Getting rid of cable - TV Tuner a good idea?

[Owltoid]

My cable & internet bill was $170 last month... f'in ridiculous.

Internet is $43. What can I get away with using no cable? I'm willing to purchase a TV tuner and download movies, but any way I can watch ESPN for live sporting events? Has anyone here broken the cable shackles and tried to go the pure internet route?

[Svpernova09]

TV tuner is only going to get you basic channels (3, 5, 10, 13, in the memphis area). You'd need some provider to get ESPN. That would mean cable....or satellite service. The wife and I ditched cable TV about 5 months ago, and went with DirecTV. I can't say enough good about it. The ONLY downside, is when it rains / storms, you'll lose your signal.

[Jubber]

holy crap that is expensive. Can you downgrade some services or do A La Carte programming. I know Comcast does this.

[falsfire3401]

That is expensive yikes! I pay $135/mo including taxes **CDN** for my ultra-high speed internet, digital cable, *AND* home phone service thru shaw canada! We don't have any of the subscription channels though, just the "basic" cable which is like channels 2-70 plus the 50 or so digital music channels in the 400's range. Provides more than enough TV for the wife and I...we have a PVR going with it and just recently we finally finished watching all our recorded programs for the 2008-2009 TV season. Most shows we just build up tons of episodes to watch, only the best get watched the week the episode comes out! (Like Lost or Amazing Race or Being Erica)

[Sajuuk]

Eh...I have a tv tuner card lying around for when I want to back up a random VHS tape.

[alcattle]

Supernova is right as always, TV tuner is a waste of time. I haven't paid for cable in 20 years. We use Netflix for new movies and Hulu for TV and older stuff. I think there is a sports package for some sports, asume you want games, news is free. Google your sport, most have something

[Diwa]

Get rid of TV and do 10 man solo

[Bovidae]

About the only thing a tuner card is going to do for you is save you the rental fee for a set top box, at the expense of not being able to tune into most of the channels you subscribe to (and the cost of the card)

I have fios and installed a QAM tuner on my garage pc, it allows me to watch the standard networks and listen to the music channels. Good enough for my garage.

That said, my fios bill is only $140 and it includes HD DVR, 4 other boxes, internet, phone, tax and a buttload of channels... Turn off the HBO/Scinemax package and no more PPV.

[Smoooth]

I haven't watched live tv at my house in the last 5 to 6 years. I download anything I want to see and usually get it before it even comes on tv since I live on the west coast. The best part of it is not watching commercials. No way could I ever go back to that crap. I don't get live sports though. Theres all kinds of sports books/bars to go to here in Nevada if I want to though.

[refined]

i work for a cable service provider, in the call center i deal with sales and trouble shooting. you would be amazed by what you can do with your bill by just calling up and asking you should be able to get a high speed internet connection and basic cable for about 80.00 a month. cable company's usually offer several different tiers of service, like limited basic which would be you local broadcast chans. then an expanded basic service with around 70 chans or so, with the major net work chanls like espn tbs tnt and so on. Usually the lim basic and expanded basic requier no equipment so you dont have to pay 15 bucks or whatever for a dvr. Anouther option would be to call up your provider and say that your going to switch to dish and see what kind of retention offer they have to lower your bill for a while.