On Television Part 3 – Cutting The Cord, Where We Ended Up

The Fifth Column first talked about “cutting the cord” in June 2019 in my post On Television that looked at the history of television from broadcast TV and rabbit ears through Cable TV to streaming services delivered via wi-fi.

In July 2020 I posted On Television Part 2 – Cutting The Cord about our first experience “cutting the cord”.

Our original plan was simply to replace it with streaming services and some downloads but decided for one time costs only to also add an antenna based over-the-air (OTA) television service.

However after a year or two we decided that using the antenna and PVR was not worth the trouble and the small amount of broadcast TV we wanted had become available online either through the providers websites or via other means.

We have now settled on using our Roku and six streaming platforms as our primary television sources:

•  Netflix, which everyone is familiar with

•  Crave with HBO/Movies + Starz

• CBC Gem Premium (including CBC News Network and all local CBC channels live

• Britbox, which features programming from the BBC and ITV

• Acorn TV, which features programming from the UK and other commonwealth countries as well as some Nordic countries 

• MHZ Choice which features mostly subtitled programming from European and other countries, which will be merging in April with the Topic streaming service to add more programs, including many dubbed into English, 

The Roku also provides access to a number of free streaming or direct broadcast programming (including CBC, CTV and Global) usually with commercials, but not always, as well as YouTube.

We also have access to programming via the computer which we have connected directly to our TV via an HDMI cable (after issues with our Chromecast).

A number of TV websites, including CTV and Global, provide free access to programming (particularly during the first week after broadcast) and some foreign TV websites such as BBC and ITV are available with a VPN set for the country of origin.

When we got rid of Rogers Cable we had basic cable plus a number of theme packs, as well as Crave/HBO. That, along with Netflix, was a monthly cost just under $100. After all this time with our current TV options, which provide a wider variety of higher quality programming, we are still playing less than that.

On Television Part 2 - Cutting The Cord

Those of you who have read THE FIFTH COLUMN: On Television may wonder if the Fifth Columnist has finally decided to cut the cord as it made a pretty good argument for that.

Well we have finally overcome over 40 years of inertia and made the decision and as of the end of the month we will no longer have a cable television service.

Our original plan was simply to replace it with streaming services and some downloads but decided for one time costs only to also add an antenna based over-the-air (OTA) television service.

There was potential for a significant number of channels if we went with a sophisticated rooftop antenna system.

 

However we decided we did not want to deal with a rooftop install and rotor systems and cabling and decided on a simpler indoor antenna that gives us local CBC and CTV and Global and TV Ontario (and sometimes the local french CBC station). This provides us with easy access to local news. As well most of the American broadcast channel programming we watch is on CTV or Global so we will still get that. What we are losing are some programs from cable only channels, though some of these are also available on streaming services like Crave TV.

We added an inexpensive (certainly compared to the purchase price of the equivalent Rogers device) OTA PVR without subscription fees so that we can record programs and watch them when we want them without commercials.

On the streaming front we stayed with the old standard and reliable Netflix, as well as Crave + HBO/Movies, adding Starz, providing a lot of high quality programming.

We also continued the CBC Gem Premium package as a good portion of what we watch is CBC programming and this provides all of that plus more, with no commercials. It also provides live access to all local CBC stations in Canada as well as the CBC News Network.

The newest addition that we did not have before cord cutting is BritBox, a relatively unknown service in Canada that provides programming from the BBC and ITV. If you are not familiar with it you should check it out as a provides a remarkable range of high quality programming.

And if this is not enough we can supplement it with a few free sources of programming.

By cutting the cord we cut our TV budget almost in half while still contributing to the cost of providing programming but providing less subsidy to the middleman cable company.