A lot has changed since we started this blog. The digital transition has taken place. Hulu.com is on it’s way to becoming a household word. And we’ve found even more ways to watch our favorite shows without cable. We’re amazed at all of the attention our site has been receiving and appreciate all the recommendations!
Here’s what’s new since our last post…
Our current setup:
Main TV:
We took some of the money we saved by canceling cable and purchased a 50′ flatscreen TV for our family room. It was a good feeling, since it cost less than what we would have paid for about 7 months of cable. Best of all it has a built in over the air tuner, so we now receive free broadcast HD programming with a picture quality that is superior to our old cable signal.
For movies, We’re using a Roku player in combination with a basic Netflix account. This lets us watch thousands of movies and shows for free using Netflix’s free streaming service - kind of like zero cost pay per view. If a very recent movie isn’t available, we usually get it by DVD via Netflix. Another nice thing about the Roku is that it lets us rent current movies from Amazon’s Video on Demand Service (typically $3.99) and watch them on our TV.
We ended up canceling our Tivo service and instead, we connected our laptop to the TV using a HDMI cable and watch our favorite shows on Hulu.com. The only downside is that we can’t fast forward through commercials, but the nice thing about Hulu is most commercial breaks are 30 seconds vs. 2 minutes or more on broadcast TV.
Bedroom:
We pulled the TV out of our bedroom and use our widescreen laptop (an old 15″ HP) to watch TV in bed via Hulu.com
Portable:
In addition to the widescreen laptop, we have an inexpensive Netbook which weighs about 3 pounds and lets us watch Hulu.com, Netflix Instant, and Itunes anyplace in the house. We also take this with us on vacations and use it instead of a portable DVD player.
What we are working on…
In the next few posts, we’ll try to answer some of the most common questions we’re asked…
How to watch Hulu programming on a TV
Watching sports coverage without cable TV
New devices which let you watch movies and TV over the Internet
We’re also in the process of updating our Showfinder tool to reflect the new programming which is now available.
If you have any questions or suggestions for future articles, please leave a comment for us. Thanks!
It’s been over a year now since we canceled our cable TV service. We’ve saved a lot of money and now watch all our favorite shows using a combination of free HD broadcast TV and the Internet. We’ve been very happy with our decision and have been taking advantage of some pretty cool new services.
Here’s a quick summary of our current setup…
Our main living room TV is hooked up to a digital converter. This lets us watch all network broadcast shows (and FOX/PBS/weather) in perfect HD quality for free. We also have a Roku device hooked up. The Roku lets us watch approximately 20,000 free shows and movies on demand. We tend to watch most first run movies using our Netflix subscription or if we are really impatient, the Roku device lets us instantly rent movies from Amazon’s video on demand service for $1.99 - $3.99 a movie.
Our total cost for everything was a one time $99 purchase for the Roku and $17/month charge for Netflix (which allows us to have 3 DVDs out at a time in additional to unlimited instant viewing).
We have a second HD LCD TV which we use to watch Hulu.com, Netflix Instant and Amazon videos. In addition, we use a laptop and a $300 Netbook to watch videos in other rooms of the house. Once in a while, we will use iTunes to buy kids shows or watch a HBO or Showtime show that isn’t on Netflix yet.
We do watch less TV then we used to, but more importantly the quality has improved. Since we need to be more proactive and select shows from Netflix or HULU, we read a lot more reviews and tend to sit down and watch complete movies rather than just swiching around hundreds of channels. The same goes for kids shows. We add about 10-15 shows we select to the queue and then let our kids watch whichever ones they want. Another nice benefit is that shows watched on the ROKU do not come with any commercials.
Site updates…
We are planning for many site updates over the coming few weeks and months. Starting with our Showfinder guide and also many reviews of some of the new services that are coming out. If you have any comments or suggestions for our site, please let us know. Thanks!
Quick post: We are receiving very heavy traffic this morning, mostly from people typing in our URL directly. This usually happens when we are featured in a newspaper article or radio show, but we aren’t aware of any new ones. If you have a moment, can you please let us know how you heard about our site? Thanks!
Update: Thank you all for your helpful comments! Looks like we were mentioned this morning on the nationally syndicated consumer advocate program The Clark Howard Show.
CH listeners: If this is your first time on our site, welcome! If you are interested in learning about free digital broadcast tv, start here. Or visit our Showfinder tool to see what shows you can watch without cable TV. And if you have canceled cable or are about to, please consider sharing your story.
Just checked our logs and noticed that our traffic is through the roof. Turns out we were just written up in a Washington Post article titled ‘TV Breaks Out of the Box‘.
The article mentions our Showfinder tool and talks about how canceling cable is becoming a viable alternative for some broadband users. My favorite was the anecdote about how Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer watches his favorite show (Lost) online for free as opposed to paying a dollar for it on Itunes. I think Post’s author Mike Musgrove summed it up best when he said “Ever have a billionaire make your feel dumb for leading an overly extravagant lifestyle?”
Netflix streaming movies will soon be available on Tivo and Xbox Experience. Previously, Netflix’s Instant Watch content could only be viewed on a computer or using a $99 set top box called a Roku. Since Roku, Tivo and Xbox will pull all the content off of a standard broadband connection, cable TV service is not required.
We’ve been using Netflix’s Instant Watch service since it first launched in 2007. At first the content was very minimal - mostly pretty unknown “straight to video” movies. This has changed quite a bit in the last year. Netflix has recently partnered with the STARZ movie channel and now offers more than 12,000 shows and movies which can all be watched for free.
Here’s a video demo of the Xbox Netflix interface:
Any downsides to Netflix Instant Watch? A good amount of brand new first run movies are not on it yet, so you may have to wait a day or two to get those in the mail on DVD. The fast forward and rewind controls are slightly clunky, although they do work pretty well once you get used to them. Also it appears that only the new Tivos (Series III and HD) and latest Xbox (Xbox Experience) will support Netflix.
Just read a great post by Seth Godin called Hungry, which explains how marketers are great at teaching well-fed consumers to want to eat more than they need. He mentions canceling cable as a prime example. Cable TV used to fill a unique need. Twenty years ago, it was the only way to get first run movies and was an exciting alternative to the content available on the three networks. Cable was introduced at a reasonable price and it’s adoption soared.
Things have changed. We now have free digital broadcast tv, DVDs, Hulu.com, Netflix and fixed price set top boxes like Roku. In spite of this competition, cable prices have only gone up. Yet it’s still hard for most of us to make the phone call and cancel cable TV. Why? Because we still want our snack despite being full.
