Stop Paying For Cable Television But Keep Up With Your Favorite Shows

Personally I love HULU.com but sometimes you want to watch your favorite tv shows on a bigger screen.

That's where I find my Netflix subscription to come into great use as I can catch up on whole seasons of my favorite shows such as Heroes, Lost, Prison Break, etc.

Yes you're a season behind but you don't have to wait a week between cliffhangers.

Does anyone know of any good sites that are available in Canada? (Last I checked, we're still banned from watching stuff on US Network sites and Hulu).

While I enjoy our Canadian shows, I'm still a big fan of US ones -- and we can only get them on DVD or cable!

Our household has no choice but to continue to pay for cable. My 81-year-old husband has no interest in "that computer junk." Some people are too old to change.

However, about a year ago I wrote an angry post about Comcast's "bait-and-switch" tactics. No regulatory agency could do a thing about it. (Amazing, isn't it?)

You can read the post -- all points still valid -- at
my archives>/a>.

Another great program to check out is Boxee. Like Tidal and Sling mentioned above it pulls in all the internet content to your TV (granted if you load it on to your Apple TV).

It includes Hulu and all the channels mentioned above. It also includes Comedy Central which has full episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report (like Hulu), but also has every episode of South Park ever. Plus, you can subscribe to an video RSS feed and it will pull it in an allow you to watch it.

Boxee is still in Alpha right now so it's really wet behind the ears, but I'm hoping that it's a cable killer.

Unfortunately, my cable TV is just one of those things I am willing to pay to play for. I'm a bit of an addict that way. I concept of watching it through a computer with my wife just doesn't thrill me the way chilling on a couch and clicking through does. Plust the DVR is great!

We are not quite ready to give up cable but we are seriously considering switching to one of the dish services and buying a lower service tier. We will also have to get an antenna to get all of the local PBS but we intended to do that anyway even with cable. Our cable service has jacked the price, downgraded service and their customer service has become horrible. Another company bought our cable company.

We can get some of the content we want via the internet. Honestly, the things we have found online had better picture at full screen than our cable broadcast.

Until we can get live cable news some other way and a few channels we watch all the time we won't cut the cord. If certain channels started providing a subscription to stream live we would be all over that as an alternative.

Unfortunately, most of the shows I watch (a lot of HGTV, some PBS, Discovery, "Nat Geo" etc.), are still not available online. For example, the Discovery Networks site you link to offers full episodes for only two shows, and short clips for a couple dozen more. The HGTV site likewise only offers a small fraction of their full offerings as full episodes.

Ditch-the-cable might work if you really only watch a few blockbuster series, but if you like talk shows, DIY shows, etc., it's still slim pickings. I may only watch 10% of the channels on my cable package, and watch only 10% of the shows those channels offer, but *I* get to pick which 10%!

This doesn't make any economic sense. Computer costs 500 dollars. Internet costs 50 dollars a month. Computer needs to be maintained and you have to put up with firewalls,viruses,malware, freezes,updates internet going down, etc. For 500 dollars you can get a nice 32 inch HD TV and get the cable with HD channels and lots of free movies. Then go to the library for free internet.

I was looking at all our household bills yesterday and while cable is the highest it is just something I am not willing to part with. I actually get very good use out of it and while I don't think it is actually worth the large amount of money I don't even want to write down I just don't want to part with it. I am however getting rid of the two movie channels I have and while I will miss the 5 or 6 shows I watch on them, I guess I can just wait for them to be on Netflix and catch up that way. I do believe some of the shows are available online so I am hoping for that once the seasons start up again. It is definitely not worth the $21 just for the movie channels when I only watch two of them, they come with at least 5 each and while I do watch the occasional movie I rarely even stop on some of the other channels. Depending on how the next few months pan out though I might just be forced to scale it down even more.

Fancast.com has TOOONS of stuff, movies, tv shows, etc.
watchtvsitcoms.com is ok too

I love Surfthechannel as well - you have to put up with pop up ads but it's totally worth it ... just delete your cookies after each session!

I watch OTA tv via rabbit ears. Wrote a post about it here. http://frugalnyc.blogspot.com/2008/09/free-dtv.html

You don't need the converter box if your tv has a digital tuner already, just a good set-top dish antenna would do.

Great resources from this post and comments though.

The cartoon network has lots of episodes up if you are worried about the kiddos including Ben 10 (which is a favorite with my boys) kids wb also some content available but their player isn't as good as CN's in fact CN has one of the best online players we've come across. I don't know why some others aren't as good (cbs can be finicky and fox isn't great -- use hulu for fox shows). I suppose the idea was it should be so easy a child could use it, lol.

I've never had cable and I think I never will.

It's never been a priority for me. Now Internet access is a different story, I may give up food and water before I give up my pipeline. An Internet connection is a much more entertaining option than cable TV.

It's going to be fascinating to see how the different forms of media survive the digital age, my bet is that newspapers and cable TV are going to suffer.

Something else to add to this. PBS is adding two new channels that most state PBS systems will be broadcasting when the DTV switch is done. One is called "Create" the other is "World". Create looks to be the craft, home, food type content only more of it all the time. The "World" one is science, current affairs and history including documentaries. So even our in State PBS will have 3 channels OTA. Watching it on cable or dish we will still get one channel only.

Since we live near the borders of 3 other states OTA we can get Iowa (4 channels) MN (4 channels) SD (3 channels). If we can find a way to get Nebraska that is another 4. Granted two of the channels on each are duplicates of Create and World. We then also have at least three other channels with unique programming that is the traditional mix of shows and BBC reruns.

We also had someone give us a free to air sat dish. We need to buy a computer card and an aiming motor for it. This will get us the Nebraska channels, national PBS and some other channels.

I got a Nano (8gb) for Christmas, and while I was pleased to get it, I had no idea how thrilled I'd be within 24 hours. It took that long for me to realize I could download shows onto my iPod, then plug my iPod into my TV. (It cost $50 for the Griffin brand cable.)

I'm giving serious thought to breaking up with my cable provider. And this time for good!

Where I live, the cheapest cable package is just $15. So I'm debating whether or not I'll actually save money if I'm buying programs (and season passes for my fave shows) on iTunes. Then again, it's pretty nice to be able to watch Grey's Anatomy whenever I want.

I'm a big fan of sidereel.com - - - I got hooked on the Showtime show Dexter during a free preview. Then I found Dexter on sidereel and was able to watch each episode. At the end of season 2, I even saw a couple episodes BEFORE they aired!

For each show and episode, there are multiple links. The only caveat is if you get one of the megavideo links, you're limited to 72 minutes of viewing - - then you have to wait an hour before you can view anything else. Sometimes, you've got to refresh or shut down your browser and restart. But it beats paying high cable / premium channel prices! (BTW, lots of the links in turn link to megavideo, so I check out multiple links before actually clicking and committing.)

For 2 years I debated on canceling my Cable TV and finally I did. my wife was a little pissed off about about but she kind of accepted it. I have a 20' iMac and a 37' HDTV and VGA and/or DVI/HDMI inputs all going from my Imac to my HDTV and I like to watch a lot of TV Shows that I missed over the the years. A pay a small month price of $19.00 for 3click.tv that has every TV Show that cam out with no commercials and it's worth every dollar and way less then Cable TV. i really got pissed of at cable TV because of the same commercials , the same news every half hour and when MJ died my wife watch the the news on him every day for the past 9 days and that for me says enough is enough.She was always glued to Cable TV not me, ha,ha... not me . Now that I had it disconnected the stress is gone and I save $50.oo a month now. I say CABLE TV...WHO NEEDS IT THES DAYS.