HOUSTON – You probably hear everybody talking about cutting cable. Maybe you're nervous about missing your favorite shows or you just don't know how to get started. Consumer expert Amy Davis has a crash course, offering 4 steps to kicking that bad cable TV habit.
Step 1: Buy a Digital Antenna
Maybe you forgot; but your TV will still work without that cable box. All you need is a digital antenna. When we tried one at the station, we found 79 channels including Channel 2 and most major networks. Davis bought this digital antenna on Amazon for $17.99 at her house.
Step 2: Buy a Streaming Device
If you want to stream movies and shows, you need to buy a streaming device. There are a lot of different devices for this like Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV. Just google "streaming device for TV" to find all of the options.
One of the least expensive is Google's Chromecast that'll cost you $35. Plug the Chromecast dongle into a laptop, smartphone or tablet and whatever you can watch on that device will stream to your television.
Step 3: Get High-Speed Internet Service
Even though you're cutting cable, you still need high speed internet if you're going to stream video from online. We checked with Comcast Xfinity and got a quote of $29 a month for 10 mbps. You'll need at least that to be able to stream video. You can check prices at multiple internet service providers to make sure you're getting the lowest price but beware: If you already have cable and want to cut your service down to everything but internet, your provider won't give you the lowest price. They told Davis she would pay $39 a month because she's not a new customer.
Step 4: Start streaming!
You can subscribe to one or multiple services; but if the whole point of cutting cable was to cut costs, you don't want to get carried away. Netflix is $8 a month. Services like Dish Network's Sling TV is $20 a month and includes sports channels like ESPN. And if you're already an Amazon Prime member for $99 a year, you have access to thousands of movies and TV episodes.
The folks at Slate created a handy calculator to see if cutting cable will actually save you money. Check it out here.
