How to cut the Cable Cord

Cutting the cord has become a symbolic term for getting rid of cable.  The fact of the matter is that you need internet if you want to cut the cord and not see any drop off in what you watch...so you're still gonna have a cord, but it'll be a helluva lot cheaper.  My watchout here is that if you're the type of person that loves just channel surfing and watching a wide variety of random stuff you never planned on watching, this is not for you.  You need to know what you want to watch and then find the best way to get that content without paying for cable.

First steps, get an OTA (over the air) antenna and DVR.  You can start with just the antenna, but I recommend not half assing it.  I have a Tablo DVR that is two tuner (meaning you can watch or record two things at the same time.  I recommend a 4 tuner DVR because I sometimes have conflicts and the price difference isn't that great.

The OTA antenna will get the major broadcasting channels like CBS, NBC, ABC, Fox, and CW and in HD quality.  Depending on how good your antenna is and your location, you may get additional random channels like Grit, Laff, Ion, etc. I've got a cheap RCA 70 mile antenna mounted in my attic but I've also used several Mohu models in the past.  Mohu is focused on making the antenna's look cool and that's not really something I care about since it's in my attic.  You can plug your attic antenna into your existing coax cable run through your house and run about 4 tvs.  However, I run mine directly to my Tablo DVR and stream the antenna content from there to every tv in the house that has a streaming device.  This can seem like a lot of streaming devices if you have a bunch of tvs at your house, but the cost is a drop in the bucket compared to what you pay for cable every month, year after year.

You'll also need a signal amplifier for the antenna, this is the one I have.

As far as streaming devices go, Apple TV is the best and it's not even close.  The main TVs in your house need to have Apple TV to make your experience enjoyable.  Other less used tvs can have other devices like Chromecast, Amazon Firestick, Roku, etc.  Maybe these other devices catch up soon, but as of this blog post, Apple TV is the best there is for this purpose.  You can get deals on streaming devices when you prepay for certain streaming services when they have deals running (ie, Sling was giving away Roku's when you prepay for two months).  

Next is figuring out what you watch and the best streaming services to get it.  The cool thing about these services, is that there's no commitment.  It's month by month and most are really easy to turn on and off.  Sling, Hulu, Netflix are just few of your options, but are really easy to cancel and resign up.  You'll just need to look at each and see what meets your needs.  If you have want AMC, Sling is a good option, etc.  And you don't have to get them all.  That's the cable company's argument for cord cutters, "if you have a bunch of different services, you're paying as much as you would for cable.  Not true, even if you have 3-4 services going at the same time, your total spend is still usually way less than your cable bill.  

The bad part about having to watch some of your show live through a streaming service is that you can't skip commercials.   This isn't always the case, but some services like Sling that offer live and on demand options have commercials.  Another option is to just buy a season of a show on Itunes.  Instead of paying for Sling for 3 months to see "Better Call Saul" on AMC, I just bought the season for about 1/3 of what I would've paid for 3 months of Sling.  Buying the season doesn't always make sense, but in certain situations it might.

You also need good wifi or your cord cutting experience will be frustrating.  I recommend biting the bullet and getting an Eero system or really any type of mesh system.  It's expensive, but its a great investment for rock solid wifi.  If you think you have good enough wifi, I guess you could just try it and see how your original wifi setup does.  But there are so many other things we are adding to our Wifi everyday (thermostats, lights, etc) that having a great Wifi setup is becoming crucial to living with 21st century appliances.

You can also get a lot of content through certain sites streaming services HBO Max, ESPN, etc with more and more being added every day (like NBC's Peacock).  If you can "borrow" a subscriber login, you can get a ton of content that way.  Some call this theft of service but I don't like to put labels on things.

Some downside to cutting the cord:

• People that come to your house can't figure out how to operate your tvs.
• Even people living in your house may have a steep learning curve
• Watching commercials in certain situations.
• Becomes hard to channel surf
• You're giving up a one stop shop of DVR'd shows