Some readers may remember the post from about two years ago, 57 Channels (And nothing on). Several months ago I totally cut the cord on cable TV. I turned in the receivers, recorders and only have Internet service. We bought 2 Chromecast adapters, and a Roku adapter. Neither the Chromecast nor Roku have a mandatory subscription fee. We have not even mentioned the Amazon Fire Stick adapter (which we have not tried yet).

• 

• 

To subscribe, or not to subscribe.

We subscribe to some services, and still save money. Turning off the cable TV side, saved an instant $90 for us. For subscriptions, we spend about $10 for Netflix, and $9 for Hulu. We already had Amazon Prime for shopping and shipping, so we get the Amazon Prime channels. There are many free streaming services that contain small commercial breaks. YouTube, is a treasure trove of documentaries, movies, and special interest subjects.

So long, to most commercials.

With subscriptions, you usually get no commercials, something that I had come to hate on cable TV. On some free streaming services you may get one or two short commercials every 20 minutes or so. They last from 15-30 seconds each. Many times, the commercial starts, and after 5 seconds you get the option to “skip” the commercial. No more 8+ minute blocks of commercials in a 30-minute show. It’s hard to beat having the freedom to actually choose if you want to view a commercial. Around 2018, the average TV commercials consumed 32% of the program being shown.
(1952 – 13 percent of the time was spent watching commercials (only 4 minutes out of every half hour!))

How easy is it?

We can control, or select what we want to watch, from our smart devices, tablet, phone, computer or laptop. Much easier than using a remote to scroll through all the choices, or type in a search for a movie one letter at the time from the remote. We can use voice, or type on the device.

Comments or questions always welcome,