If you’re like most people, you’re pretty attached to your TV service. You probably have your favorite TV shows you don’t want to miss out on, and you still like the ability to browse around a see what is new.
What if I told you, you could probably save $50 per month and still get as good or better television? Sounds too good to be true? I was skeptical until I did it.
I always said I could wean myself off the TV, but could never get it done. I grew up with TV.
I haven’t known a time in my life without it. It became kind of like a security blanket.
I had other interests.
I loved reading and working on my internet projects, but the TV was always there for me when I needed my ‘fix.’
It had become my drug and every once in a while; I’d relapse into its warm embrace.
To give it up entirely like so many people trying to save money was crazy to me.
It was a hefty chunk of money, about $150 a month. So, many people in the FIRE community were going without it and saving a ton of money.
The addiction was there.
For me to get away, I needed to wean myself off it slowly.
The internet in the house is essential. I use it for my work. My wife uses it. We even have our thermostat hooked up to it so we can turn the heat on or off from anywhere in the world.
This is pretty nice when you are out on the town on a cold night.
We turn the heat out before we leave to save a little money, then when we are on our way home we turn it up again, so the house is nice and toasty when we arrive.
We knew we couldn’t live without the internet, but the TV front needed a change.
Our call to our cable company to break the news.
We called the cable company to break the news we needed a better deal. It turns out that when the old player got bought out several years ago we got tossed on a legacy plan.
We were getting screwed. After being on the phone for a while, we decided to ditch the cable TV and go with the internet.
We had a card up our sleeve which I’ll get to in a bit.
The cable company told us they could put us on their ‘new’ plan and give us faster internet at a lower price.
“Do you want that package?”, said the meek voice on the other end of the line.
Now, there comes a time when great restraint is needed.
“You mean, we were paying too much for slow internet for a while, and we never got switched automatically after the buyout?”
“Yes, sir.”, she said. “You were kept on the same plan you always had with your original provider.”
Silence, I was speechless.
This is what we ended up with. Our internet speed went from 50 Mb/sec to 200 Mb/sec, and we would pay only $60 per month.
I shouldn’t have to mention at this point my state of mind. Needless to say, a deep meditation session and some reading from Sun Tzu brought me back to a tolerable state.
What were our TV options?
There are three basic options out there for us to get our TV fix.
Option #1 was the good ole cable company. This is what we had. We knew we were getting screwed. The cable company needed replacing.
Option #2 was U-verse or AT&T. This came into the house via the phone lines and was formerly known as DSL. We could get this in our area. I guess we live too far out in the sticks.
Option #3 was Direct TV or Satellite. We had done satellite years ago and had gotten away from it because of lousy service and intermittent reception.
So, we needed to look for another option.
In steps HULU and Netflix.
My wife was a Netflix subscriber. She said it was around $7 per month. In the beginning, we used it quite a bit.
I guess we needed to find out first-hand what the whole ‘Netflix and chill’ thing was all about.
We started getting away from it recently. Every once in a while, we get on it to watch documentaries and some movies, but now we are hooked on YouTube travel Vlogs.
OK, what about HULU?
My brother and sister-in-law switched to HULU about a year ago. They urged us to take a look at it, but at the time HULU only offered tape-delayed programming.
To get local channels and live events like the Sunday football games, you needed to do it with good old-fashioned, 1950s technology, ‘rabbit ears.’
For those of you too young to experience such a remarkable invention, let me give you a brief synopsis of my typical rabbit ear adventures.
My father would sit on the couch while I wielded the set antenna like a Jedi master until the perfect picture came in. Then he would tell me to ‘freeze’; ‘right there.’ I froze into a pose that would make a yoga master proud; my arms were burning, sweat rolling off my brow, and I’d begged to put the ears back on top of the set.
He’d shoot me a look like ‘If you have to, just don’t screw up my reception.’ Then he’d say, “Ok, but get me a beer on your way back.”
Yea, rabbit ears suck.
My brother-in-law confirmed secretly, so ‘she’ wouldn’t hear, that the rabbit ears did suck! ‘Don’t do it, man, save yourself.’
That was about a year ago. I dropped the whole HULU idea like a diet on a holiday.
Then about a month ago I heard HULU now offers a new service. A live programming option for about $40 a month.
It was what I had always dreamed of. I can get all the live programming I want without the threat of ears.
After telling my brother-in-law the exciting news, it was like a Tyson blow to the chops when he said, “Meh, we had it for a while now.”
I exclaimed, “You idiot, you moron, why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know; I didn’t think it was that important.”
So, how do we put this whole package together?
We had Apple TV.
This is how we got the whole Netflix thing to work.
I’m an Apple junkie, so it hooked into my Apple account, and I got everything I needed on the ‘big screen.’
‘YouTube,’ Netflix, TED talks, my podcasts, my music, plus the Nat Geo channel. But the problem was our version of the Apple TV was too old to support HULU live.
The option my brother-in-law used was an Amazon Fire Stick. These run about $40, and you plug them into the HDMI port on the back of your set.
You still need high-speed internet for all this to work. The HULU gets pumped into your house through your internet data, so make sure you get as much bandwidth as you can afford.
Remember now that if you are a couch surfer while watching TV, everything will be coming from the same service.
Instead of splitting your internet and TV, they now will have to share.
In steps ROKU, to save the day.
We had gotten a ROKU player years ago as a Christmas present. We never opened it and intended to sell it on eBay. We didn’t need it; we had the Apple TV and cable.
Now, it just so happened the version we had was compatible with the HULU live.
If you’re interested, HULU has a place on their site where you can look up all the options for how to stream their service.
So, we cracked the seal on the box, hooked it up to the open HDMI port vacated by the leaving of the cable box and we were set to go.
HULU was easy to subscribe to right through their internet portal and billed monthly to a credit card.
Our total monthly bill dropped from $150 to around 100 dollars. The high-speed internet is approximately $60 per month, and the HULU is about $40 per month.
The Netflix remains the same at around $7 a month or something. I don’t know; my wife handles that one. I wash the dishes. It’s a good trade.
Let me tell you about the service.
First, I get all my local programming just like I did before. When you set up HULU for the first time, it will go through a menu of options to set up the things you’ll want to watch.
You can go in and pick your favorite sports teams or channels and anything else, in particular, you will want to watch.
Every time you turn on the system, it will pull all your favorites right up on the home screen.
Want to watch a particular sports team? There is no need to go searching for the channel it is on so you can watch sports and gamble, as there are some great online gambling sites for this. You click on the team, and HULU will automatically find the channel so you can watch the team you want without hunting around for the channel.
I’m a big ‘Sixty-Minutes’ fan on Sunday nights.
I turn on the TV on Sunday evening at six, and front and center is the link to ‘Sixty Minutes.’
No, more hunting or scrolling. It’s the way TV should be in the Twenty-First Century.
HULU has set the bar even higher now, and I think cable companies and other TV providers will need to step up to even come close.
So, what’s the moral of the story? Ditch your current TV provider. Get high-speed internet and HULU and save a ton of cash.
HULU has raised the bar on television programming, and if the dinosaur providers don’t take notice, they’ll be joining the stockpile of businesses the fast-moving internet companies have put to waste.
Does anyone remember Blockbuster?
Here are a couple more articles dealing with being frugal and keeping as much money in your pocket as you can.
Till next time, be safe.
Kevin