Cutting the Cord, A Series: Part 1, The Economics
We’ve been asked, and read a lot about cutting the cord, but we have yet to see a good series on the pros, the cons, and the costs of doing so. Well they say that if you want something done right, its best to do it yourself, so let’s get to it.
First, if you require Monday Night Football, and NBA basketball on TNT, you’re out of luck. There’s not a good online replacement for either. Looking for TBS baseball, ditto. Yes there’s NBA pass, and yes, there’s MLB League Pass as well, but its not the same, so you sports nuts should go back to your bliss of overpaying for a ton of content you don’t use to your local cable company. For those of you undeterred, read on.
For purposes of this exposé, I’m going to assume you spend $80/month on cable – that’s cable, not internet or phone, just the cable component of your triple play. Now some of you are going to cry, “Wait, I pay $100, no $120, no, I pay ONE MILLLLLLION dollars per month for cable!” Yeah, we get it, cable’s pricey, but using a conservative figure of $80/month shows just how compelling cutting the cord is. As you math majors have already figured out, that’s $960/year.
First thing you need is a box to run media center software on. We’ve profiled, Plex, Boxee and XBMC, all are free, but for this series, we are going to focus on Plex. Why? Because for cord cutters, its the most cost effective solution to enable EVERY TV IN YOUR ENTIRE HOME. This is because Plex is a true client/server system, you only need one box in the house to serve up media to any and every TV in the house. Start watching something in your living room but want to finish in the comfort of your bedroom? No problem. Or finish it on the road on your iOS/Android device. Gotcha covered. The Plex Media Server knows where you paused/stopped, and starts it back up right from that spot on any client. Boxee and XBMC don’t separate the two, and thus each TV requires a some sort of box with its own library to get the full glory of your media. Now this is going to cause lots of comments, but the point of part one is the focus on cost, so work with me here.
Plex enables users to run one box (Windows, Mac, Linux) and serve up multiple clients cost effectively.
Let’s make the assumption you don’t own a PC or Mac, or a PC running Linux, crazy I know, but let’s just assume. One can go out and buy an Acer Revo for under $400, or the Dell Zino for $600, or a Mac Mini for the same $600 (Plex’s Media Server app runs on Windows, Max OSX and Linux). But if you already have a decently powered box in your home, you don’t have to spend an additional nickel. Also, the Plex Media Server now runs on a number of Linux variants, so if you have a powerful enough NAS device, you can run the PMS there too. Worst case scenario, $600 + tax.
Tab thus far: $600 (or zero biatch!)
Next, you want live TV. Well, you don’t need it as you can get any TV show on the planet for either free or a minimal monthly charge (more on that to come), but for live TV you need an antenna. Let’s assume you live in the swamps of Mississippi. Nothing against swamps of the great state of Mississippi, the point is a) I like writing M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-1 and b) I’m assuming you are far, far away from any broadcast towers and thus require the mother of all antennas which cost under $200. Now someone’s going to have to get on the roof and install that bugger, that’ll cost you, conservatively, another $200 which includes some basic coax wiring. Worst case, another $400.
A site like Antennaweb.org can help you select the right antenna
Installing a rooftop antenna is serious business. Take great care when doing so.
Tab thus far: $1,000 or $400 if you already have a box
Now the media center software…that’s easy FREE FREE FREE. Plex is free, so are XBMC and Boxee, pick your poison.
Now what about all those shows you know and love? There are two ways to go, one free, the other $10/mo. The first is the free way, the torrent way. We’ve written about that on here before. To facilitate downloading the shows, you need a torrent client, like Transmission, BitTorrent, uTorrent or the like (all free), a PVR like ShowRSS or SickBeard which we’ve also profiled, and for movies, access to a private tracker site. DO NOT download movies from public tracking sites, bad things can happen (think 5.0, warnings from your ISP, etc, etc). Troll around on the Plex or XBMC forums and try to score an invite, it isn’t that hard. This entire setup is free, lovely! The Usenet method, which we’ve also outlined on the site, costs roughly $10/mo, which is your worst case scenario.
