sometime agoIt finally happened! I picked up the phone and called Comcast and said I only want their internet service and no cable TV. They did the usual thing of passing me around to different department a couple of times, but to my surprise I was connected to a woman who was pleasant and willing to help.

I am not sure if I wrote earlier about getting out of landline phone, but I finally brought myself to doing it . My only reason for keeping it was ADT security system which still needed a land line, but they had recently graduated to using Cell connections as well as WiFi and once I got that taken care of, I called to cancel. Comcast tried to convince me to keep it because it didn’t cost much etc. etc. but I stood my ground and got out of it. What a relief! No more spam calls waking us up in the middle of the night etc. (yes, I did sign up for nomorobo etc but they had their own limitations). And we have been just fine with receiving calls on our cell phones.

Because of the nonsense on TV around Trump administration that none of us could stand, we had drastically cut down our TV watching over the past 5 years (if one thing that was positive coming out of that administration, it was this!). However, we still watched Jeopardy and The Chase regularly as well as live sports, food network occasionally and for this reason I had kept Comcast Cable TV. We spend a lot of our time watching Netflix, Amazon Prime and a couple of other speciality systems with content from India rather than the 24 hour news channels or other TV shows.

Every month, looking at a $200 bill made me feel bad. I was looking at alternatives, but was too lazy in the end to pursue any of them. Two weeks ago, I signed up for YouTube TV’s 2 week trial and $64.99 per month afterwards. Checked it out for one day. We have a Smart TV where we can log in directly to Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube and YouTube TV amongst several other similar services. YouTube TV worked like a charm. A day later, I was on the phone with Comcast.

The woman from Comcast tried her best to convince me to keep it and she was willing to entertain additional discounts etc, but I did not budge. Finally, she heard me and did it. I thanked her for doing this, because a couple of times earlier, when we got this far, the agent at the other end would simply hang up pretending that the line was bad! Really, it happened at least twice and I was upset, but unwilling to go through the call and being passed from one agent to the next, so gave up.

Now, I do not have a cable TV set top box, no cable wire from the wall to the set top box, no HDMI cable from set top box to the TV. Much cleaner. Just the power cord to the TV and I still have the Chromecast plugged in to the back of the TV, so the power cord for that. I still chromecast some things from my phone, but this will go next!

On might wonder whether all of this change is necessary given that the net savings is about $35 a month. Great question. First off, I like this solution because as I explained above, it is much less clutter. But the greatest advantage is that for $65 a month, YouTube can be simultaneously accessed from 4 different accounts! You can invite 6 members to part of your “Family”, but at any given time 4 different devices can access it. Given that we spend time between Framingham and CT, I don’t have to pay for TV services to Comcast in two locations. I still don’t fully understand what exactly the 4 different accounts mean because they say “it is for four in the same household”. Will have to check this out a bit more. It does say that if we use YouTube TV on two devices (say one in the basement and one upstairs) simultaneously, then this accounts for 2 of the 4.

The other is that the TV goes with you wherever. Granted xfinity did too, but it was fairly restricting content if you are not on your home network! Based on my understanding of YouTubeTV, it may be a bit different in terms of accessing content compares to xfinity. It does honor restrictions imposed by the major TV networks for  live streaming. IFor example, YouTuveTV restricts access to local affiliates and not your home area affiliate. Recording content in YouTube TV is much simpler and easier!

The one sad thing about all of this is the following. We built our home in 1993. A few years earlier, Wesleyan, where I worked, adopted a wiring standard to have one AppleTalk network jack, one for telephone, one for Ethernet and one for Cable TV. This was very forward thinking for its time. And I proudly adopted this for our home. We had 10 outlets installed in the house, with a patch panel in the basement and a router and all that jazz. Soon thereafter, AppleTalk was no more! Then recently, got rid of landline phones, and now cable TV! We do use the Ethernet jack to connect additional routers in different floors. It is a matter of time that also goes away! My pride and joy has become a victim of technological advances!!!

I should say that there are other alternatives to cutting the cord such as Roku or Amazon Fire TV that if you are interested you should explore. Here is some information on them.

After two weeks of free trial, my account converted to monthly. And thats another advantage, no long term contract needed! I am not sure why, but with each of these moves, I feel excited and feel young!