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
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.