Usenets vs. Torrents is 5.0 vs $$. Both work well, but torrent at your own risk.
Tab thus far: $1,000 (or $400) + $10/mo
Now you need a place to store all that lovely media, and that requires an external hard drive. You can go the NAS (network attached storage) route, but its more expensive and unnecessary (although it really is lovely and recommended). There’s lots of options, but you can easily buy 2TB of storage for under $200. Don’t believe me, just look here. But lets assume another $200.
Tab thus far: $1,200 (or $600) + $10/mo
What about Netflix and Hulu. In my opinion, Hulu is completely unnecessary. There’s nothing there you can’t get from the torrent/SickBeard & CouchPotato options, but let’s assume a Netflix streaming subscription so you can watch Gone with the Wind whenever you like. $8/mo
Finally, what about recording, pausing and time-shifting live TV? Here’s the thing, with the setup thus far, you a) don’t need it and b) will rarely if ever use it. When I cut the cord almost 2 years ago, I went out and bought EyeTV for $80 plus the $20/year subscription for TV Guide and an HDHomeRun for $130. I only use either when I travel and want to watch live, local TV, which is, basically once in a blue moon, or I want to show off to friends (but I’m seeing someone about that). With the antenna setup, and every TV after 2003, you’ll be able to watch the Emmys, the Tonys (you know you do), the Superbowl, March Madness, etc, live and in glorious uncompressed HD. You still want it, get it, but you won’t use it. That’s another $210.
Total thus far: $1,410 (or $810) + 18/mo
Alright, now what about all those other ginormous big screen TV’s in your house? Well this is where Plex hits the ball out of the park. Already own an LG Netcast or Samsung SmartHub TV? Plex clients already exist for both…for free! Or, at $49, the new Roku2 LT has a free Plex channel built for it too. So for $50/TV, you can extend all the your delicious media to any TV in your home. You can buy the more expensive Rokus, but unless you live in one of those storage container developments, or get really bad WiFi around your home/apartment, there’s no real need for a wired setup. So lets assume two Roku LTs, that’s another $100.
Grand Total: $1,510 (or $910) +18/mo. That gets you ANY TV SHOW YOU WANT, plus movies downloaded to a dedicated hard drive, plus live TV for the main broadcast plus local channels in your area, served up to at least 2 TVs in your home. So if you don’t already own a PC or Mac (which btw how are you reading this right now if that’s the case), your break even is 25 months, and that math my friends, includes the $18/mo (to get that, solve the following: 1510 +18x = 80x where x is the number of months, and you thought algebra would never come in handy). After that 25 months, your ‘cable’ bill is just maintenance on the setup, and the $18/mo. If you were born after 1940, and do own a box, that break even goes down to 14 months, and I’m assuming most of your reading this fall into that camp. Don’t go the EyeTV (or similar product) route, that that cuts the break even to under a year, and the overwhelming majority of people I’ve helped cut the cord fall into this later camp. If you are paying $100/mo or more, the break even is WELL under a year.
Are there downsides? Yes. The live sports options currently suck, but your over-the-air antenna will get you ABC/CBS/NBC and FOX live sporting events. Do you only watch the Food Network or the History Channel? Content is limited, but Plex has numerous plugins that pull content from websites including full episodes (both those channels included). XBMC and Boxee have some similar, although more limited options. Can you cut the cord and exactly replicate cable’s offering? No. Can you come close depending on your proclivities? Yes, and we’re here to help you do it.
Next up in the series, picking the right equipment. Until then, happy cutting….
Update: Click here for Cutting the Cord: Part 2, Live TV!
Nice article. You might also consider adding the cost of remotes but obviously that isn’t a huge addition. Didn’t realize roku 2 had a plex channel. Is that a full featured client with the ability to run addons or just a way to serve up local media?
