my name is not matt

The Decision

For the better part of a year, I have been eyeballing our cable bill. Well, maybe it’s best to clarify, because “cable bill” is a little deceiving. Probably like many of you, I have signed up for a bundle of services from a local cable provider – RCN. The bundled package includes cable, Internet and phone service. Ok, back to the bill. So, as a I said, for nearly a year I had grown increasingly ambivalent about paying for the service. On one hand, I am an unapologetic TV viewer and Internet user. On the other hand, I am prone to rather strong pangs of frugality. (That’s a pretty way of saying that I can be cheap.) In my mind, there was just something entirely wrong with paying $200 for this bundled service. Something had to give.

I first started talking to my wife about getting rid of the land line. Why do we need a land line? Who calls us on the home phone anymore? I’ll tell you — unsolicited callers and a few people (family and close friends) who can’t reach us on our cellphones. My wife was particularly keen on retaining the home phone number, because she’s had it for a long time. “What about people who I haven’t talked to in a long time? The land line is the only number they would have.” My wife asks/state. Really? (said as dryly as possible) is my response. There may be a reason you haven’t talked to someone people in a long time, was my thought. Add to that, my wife is not hard to find. So, in my  mind this component of the bundled service was easy to cut. However, yielding to my desire for a harmonious household, I ported (transferred) the home phone number to an unused third line on my cellphone contract. I’m paying for the line anyway, I might as well use it to save the number. Now, as soon as the contract term on that third line ends, I am going to port the home phone number to a Google Voice account. That way, we’ll retain the home phone number, and we can access the voicemail from anywhere. We can even have the home phone ring through the Google Voice app our cellphones if we so chose…or not!

With the land line effectively pulled out of the bundle, I now had to focus on the real driver of the high bills — that cable. Surprisingly, coaxing my family to go along with getting rid of cable was not as tough as I expected. I first broached the idea earlier in the summer, and the response was somewhat tepid. I think my wife and son are used to me plotting on ways to save money, so, perhaps, they didn’t take me all that seriously. When my wife landed the job on ABC, I saw an opportunity. I knew that she would be in New York four to five days a week. My son is with us every other week, so there’s a lot of time that no one is in the house except me. I brought up the idea of cutting the cable again in September. Barley a shoulder shrug from both. I expected more of a struggle from my son about ESPN, and my wife about certain cable channels (AMC and Showtime in particular). Again, I don’t think they thought I was serious.

I called RCN, after the land line was ported, to discuss eliminating cable from the remainder of my bundle. Naturally, the customer service representative asked me a number of questions, put me on hold, and them came back with an offer. $139 for the cable/phone/Internet bundle, including all the cable box rentals (5) and the router rental. My eyebrows didn’t even flinch; primarily because I knew that when the exorbitant taxes on cable and the phone line were added, my bill would be right back nearly $200. After politely rejecting the offer more than a couple of times, and convincing the CSR that I, indeed, did want cable, we moved to increasing my Internet plan from 15Mbps to 25Mbps. Though speed on the Internet is often subject to the output by the content provider, not necessarily your bandwidth capability, I wanted the increase in speed because we would have multiple devices and computers pulling data. Whew…done!  (Well, the switch to a faster download speed plan wasn’t quite the easy, but I’ll explain that in a bit under equipment.) I must say that I experienced a tangible sense of freedom when I dropped off all of the cable boxes and the modem/router at the RCN office. I walked away with a tiny box containing the cable modem.

Equipment

Video

Even before contemplating cutting the cord, I had been interested in media streaming devices. We are big fans of Netflix in our house, and HuluPlus has also become popular. Even though I have been slowly creeping over to more and more Apple products, I was barely even n the fence about AppleTV because it does not, at this time, support HuluPlus or Amazon Prime video content. Some of the audio functionality of AirPlay are interesting; but even with two Apple computers, and two iPads in the house, I wasn’t really that drawn to AirPlay for video. (Don’t kill me Dotch.) That led me to check out a number of media streaming devices on the market — Roku, Boxee Box, WD Live, Sony Network Media Player,  just to name a few. I recently purchased a BluRay player for my wife’s apartment in New York. It features just about every media streaming app you can imagine. If you’re in need of a DVD/BluRay player I would suggest getting one that includes the streaming service apps built in. Why not? I didn’t, however, want or need another DVD player in the house, so I kept my focus on media streaming boxes. In the end, I decided on the Roku box because of the extremely large variety of content available and features-for-the-price. We have  one 720p resolution television and a two 1080p resolution televisions in our house. To get started, I picked up the Roku 2 HD (720p – $50) and Roku 2 XD (1080 – $80). I’ll worry about the other television later because it’s not used that often.

Most of the streaming boxes are relatively small, but I am really amazed by the small footprint of the Roku boxes.

Set up is very easy. The video quality of the streamed content through the Roku boxes has been fantastic. Navigation through the various channels is easy, and the interface is simple, but usable.

Oh…one word of advice about streaming. Some media content (CBS, AMC, TNT) is not available through HuluPlus. You have to stream that content directly from the network’s website. Not to worry, though. A quick and easy fix to that issue is to buy a VGA to HDMI, or DisplayPort to HDMI (Apple), cable. Connect the video out on your laptop and run the cable to the HDMI input on your TV. Voila! Now, I’ve only done this with a MacBook Pro, so I’m not sure if you need an additional cable for the sound with Windows-based computers that don’t have HDMI outputs. Solutions are pretty easy to find, though, if you do an online search.

