Cable

Cutting Half the Cord

A little cable bill history. Back in Aiken ten years ago, which is the furthest back I can find a bill, we were paying $62 a month for their cable service. In 2016 our bill jumped from $83 to $145 because we dropped AT&T’s DSL internet service for the speedier cable internet. Two years later it went from $164 down to ninety-five bucks because we dropped down to the very basic TV service. We had had probably 100 channels previously, but watched a half dozen of them. This cheaper option gave us what we really needed, just the big 4 networks, PBS and the Weather Channel. By the time we moved west it was up to a few bucks over the hundred dollar mark.

When we moved in here in Oregon we signed up with Spectrum. In 2020 for 125 channels and 500MBs internet speeds it was $134 a month. Because that was an introductory price it creeped up to $215 by this year. There was something about breaking the two hundred dollar that made it seem like that was too much for what we were getting.

Unlike Atlantic Broadband in Aiken, Spectrum’s 125 channel package is the lowest they offer. This is too bad because if they did offer a lower tier and we could save forty or so dollars, we’d have happily stayed. Again, all we really needed were the regular broadcast channels and ESPN for watching NFL football games. The day after the Super Bowl we drove down to the local Spectrum store, handed them their box and remote. The next bill we get from them will be a more reasonable $89 for their 1 Gig internet.

We have had a Roku box for about ten years that delivers all of our non-cable video entertainment. We’ve been paying $6.99 for the ad-free version of Discovery+ for HGTV & Food Network. Plus another $9.99 for Peacock Premium+ (ad-free) and a little over $4 a month more for GCN+ for watching pro cycling.

Probably the two most used apps on the Roku are Radio Paradise and YouTube.

If we we’re just reading a book or doing a jigsaw puzzle RP’s music was on in the background. Because Radio Paradise is listener supported I’ve been donating $5 a month to them for quite so time now. After the cable TV cancelation I bumped up that reoccurring donation to $10.

Whenever I watch car related stuff on YouTube on the PC I never get commercials, but when Donna watches it via the Roku on the TV she was getting a lot of very annoying ads mid video, so we have upped to YouTube Premium for $11.99 a month so she is much happier (and consequently so am I.)

What about NFL football when it starts back up in September? Where we live there isn’t a strong enough signal from the networks to just add a small indoor antenna, plus what about Monday Night Football on ESPN? Glad you asked. The cost savings from eliminating cable TV is roughly the equivalent of half the cost of YouTube TV or Hulu, both of which offer local broadcast stations and ESPN.

HDTV not HGTV

About a month ago I wrote about my cable company trying to cheat me out of $2.99 a month for a stupid digital adapter box that I didn’t need. I managed to get them to stop charging me the money because one or two adapters were supposed to be free.

I also hoped that in the end I wouldn’t need it. You know what they say about hope? “Hope in one hand & bleep in the other.” By the end of the month all the HD versions of the regular channels disappeared and if you wanted to watch the lo-def versions you needed the adapter. This is no good. Once your eyes have feasted on tasty 16:9 crystal clear images, you just can’t go back to a 4:3 fuzzy-wuzzy picture.

Not wanting to give AtlanticBB the satisfaction I hoped maybe a newer amplified Mohu Leaf would pull in all the local channels unlike the regular Leaf we tried 5 years ago. This way we would keep the high-speed internet and drop the TV portion of the bill. Well you know what they say about hope? Unlike 5 years ago with the non-amplified Leaf, this time we got the local Fox affiliate great, but NBC was nowhere to be found. To top it off ABC worked well only most of the time.

Giving up, I called Atlantic Broadband and asked what do I have to do to get local channels in high definition. Right now we are paying $132 for the Limited TV package and the 125Mb internet, but if I wanted to drop the internet down to 100Mb we could get the “Essentials Package” which would be the Limited TV in HD and they’ll toss in HBO and EPIX for $95…for the first 2 years, then it goes up $5 bucks a month until it gets back to $130ish…at which time we will no doubt have to call and beg for a lower rate for a different package.

Our appointment was scheduled for 2:30 to 5:30pm yesterday and I certainly hoped whoever showed up to do the work would be better than the last time these chuckle-heads had to come into our house. This time, like a Vegas slot machine paying out a few coins, hope won.

