Snooze2978

Yes, I have a Roku on my upstairs TV which allows me to watch a specific broadcast channel. It also gives you Youtube if I remember correctly. I picked up a Blu-Ray player fairly reasonable as it also gave me Youtube, Netflick which I never use and I can bring my external hard drive and plug it in to watch whatever I've downloaded. I love the feature of the Youtube as it will bring up all my scribed channels. It also has the Amazon Prime which I'm trying out free for a month but haven't really found many movies on it that I don't already have in my collection. The rest of the movies & series I'm not interested in for one reason or another. With Amazon Prime I can order Starz for a reasonable price for a couple months and watch the Outlander series when it comes on as well as a few others I'm interested. My cable company charges way more and you can't just cancel as easy. Those of us on a fixed income has to come up with ways to enjoy life and looks like we have.

juliasb

One more things for persons on a fixed income if you also receive state assistance for food (SNAP) or medical insurance (medicaid) you can get Amazon Prime for $6.35 a month (half price) instead of the $120 a year otherwise. Contact Customer Service for Prime for details.

QuiltingNinaSue

We have our computers and television and phones all hooked up to a local server who do a wonder job 24/7 to take good care of us. They go belong the norm, and do extra for us...free. They just installed Optic Fiber lines and now its really bright and clear on our computers and TV. Better than the other two TV services we had before. Now I can watch the quilting filmed stories on YouTube. Yes, I enjoy Facebook, watching HGTV, DIY, and cooking channels more that the normal TV shows. On good days, I quilt and enjoy what I do. I am blessed.

tuckyquilter

I cut cable/tv some years ago as well. I didn't watch enough TV (except during football season) to justify the cost. And there was little else I was interested in. I'm not into soaps, cooking shows etc, dancing or the Kardashians, lol. I do like a good Crime mystery, but I can see some of those right on the computer. CBS lets me watch NCIS reruns for free. I do have Netflix and free Amazon viewing with my Prime membership. Funny, I haven't missed a thing by not having TV. I would need to buy an Internet Ready TV to stream from my computer. Not likely to happen.

Iona D.

You don't need an Internet Ready TV for streaming. When you buy a simple separate streaming device of your choice, the little gizmo takes care of all the locating the website itself, storing your apps or preferences in it or online, and other computer related activities instead of the traditional laptop or other computer devices. The TV is simply a "dumb" monitor with no brains of it's own (unless you choose to activate the newer ones to connect online-I prefer not to myself).

My laptop was used for streaming before I got an inexpensive HMDI port enabled television to hook it up to. I found after I got it that I rather use the laptop & smartphones for general computer & communication uses and leave the streaming devices to what they are specifically designed for-television viewing. Makes far more sense to me no matter how much or little I actually stream. Right now I'm online using my laptop to communicate with all of you. In a few minutes, I will check banking activities, e-mails, and other 21st century household chores. Then this laptop will go back to my bedroom drawer for storage.

I find this arraignment works well in my case. Everyone is different in his/her needs. No shame in that!

Iceblossom

Hubby and I met on-line playing a game, we are going to continue to have our techy toys!

But fundamentally I am cheap/frugal, whatever you want to call me. We currently have 3 rooms with TVs with cable, I'm thinking of cutting out one because it's just not getting enough use for me. In my sewing room I have a tv with the digital antenna, it gives me the local network channels plus several others, enough to keep me company, but I live in a major metropolitan area (Seattle).

We do have Amazon Prime and Netflix old-school disk rental. We are going to be moving a cable to the far end of the house so we can hook up the big tv and use those as well as the cable we already have.

Mostly though I listen to audio books since I have vision issues. Amazon owns Audible and you can get a book a month as part of prime, but I get all my downloads for free from our public library system. Typically I go through 2-3 books a week so prime isn't so good for me, but our library is!

Again, it helps that I am in a major techy area, but many libraries have free access to downloads of both audible and ebooks.

juliasb

One other thing I have done to save a great deal of $$ and allow myself Hulu. I have gone to magicjack for my home phone. I believe the price is a bit higher now but when I got it it was $20 a year! It is VOIP just like so many other carriers. Comes with its own answering service too. Does require a high speed internet connection but makes the internet more affordable.

lberna

We bought a Roku about 5 years ago and we love it. It’s incredible how a fairly inexpensive device (about $40, that’s total and not per month) gives us so much pleasure. So easy to set up on the TV. We stream Netflix, Amazon, Acorn (British programs), and BritBox (British programs). Yes, those streaming channels cost but we don’t go to movies. So, it all evens out. We have closed captions turned on and sit back and enjoy. We would get rid of cable except we do enjoy Masterpiece Theater and college/NFL football. Other than those programs, cable TV is pure rubbish. We don’t turn the TV on during the day even though we are retired. I'm told there are ways we can get sports without cable TV and one day I’ll check it out. We can get Masterpiece through our Roku but we watch it on cable.

Iona D.

VOIP is an excellent way of saving some serious money on phone/internet costs. It could be substitute/augment both your landline/mobile phones" usage. I use it for my mobile phone as an extra number. The 3rd party service I use is Google Voice.

Initially, I use my carrier's own number to sign up on the service. Google Voice is an separate app installed directly on my phone's screen which I tap on to select it when I want to use it over my carrier's service. It works quite well when decent WiFi is available either at home or out of the house. I use it as a back up when my carrier's own signal is too weak or unavailable to use. Or when I'm low on minutes.

Most of the time there is no charge to use this service. I don't have to get the other end user to sign up for this service unlike other 3rd party apps as most people have an Android phone which has Google products already installed.

Another reminder for all those people using alternate products to bypass pay TV options. Scan your channels frequently at least once a month-I do once a week when I remember to do so. Here in the US at least, the channels are migrating all the time to other frequencies/positions or whatever on the transmitting towers until 2020. Plus sometimes more channels are being added too. At my house, I keep losing/gaining channels all the time. Hope you don't experience channel loss!

Mimosa91

Satellite loses connection in big rain storms!