@MikeDeTiger FYI I always recommend Roku for some of the reasons you state. Amazon Fire Stick doesn't want to support Youtube TV because they're competitors. Chromecast is obviously pro-Google. Apple TV is all about promoting Apple.
Roku is both in a dominant market position and platform-agnostic, which means that all the services not only have to deal with them but also that they have no reason to promote or dissuade any particular service. So Roku is my favorite device.
Plus, per your point re: a remote... It has one.
@MikeDeTiger
Couple things--
1) To break it down economically, appropriately, I have to call out the cost of the internet service and I have to do it separately-- because it changes dramatically depending on whether or not it's bundled with the cable TV. It's something like $35 bundled. That jumps to $90-something unbundled. Which makes the economics not nearly as much of a no-brainer.
Are you sure it's $35 bundled? For example in my Cox post above, I currently pay $103 for internet, and if I switch to bundle, I get internet + TV for $110. That sounds like a GREAT deal to bundle, right?
But it doesn't include the fact that after 12 months, bundling is $238. And it doesn't include that I might be paying equipment rental fees on DVRs for each TV (two in my house, which is low for modern homes). And it doesn't include the myriad taxes and fees that suddenly show up on the bill.
I'm guessing the $110 rate, once my bill arrives and equipment/taxes/fees are added, wouldn't be $110 any more. Which means that neither would the $238.
And that doesn't even factor in the lack of contracts. When I was on Sling, I would ditch it between the end of the NCAA tournament and the beginning of college football. That's almost 6 months of not paying a dime. You can't do that with cable or satellite.
2) Agree on the inclusion of Netflix and Amazon Prime in the litany, those shouldn't count toward the total as I'd have them regardless. Rather, it's the stacking of the "television-based" streaming services that I don't like-- your example of YouTubeTV + Hulu is problematic for me. And of course, neither solves my LHN issue anyway.
Well, you don't stack Youtube TV + Hulu Live TV, because they're basically competing services. You pick one or the other. The Hulu (non live TV) service is basically a next-day VOD service for network content, and is much cheaper (<$10). But if you have Youtube TV, you don't even need that as you can DVR your network shows.
I get it that in some cases, for some people, cutting to ISP-only and hooking up with one or more streaming services is a legitimate solution. I'm just pointing out that it's not a solution that works for everyone, supported by the bit of evidence that it does not currently work for me, for at least two different reasons.
I don't know about
@MikeDeTiger , but my issue has been that most of your arguments have seemed to come from the same standpoint as all the hit pieces I've seen on cord-cutting...
I.e. "Well, to replicate EVERYTHING I need from cable, it means I'm going to have to subscribe to these eighteen different streaming services, which is entirely confusing and will cost me tons of money. Why would I do that when cable is so perfect and does it all for me?"
The truth is that cord-cutting became a thing because the cable bundle started to grow to ridiculous costs and didn't satisfy consumers. Instead of asking "how do I replicate everything cable gives me", people started asking "what do I actually want and is there a better deal out there?"
Yes, it's marginally more work. You have to ask those crazy questions like "what do I actually want, need, and/or are willing to pay for?" And then you have to figure out "what service gives me those things that I want, need, and/or are willing to pay for?" In a lot of cases, people are realizing that they come out ahead by ditching cable for streaming.
I'm not saying it's the right solution for everyone. What I'm saying is that many of your arguments were easily-refuted tropes about how hard, confusing, and expensive it is to cut the cord. Whereas most peoples' experience doesn't bear that out--you don't see that many rushing back to cable, do you?