How I Stopped Paying For Cable

Why Bother?

If you're like me you hate paying for cable and you've probably had enough poor customer service experiences with different providers that you've switched between them at least once. The last time I went to switch though I realized that my only choices were providers that I had already 'fired' once before...it was time for a new solution. So I did some googling and after a bunch of painful experiences I eventually found a way to get rid of my cable provider once and for all!

Now I'm not particularly young anymore and I wouldn't call myself tech-savvy but I did figure this out and you can too. The point of this blog is to show you how I did it and also to show you some of the common alternatives so you can join the over 100,000 Canadians who cut their cable in the first half of 2015. Besides who doesn't want to save a little money?

What I Did

After doing a bunch of googling and finding a number of articles that were useless I eventually stumbled on this one: http://o.canada.com/technology/personal-tech/the-ultimate-guide-to-cord-cutting-and-ditching-your-cable. This was my outline and I encourage anyone who is serious about 'cutting the cord' to read this article as well as the rest of this blog. If you do read both you'll realize I didn't follow the guide exactly and hopefully between the two of us you'll find a solution ideal for you.

So what did I do?

First, I took advantage of the fact that the CRTC requires local television stations to broadcast their programming over the air. What that means is that you can get HDTV from channels like Global, CTV, CBC, City, etc. for absolutely nothing! You simply buy an HD Antenna like this for under $100 and hook it into your TV. At first, I was concerned that I'd have some ugly antenna hanging out my window but they're actually quite small and are made for indoors - mine is sitting in my storage cabinet with all the other TV equipment and still gets a perfect signal.

Source: https://www.tablotv.com/sf/uploads/tablo_tv_premiering.jpg

The next concern I had was that I would now be tethered to my TV because I no longer had a DVR (something to record TV). I honestly can't remember the last time I watched a television show live and there was no way I was going back to that. Fortunately, a company called Tablo had me covered. They sell 2-Tuner and 4-Tuner DVRs specifically designed to record over the air signals. I bought a 2-Tuner because I only have one TV and had a hard time envisioning a scenario where we'd have 4 people watching different shows via the Tablo. Maybe I'll regret this later but in the last year I've had no problems.

Source: http://www.hulu.com/tv/networks

To supplement the content I couldn't get over the air I subscribed to Netflix, Hulu Plus and NHL GameCenter. This doesn't get me 100% back to the content I had with cable but it's pretty close and in some cases better.

For those of you who still don't have Netflix it has a variety of movies and television shows and lots of kids content (Curious George is now easily the show I've watched the most in my life...). For $8/month it's a must. In addition to Netflix I had to add NHL GameCenter because I watch a lot of hockey and this subscription actually improved the amount of hockey I had access to compared with my cable package. Finally, I added Hulu Plus and this is probably something many of you won't be familiar with.

Hulu Plus is a US-based company and only available to US residents, but there are ways around this which I'll discuss a little later on. The reason you want Hulu Plus though is that it fills out a number of the channels that you lost when you cut the cable bill. We picked up the local channels through the air but Hulu Plus will give you access to networks like Fox, AMC, CW, History and other 'specialty' channels that you may watch but lost with your cable subscription.

So once I was convinced I needed Hulu Plus that meant I had to follow this how-to-guide in order to get it (paying for it can be a little tricky). I also had to sign up for a VPN. For those who don't know, a VPN allows you to 'pretend' you are in another country so you can access things like Hulu Plus or blacked out hockey games...if you know someone who has 'US Netflix' this is almost certainly how they are getting that too. I selected unblock-us.com for no reason other than it was recommended in the article I referenced above (they also have a handy guide for setting up just one device - like my PS3 to be 'in the US').

The last thing to address once I was subscribed to all the content was how to get it to my television. Believe it or not, the Tablo does not actually plug into the TV and I'm guessing a lot of you don't have a Smart TV so you will probably need a way to get Netflix, NHL GameCenter and any other alternative content you buy to the TV as well. This is where things like the Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Google Chromecast and Roku come into play. All of these devices will allow you to get the content to your TV and come with small pluses and minuses. I'm not going to detail that for you here but if you don't know which one is for you check out this link. I ultimately chose a Roku Streaming Stick. (I'll also say that if you have a gaming system like a Playstation or X-Box you can often use that to get the content to your TV too. I had a Playstation 3 but because I wanted US content I bought a Roku to get my Canadian content to the TV and use my PS3 exclusively for US content.)

Putting It All Together

Now that I've gone into way too much detail on all of this and it probably feels overwhelming I'll try to simplify it with an image...

It's a little messy in the middle because I needed an antenna, a DVR, and an external drive to get the Tablo recording the over the air content but once I got it figured out it wasn't so bad. Now that it's set up all of my Canadian content goes through my Roku and if I need access to US content I fire up my old PS3.

This is Starting to Sound Expensive...

To get this properly set-up did require an up-front cost and depending on how you approach it the costs will vary but the table on the right shows a summary of what I spent. If I had to do it all over again I would buy the new tuner and antenna bundle from Tablo and save the hassle of buying them separately (and also save $60+). Unfortunately they didn't have that option a year ago though when I first started this...Outside of that I wouldn't change a thing with my hardware.

Obviously the whole point of doing this was to save money so the table on the left shows my new and improved monthly expenses! I no longer have to pay anything to the cable giants as I found a different provider for internet (although I'm sure TekSavvy's paying one of them...but at least I don't have to anymore) and then I pay for Netflix, Hulu Plus, NHL GameCenter, a VPN and the guide for my Tablo. This obviously isn't $0/month but it is roughly half of what I used to pay and it should have paid me back for my up-front costs about 6 months in.

What's the Catch?

If you do this you will be an early adopter of the technology and that comes with some consequences. One of the biggest consequences for me was losing TSN, Sportsnet and the Golf Channel. There is just no way to get that content outside of a cable package right now and that can be a real pain (especially when the Blue Jays are in the playoffs or you want to watch the World Junior Hockey Championships). Undoubtedly you will also find yourself missing some content if you go down this road and I highly recommend tracking what you watch and then comparing it to the content you can get over the air or through Hulu Plus. If there's something missing that you just can't live without cutting the cord might not be for you yet.

The other challenge with this is just dealing with technology. Occasionally something just doesn't work the way you think it should and that can be frustrating. A couple that happened to me were:

• One day my Tablo just stopped recognizing that a hard drive was connected to it and didn't record the shows it was supposed to...
• Because I've got a lot of devices connected to the internet with this set-up (especially when you add in laptops, cell phones and iPads) the wireless gets spread a little thin and my Tablo and Roku frequently cut out on me in the early days (I've since hard-wired all the TV related devices and make sure I turn off devices I'm not using...). 

Final Thoughts

Cutting the cord was a bit of an emotional roller coast ride in the beginning. At some points I was really excited and proud of myself for figuring it out and then 10 seconds later something wouldn't work and I'd want to throw it all out the window...eventually though I really did get it working and  now I'll never go back.