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I thought about asking this in Zero's thread but figured this is worth it's own discussion. I've been thinking about this because I really don't watch that much DirecTv anymore. I usually watch a lot of "old fart" stuff that a lot of us watch, live news and discussion, Discovery, Military, History, NatGeo, the occasional live pay per view UFC event, very few current live network shows with one big exception. Live sports like the Lakers. That I would have to go to a friends house which I do a lot of anyway or go to a local sports bar. For about $75/month I'm spending now I'm thinking why not do that? There's a lot of stuff online but I don't know all the choices for somebody who's thinking of cutting the cord to regular commercial TV. After reading in Zero's thread about getting a blu ray with wifi and streaming I'm thinking I could subscribe to various online services and get most of what I'm used to, it would be a whole lot less than $1,000 a year even though yeah, I would still be giving up some things that are just not available online. Thoughts and comments?
This is the same idea as me giving up my landline phone. I've had the same number for over 25 years but what does that mean, really? I haven't dumped it yet but I hardly ever use that either, it's all my cell.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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I can't be without my sports. I can't watch a game the day after knowing who won. I also watch woodworking, car building shows, cooking... I doubt if I have watched 10 movies in the last 10 years, so Netflix doesn't do it for me. I HAVE streaming stuff (Roku) but don't use it much.
Really, I rarely "watch" TV other than sports. It is on all the time but more as background noise.
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I have only 23 basic cable channels that come free with the complex ammeneties, everything else goes thru HULU and Netflix. I can live without sports, most of the new stuff is garbage as far as network programming, so I miss a few things I'd like to see, but I watch a lot of things I would have never seen had I not made the switch. Saved me about $75 per month and I'm glad I did it.
Yep Yep.
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Bob, my wife and I gave up our land line about 10 years ago and went 100% cellular....have never looked back or missed the land line for one minute. Had been with Spr**t voice only for all this time but have recently dropped them in favor of Str**ght T*lk that has an unlimited do everything plan for $45 a month. While Stra**ght T*lk is only 3G, its plenty fast for me and the reception is no different than Spr**t. As an added bonus, we now get unlimited talk, text, web, GPS etc for no more than the Spr**t line was costing us. Something to consider.
Win11, Intel i7 7700K 4.2Ghz, 32Gb RAM, 2x1Tb HD, 500Gb NVMe, BIAB/RB 2026, MOTU 828MK3 audio, MOTU Midi Express, Yamaha Montage 7, DX7II, TX802, Motif XS Rack, Roland Fantom XR Rack, Oberheim Matrix 1000, VoiceLive3 Extreme, Kontakt 6, SampleTank 4.3
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I've paid for cable about 1 year in my 20 years of home ownership. And no, I'm not getting it for free. I just don't think there's that much worth watching. I COULD totally get into sports watching (I've watched tons more football with the HD over the air streaming into our 47" VIZIO) but in the end, I have alot of other interests that are worth more than watching TV.
People complain about being broke, but almost everyone I hear say that has a dish on their roof.
$75/month can pay for:
1. going out to eat at a decent restaurant a couple times a month
or
2. Sponsoring 2-3 children at the charity of your choice
or
3. A $900 guitar (with one year of savings) or axe of your choice.
or
4. a couple of iPads (with one year of savings)
or
5. 1 iPad and all the music apps you would have time to have fun with for a year and more
or
6. A halfway decent PA system to gig with
or
well you get the point.
I think cable and DirecTV are THE biggest money pit that the western world has sunk their clams into.
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We dropped television some time ago when we couldn't afford cable any longer. I never bothered to get an adapter for "free" television.
We still watch DVD and VHS, getting most of our movies from the local library. If there's a show we want to see, we can usually find it on line. It's actually a lot more convenient than recording it.
I don't really miss television, because plenty of other things to do.
-- David Cuny My virtual singer development blogVocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.
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Jazmanimal,
Having had a phone line as long as you have, an alternative to getting rid of it entirely would be to incorporate it as a second line on your cell account. Reason is, you don't know who from your past might have that number and suddenly decide they want to contact you. Just a thought.
The thought was prompted by my mother's having given up a number she had had for over 40 years, probably because she didn't know it was portable. As interested as she is in genealogy and acquaintances I was disappointed for her to see her lose the old number.
As far as the OP, cable is supplied where I live along with internet. I literally can't live without high-speed 'Net; I work from home and it's all online. That's apart from what I do for fun or avocationally, but I spend nearly as much time online pursuing my own interests as I do at work. I do love my TV but I'd probably be better off without it. I'm not sure what I'd do if I had to pay for it on my own. Prolly just a matter of whether I could afford it or not.
"My primary musical instrument is the personal computer."
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In South Africa we also have relatively low speeds, i can squeese 2.8mb/s out of my ADSL but thats that ....
Not enough to do even stable youtube viewing ...
I'm doing allright for Country Trash ....
