Cable and dish plans can be kind of expensive when compared to what a company like Hulu offers for $8 a month. What advantages do you see to having an actual TV provider as opposed to a Hulu plus subscription?
I'm just trying to budget some things to save more money, and I'd love your input!
I have a satellite dish and we pay ~55 a month (we're billed bi-monthly).
We have a medium range package that features the movie networks (including HBO), local channels, sports channels, music channels and some miscellaneous other channels too.
And honestly at times it isn't worth it. Especially during the summer when there generally aren't new shows airing (except Burn Notice, which don't get me wrong... I love. But is it worth the ~55 a month? Ehh... I don't think so). And during summer we're often outside doing other things anyway.
But during fall/winter it is kind of nice to have something to watch. I don't know how quickly Netflix (or those like it) adds recently aired episodes to their roster. So if you're worried about keeping up with shows as they air... you may want to keep satellite/cable.
But one problem with watching shows on cable/satellite is that you pretty much have to play by their schedule (unless you have a DVR too). Which is something that's kind of nice about Netflix... You can launch a show at any time, whenever you want. So you don't have to wait until like 9PM to watch an episode of Elementary or whatever (might not be the latest episode though).
Another nice thing about Netflix is that you can watch from multiple devices. So you don't need to stay chained to a TV. You can watch from your computer, game console, tablets or even smartphones. (Which can be convenient for when you're on the go and want to watch something.)
Netflix also likely doesn't have nearly as many commercials as cable or satellite (if they have any at all). So that's a major plus.
I'm not sure whether this is a positive or a negative really. (Really depends on if you like sports or not.) But if you're a sports fan and you go with Netflix or hulu then you probably won't get livestreams of those games. So you'll need something else to cover them. Though if you hate sport channels and always feel like you're paying for more channels than you want/use on cable/satellite then Netflix/hulu would probably work out quite well.
Though on the plus side for satellite, if you have a slower internet connection (or unstable connection) then you don't need to worry about if you'll be able to watch video or not. (Or what happens if you have multiple people using the internet at once. Like if you wanted to watch Netflix while a sibling was playing on Xbox Live. )
The only time i ever watch TV is when i'm falling asleep. I don't know if i will buy cable when i get older, i'm sure i'll watch more TV then but we will see haha.
We were with DirecTV for a while and it was absolutely horrendus. This TV company was how I discovered Michael W. Smith but it was still horrendus. We had a dish on the roof of our house, and whenever it rained or snowed, especially stormed, it cut off our reception too badly. Now we're back at regular cable and it's great. No cutoffs during storms and crap.
