How has your cable cutting experience been?

Frwinkley

DIS Veteran
Joined
Jan 10, 2016
We are close to cutting the cable cord, but are unsure of what service to use.

We are big sports fans and love our local teams (Pittsburgh). Anyone have any experience with AT&T TV Now? It would allow us to stream Penguins' games from the local channel.

I'd love to hear others' experiences.
 
We cut cable several years ago. We had Playstation Vue and we loved it. Unfortunately, they closed up shop last year and we had to find a new provider. We have Hulu Live now and it is ok. They do have a lot of sports options but I don't know specifically if they would have Penguins games. I don't like that they don't have the Hallmark channel so I subscribed to another streaming service also so I could have Hallmark. We do love streaming though and can't imagine going back to Cable.
 
YouTube TV has been the best streaming service for sports hands down. However as of October 1st they have dropped all Fox Regional Sports Networks (RSN’s). Hulu Live TV still carries RSN’s in their channel lineup so if the Penguin games are typically carried on your RSN that would be your best choice. I have had both services at various points and will say without hesitation YTTV is a superior product due to their unlimited DVR and much easier to navigate channel guide.

The Fox RSN’s were purchased by Disney when Disney bought 20th Century Fox a couple of years ago. The FTC forced Disney to sell the RSN’s due to monopoly issues since Disney also owns ESPN. Disney sold them to Sinclair and Sinclair has had several tough negotiations over carriage fees with satellite, streaming and cable providers when contract renewal has come up. Dish Network, YouTube TV as well as a few other streaming and cable providers have elected to drop them due to high carriage fees. At some point something will have to give.
 
I agree on YouTube TV. Used it for almost two years. Nothing I miss about cable. The unlimited cloud dvr is fantastic.
 


Your need for local sports programming is, I believe, the sticking point. Here in NYC there's no other way that I know of to get local sports without cable service except for occasional games on national network TV.

We cut the cord several years ago. I decided I didn't need to watch sports anymore and I miss it only rarely. We have streaming Netflix, Amazon Prime (which we had anyway for the free shipping), Disney+, and we occasionally buy another service on a monthly basis until we see the programs we're interested in. Right now we have Hulu (the lowest tier, with a billion commercials). We've also had Acorn, BritBox, HBO, and a couple of others--for a month or two, at most.

We do not have over-the-air network as this is impossible in NYC from an apartment. There's no reception here. I miss it not at all.
 
I got a digital antenna to watch sports. It has a HDMI cable that we hook it up with. Most of the times, I can get the football I want to watch. There has only been a few times that I've had to do a trial subscription to see a game. So maybe see if that would get the channels you want. We've had Hulu, and just added Disney+.
 
Local channels can be obtained through an antenna, if you have the ability to get good reception. Otherwise, you can look and see if Locast is available in your area. It provides local channels for about $5/month, but isn't available everywhere. YTTV will give you local channels, but if you need the RSN's you're out of luck as someone stated above. Hulu has the RSN's for now, but many seem to believe that's only temporary until their contract with Sinclair runs out, and then they'll be in the same boat as all the other services that have had to drop the RSN's.

We weaned ourselves off sports (that's been one benefit to the pandemic, anyway) this year and now only use Netflix, Prime, Disney and Frndly TV (mostly for Hallmark). So now our TV bill is super cheap. Sports will keep you tied to cable or a similar service, and even the YTTV's of the world are raising prices to where it's getting close to cable, especially when you factor in you'll still have to pay for internet if you had bundled service with your cable provider. We do get ESPN+ through the Hulu/Disney bundle and that provides enough lower league sports to satisfy any urges. But you won't be able to see major teams on there.

Sorry I can't tell you anything about ATT, but I refuse to touch anything they offer with a 10 foot pole. Bad past experiences. Very bad.
 


We are close to cutting the cable cord, but are unsure of what service to use.

We are big sports fans and love our local teams (Pittsburgh). Anyone have any experience with AT&T TV Now? It would allow us to stream Penguins' games from the local channel.

I'd love to hear others' experiences.
I helped my parents with this and they’re happy with ATT TV NOW. I didn’t like scrolling through the guide but that’s a personal preference & you can do that on your phone instead. Quality is good (but they don’t watch sports), they use a Roku to access for TVs that don’t have an app (only very new TVs have the app). We crossed over for a month making sure it would work before cutting the cord on DirecTV. Good thing too because the Roku+ stick we tried first overheated. Returned that to BestBuy & switched to the Roku Box special to Walmart that was like $80 and haven’t had a problem since.