I used to care, but things have changed (Bob Dylan)
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I'm too much of a commercial TV viewer to drop it entirely, what I'm looking for are suggestions as to online replacements and the cost. I know Hulu has a lot of stuff, I've used it a few times to view a replay of a certain show that was broadcast a month or so back but not every network allows Hulu to do that. I was looking for a past episode of Falling Skys and I had to go to the TNT website and log in with my DirecTV account number to pull it up so there's an example of a network controlling their show. Netflix has a lot of movies and apparantly some TV series as well, I'm wondering how well that works.
I know by giving up a commercial cable or sat service I would be losing some things and that's it, it just depends on how much and what I may be able to replace it with. I know that eventually most series become available even if it's a year later. That's ok I don't need to watch everything first run. Later is fine.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Here's where we are, Bob. We still have Dish. I would love to get rid of it, but my wife has come cable channels that she wants so..... I watch the old f--t stuff, too. We buy a lot of stuff from amazon and are Prime members for $79 a year. We love the 2-day free shipping. As part of prime, we get the free streaming movies and tv shows. We watch them via Roku ($50 for the box--hooks into your tv) We watch more old tv shows than movies. It's really nice to watch those show with no commercials. Sometimes we watch a paid movie that hss recently come out, such as "Iron Lady." Even at $3.99 (price varies up from $1.99), it's a bargain to me since going to the regular theater costs a lot more and I don't like the sound that loud there.
We also have our phone on wifi now via obi110, cost = $50 for unit. No monthly cost at all. In summary, our only cost for tv and phones is our dsl via att. We do prepaid for our cell phones which we only use when we are gone. YMMV
Stan
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Hello Jazzmammal  I have been using the blue ray job LG BP620 for two days now and although I get smart TV I don't feel any smarter ...yet. Is smart TV an oxymoron? or is it just moronic? I am not sure. I have given up both my landline phone and my TV box a year or so ago and feel the better for it though. Over in the UK we have a site called http://www.tvcatchup.com/. There are probably other similar sites too in your parts. My studio is at the bottom of my garden and I have an external TV ariel (must have) I simply rigged to a pole and attched to the outer wall. Using this ariel I purchased a hauppage tv stick: # http://www.hauppauge.co.uk/site/products/data_novatstick.htmlstick This works well too. This way I have all 'freeview' channels (30 or so out of which ten are good) on my PC in my studio and I have things like UTube on my TV in the house too using the LG. For an extra $10 you can get a software update for the hauppage which will stream all your TV channels to all your devices, including phones via your WIFI. I haven't done this yet. Do I want this? Ah this is the question! Answer: not really Yesterday I tried weatching some David Attenborough (aside did you know that David Attenbourogh has no teeth and no detures - just like me) BBC vids on Utube on one of the 'channels' I recommend you get to know what a channel is if you dont already. I found that really in this specific case they were just clips. I switched to Utube's Discovery News and found this was entertaining and mildly informative. I could have surfed the channels for days and days and days - this, is an issue in itself! Sport seems to be a special case on this terrsetial planet. Over in the UK you almost MUST have a SKY subscription to watch the Premiership. You can get the occasional Footbal game on TV but it's something of a rarity. Other sports such as Morris Dancing are more freely available. You can even participate if you wish. Anyway - my solution gives you TV in your internet time and Internet on my TV time, now... if only I could also change my habits... Now back to BIAB where I spend at least four hours a day Zero
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Everybody who uses any kind of online streaming, please answer this simple question, because I don't know the answer. Is there ANY streaming content that is shown in real time or is everything delayed? For my tastes I couldn't hang with watching a sporting event knowing who won before I watched it. And places like Crackle that run syndicated TV but only change the 10 posted episodes every 60 days... I mean, I loved Seinfeld but I can only watch "The Contest" so many times.
I changed from Time Warner cable to DirecTv JUST for NFL network, so that gives you an idea of how much I enjoy watching overpaid illiterates run with an oblong ball....
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Eddie - here, when watching tv news on the TV then watching streaming on a laptop there is a delay of about two seconds. Not sure if this is universal
Win 11 64, Asus Rog Strix z390 mobo, 64 gig RAM, 8700k
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Oh no, Zero, not what I meant. What I mean is when the World Series is on, is there a place on the Internet to watch the games as they happen or do the streaming services carry them on a one day delay, or even at all? From what I know of Hulu and Roku none of the content is new. It's all old shows in syndication. And that's great if that's what you want to watch. For me that would be watching just anything on TV just to be watching something on TV. I use my Roku for stuff like techie podcasts, stand up clips.... basically anything that is not on "real" TV.....
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In the UK, Eddie, the only thing which is streamed "live" over the net is the news. Some content is available on catch-up for a limited time from the following day, but copyright issues stop programs such as films from getting onto this service.
ROG.
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See Eddie, I just learned something, I've never heard of Crackle but it looks interesting too. I saw the promo pic for an old movie called Hardbodies. That's a pretty funny movie that was shot about 5 blocks from me on the Strand in Hermosa Beach maybe 20 years ago.
