‘Cord Cutting’ Becomes More Common; Here’s Our Story

Over the years, Rita and I have bounced around from cable TV to DirecTV to Dish Network because of the astounding increases in monthly fees. Add some premium channels and the cost can approach $200/month, which is $2,400 per year, just for TV!  Perhaps your story is similar.

A year ago, when Rita and I moved into a 55+ rental that only offers Comcast TV and doesn’t allow satellite dishes, we finally did what so many have done before us: we abandoned both cable and satellite TV, or “cut the cord,” as it’s called.

So now we only stream, and our primary TV provider now is YouTube TV, not to be confused with YouTube. And I recommend it as an affordable solution. We get all the channels we were getting before, both local and cable.

We have Comcast/Xfinity for our home internet, which is a business expense for me, and their basic internet speed is fast enough for streaming YouTube TV (which is $64.99/mo.) and Netflix.

I love two things about YouTube TV. First, it has unlimited cloud DVR storage. (No equipment for us; just connect to our WiFi signal.)  Second, like Netflix, I can watch it on my laptop, phone or iPad, such as at the office or when I’m traveling anywhere in the U.S. (I watched some Denver programs while I was in Hawaii recently.) Rita can watch one program while I’m watching another.

We don’t watch any programs live anymore, because we want to fast forward through commercials. We preferred Dish and DirecTV over Comcast because they have a 30-second fast forward button. Comcast has no such button. YouTube TV has a 15-second button, which is good enough. Here’s a screenshot of from logging in to YouTube TV just now:

Each of those programs (and countless others) are recorded online and we never have to worry about running out of DVR space.