Currently it only supports local media and some limited Plex channels. myPlex support is coming ‘soon’. But given that the Roku itself has so many channels, including many that overlap with Plex Online, unless you require the Roku to play your local music files, its a terrific extension of Plex. Also, this isn’t Roku2, limited, it works on the earlier generations too. Finally, remotes aren’t ‘required’ per se, but one could add them.
To piggyback what Charles said, remotes aren’t required, but are an amazing addition to your HTPC. I swear by my harmony remote. Check our post on remotes to read more.
Don’t forget $10 for the VIP Membership to NzbMatrix or some other indexing site.
Matt,
Thanks for reading! That cost is only necessary if one chooses the newsgroup route. One can go the ShowRSS/Catch route for free. But as we have written on the site, there are pros and cons to both.
Cord Cutting is possible but some issues need to be addressed….
1) If your a big football fan and your team is not playing well (Winning Record) then you’re local games could be blacked out or another game shown. In the case of the Los Angeles area, if we don’t get Raider games we get Charger games and as a long time Raider fan, I do not want to watch Charger games. This wasn’t a problem when we had NFL Sunday Ticket, but since the crisis we’ve had it only once in the past three seasons.
Before we had it every season since 1995. Now the Raiders are playing better and about 10-13 games we’re shown on TV including a Thurs Night Game and apart of the opening day double header.
Obviously the the answer is not for your team to win all the time. Sunday Ticket allowed you to see any out of market game. The NFL does offer streaming outside of America but its expensive and you have to use a VPN to get it.
2) More plug-ins need to be created for content, especially news. I know most people are focused on Adult Content, Movies and TV Shows/Specials. But being informed is just as important. Getting alternative forms of news media like Free Speech TV, RT USA and France24 can be seen with OTA HD tuner, but some programs are not shown on a regular basis (like the Keiser Report) but are streamed on the web site or available on You Tube. I guess a scraper program which is available for XBMC can do this.
3) Cost and Complexity
Since the American Le Mans Series announced it would be streaming flag to flag coverage of its races, I have been defending this action because the numbers of fans that watch entire races is frankly a bit small, similar to NASCAR Truck and Nationwide actually. But with the cubic dollars invested in NASCAR, they can afford to write those series media cost off. The ALMS is not afforded that and requires a big investment from its sponsors.
Anyway, I have been pushing the idea of cutting the cord and building an HTPC. I explained it could have been done with a $99 ATV or $100 WDTV as well or even Google TV (now $99) but of there is resistance to this as people are stuck on the crappy DVR’s they get from sat or cable companies.
You can build your own HTPC with Tuners for about $550 with Windows 7. You can save going with Linux, but poor TV Tuner support gives me pause. I still believe ATI/AMD makes a better TV Tuner chipset than anybody else in terms of video quality and there is no support for AMD Tuners inside MythTV. Sure you can use a HomeRun or other tuners but they don’t work as well IMHO.
Just wanted to point these issues out, keep up the good work.
thanks for the read . you may have seen our recent article on a new VPN service, check it out. re: tuners, they are only as good as the signal they get from their antenna. my hdhomerun has been flawless and my picture is terrific. likely if you have had issues with one i would check your antenna. there is no cord cutting solution that perfectly replicates a cable package. the question is does one find the tradeoff between price and content acceptable. also check out part three, one doesn’t even beed an htpc anymore.
Also, regarding Plugins, Plex has over 250, many of which are news-based, I’m assuming based on your comment you use XBMC which has far a fewer.
Charles is this *your* path to entertainment independence or a possible scenario? I ask, because it’s 180 degrees out of sync with my own journey. Media center was one of the last stops for me. I think most people would have an experience more like this…
1) Do some research
2) Get an antenna
3) Get a DVR
4) Get a Netflix box
It’s a lot less expensive and most people still spend more time watching network TV than media files.