Streaming Services

Speaking of streaming, I downgraded my Netflix subscription to streaming only ($8 a month). I also subscribe to HuluPlus; also $8 a month. I already have Prime on my Amazon account, so I don’t count that in my monthly, post-cable expenses. I will rely on RedBox or Blockbuster Kiosk for any future DVD rentals — about $1/rental. There are also a bevy of  movie streaming services, such as Vudu that have just-out-of-theater releases.

Antennas

Of course, streaming content isn’t all I had to think about. I also had to think about  picking up antennas to receive over-the-air (OTA) high-definition broadcasts. There is a great website called AntennaWeb, that lets you plug in your zip code and it produces a list of all the stations in your area. From there, you can determine what type of antenna you’ll need. Now, I didn’t want to go all old school and bolt a big antenna to the roof (though it may be the best thing you can do for a clear signal).

Instead, I picked up an antenna from Radio Shack ($25), a couple of RCA uni-directional antennas from Best Buy ($30 each), and an amplified GE antenna from MicroCenter ($45). The amplified antenna doesn’t seem to provide any additional channels, and I question the additional cost. If you’re not familiar with over the air HD broadcasts, you notice that channels will pixelate (get choppy) or completely go out, as opposed to analog channels merely getting fuzzy, if the signal is not strong. Additionally, it appears that certain things will interfere with the signal — such as moving around in the room, or passing trains (we live near mass transit and freight rail tracks). I am still researching indoor antennas. I just can’t bring myself to go with an attic mounted or roof mounted antenna. It’s not worth it, to me, for a few extra channels. Based on my observation, I don’t think you even need a “HD” antenna or anything too spectacular unless you live in a rural area or in the city with a lot of tall buildings nearby. Here’s a video (part 2) of a guy who made an antenna with a CD jewel case and binder clips. Naturally, I’m gonna try making one to see if it works. I’ve saved my receipts, just in case the binder clip antenna works out, thought I don’t think I would sit it prominently on the mantel like the kid did in the video.

Internet/Broadband

The last piece of my cord cutting was picking up my own router. I have been paying RCN $4.95 a month — dubbed a “home networking fee” — for years to rent a pretty basic Linksys G-band modem/router. It’s done the job, but I’ve paid for this thing many times over. I can’t even explain why I never bought my own router, but I figured there was no better time to make that purchase than going all Internet in the house. As with anything else, I researched WiFi routers to death. I solicited advice from friends and acquaintances on Facebook and Google+. After way too much reading and hand wringing, I narrowed my list down to the Netgear,N900,  the Linksys 4200 and the Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station. They are comparably-priced, dual-band N routers. I decided on the AirPort Extreme Base Station, simply because I have Apple computers in the house, and I’ve heard and read that the Base Station communicates better. *Shrug* Who knows.

As I mentioned earlier in the post, I bumped up my Internet speed plan from 15Mbps to 25Mbps. Unfortunately, this is one area in my cable cutting adventure that did not go off without a hitch. I got home the evening I returned all the RCN equipment and plugged in the new cable modem. As soon as I fired up the modem and connected it to my computer, I pointed my browser to Speedtest.net. I immediately noticed that my download speeds were well below my 25Mbps plan. In fact, I wasn’t getting speeds anywhere close to what I got under the 15Mbps plan. Mind you, I have not connected my router yet. These are speeds directly from the RCN-provide Cisco 2100 cable modem. I jump on the phone with the RCN tech support. I am asked to power cycle my  modem, and check the cables to make sure they’re tight. After doing all of that, I get speeds near 22-23MBps. Ok. I’m good. Not more than 30 minutes late, while connecting the router, I noticed that the speeds have dropped off again. A return call to RCN doesn’t prove as successful as the first call, and I’m told that a technician will need to come out. *THUD*

Fast forward to the technician arriving at my house a few days later, on time at least. He does a few checks, and then gets on the phone with someone. Within a few minutes, the person on the phone reveals that there is no problem with my line, connection or equipment. No. The problem was that someone didn’t code my account properly to release the faster bandwidth. It was a coding error. Ugh! Since the fix of the code on the account, my speed is where it should be. This speed test was performed over WiFi on my MacBook Pro.

I shared all of this as a bit of a precautionary tale. If you’re considering cutting your cable, or simply bumping up the speed on your Internet service, make sure that you ask the CRS you initially work with, or tech support if you encounter an issue, to make sure that your account is coded properly. Apparently, this is not all that uncommon.

Initial Impressions

I’ve only had the cord cut for about five days now, so I can only give you an initial impression. I would be lying if I said that it hasn’t been an adjustment. I am someone that’s always had a pretty robust cable lineup, and the first few days in the house without some of my favorite channels was a little rough. Fortunately, you can find a lot of content online and through streaming services. What is amazing, though, is how quickly I watch much less television. Of course, it’s by force; but it does make me realize how often I was looking at TV, but  not really watching anything. The TV always seemed to be on. Since the end of last week, I’ve noticed and appreciate the quiet. It makes room for the sound of my favorite music, and has made me think about a lot of other things that I’d like to accomplish. Without the distraction of the TV, I’ve been more productive.

I can this – cutting the cable is not for everyone. I’m not going to become some anti-television evangelist. I’m just someone who got tired of pouring money, month-after-month, into RCN’s pockets for a lot of services I didn’t really use. There are a lot of good cord cutting resources online. I started with articles and videos on GigaOm, and still frequent the site for tips and suggestions. Naturally, I am happy to act as a resource for anyone interesting in cutting the cord.

I would love to hear from you, too.

• Have you cut the cord?
• If so, what led to your decision?
• What equipment do you use?
• What services do you use?
• What type of Internet plan do you have?
• Do you still have a land line?