“Cutting the Cord”, or dropping your Cable TV for more internet-based options, is becoming pretty popular these days. I’ve often considered it myself, but never have taken the plunge. If you’ve wondered about it, there’s a great graph over at FlowingData (shown above) that does a great job showing the impact.
At $85.91 per month for the most basic HD plan from Comcast, that comes in at just over a grand per year. With Netflix and Hulu, it’s $15.98 per month, or just under $200 per year. That’s a big gap between Comcast and Hulu+Netflix. $839.16, to be exact, which is quite a buffer.
That paragraph of text and the Image show the exact same information, but the graph has so much more impact, don’t you think?
I cut the cable cord by getting a Mohu Leaf antenna for the OTA signals and a Tivo box as I wnat to record and watch the broadcast shows when I want. Tivo also includes streaming access with apps for Amazon, Netflix, Blockbuster and Hulu Plus(or use any other streaming device, i.e. Roku) The Tivo box requires a $20 monthly fee, but that’s less than 3 times what my dish bill was and will alll the features the DVR has, I find it to be an easy, cost effective alternative.
I cut the cord a few weeks ago. Get an RCA antenna on ebay for ten bucks and get true hd channels free ota. Also get a Roku or apple tv 2 and stream Netflix . Also many sports packages available online in hd for 19.00 per month.
My wife and I have not had Cable TV service for the past 7 years. Granted, we were never big TV watchers, but as Lucas pointed out, you have to also consider the price of your internet service. We have Time-Warner and it’s around $50/mo. Add that to our Netflix and you see how this graph is very misleading.
But you’ld have internet access whether you had Cable TV or Netflix/Hulu..
Yeah, there’s some confusion there. I pay $87/month for Comcast internet access AND television, so I assumed the FlowingData poster was similar. Paying $86 for JUST TV with no internet does sound very expensive, and would prompt me to drop the service too. If we were to drop the TV, though, our internet rate would go up, so in the end cable is only costing us something like $50 if we consider the internet to be a requisite.
Thats not true , I dropped cable and threatened to go elsewhere with my internet service and got 30 percent off for a year. I will call back when the year is over and get the same thing again by asking for retentions dept.
You bargain with your cable company for you internet service. Ask for retentions dept. and tell them to either give a discount or you will take your business elsewhere. I currently cut cable tv but get 30 percent off my high speed internet with Rogers for a year.
It is already discussed in the discussion on the original page, but it doesn’t cost $64.99 for cable tv from Comcast if it is bundled with internet access. The additional cost of tv over the price of internet alone is much smaller than what is in this graph (perhaps in the 10 to 20 dollars a month range, I don’t know for sure), and internet is certainly a prerequisite for Hulu or Netflix.
Umm.. As a Comcast customer myself, I’ld have to say that $65 is generous.. I pay $180 a month for TV & Internet.
My mother is a Comcast customer (almost former) and for just cable (she has no land line and doesn’t use the internet, she’s 85) for 1 HD TV and no DVR her bill is over $80 a month. I’m switching her to OTA TV by using an antenna. I have a Mohu Leaf for each of my TV’s and the pictures I get from the network channels are clear as a bell (and FREE).