Do you Roku?

In a previous blog I mentioned that we got rid of cable. Cable TV kept raising their prices every other month and quickly exceeded our budget. The sad thing was we only had basic channels and we were paying $110.00 a month. That's a huge sum of money for TV. We watched our collection of DVD and VHS movies for a couple of months.

After we turned off cable we saved up our money and first bought digital TV antenna's for each TV in the house. This gave us back the 20 network stations in our area. It brought us ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, PBS and quite a few others. Then we purchased Roku's for our main TV's.  With Roku we purchased the unlimited video streaming account from NetFlix for $90.00 a year. Roku also gave us Crackle for free and many many other free channels. They have cartoon, old movies, talk shows, news and sports channels. Pretty much everything the basic channels that cable have.

At that end of this year instead of spending $1320.00 on cable (based on $110.00 without an increase), we spent a total of $400.00. Out of the $400.00, $300.00 of it was on equipment that we now own. Next year we could either pay just for Netflix $90 or add another pay Streaming channel like Amazon Streaming or HuluPlus for an additional $90.00. Either way we are still ahead and saving money for other bills. We are very happy with our Roku's and wished we had found them years ago.

Living without Cable TV

Wow! It has been a month without cable TV. We've had cable TV forever. As I sit here, I recall a time in my childhood when cable was new. There were only 9 stations to watch on TV and it had been the same 9 stations for decades. Then cable TV came in and brought MTV, Movies and everything you could ever want to watch.  Sadly, it seems that now cable is a lot of re-runs.

You may be asking why I'm living without cable TV.  In September our cable company raised our bill from $70.00 to $90.00. Then we received a notice in December that the cable company was raising there prices yet again. This time from $90.00 to $110.00. We decided that cable TV is a luxury. We are living on a budget and $110.00 a month to watch re-runs was a bit too much. We decided to use the money towards the ever increasing electric bill and extra food we may need. So, here I am living without cable.

In case your wondering if I miss it... I don't! I thought I would but I really don't!

We have been watching the new programs like NCIS, House, Greys Antomny or any other new program that is on TV from the internet sites for ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX. We video stream it from our computer laptops directly to the HDTV. We can rewind, fast forward or watch them as many times as we want. Unfortunately, we have not escaped the commercials even with the internet. =(

The other thing we've been doing is watching all of the VHS and DVD movies we have collected over the years. What I have found interesting is that most of the movies that we own are the same movies that they are currently running as re-runs on cable TV. Some of them had price tags of $2.99 to watch in 24 hours.

We've been looking into buying antennas and splitters for the each TV in the house. The antenna will bring in the basic channels ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, PBS and a couple of others. Then for our movie needs we are looking into Netflix video streaming. Netflix has a lot of the new movies releases like cable stations HBO, Movie Channel, or Stars. The only difference is Netflix is unlimited movie viewing for $8.00 a month versus $110.00. We are also looking into using Hulu.com as a possible site for our video needs.

The cost for an antenna and spitter will run us anywhere from $10.00 to $50.00 depending on the antenna we want to purchase for each TV.  This is a one time purchase.

My question is if we pay a one time purchase price of $20.00 for an antenna and spitter and $8.00 a month for NetFlix then what exactly is the cable company using $110.00 a month for?

The other positive about living without cable is that I seem to be getting a lot more work done without it. My stores may get more items shortly introduced into both of the stores.
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