It’s been a long time coming but we’ve finally taken some baby steps towards getting rid of cable TV.
Oh, no worries, we’re not giving up TV all together, just starting the transition to streaming TV instead of live or DVR’d content.
Why? Mostly because our cable bill seems to be incredibly high and, truth be told, hardly anyone in our household really needs it. My husband just watches reruns of shows that are no longer in production, my youngest watches Netflix almost exclusively and I watch more on my iPad via Amazon Prime more than anything else.
Except for a few shows that I MUST WATCH in almost real-time, like The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and Project Runway (odd mix, I know). But, I have to ask myself if those few shows are really worth that hefty cable bill we pay every month.
What confirmed our decision to move away from a cable subscription was when, a few weeks ago, we were helping our oldest daughter set up her new apartment. I asked her what kind of cable subscription she wanted and she responded to me that she never watches cable. Just Netflix and Amazon Prime were good for her! All she wanted was a really good Internet connection.
Ok, that did it. It’s clear that we don’t need cable any more. So, we took our first steps. After exploring all of our options, we decided to get a Roku 3 device. It seemed to have the most channels available, including Amazon Prime (a huge drawback for the Google Chromecast, which isn’t compatible with Amazon Prime).
In addition to our Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions, I also went ahead and signed up for HuluPlus, which also seems to have the most current episodes available.
It’s only been a few days but there are few things I really like about the Roku 3:
- Amazon Prime – I keep saying how much I love my Amazon Prime videos!
- Local News – I was able to easy find 2 of my local news stations on the Roku 3. There’s probably more available but I didn’t really dedicate that much time to it. What I really like about these two channels (and the other news channels) is that I don’t have to watch the entire newscast. Everything is broken down into little “clips” by feature or title. So, I can just find the clips/content that’s interesting to me and skip right to it. No more waiting through the sports stuff!
- Channel Selection – This is both a good and bad thing (more on that in a minute). There does seem to be a lot (and I mean A LOT) of channels to choose from, including a ton of educational channels. It’s nice to have variety but also a little overwhelming to sort through it all. But, that leads me to my next thing ….
- Discovery – I was a little worried about finding interesting things to watch or new shows. It might sound a little crazy but, how am I supposed to know about new shows without commercials? The RokuRecommends channel is really helpful for that.
There is one thing that I don’t like so far. That is that some of the channels listed as “free” really do require a subscription. Feel’n (a family-friendly movie channel) and CBS All Access is one of them. You have to really read through the channel description to find out if you need a subscription or not.
How about you? Have you cut the cable cord yet? If so, what Roku channels do you recommend?
