What A Great Time To Be A TV Consumer

We got rid of out satellite TV a few months ago and I haven't missed it one bit.  I always liked my satellite and its large DVR and had no intentions to get rid of it as a means to watch Television.  While many people my age and younger cut the cable a year ago or longer, we continued with the more traditional method of TV viewing mostly because of sports.  In the past, there were few mainstream streaming options to watch live sports and the experience wasn't great.  Interestingly, this time wanting to watch live sports is what made us switch to a streaming only platform.  Dish Network dropped the Fox Regional Sports Networks with seemingly no intentions to get them back.  They also briefly dropped Fox Sports 1.  All of these channels are essential to watch the Pacers and Cardinals.  I couldn't be more pleased with my decision to switch.

We decided to go through YouTube TV because of the experiences of a couple of my friends.  Admittedly, it is a bit odd at first not to have TV "channels" on the guide.  However, its "Home" screen learns what you like to watch, making a guide and channels almost unnecessary.  Additionally, YT TV's DVR is arguably better than the Hopper.  Both offer an endless amount of storage (The Hopper is technically 2 TB, but come on, that is plenty!), but YT TV's DVR seems to offer more recording options.  When trying to record a game between IU and Maryland, it asked if I wanted to record this game only, all IU basketball games, all Maryland basketball games, all Big Ten basketball games, or all college basketball games.  Amazing.  The only downside is that the recordings only stay active for 9 months and then they delete.  But honestly, unless we're talking about Glastonbury rock out concerts, if you haven't watched something in 9 months it is probably time to move on.

We decided to go with Apple TV as our hardware platform.  While not too interested in TV+ or their software, we are heavily invested in their hardware.  It seemed to make sense from that respect.  Plus, I am not a fan of Amazon's firestick interface.  We were going to go with Roku, but decided to go against it once I read a bit about their company history.  Regardless, beyond the sometimes great, sometimes awkward remote, we like Apple TV.

Here is where things get interesting.  Streaming television, as many know, is markedly cheaper than cable/satellite packages.  YT TV is a splurge for the live content at $50 per month.  We added Disney+ mostly for the kids, for a deal of $4 per month.  We also have Amazon Prime, which I will include to be fair, but we've had Prime for years and never purchased it for TV.  I think it is like $10-12 per month.  It has a ton of great content.  So our monthly content bill is $65-70 per month.  Our satellite bill under contract was $110.  Not under contract it was pushing $200.  Granted, there was some hardware infrastructure that had to be purchased: two Apple TVs at $180 a piece and a new router at $190 (more on that in a bit), but those are one time fixed costs.  We were paying monthly to rent the satellite receivers with no end to payments.  What I don't know is how the cost of streaming will change in the future.  We are already starting to see bundles being formed, and individual channel providers are starting their own streaming services with their own monthly bill.  The current a la carte options are great for a small handful of services, but can start to add up if multiple services are needed to get the content you want.  But in the current day and age, the options are affordable and provide great content.  The traditional cable and satellite companies have competition and this benefits the consumer.  What a great time to be a television fan.  Now, off to binge watch the next show.