Side benefit is they ended up really liking the Roku and now watch all their streaming services through it.
 
I use Locast for lots of local programming. It's free but every 15min you have to back out of the program and go back in. I usually do that on the commercial breaks. Or you can donate $5/mo and not have the Locast ads. I don't pay because the ads don't bother me. You get a lot of channels. I have the app on my Roku.
 
Before you consider AT&T TV Now look to Sling, Hulu, YouTube and Fubu. IMHO AT&T is one of the worst at streaming. We had the old DirecTV Now and got our free AppleTV, but they soon started monkeying around with the prices and the service. Basically AT&T hates the streaming platform they keep going back to their roots of DirecTV trying to lock you in.

We cut the cord years ago, we subscribed to Sling to watch PAC-12 Football for 3-4 months then we'd cancel (no need to pay when we don't watch).
 
We just cut the cord in August. We have YouTube TV. We love it. We are big fans of the Red Zone Channel and we were able to get it for an extra $10 a month. We will drop it after football is over and pick it back up when it starts next year. We did this with cable to. I am missing the Hallmark channel and the Weather Channel. We do have a ton of sport channels include 2 dedicated to horse racing that my daughter loves to watch. Until recently when the reginal Fox channel was dropped we had the Columbus Crew games. So far this is the only game we don't get that we would watch. We are not big in baseball, basketball or hockey so I am not sure who they will be.

I do really love the DVR with YouTube. It is better then cable. Also each person in the house can have their own login/account. We have found though that only 3 can on YouTube TV at one time. We have 4 in our house. If the 4th one gets on someone gets knocked off. This doesn't happen too often as there are usually 2 of us in the living room watching TV or DD is watching Disney +.
 
We have ATT TV Now. DH also big sports fan. Locked in at a decent price, $45. Plus right now he has some Amex deal on the Plat and gets $20 off until Dec.

Experience is fine, record function is limited 10 hrs, but we don't record much anymore like we used to anyway and barely use that feature. It has rarely gone out or locked up. I mainly watch news, on occasion the CBS, ABC, apps on the TV like HGTV, and DH sports. We have a very basic version, I do miss the Weather Channel, Accuweather is bad. I also don't like the little remote we have with it.
 
We've had Hulu Live for a few years and it's been great for us. I just bundled it with Disney+ and pay like $65 a month for both. We get plenty of live channels, plus the whole Hulu streaming library. Tons of space on DVR. I also turn Netflix on and off, depending on what show I'm getting into.
 
Cut cable maybe 5-6 years ago. Now with Hulu Live we can see way more sports than we ever could with cable. Between that and Netflix we have more than enough to watch. We do have Prime but I don't count it as an entertainment expense since we've had it for the free shipping for many years. We occasionally add HBO for a while to watch something and catch up there but then we cancel again. We added Disney to Hulu Live for a weekend to watch Hamilton- it cost us .98.
 
Only thing I want to add is if you cut cable and plan on doing a streaming service make sure your internet can handle it. Saving money on cable but than having to upgrade your internet plan can crush the savings.
 
We went to YouTubeTV about a month or so ago. Of course a couple of weeks after we did, the Fox Sports Channels went bye bye. There are very few places at to get those channels now. Other than that, I actually love it!! We got that and HBO Max for half of what we were paying for Dish. I have had zero issues with it so far.
 
We dropped cable for Sling Blue & Locast 6 months ago & love it - wish we'd done it way sooner!

However we are NOT sports people. My husband likes to watch drag racing & Sling has FS1 for that, plus we get OTA channels both thru our antenna & Locast if we want to watch an occassional sports program.

We have a Roku Ultra box & have a LOT of free channels for movies & shows, too.
 
We're in the trial process of YTTV. I'm having trouble getting it to play on an older TV. I got the picture using a HDMI to composite cable but for some reason I can't get sound.
As a side note, we were able to cut cable at our second home and play the YTTV there too. Eliminating that cable bill too.
 
We cut the cable about 10 years ago and haven't looked back since. We did run into some issues with regional blackouts on local sports the first few years so that might be something to check on the fine print. Over time, we found that our tv habits really changed and we just don't watch as much any more unless it's to binge watch a specific show or watch a movie on one of our streaming services.
 

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