For my family, broadcast television is the primary source of entertainment. Besides the weekly sitcoms, news programs, and reality shows of the national networks, there are retro channels (This, ME, RTV), PBS channels (create, kids, explore, world), local independent channels, and new networks like ION (ION, ION Life, Qubo). For most a DB8 will pull in nearby uhf and vhf stations. A DB8 plus enough coax to reach from the attic to a TV set can be had for less than $100. People very local to broadcasters can get away with a $15 set top antenna.
When we are not watching live broadcast television, we are most likely watching the shows we missed. DVRs are expensive. As far as I am concerned, there are only three real options — Tivo, Channel Master TV, and the Echostar DTVPal DVR. Tivo is a very smart box with cool features and a monthly fee. If you opt for a lifetime subscription, Tivo will cost you $600. CMTV combines a less smart DVR with Vudo, internet apps, local media playback, and a nice channel guide for less than $400. The DTVPal DVR is not made anymore, but you can find them on ebay for $200-$400. The DTVPal DVR lacks internet apps, streaming media, and local media, but it’s a terrific DVR with a nice channel guide. Besides ‘time shifting’ (recording programming for later viewing), a DVR lets you pause, rewind, and fast forward through programs. When we dumped Comcast, pausing and rewinding were what we missed the most. Cost of an attic antenna and a DVR comes in at around $400. Add a blu-ray player and you have cut the cable for less than $500.
For us, this was about 70% to satisfaction.
The next phase of enhancement premium content. I do not advocat downloading files from illegal sites, but I can see no legal consequences or moral dilemna to viewing files posted to public facing servers through an appliance rather than a PC — including Hulu.
There are a lot of set top boxes that can receive streaming media including all three major game consoles. If you have an Xbox, a PS3, or a Wii, you can watch Netflix and other media on your TV via the internet. If you have a recent blu-ray player, chances are you can stream internet TV. Roku is the most popular dedicated streamer at this time, but my favorite is the recently discontinued Sony SMP-N200. You can get a Roku for as little as $50 and SMPs can be had for less than half of that. Both the Roku and the SMP stream the popular paid services (Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Hulu Plus, Crackle, VUDU). The Roku has more channels while the SMP is less expensive and has better support for usb attached media.
The Roku’s other channels aggregate content from web servers for viewing on a television. Generally, this is in the form of video clips, but the box can also stream live content from sites like Fox News and CNBC. This is a great way for cable cutters to keep up without sitting in front of a PC, but everything the Roku can stream, can be streamed on a PC.
Whether you pay for Prime or Netflix, adding unlimited streaming to your infrastructure will cost less than $100 and add less than $10 to your monthly nut. So, $600 to cut the cable.
For most people, running a server is unnecessary. Both the SMP-N200 and the Roku XS support playing files off an attached USB device, so movies converted to MP4s can be played off the inexpensive, energy efficient set top box. I recommend that approach. Even if you have a couple televisions, the cost of USB disks is low enough to rationalize the redundancy as backups.
The only server I can recommend at this time is called Playon. Playon is an inexpensive piece of software that streams aggregated content like the Roku to computers, tablets, and set top boxes. (Playon streams to tbe Roku but not the SMP.) Channel selection is dramatically better than Roku alone, but resolution is only 480p — which looks great on my 720p sets. Playon does require that a computer be running whenever you watch. A lifetime subscription to playon for Roku users is $39.99. For $70, you get the subscription plus a Roku LT.
(lots of details about these devices and links at http://thebeersoncomcast.wordpress.com under News and Views).
