Comprehensive TV Cord Cutting Guide

So you’re finally thinking about Cutting the TV  Cord, or maybe you’ve Cut the Cord already and you’re searching for ways to catch more content- You’ve come to the right place.

Our family ditched Pay TV more than 2 years ago and could not be happier.  Every week, more and more content goes ‘a la carte’, where you can choose whatever you want to watch via a Smart TV device like a Roku box without buying a $100 per month cable or satellite package.

So where to get started?

First, make sure this is what you want to do.  You’re probably paying more than $1,000 per year to have garbage pumped in to your living room at a high rate of speed.  Read this article to review the Top 4 reasons why Pay TV may not be for you, and find out how much it is really costing you:

Second, you’re going to need an antenna to pull signals from Over the Air (OTA) and a way to record your shows (DVR).  The post below shows you how to pull in TV signals in your local market.  You’ll be surprised at how great the un-compressed TV channels look, especially during a live event like a football game.  (Tip:  Take whatever TVFool.com recommends, and spend an extra $10 or $20 getting the next best antenna.  You don’t want to make 2 trips to your roof or attic).

For the Whole-Home DVR, I would go ahead and get the 4-channel Tablo in most cases.  This give you the most flexibility:

Third, someone in your household has got to be a Sports Fan, and you need to figure how to say ‘Go Local Sports Team!’ – Can’t do it of you never see the games.  So here’s a guide to catch your local teams from College Football, NFL, Pro Baseball, College Sports, and Racing (Hint: Get Sling Blue or YouTube TV, and/or NBC Sports Gold for Roku).

For News Junkies, there’s CBSN (the CBS 24-hr news channel) and Bloomberg.  Both available for Free:

Finally, You’re now a ‘naked’ cable subscriber.  The dirty secret about Cord Cutting is that in most cases you are just as dependent on your cable company as you originally were, because they are your lifeline to Netflix, Amazon Prime, and any streaming content packages (Hulu, YouTubeTV, Sling) you have.

So don’t get jammed by your cable company and let them charge you the same monthly amount just for high-speed internet as they were charging you for the full ‘bundle’ package.

Use BillFixers.com (I’m not affiliated or compensated by them) to cut your cable bill.  I’m a happy customer of their service, which is described in detail by this NYT Article.  In my case, BillFixers.com cut my internet bill from my local cable company in half.

Prior to BillFixers, I had tried on multiple occasions to lower my cable internet bill- all to no avail.  Pretty sad, considering I live in a rare neighborhood that is served by 2 separate cable companies that have to ‘compete’ for my business.

So bet of luck on your Cord Cutting endeavors.  Let me know how it goes!