this episode of tekzilla isbrought to you by naturebox. hey, david writes in, hey,patrick and snubs, i'm thinking really seriousabout cutting the cable and saving some serious cash. could someone be browsingthe internet or, in my case,
Android TV hbo go xfinity, working from home usinga vpn to my office, while we are watching tv? or will we have topick one or the other? how about the "hidden" costs?
i already have anetflix account, but are there otheraccounts that we would have to pay for thatwould reduce our savings? are the major networkshows strictly videos (delayed broadcast) or isstreaming real-time nowadays? i also assume that youwouldn't have local affiliates unless you use adigital antenna. i appreciate any informationyou could provide or real world experiencewith this issue.
thanks again for all you do. signed, david from arkansas. ok. so simple answer is yes! cut the cable. you will live on happy. i believe you've cutthe cable, and so have i. it's so, so nice. i cut the cable abouta year ago, again.
and it makes me a very,very happy camper. when my comcast new account saleprice ran out, i quit cable, and i have been savingabout $50 per month. so it's definitely worth it. so first off the woes aboutdoing a vpn to your workplace and then tv at the same time. this is totally remediedwith a decent download speed on your isp. i currently get 28megabits per second down,
and then i get 5 up. it's really a decentspeed for the bay area, but if you're in a lesspopulated area, 10 down should suffice. i know that's available inmissouri where i grew up, so you should definitelyhave that over in arkansas. and it has workedfor me in the past. now, as far as hidden costs go,your subscription-based online tv includes hulu plus,netflix, and amazon
prime for the mainstays. there's probablyother ones in there that i didn't mentionbecause i haven't used them. channels that do notallow on those sites oftentimes stream their owncontent on their own websites. one that i love is cw.tv.com. you can watch all oftheir shows the day after. same thing goesfor comedy central. you can watch a lot oftheir full episodes right
on the website,and you don't have to have a cablesubscription for these. so sites like thesegenerally post shows one day after thetelevision premiere, and they are free. so it's totally agood deal, especially if you're a big fanof a certain channel. netflix is about$7.99 per month. same with huluplus, that's $7.99.
and then amazon prime is $99per year, which is about $8.25 per month. so i end up spendingabout $24 per month on subscription-based servicesfor streaming shows online, plus i get free shippingfrom amazon baked in. which is totallyawesome, since i get all sorts of things fromamazon, including cat food. now i find that sometimeshulu plus isn't worth the money if i'm not keepingup with certain shows
week after week. so then i'll just drop downto free hulu on their website. if i want to watch on just mypc, you can do it for free. most of their content isavailable for free on a pc, and they charge you if youwant to watch via mobile device or if you want to watch a showright after it airs on tv. but i know you have somethoughts as far as sports go, correct? totally.
because if you arein into sports, that's going to costyou a little bit more in order to get the accessyou want, especially for live content. that's really the challengeof being a streaming-only tv viewer, so to speak. a lot of local games basicallyaren't available online unless you use a servicelike, say, unlocator.com. you can then use serviceslike, say, mlb tv
and get those local games. so you're not missing out. however, you are goingaround the mlb tv rules for distribution,but for apps like mlb at bat, that's oneof the best out there if you're a sports fan. and, honestly, it's cheaper forbuying a whole season of that than it is maybe going toa couple of live games. now some sportswebsites will have
to require that if you wantto watch an online stream, you're going to need a cable orsatellite subscription anyway to view them. the other thing i do regularlyis connect a digital antenna to my tv. every hdtv has thatbuilt-in over-the-air tuner that will receive freebroadcast programming. check out a sitecalled tvfool.com. they will give you an ideaof exactly how many sites
you can get where you live usingdifferent types of antennas and depending on howyou have it set up. one of my favoriteantennas for indoor use is this companyhere in us called walltenna, a terrific product. basically a flat sheet ofplastic with a beautifully built all-copper antennaintegrated right in there. you can hang thatright in the window or behind a picture frame.
so that's what that thing is. i've seen those beforein my friend's house, and i was likewhat is that thing? they work phenomenally. there's a few designssimilar to that. that's like an open-source,probably 50-year-old antenna design, but put inthat piece of plastic that you can just hang up. i have mine right in thewindow, behind a window
i generally don't use. so it's perfect for receivingthe local signals like that. here in the bay area, we'reblessed with over 80 channels of local broadcasttelevision, so if you're able to receive thisbroadcast television, that's a great way to getfree sports programming on all the major stations. cbs, nbc, fox. and usually thingslike pbs as well.
and if you lookaround, you might find-- for me, i'man f1 fan, and i find that my localunivision station actually broadcasts the whole season. it's in spanish, buti really don't care. it's auto racing, and i love it. so there's another good option. so the last one i wanted tomention, because i know people are going to ask about it, hbo.
of course. because we want to watch "trueblood" and "game of thrones," right? but hbo go and hbo viathe web both require a cable subscription or a verygood friend or family member's login information. hey, that's legit! just letting you know. it is.
it's legit. you're good. somebody's paying for it. another thing to know asfar as local affiliates is when i canceledcable, i was still able to get cable via the co-axline going to my apartment, but only for the local stations. so my cw local affiliate. i could get that forfree via the cable.
i just plugged my tv rightinto the wall jack, and voila! i had a few channels for free. it was super cool. my isp still allows thesechannels unscrambled, as they call it,but yours might not. so it's kind of a gamblewhether this would actually work or not. i don't know how much you'recurrently paying for cable, but i cut my costsaround $50 per month
when i canceled cable andthreatened to close my internet account entirely with my isp. they ended up giving me areally good deal, around $40 per month, for justinternet, as opposed to $110 for their packageof internet and cable. so subtract the $24per month that i pay for all my subscriptions,and i come out on top. so it's definitelya really good deal, and you should consider it.
i consider cutting cablefor all of my friends. it's been a fewmonths now, and i have no regrets ofactually cutting the cable. and for the sportsprogramming, i simply wish that more of thefranchises out there for the different sports teamsand whatever would do something like mlb tv does in terms ofproviding an app that really gives you almosteverything you can watch in an almost unlimited format.
i would like to see thenba and nfl step up. and that's the way it is. all right. well, i hope thatanswered your question. thank you so muchfor sending it in. coming up next, we have allsorts of home theater funness, because robert's here! but first, it's time tothank one of our sponsors. it's easy to talk toughabout eating right,
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