Just to put some real numbers with this, I spend $53/month for unlimited internet plus Netflix unlimited streaming. We went with two antennas — 91XG@$60 for UHF plus Y10-5-13@$30 for VHF — coupled with a CM-7777@$60 and distributed through an EDA-2800@$80. I have two Roku XS streamers which I bought refurb’d for $65 and $70 plus an LT I got with the lifetime subscription to Playon ($80 at the time) and four SMPs which cost between $25 and $70 each. We have five DTVPals I bought off ebay for less than $1000. I use an OOMA Hub@$205 for no fee VOIP phone service. We cut the cable 18 months ago and have $1855 into this project — $100/month. At this point, my monthly cost is $155. When I cut the cable, my monthly cost was $170, so I’m a little ahead. I had more programming with cable (at least on the set with their DVR), but I did not have five DVRs. I have to maintain my infrastructure and replace things that break, but the my costs go down each month while the cable bills keep going up.
Len,
Thanks for the read. The point of this series is to help users significantly lower their monthly entertainment bill and yet keep the same high quality and breadth of content available to them. I would argue spending almost $2000 plus monthly hardware maintenance to save $20/month isn’t what we are driving for.
You make running a ‘server’ sound like a chore. It isn’t. It runs on the same PC/Mac readers most likely already own. It runs in the background, and requires little to no maintenance. I’ve had readers tell me after following our guide they haven’t touched their hardware in months or had to go into the server for months.
There are lots of paths to entertainment freedom, I’d suggest yours is a road less travelled, but no less valid. Thanks for the read.
The point is that you can cut the cable for less than $100. From there you can add to your infrastructure until you are completely satisfied.
As for the savings, in my market, a Comcast HDTV package with internet, VOIP, and five DVRs runs over $200/month. For 18 months, this would be $3600, so the savings is substantial.
However this is not what you wrote in your original response, nor is it your setup. Your setup has a 90-month (7.5 year) breakeven (not to mention monthly maintenance in both time and money).
One cannot ‘cut the cord’ for $100 if they live outside a major metro area, the antenna alone would cost more. Plus with your suggestion of Hulu and netflix (monthly subscriptions), there would continue to be monthly charges. We are trying to write for everyone. If your read my most recent post, in theory, without live tv, you could cut the cord for free, and do it in 15 minutes.
Again, there are lots of paths one can take, we have written about one, but many are possible. Thanks for the comment.
You can cut the cable by installing an antenna and running some coax. If that antenna sits on the set, one of the best set top antennas runs $15 at Radio shack and comes with the coax in the box. A DB8 is good to 70 miles and can be had for $70 on Amazon today. 100′ of coax will set you back $10, so even a rural cord cutter can get started for less than $100. I’m 40 miles from broadcast towers and the DB8 worked well for me.
I deliberately broke out costs at each stage of the infrastructure development so readers could get a feel for the cost of the level of service they wanted. I lot of people would stop at receiving broadcast. My inlaws have. Their total cost was $0 as there was an antenna in the attic of the home they bought.
I’ve done more than that. Saving $120 per month, I have been able to dramatically upgrade my infrastructure while putting a little money in the bank. We had Netflix before cutting the cable, but $8 for Netflix plus $45 for internet is my monthly budget for entertainment. I do run Playon on my desktop (which I had before cutting the cable). I paid $80 (it’s $70 now) for a Roku LT plus lifetime Playon. Playon streams Hulu (free) and a bunch of other stuff at 480p.
That is the path I recommend — research, incremental improvements, and relentless enjoyment.
Anyway, have fun. It’s great that you are getting this information out there. Most people do not know what is possible or where to start. Enthusiasts like you and me can help. If enough people revert to broadcast and/or embrace internet, then there will be more products and services for the early adopters. (Echostar is considering re-entering the broadcast market.)
PS After 18 months, I have saved $2106 — 18x($170-$53) — so I am already ahead $251 ($2106 – $1855). Of course adding four DVRs to my Comcast plan would have jacked the price $60 per month or $1080 over 18 months, so even that math is conservative. Not everyone needs five DVRs 😉
THEFIRSTROW.EU = FREE LIVE SPORTS
problem solved
you wrote a nice article but neglected this…