I cut the cord to cable tv a little over a year ago. And when I did so I knew I still had some other options available. Was it cheaper just to stream each of the channels, maybe? But I couldn’t deal with the math or the letting go so I made the bridge decision to get Hulu Live. Hulu Live lets you not only get Hulu but basically watch or save any of the broadcast shows including most cable channels.
So I figured summer was the right time to play around with giving up some stuff to see if it really worked. I will say dropping down from $83/month to $10/month seems to make sense. I am still getting regular Hulu (I dropped the Disney+ add-on). I’m also still paying for Amazon Prime, Netflix, and HBO Max (which is what it’s called as of this writing).
Fortunately, some stuff is easy. I’m now picking up It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (Fx) and Bob’s Burgers (Fox) through Hulu. The CW seems to stream their stuff via their own app but it’s free so catching Children Ruin Everything and the upcoming Family Law. PBS doesn’t stream all their stuff but I am able to pick up the NewsHour and Washington Week.
And I am definitely missing a couple things. I was watching Resident Alien and Revival on Syfy. Resident Alien seems to eventually make its way to Netflix, but looks like I can grab some Peacock to finish out the season if I don’t want to wait. I can also pick up the last couple of Transplant episodes that were on NBC. Peacock did just announce it was jacking its pricing from $7.99 to $10.99.
I had started watching Librarians: The Next Generation on TNT, and that looks a little trickier to find, but fortunately, I wasn’t that into the show and can ignore it. I can revisit later if desired. But good to make note of things not really as available. I am also still missing Dark Winds without AMC, it eventually makes its way to Netflix, but season 3 isn’t there yet.
Once fall tv rolls out, I’ll need to decide if I want to watch things in real-time and get maybe a Peacock and Paramount+ subscriptions or just batch them up for a month at a time for some savings. I can of course, buy pretty much anything on Amazon but I prefer to get via a month of something when possible. It’s usually cheaper and I can watch other stuff.
There is also technically a way to watch live TV from various programs, but tracking the time and literally watching something live is like returning to the ’70s, and I’m not sure it can be done.
The biggest challenge? Keeping track of everything. I long for the days when I had one TiVo with almost everything saved. Now I need to keep track of what’s where and when. When it was saved stuff and just a couple of apps, it was just easier. So again, come fall, I may start to lose it. But until then, I think things work.
Is there a solution I’m missing?








