Life is moving at a frightening pace over here, but I want to take a moment and get your advice.
How are y'all watching TV/movies nowadays?
I typically watch in bed at night, with subtitles on because I'm slowly losing my hearing.
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| ...and then blame my husband for losing it. |
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| This is a joke - we actually are strict about screen time in our house. |
But that's not what I wanted to discuss. I want to talk about what you're paying per month and what you're paying for.
Our current setup is that we pay for a basic cable plan through Comcast that's $42/month. We also have the following streaming services, which are either bundled or include ads (whatever way is cheapest):
Netflix $7
Hulu and Disney $25
Prime (free with Amazon Prime)
Peacock $8
Apple $26 (this includes a family subscription for music as well)
So that's $108 per month.
How can we make this less expensive? Or are we doing okay? Let's discuss!
We ditched Netflix a few years ago--IIRC they made an original movie or something that portrayed Jesus in a horrible, awful way. Plus by then Disney + was a thing. We only have Amazon Prime Video and Disney +. If our youngest wasn't a fan, we'd get rid of Disney, but for now he enjoys it.
ReplyDeleteWe only have Amazon prime and Netflix. Tempted to give up Netflix, but every so often they come out with something new, and most of my adult kids borrow it sometimes. We cut the cord on cable a long time ago, and we just watch whatever channels cover over the air. There's a few PBS stations for me to watch the occasional Cook's Country, and Odd Squad. (Though my kids are getting too big for PBS Kids!)
ReplyDeleteIf I were you, I'd survey the family to see what shows they actually watch, and get rid of a channel if there is only one show that people really like on it. Most stuff rotates to other channels eventually, or on YouTube.
I am team subtitles all the way. I can never hear what's going on on the TV! I feel like I've seen enough memes about this to indicate this is a pretty broad issue though, and may be more about sound mixing than about our hearing?
ReplyDeleteI would love to weigh in on cost, but I have NO IDEA. I do know that we "cut the cord" a few years ago and have never looked back, so the savings must be significant. (My husband did all the research and pays the bills.) We have everything you do except Peacock, but we also have Max, which might be bundled with something? And we get our local news/cable channels/sports through a subscription to YouTubeTV.
Team subtitles right here! Always always have been. In college a professor was so frustrated with me because my roommate was in the class too and she could verify that I read TV since I would watch on mute and so all the music and psychology behind it was lost on me. (Which was the topic of the class.)
ReplyDeleteSo we get Disney+/Hulu/ESPN through our cell phone plan. So let's call that "free" since I would be paying for our phones anyway right? We pay for: Prime, which I would have for shipping anyway and is the video service we definitely use least, we add on Paramount + for Amazing Race and Survivor, plus we have Amazon Music Family which isn't TV but a monthly cost anyway. Then Netflix with no ads and Peacock as well.
With free Prime shipping all of those channels plus our music is $57.89 a month. We pay the annual fee for Prime and Peacock so it's a little cheaper per month. We don't have any cable at all and never have in our 14 years of marriage. We could likely drop Netflix, but as with anything, our interest goes in waves. Yours shakes out to less per person than ours is though!
My husband loves all the shows, but we are so poor. What we do is rotate streaming services between Disney, Hulu, Maxx, etc. We always have Prime and 2 others, and he just makes sure to watch what he wants to see before swapping one for a different one. We never have all of them at the same time.
ReplyDeleteI feel like might be the ONLY one on here without a Tv ! Have never had a tv nor cable nor Netflix nor disney .we also don’t watch movies neither do our children. We have little free time as we live in the rectory and are busy with work the parish and sports. Don’t miss it and Will never own a tv. We only have 4 kids bc of health reasons but they are growing up fine without tv. Sadly in austria every household has to pay a monthly national news and tv tax even if you don’t have a tv . Which doesn’t make us happy . Greetings from the snowy alps !
ReplyDeleteI just ended an upcoming post with the question: do you watch TV in your bedroom? My post is different than this one, but this is a great topic. I'm so interested. We watch very little TV. We pay for YouTube TV ($60-something a month, I think). We have an antenna, I know, right? I have to have my local WGN morning news. We also have Netflix and Prime, because we pay for Amazon Prime anyway. I don't think we have any other streaming services, BUT - we've been known to sign up for a free trial (influenced by kids) and then forget to cancel it when it is no longer free and discover we've been paying for it and never watching it. There are shows I want to watch on other streaming places and it kills me that we can't access some of those shows, but our evenings are pretty full. I write at night and Coach preps for classes he teaches. I watch more shows and movies when college kids are home or sometimes on the weekends with Coach. We used to always rent movies from the library for free, and I do think that they have series available to rent. I wanted to watch Only Murders in the Building and 'rented' it at the library. Turns out it was only the soundtrack. Rookie mistake. ;)
ReplyDeleteComcast is really the only option for cable or internet here so they have a monopoly. I have more than once referred to Comcast as the evil empire! I have the cable and internet bundled and pay about $150 a month for both. Friends who dropped the cable and just have internet with them still pay $120 a month so, I decided it was worth the $1 a day to have local news in case there was a tornado or something. I got the most basic cable package available so we only get local channels, religious channels, and home shopping channels. We have a Roku TV upstairs and there are several channels in the Roku app that I enjoy. The only streaming service I pay for is Netflix, and realistically I probably should cancel it, as it rarely gets watched anymore. Have tried Amazon Prime, but there wasn't much included that I wanted to watch. Had Hulu for a year with a great promotional rate 99 cents a month but canceled after watching every episode of ER.
ReplyDeleteI always have the captions on, I'm hard of hearing so I can't quite understand what is being said without them. I did try to listed to the audio commentary on a movie a couple years ago, but even with my hearing aids and the TV volume turned all the way up, I didn't quite catch it all. I just hope the neighbors also wanted to spend the entire afternoon learning about Ben-Hur! (It's about 4 hours long!)