cable-cutting

On opening weekend of the NFL season, I gave NFL Sunday Ticket To Go, DirecTV's NFL game-streaming service, a spin on the PlayStation 3. Or, at least, I tried to: service outages for Sunday Ticket To Go plagued everyone and killed the excitement of NFL game-watching on a console.

Two weeks later (I was tailgating at the Jets-Jaguars game last week), I returned to my first-gen PS3 to give the service a second go. Thankfully, this time it worked as well as advertised.

Sunday Ticket on the PS3 acts and works nearly identically to how it functions on devices like the iPad. After entering login information and waiting several seconds, a dashboard of all the available Sunday games appears for browsing, optimized for use with the PS3 controller (stats and standings can be browsed with the left/right shoulder buttons, but if you use a PS3 Bluetooth remote you'll need to fumble for the equivalent "L2/R2" button). Sunday Ticket starts you off on the Red Zone Channel, which cuts to the most interesting action among all games. From there, clicking on the others will load the appropriate game, after a delay of 10 seconds or so. … Read more

Cutting the cable can be done, but one of the toughest challenges is replacing live TV programs, like sports and local news. We've long been advocates of over-the-air (OTA) HDTV to fill the gap, but there aren't many OTA DVRs and the existing models have significant drawbacks, including the Channel Master CM-7000PAL we reviewed earlier this year.

Channel Master has announced a new over-the-air DVR this morning, the Channel Master TV, combining TV recording functionality with the ability to stream Vudu. Unlike TiVo, the Channel Master TV does not require a monthly subscription, instead relying on free electronic … Read more

Cable cutting has garnered a lot of hype lately, but it can become a lot less appealing once you dive into the details. CNET Senior Editor David Katzmaier didn't even last a full month during his cord-cutting experiment last November, and CNET contributor Geoff Morrison was similarly unenthusiastic when he broke down the details of what it would take for him to be cable-free.

Those cautionary tales are excellent resources for anyone thinking about taking the leap, but not every cable-cutting story ends in failure. I canceled my cable more than four and half years ago and haven't … Read more

My wife, eBeth, and I decided to disable our Verizon Fios TV service to save roughly $100 per month, and I chronicled the good, the bad, and the ugly in the diary entries indexed below.

At the end, I reconnected TV for what amounts to $35 per month (and $50/month the following year) for the TV portion of my new Fios bill. After a few days back on the cable TV pipe, including an amazing Knicks almost-win versus the Celtics for me and lots of "Watch What Happens" for eBeth, we're both happier, albeit somewhat poorer, … Read more

Last Saturday night, after a few sleepless hours thinking over alternatives and scenarios for how to continue my cable-cutting adventure, I came to the conclusion that I should probably just give up and reconnect Verizon Fios TV. The next afternoon, I did just that.

My household is now back on the pipe, dumb as it may be, and I'm back to being able to watch Knicks games legally. More importantly, my wife eBeth can watch CBS daytime shows and Bravo prime time without having to deal with streaming video from TV.com, a wind-tossed rooftop antenna, or paying for … Read more

It's been two weeks since my wife, eBeth, and I decided to ditch full Fios TV service--complete with a whole-home DVR, local sports channels, HBO/Showtime/etc., and a $100-per-month bill--for "free" TV supplied by a rooftop antenna and the Internet. Check out previous diary entries, from Day 1 and Week 1, if you want to catch up.

Being away from home for most of the recent Thanksgiving weekend provided a bit of perspective. On one hand I experienced a warm, tryptophan-aided fuzzy knowing I wasn't "wasting" three days of pay TV service (a whole $10!) by not being home to watch it. On the other, returning home to our own less-than-stable Internet TV solution--supplied by PlayOn connected to my PlayStation 3--persuaded me to try something else.

Here's the day-by-day.… Read more

A week has passed since we decided to stop paying for Verizon Fios TV in my household, and the world hasn't imploded. At least, not yet.

Check out my original Day 1 entry to get up to speed. Here's what happened next.

Dear Diary... Tuesday, November 16: Arrived home to my wife, Elizabeth, describing how CBS.com, accessed on our TV via PlayOn, was cutting out in the middle of her show. While over-the-air staples like "Sesame Street"--a morning tradition for our 16-month-old--and "Oprah" were a success, she told me in no uncertain terms she wanted cable back. In the ensuing discussion I promised I'd try adjusting the antenna next weekend to get the currently unavailable CBS. She appeared mollified, for now, and we watched a catch-up episode of "The Amazing Race" together via PlayOn with no problems, my fingers crossed the whole time.

Wednesday, November 17: More issues, this time with over-the-air, where wind caused interruptions during "Law & Order: SVU." It basically made the show unwatchable, causing audio stutter, video breakup and extreme annoyance from eBeth ("That's crappy, does it do that every time it's windy?"). She created a CBS account just to leave comments on my original article in protest (one of which received the most "like" votes of any comment so far).

I understand I should have installed "guy wires" on my elaborate rooftop antenna to prevent wind-caused interruptions, but frankly I'm just happy the thing didn't blow down completely in the 40+ mph gusts. I also checked Hulu Plus, but that night's episode wasn't available yet.

Thursday, November 18: No major issues. I also figured out that TV.com was much more reliable than CBS.com via PlayOn, so eBeth was able to catch up on her daytime TV. … Read more

As the credits rolled over the DVR recording of the latest episode of HBO's "Boardwalk Empire" yesterday, I picked up the phone and dialed customer service at Verizon.

"Yes, I'd like to modify my plan to remove the television portion and subscribe to the least-expensive Internet and phone bundle you have," I told the representative.

She cheerfully complied, and didn't even try to convince me to simply downgrade my current TV subscription--which included pretty much every available HD channel on Fios, the Home Media DVR, and a second box--to something more basic. It … Read more