Al was pleasant, competent, and went above and beyond. The only possible bad thing I could say about our hour and forty-five minutes together is he reeked of cigarette smoke when you got near him. Because our signal strength was only marginally acceptable he went outside and climbed the pole across the street. From up there he removed a couple of old filters (that are no longer used anyway.) He also ran a ground wire from the new splitter he put on the house to the ground on the electric meter instead of the ground stake (which is not to code) that Mutt and Jeff didn’t fix 4-1/2 years ago. He then made up a couple of new RG-6 coax lines to replace my interior runs, just because.

We have the same channels as we did before, only now in glorious HD. We now also have 5 channels of HBO and 4 of Epix which we will probably hardly ever watch, but I left them in lineup of channels that we will scan through while surfing using the remote, so who knows.

Somewhere along the line when I was telling Donna what we were getting HDTV, either I mis-spoke or she mis-heard, so she was disappointed when I told her we don’t get HGTV even though everytime we are in a hotel room in which that channel is available, she will invariably remark, “I’ve already seen this one.”

Sneaky A** Atlantic Broadband

A little background first (in case you haven’t been following this site religiously), from our local cable company, Atlantic Broadband, we get the fastest internet they offer because that is what is really important. We also get what they call the Limited TV Service so we can get the local big 4 networks and the PBS stations. Because we get just the limited channels we don’t have the cable box that they usually rent you for a mere eight to ten dollars a month, the coaxial cable gets plugged right into the back of the Samsung.

In early September, we received a letter from Atlantic Broadband with the exciting news that starting October 10th all the Limited TV channels would be broadcast in digital format. To view these dramatically enhanced picture and sound quality channels you would need a digital adapter. The letter states that we were eligible to receive two digital adapters at no cost for use on TV sets that are connected directly to cable and if we needed more than 2, they would be $2.99 a month. One adapter would be mailed directly to our home.

Sure enough, two weeks ago, a box came in the mail and inside was an adapter and its associated remote. I placed it aside waiting for the 10th of October to see if I’m really going to need it or not. Right now, if I let the TV scan for available channels it finds over 40 stations which includes several standard definition versions of the local networks along with an HDTV version. So instead of watching the NBC affiliate in 4:3 low definition on channel 2, I watch the 16:9 high def one on channel 82-14, etc. I’m hoping that this will still be the case once they go digital. But not optimistic.

On Monday, we got an email that our cable bill for October was available for viewing and paying online. Hmmm, that total looks higher than it did last month., so I look at page 2 where the details are and looky here. Under Monthly Charges, along with the cost of our monthly cable service there is a line for a Limited Digital Adapter at a cost of $2.99 for the month. WTF? It is supposed to be free!

And it gets even better. Underneath the Monthly Charges section is one entitled Prorates where there is a line for Limited Digital Adapter at a cost of 89 cents. They started charging me for using the adapter (which wasn’t connected to the cable yet and supposed to not be needed until the 10th of October.) on the 22nd of September. Had they looked at the tracking number of the package and started charging on the day of delivery to my house?

Update: 55 minutes total on hold, 2 customer service representatives and the $4.49 “mistake” was removed from our bill.

USB Powered Auto GPS

Even though I now have a smarty pants phone with all the latest travel geegaws, we still use a Garmin Nuvi GPS in the car to navigate when traveling. In the Sonata, it is not an issue, but in the Miata the combination of the location of the cigarette lighter socket and the big stock GPS power plug make shifting into 3rd & 5th gear an adventure in knuckle banging.

Tiring of having to remember to shift into those gears with the flat of my hand in the Emperor I bought an accessory cigarette lighter plug and mounted it on the side of the console out of the way. This eliminated the shifting problem but the large GPS power plug was now an issue for the passenger because it stuck out into their already cramped foot well space. The perfect solution would to have a USB cable that powered the GPS, but…

Even though the Garmin GPS comes with a USB cable it could only be used to charge the unit or load new software or maps. The only way to get to use it for directions was to use the bulky 12V power plug. When I first starting looking for a USB cable that would actually charge the Garmin and allow you to navigate with it, they didn’t exist. I found a tutorial on how to modify a regular cable to make it work, but it involved cutting the cable apart, digging into one of the connector and soldering a jumper wire between two pins of the mini Type-B end. It was delicate operation that me, along with my dull x-acto knife & 40-year old soldering iron would not be able to do, so I gave up.

Fast forward to a week ago and I tried again to see if someone made a cable that would work off the self. This time my googlefu led me to 3BR Powersports, a small business that specializes in cables for the motorcyclist’s power needs, and had just the right product – Red Band GPS POWER CABLES.