shar­ing” part of the App)
• Hulu App: I’m going to address this below
• Net­flix: Most peo­ple are famil­iar with this. But, one thing to note, your always about a sea­son or two behind every­one else.
• Vudu: This lets you rent/purchase High def­i­n­i­tion TV shows or Movies. Their usu­ally out the same time red­box may have them. When you have a HD TV, it’s worth rent­ing the HDX ver­sions. Their GORGEOUS!

Hulu is the Key peice here in cut­ting the cord.

They have many shows online. The only down­fall is the App. When you pay $7.99 for an app, it doesn’t mean you get access to all their shows. Some shows are not avail­able to view on “Devices”, and is “Web” only. Some TV shows are only on the devices and you can’t watch them online.

This is where PlayOn comes in. It lets you watch ANY of the online con­tent on your device, with­out pay­ing for it! I don’t know how they do it, but it works pretty well. The qual­ity isn’t too bad, but you will notice frag­men­ta­tion when your on a HD TV, but it’s not hor­ri­ble. Some­times its pretty good.

Also with Hulu, you have a “queue” and save/subscribe to shows you want to watch.

So why do I pay for Hulu. Since my TV has the App, I watch most stuff the app. It’s crys­tal clear and jsut works. Some­times I have con­nec­tion issues with PlayOn…or for some rea­son PlayOn can’t “see” the Show…sometimes my Hulu App doesn’t work though, and I go through PlayOn to watch it…it all depends.

One more thing to men­tion. If your com­puter has a hard­wire con­nec­tion for intent. USE IT! Wire­less is great, but you will have con­nec­tion issues. Some­times my TV looses the sig­nal in the mid­dle of a show and I have to mon­key with stuff to get it back.

This may seem like a lot of work, just to not pay for cable, but once it is all setup…it works pretty great…and costs a lot less!