Okay, I was not planning on another guest post this week. I casually mentioned to my dad that I thought cutting the cable cord would be a great topic for the blog. A few days later, I had a full article in my inbox. I don’t look a gift horse in the mouth (whatever the heck that actually means) so I’m rolling with it.
I consider my dad to be a connoisseur of entertainment. Some of my earliest memories with my dad are him taking my brother and I to the movie theater (most vividly, The Mighty Ducks) or watching at home, theater-style (Star Wars).
In today’s article, we’re covering how you get started, how to evaluate your needs and what devices you can choose from to orchestrate your navigation. Later, we’ll cover the various services and how to balance them against your needs.
Read on for our take on ditching cable and sampling the world of streaming-based entertainment. I assume many of you are already streaming in some capacity, but you might learn something along the way OR share something we missed in the comments. Oh, and we are assuming that you already have internet access; it’s 2022, and I think that is a fair assumption.
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Cutting the cable cord is not just about cost! It is also about accessing a broader market of entertainment and controlling your cost while getting the most out of your viewing hours.
What to Stream
Before starting on this journey, you should consider a guide to your requirements by creating a list of the programs channels that are a must-have then a list of specific shows you would like to watch.
Here’s a sample list of areas of entertainment to consider:
- Live TV
- College Sports
- Pro Sports
- Local Programming/News
- Cable Channels (streaming)
- Award-winning Shows (E.g. Only Murders in the Building, Stranger Things, etc.)
- Shows from different parts of the world
- Premium Channels (Starz, HBOMAX)
- Kids Entertainment
Dabs: You can tell my dad compiled this list because sports would be nowhere near the top of a list I made up.
Some shows are specific to a streaming service, so this may limit your options when finding a solution that meets your requirements (Dabs: or those of your various family members!).
Here’s a sample list of shows that might require a specific service:
- Yellowstone
- House of the Dragon
- Ring of Power
- Mandalorian
- The Good Fight
- Game of Thrones
- Cobra Kai
- Better Call Saul
- She Hulk
- Scooby-Doo
- Pokemon
Budget
The next step is determining the budget that falls within your monthly entertainment expenditures and comparing to current cable cost to determine if there is savings in cutting the cord.
Current Cable Bill – Internet – Phone (if you have it) = Net cost of TV cable service
Dabs: If you are looking to stay budget neutral, this net cost would be what you could spend on streaming services. Spend more or less as you choose, but this net cost helps set a starting point for your budget.
Download/upload speed requirements need to be part of the budget calculation. You may need more speed once cutting cable to accommodate all of the additional downloads to TVs and devices. Here’s a helpful link to a calculator to determine what speed you might need.
Dabs: I will point out that since the Year Which Will Not Be Named, a lot of us had to bump up our internet speed package to accommodate all the time we were spending at home.
Remember to account for all of the Internet requirements to avoid dropouts or slowdowns.
- How many TVs will be streaming at any given time?
- Are there online gamers in the household?
- How many tablets/PCs/Phones may be accessing the internet?
Users
Who will be using the services? Kids, teenagers, adults, seniors? This can be a big part of the decision process as far as the type of services which will work for your household. Kids and teenagers adapt pretty quickly, but more importantly, can all the users in your household actually figure out how to access all the content?
Dabs: Especially with parental controls. I can’t remember our password to adult content, but our 6-year old sure can. (I do NOT recommend using 0-1-2-3 as your parental control password!)
Be forewarned, seniors are used to one point of contact for shows. The challenges of navigating to the correct app can bring on frustration. I write from the experience of two seniors over 90 who require frequent technical support or just opt not to watch TV because they don’t want to deal with the navigation. Using the microphone in the controller or Alexa is an option but can also be foreign to someone over 70.
Dabs: He doesn’t lie. Our nonagenarians can get kinda cranky with the streaming.
Devices
What device should I use to access all of these streaming applications from my TV? Do you need 4K? These devices will likely need a HDMI port on your television.
Dabs: I don’t even know what 4k is, so I obviously feel we don’t need it. Unless it’s $4,000. Then we need it.
Here are some options for devices that hold your apps and allow you to navigate to your content.
- Roku
- Amazon Fire Stick
- Apple TV
- Chromecast
- Most newer TVs have streaming capabilities
Dabs: After many years using the Fire Stick, I got incredibly sick of Amazon trying to control what content I was watching (and advertising to my daughter). We switched to the Roku, and I find it so much cleaner to navigate and control.
We have used our Samsung TV’s built-in functions (and those at various AirBNBs we’ve visited), but I found, like the Fire stick, it was not simple to navigate and it seemed to push its own content on me as I searched.
Black Friday is coming up, so if you are in need of a new device that is always a great time to pick one up at a discount!
That wraps up our fireside chat on cutting the cable cord for this week! In the future, we’ll cover which apps are out there, cost for those apps, how to find deals and free trials and keep track of all your services.
As always, I’m here to help. Reach out with all those burning homeowner questions!
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