Bryan's Weblog of Stuff

Cutting The Cord, One Year Later

As I realized that we’d hit the one-year mark since cutting the cord, I also realized that I’d failed miserably with my plan to provide a glimpse into our journey. Sorry.

Not as a replacement for all of those things I was going to write about, but simply as an update, we’re still cord-cutters. We have an internet connection, and that’s it—no cable or satellite subscription, and no landline phone, for that matter. We have a fairly typical set of streaming products that we subscribe to: Netflix, Amazon Prime Videos, and DirecTV NOW. Over the course of the year, we’ve also subscribed to others services, like Hulu—typically to binge on a specific show—for short periods of time, and then cancelling. Additionally, we have an HD antenna setup, which feeds OTA broadcast signals to our TVs.

So far, so good. We don’t have the ability to DVR shows at the moment, but we’ve hardly missed it. The kids, of course, were already accustomed to streaming almost exclusively, and even the adults have adjusted. Aside from the impact on our wallet, the biggest change cutting the cord has had on our family has been a big reduction in time spent mindlessly watching TV, just because it’s there. Also, I was able to read 52 books in 2017.

By Bryan at 10:55 PM , in Cutting The Cord - Permalink
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We Cut The Cord!

Today I called our internet, cable, and landline phone provider, Frontier, to “cut the cord.” By now, most everyone has a general idea of what it means to cut the cord, though the specifics often vary from person to person. To us it meant getting rid of cable and our landline phone service. Over the next few weeks, I plan on writing a series of posts on our cord-cutting experience.

Before I get into that, let’s see how the Oxford Dictionary defines a cord cutter:

A person who cancels or forgoes a pay television subscription or landline phone connection in favour of an alternative Internet-based or wireless service:

‘the ranks of the cord cutters are growing, adding to the incipient rebellion around pay TV’

In the series, I will first tackle our motivation for cutting the cord. I’ll dig into all of the reasons why we decided to cut the cord, and perhaps some of the perceived reasons not to cut the cord. After that, I will discuss what was involved in our personal journey from a family of 6, seemingly at the mercy of the monopolistic cable company, with their hundreds of channels and prices to match, to a family of 6 happy without that overhead. Finally, I will talk our experience as cord cutters to date, and offer up all of my resources.

When it’s all said and done, if by sharing our experience, we’ve helped even one person or family decide whether or not cord cutting is right for them, then these posts will have been a success. To help keep up with the posts, here’s a handy list. I’ll add links as new posts become available.

Posts In This Series

• We Cut The Cord!
• Our Motivation For Cutting The Cord
• How We Cut The Cord
  • Preparing To Cut The Cord
  • Ditching The Landline
  • Ditching Cable
  • Making the Call To Cancel Services
• A Cord-Cutting Retrospective
• Cord-Cutting Resources

By Bryan at 10:43 PM , in Cutting The Cord - Permalink
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DIRECTV NOW Update

A quick update on our DIRECTV NOW experience…

We're doing our best to avoid using our cable boxes and use DTVN for any live TV, with okay results. The main issue we're running into is the same that everyone else using DTVN is running into—buffering and needing to reset the app. It's a pain. However, it also led me to hook up our HD antenna so that I could distribute it throughout the house, which has been a success. We no longer rely on DTVN or cable for anything local.

I’ll write more on us testing the cord-cutting waters when I get a bit more time.

By Bryan at 9:45 PM , in Cutting The Cord - Permalink
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DIRECTV NOW: My First Impression

As each new cord cutting option comes online, I take a look, but aside from buying an HD antenna a couple of months ago, I’ve not taken this cord-cutting idea any further. Based on reviews, channel selection, and a very attractive introductory offer, I took the plunge and signed up for DIRECTV NOW, the cord-cutting offering from AT&T owned DirecTV, if only to be able to rule them out as a viable alternative. After a weekend with the service, here are some of my thoughts.

Features

The first question I had when I started looking into streaming options was “does it have DVR capability?” The answer is no, unfortunately. At least that’s the answer right now, though they do plan on offering DVR functionality in 2017. Though they do have a growing on demand offering, if you’re not able to watch something live, you might need to find an alternative viewing source, at least in the short term, or see if the channel is included in their 72 Hour Rewind feature.

Another question that comes up often is “how many streams are you allowed?” DIRECTV NOW currently offers 2 streams. Beyond that, you’d need another account. Hopefully they’ll make it possible to purchase additional streams for a nominal fee in the future.

Finally, where would any of this technology be without devices? DIRECTV NOW is currently available on Amazon Fire TV devices, Apple TV, Chromecast (for Android only), most modern computer browsers, Android phones and tablets, and iOS phones, tablets, and the iPod Touch. Support for Chromecast (for Apple iOS), Roku, and XBOX One is coming. Here’s the official current list of supported devices.

Plans

DIRECTV NOW offers 4 plans, with an increasing number of channels and cost. At the low end is “Live a Little,” which is advertised as having 60+ channels for $35/month. This is followed by “Just Right,” which includes 80+ channels for $50/month. Next up, and this is the plan they hope to snare folks with at launch, is “Go Big,” which includes 100+ channels and a limited time special introductory price of $35/month as long as you remain a subscriber (regularly $60/month), and finally “Gotta Have It,” with 120+ channels for $70/month. In addition to these four plans, they also offer two add-on packages for $5 each/month—HBO and Cinemax. Here’s a comparison of the channels included in each plan.

Additional Offers

There is currently a 7 day free trial, and some free equipment if you prepay for 1 or 3 months. If you prepay one month, you will receive Amazon’s all-new Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote, and if you prepay for 3 months, they’ll send you an Apple TV.

Quality

You should know that my experience thus far has been limited to my web browser. I’ll be trying it out on our Fire TV Stick soon, but I haven’t yet. That said, the picture quality has been at least as good as any other streaming provider. DIRECTV NOW streams all programming in HD, and downgrades the quality as necessary, depending on your bandwidth (they recommend 2.5 – 5.0 Mbps for HD quality).

Overall Experience

Using DIRECTV NOW web app should be intuitive for anyone familiar with using other streaming sites, and the channel guide is similar to most cable guides. However, I do have a couple of suggestions that I think would greatly enhance the user experience with the guide:

1. When navigation from watching a channel to the guide, open the guide at the channel that is currently being watched, not at the beginning of the alphabetical channel list.
2. Add some info in the guide for specific shows. For example, a show summary, episode info, and for sports, the teams that are playing.

Those two things would go a long way to improving the usability of the guide.

While I am ready to cut the cord, I’m not sure that DIRECTV NOW is the right solution at this time, mainly due to the lack of DVR functionality. As I mentioned earlier, they say it’s coming in 2017, but it’s already available with PS Vue, and Sling released a beta DVR service. That said, the $35/month special introductory offer is quite compelling, and just might be good enough to entice me to stick around while the work on the DVR. Though the thought of not being able to watch what I want, when I want, even if for a short time, feels like a huge leap back into the stone age.

Additional Information

Here are some links that you might find useful:

• FAQs
• Community Forums

By Bryan at 5:25 PM , in Cutting The Cord - Permalink
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