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Comment by usaphp | Hacker News Reader

I have a question to US people, when you say "cord cutter" - what exactly do you mean? Because you still need to pay for internet to the same cable company, and the price is only 5-10% cheaper compared to the same plan with cable box? Am I not understanding it correctly?

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The cable company here in Minneapolis is Comcast (the number 1 hated company in America year after year), which I can avoid by going through CenturyLink (the phone company). Thus I deprive Comcast of their revenues and don't pay ESPN a nickel. All I watch is Amazon Prime.

My Internet is $30 / mo. Comcast Internet & TV is $49 per month for 12 mo (a teaser rate), their real rates seem to be $120 or $150, plus they steal your time by signing you up for stuff you don't want. Search for "comcast signed me up for didn't order"

Minor update: I'm looking forward to Elon's satellite based Internet system. So I might go with that in the future.

If you're just doing it for web/streaming video, it'll be fine. If you do any gaming or videoconferencing, the latency on satellite puts a real damper on the "feel" of the connection.

I think gp is talking about DSL, not satellite internet.

Musk claims to have improved satellite latency by a factor of 52, from 1300 ms to 25 ms. So maybe the issues will be resolved.

"Cord-cutting" means getting rid of cable TV. Yes, ISPs are often also cable providers, but more and more consumers are choosing only an Internet connection. They are "cutting" their cable cord. The money still goes to cable companies but it is often significantly less with only the Internet. Cable companies are attempting to bundle Internet and cable TV into packages and hiding their prices, but more and more are simply ignoring TV packages altogether.

The "cord cutter" term is a little odd because you're still probably buying internet from the cable company; you're just not buying their video services.

When I first signed up for cable, Charter Spectrum had me on a promotional plan - 130/5 internet and extended basic cable (essentially everything but HBO/Cinemax/Starz/Encore), for around $110/month.

This was a 1-year promotional price offered only to new customers. After 12 months, it went up to $65/month for the internet and an additional $90/month for the TV. I chose instead to sign up for DirecTV Now streaming, because even at buying a "bundle" of channels, it was significantly cheaper at $35/month vs the cable company's offering.

I am paying $120 for 300mbps internet + TV + phone and some soccer sport pass right now, I just contacted Charter (who bought TWC here) to ask how much just the internet would cost me, and they told me it is going to cost $105 just for the internet. So by "cord cutting" I actually only hurting myself here, no?

Yes. The details will vary--and I've been meaning to look into what my options are--but you probably won't save nearly as much by switching away from Triple-play type deals to straight Internet as you might assume.

Are you paying for a DVR? Verizon and Commcast charge about $15/month per TV.

Nope, don't have a DVR

Technically you're saving 15 dollars a month, so it's not really "hurting" per se.

I am assuming that he is implying that if he cord cut, he would have to spend more than 15$/ month in subscription fees. That seems like a much more reasonable interpretation than assuming he doesn't know that 120 > 105

If Charter is anything like Comcast, by not going through them for my cable I save monthly:

$50 - 5 additional cable box rentals

$10 - "HD Technology Fee"

$5 -- Broadcast access fee

$3 -- Regional Sorts Fee

That's $68 I avoid by using Hulu + Sling + CBS All Access. We have 6 TVs, 3 Roku sticks, a Roku TV, and 3 Apple TV's.

Out of curiosity, what are you doing with 6 TVs? Even when I lived with my parents we only had two.

You need a TV in every room so you're never left alone with your thoughts.

What do you find so strange about it? Even growing up in 70s and 80s, my parents had three televisions. It's not like TVs are luxury items. We had one in my room, one in their room and one in the family room. Now, they have five -- two additional TVs one in my dad's "man cave" and one in my moms office.

TVs last forever or at least they did back in the CRT era. My Dad's TV is one I bought in 1996 when I first graduated from college. All of their TVs are CRTs.

Even all of ours were less than $400 bought over the course of 7 years.

Since you asked, it's not about cost. I've never owned a television, so I find the whole thing quite bizarre. Whenever I see how friends and family use their TVs in their houses and what plays on them, it redoubles my desire to never own one. I don't mean to be that guy, and it's not like I don't squander my time on trivia pursuits (I'm on HN, after all). But the quality is just so bad, and the ads so obnoxious. Maybe you don't notice if you're accustomed to it?

I know that in the last 10-15 years there have been a handful of great shows. Real works of art. But a house doesn't need more than one TV for such intentional viewing. Surrounding yourself with TVs flabergasts me.

But I don't think you're strange. You're normal; I know I'm the strange one.

96% of households have TVs (http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/news/2016/nielsen-esti...)

As far as ads. Neither Netflix, Starz, Hulu or CBS All Access (the on demand part) have ads -- for CBS and Hulu I pay for the no ads subscription. Because of a quirk in the way that channels work in Plex, I don't even see ads on the Plex channels.

As far as what a house needs, people would also say a family of three doesn't need a 5 bedroom house in the burbs, could exercise outside instead of turning one room into a gym, my son could use the one tv to play his PlayStation instead of having his own TV, doesn't need gigabit internet and every room wired with a gigabit connection, etc.

But honestly life isn't always about needs. If we decide that we don't want to compromise between three people in what we want to watch or where we want to watch it, what's the big deal?

No big deal. I'm glad your family is happy.

Owner's suite

son's room

home gym

wife's sitting area

Family room

Guest bedroom

Gotcha. We didn't have TVs in bedrooms in my parents' house, which is what I figure our TV deficit stems from.

And the TV in the gym serves as a glorified set of speakers most of the time using AirPlay listening to podcast while I'm running.

you should also probably itemize the cost of each of those hardware peripherals.

The hardware peripherals are one time costs not monthly. But Roku sticks are $60 each and the AppleTV's (third gen) were $59.

A few notes:

* "First X months" deals are everywhere in home internet access. Buying TV and internet together is usually only slightly more expensive than internet alone for the first 12 months. After that, I'm guessing they hope you've become dependent on it or forget your prices went up.

* I think "cord cutting" generally meant eliminating the cable plugin to the TV. Sure, a cable still goes to your modem, but if you had cable internet, you're still eliminating one cord... now your TV is solely fed by Roku/AppleTV/etc rather than that plus traditional cable.

It was just a way to communicate getting rid of something - cable TV - which many Americans equated with having success in life and/or prosperity.

> Buying TV and internet together is usually only slightly more expensive than internet alone for the first 12 months.

It's even worse than that, Comcast won't even sell me their top tier internet without TV and the next tier down is only $10 cheaper but less than half the bandwidth.

So I'm paying for cable that I have nowhere to plug into because I don't own a TV anyway.

> So I'm paying for cable that I have nowhere to plug into because I don't own a TV anyway.

But you can watch all the channels online using their channel websites or phone apps if you want to. They ask your cable subscription login to verify.

Varies by region. My ISP is not a cable company* and about half as expensive (for 150mbps symmetrical) as the competition.

* They do offer packages with TV but those are provided by some other company.

I actually pay for YouTube TV even though the price to add cable to my plan would be about the same price. The difference is I get better channels (sports!), DVR, multi-room support, and streaming anywhere outside the house. If I wanted any of those features from my cable company, I'd be paying over double what I pay now.

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