Back in 2021, I dropped my regular cable subscription down to their “broadcast basic” package. At the time, it was $25/month, I think. It went up to $35 at some point. And now, it’s gone up to $50. Which seems like a lot to pay for mostly just regular over-the-air channels. (I’m too far from both NYC and Philly to pick up OTA channels with an antenna, so if I want them, I need to get them from cable TV or streaming.)
The price increase, and an occasional desire to watch ESPN, has gotten me interested in maybe shutting down cable entirely, and switching to YouTube TV or Hulu + Live TV.
I’m also paying $150/year for TiVo service, which comes out to $12.50/month, so my total cost is $62.50/month. YouTube TV costs $73/month, so I’d be only be paying $10.50/month extra, and getting both my local channels, and a bunch of cable channels. And I could ditch my TiVo and stop having to switch HDMI inputs on my TV every time I want to switch from watching broadcast TV to streaming and vice versa. I could just do everything from my Apple TV.
And if I switch to the Hulu + Live TV bundle with Disney+ and ESPN+, I can actually save a couple of bucks. I’m currently paying $19/month for my legacy Disney bundle, so cable + TiVo + the Disney bundle is $81.50. Ditching those three and switching to the Hulu bundle would cost $77/month. So that’s probably my best bet. (I’d lose the ad-free Disney+ that way, but I could live with ads on Disney+, I guess.)
On the other hand, maybe the new streaming service from Fox/Disney/Warner would be a good compromise. It looks like that would get me my local ABC and Fox stations, plus ESPN and some other random channels. No clue what it’ll cost though.
The prices on all of the streaming services are getting too high, really. Maybe I should rethink the whole thing and spend more time reading books and comics.