How cool that Rivet2000 just posted a link about using wifi calling with Tracfone. I do appreciate this community.
Yes I think you should just try the wifi calling while you have your landline. First call can be to your landline.
One important 911 safety point when you are using wifi calling is to navigate to the setting where you input the street address where you are using the wifi calling. A benefit of landlines in emergencies is that the operator can tell automatically the physical address of the line even without any input/aid from the caller. Itās less so with wifi calling it seems so they just have you input the street address. On iPhone itās found under the wifi calling section as āUpdate Emergency Addressā.
We pay well over 200 a month for cable, and I donāt watch much TV. Husband must have the big10 network. We finally upgraded our TV to a current model, and we are going to try another option soon.
One problem we have is our alarm system requires the old fashioned telephone line, so Iām not sure what we will do about that.
We have to have Big10 and HGTV for DH and the regional baseball MASN. I would have to figure out what would cover that and local channels. Weāre not big Netflix users.
Itās pretty easy to find out what channels the various streamers provide. Go to their website, check for channel lineup, enter your specific zip code, then viola!
I havenāt yet cut the cord. My biggest problem with relying on streaming is that things are so diffuse now. There are so many streaming services, and new/old shows and movies are spread throughout so many services, it would cost quite a bit to subscribe to them all.
We have Xfinityās triple-play cable/ 1 GBPS high-speed internet/home alarm. We get tons of channels on cable TV. Unlike their reputation, Iāve had great success with Xfinity, both in terms of reliability and customer service.
For DH, sports would be the holdup. He likes being able to watch his teams and our kids watch lots of soccer. The local stations donāt cover out of town sports teams for the most part. If it were just me, I could easily do it with local channels and some streaming.
We, too, have had good luck with Xfinity, although the cost is not great. May have to revisit once we both retire.
So with the YTTV unlimited dvr, the initial welcome screen asks what shows you like, then it starts recording them and building your āLibraryā. We are sitcom fans so we selected shows like Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, Last Man Standing, Roseanne, Seinfeld, etcā¦you get the picture. With these shows in syndication it doesnāt take long before you have a large library of āon-demandā content for streaming. If itās been recorded on the dvr then you can fast-forward through the commercials.
I agree there are too many streaming services and I stuck with cable because I felt that you would eventually have to subscribe to so many services that it would become like cable only less organized. However, I think streaming is the way to go; at least for us.
Re: the cost of many streaming servicesā¦make sure you take advantage of what your cell phone provider might offer. T Mobile includes free Netflix and Apple TV+ free for 1 year. Whether or not I keep Apple will depend on when Ted Lasso starts again. (Was so glad I was able to watch CODA!) The nice thing about streaming services is you can start and stop anytime, without having to deal with a cable company. I got a free month of HBO Max when I got a new Roku and planned to cancel it after watching the Harry Potter reunion and when The Gilded Age was done, but Iām finding a lot to watch, so I still have it. Our son pays for and shares the Hulu/Disney/ESPN bundle. We also have Amazon Prime so we have Prime Video. We had Paramount+ for awhile so I could watch The Good Fight, but cancelled until the new season starts. So we have all of these options but the only one weāre currently paying for is HBO Max (not counting Amazon Prime which we have mostly for the free shipping). There are also free streaming services (currently occasionally watching Cagney & Lacey on I think itās Tubi). We have an antenna to watch regular network/local channels, and itās amazing the number of other over the air channels there are. Many are junk, but I love watching some of the old sitcoms on Decades, Rewind, etc. When we dropped satellite TV, I thought I would miss the DVR the most, but I find most programs I miss can usually be streamed somewhere within a few days.
Getting sports is too hard without cable, so we still have cable, plus Disney+, HBOMax, Amazon Prime, and Netflix and Hulu (through T-Mobile). Itās actually more expensive than a big cable package back in the day. I do miss the days when everyone got their shows from the same places so more folks overlapped on shows to talk about. Though I love the variety available now.
We watch a lot of sports here. Sticking with cable for the time being.
My son they have no cable. My daughter, her boyfriend is a big sports watcher they have cable.
When we were all at my sonās at Christmas and wanted to watch football, my daughterās boyfriend was able to stream cable in to watch.
I think watching live sports is the thread that keeps people on traditional cable.
My S loves sports but is able to find and stream whatever he wants free online. He has no cable as far as I know. He does have Amazon Prime but for shipping.
You can get a cellular module for it so that the alarm system uses a cell phone connection rather than a landline. We did that for ours. Had to buy the module and there is an additional monthly fee for the cell line (but its like $5 or $6 per month).
We cut cable a couple years back. Had internet, TV and phone forever but cost kept increasing. Just have internet now (I actually ported our home number to google phone so I get straggler email messages from time to time but they are text messages so its easy to see what they are). And a few streaming services. Amazon Prime we would otherwise have. Google TV (has the sports I want to watch ā found out last seasonāmid season it didnāt carry our local MLB team ā I didnāt notice). Netflix, Hulu and Disney+ come and go if there is something we want to watch on them. Easily $100+ a month less even with all the streaming services.
I would love to get rid of cable but our local provider bundles it with internet. Canāt seem to get one without the otherā¦!
how did you port your home number to google phone? do you mean google voice?
we have an awesome landline # thatās better than most businesses in terms of easy-to-remember - good for work purposes - i would love to keep it if we ended up getting rid of the cable robbery, er, package.
Yes. It was to google voice. I bought the cheapest cell phone I could find (I think it was $20) and ported our landline number to it. Once it ported over, I moved it to google voice which I access with my regular phone. Havenāt used that cheap phone since porting it over.
In my experience, the process works better for voicemail than it does for calls. Which works for me because I donāt need our old landline number except for a few people who still have our old number. Some we forgot to tell about new number and others who struggle updating their records.
Thatās the beauty of having a Fire Stick or Roku with YouTube TV. All your streaming companies and YTTV begin at one home screen which makes it much more organized than having cable tv and then having to switch somewhere to access your streaming services. It takes a while to get used to a new system, but in the long run it is really cleaner and gives you better access to your pricey streaming services with a search across all of them.
I have what I know is a very naive question. We have a vacation home that will be available in a month. We currently (main home) have pretty much everything in terms of TV as dh wants all the sports, HBO max, etc. that requires the most expansive package with xfinity for $260 a month (includes internet and land line which we no longer use but it doesnāt seem easy to get rid of) along with several streaming services (netflix, prime, etc.). We will need to buy new smart TVs for the vacation home and Cox will charge $100 for internet. Xfinity enables streamingā¦Can we access xfinity (main home) via the smart TVs in the vacation home without anything further? Xfinity offers streaming which Iāve used when traveling so my thought is that we wonāt need anything extra but Iām not positive. Is a stick needed only when one doesnāt have a smart (wifi-enabled) TV? Seems like that would be the most cost efficient option, if itāll work.
Yes, you should be able to access via the smart TV.
For those citing live sports as a reason to keep cableā¦itās simply not. Thatās an outdated mindset. We get more sports options through youtubeTV than we ever had with either satellite or cable. And adding, and more importantly removing, additional sports packages is as easy as clicking a button. We often add packages in season and remove them after.
Since we moved to streaming I cannot think of a single sports event that we wanted to watch and were unable to. And we watch a ton of live sports. More and more sports content is moving to streaming platforms. Like a regional team or less popular sport? You can likely find it on ESPN+ even though itās not in your cable listing. Going forward, cable will actually be the medium lacking sports options and content. So if you are using sports as the rationale for holding onto cable, donāt.