As to big league sports, yes that's the biggie that is not and probably never will be available in real time online for free. I used to be a big Rams fan but then they moved to St. Louis and I followed them for a while when Kurt Warner was winning those Super Bowls but I've dropped them since and I no longer follow football. Now I'm a big Lakers fan and they just signed a 20 year 1 BILLION deal with Time Warner. The Lakers have been broadcast live on over the air TV locally for years and could be picked up with an antenna. No more. Good luck on them being online any time soon. If I give up all commercial sat/cable I'll have to watch the games at a friends place or a sports bar.
I've been doing a lot of reading about this lately. The sat/cable companies know they're coming under pressure from people just like me and are trying desperatly to get some locked in exclusive stuff that is only available through them and sports is at the top of the list. The question is is it worth the minimum basic package that's still about $65/month or so? I'm beginning to doubt it, there's sports bars all over the place here. I am a fan but I'm not fanatic about it.
Now I see that virtually any premium show that's on HBO, Showtime etc is available online from Amazon for about $20-24 for an entire season. To get those with DirecTV you have to pay extra for those channels and that ups the bill to about $140 a month. It's worth it to buy a complete season of 2 or 3 shows. Of course if I were a hard core viewer watching every series out there, then no it wouldn't be worth it to buy all those shows separately but I'm not, too busy with my music among other things.
Keep the suggestions coming.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Quote:
Everybody who uses any kind of online streaming, please answer this simple question, because I don't know the answer. Is there ANY streaming content that is shown in real time or is everything delayed?
Just watched the Brewers play the Pirates on MLB.TV live, no delay.
To the OP:
We got rid of our television five or six years ago and have never looked back. There are still plenty of distractions to be found.
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That's cool, but...read this from the MLB.TV website:
If a game is blacked out in an area, it is not available for live game viewing. If you are an MLB.TV Premium subscriber and not within either Club's home television territory, the applicable game will be available as an archived game as soon as possible after the conclusion of the game. If you are an MLB.TV Premium subscriber within either Club's home television territory or an MLB.TV subscriber in any territory, the applicable game will be available as an archived game approximately 90 minutes after the conclusion of the game.
90 minutes isn't too bad from my point of view, I'll record games to watch later that evening anyway and I usually don't hear who won. It appears the NBA doesn't have a similar system, you have to buy the League Pass for a minimum of $120 and you can watch 4 teams. Against $1,000 a year even that may be worth it, I would just have to really keep track of these different services, I can see it can easily start to creep up to the same money if I wasn't careful.
Bob
Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.
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Wow, I had no idea more folks have been thinking about this. My family stopped the bleeding in my wallet 9 years ago when satellite was a whopping $35 a month! It was too much then and too much now. I told them if they would do an al a cart I would still pay the $35 a month for the five channels we actually watch versus the 200 we did not.
Because of moral convictions, I could not support giving my money to channels I did not agree with their programming. Sure, you can block those channels. But, it does not stop their revenue how little it may have been.
Anyway, now we have come to al a cart where the programs my family watch on all over the internet for free! We love the classics! The stuff nobody else watches basically.
So, we are 9 years strong and still going! Based on some people comments of what they pay, the savings add up to a nice used car!
A friend mine several years back had MLB.com. He told me then that you could watch the archive games for free.
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Ask sales and support questions about Band-in-a-Box using natural language.
ChatPG's knowledge base includes the full Band-in-a-Box User Manual and sales information from the website.
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Last Chance! The Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac® Special Ends Today (May 31, 2026) at 11:59pm PDT!
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Jazz, Funk & World (Sets 468-475):
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Rock & Pop (Sets 476–482):
Our new rock & pop RealTracks bring a powerful mix of requested favorites, fresh genres, and modern chart-inspired styles! We have more of our popular “Producer Layered Acoustic Guitars (15)” featuring Band-in-a-Box favorite Brent Mason. We’ve continued our much-requested disco styles (10), and added new Celtic guitar (5) with a more basic, accessible approach than our previous Drop-D or DADGAD offerings. There are also highly requested yacht rock styles (17), inspired by the smooth, polished soft-rock sound of the late ’70s and early ’80s — laid-back grooves, silky electric pianos, warm textures, elegant harmonic movement, and pristine production aesthetics. Fans of heavier styles will love our new glam metal (13), capturing the flashy, high-energy sound of ’80s arena-ready guitar rock. We also have a set of rootsy modern-folk rock (18), with a warm, organic sound combining contemporary folk textures and driving acoustic strumming. And we’ve added lots of new modern pop styles (16) — the kinds of sounds you’re hearing on the radio today, featuring exciting new drums, synths, and cutting-edge RealTracks arrangements.
Country, & Americana (Sets 483–488):
Our new country & Americana RealTracks deliver a rich collection of acoustic, electric, and roots-inspired styles! We have new country pop (9) with legendary guitarist Brent Mason. There is also a potpourri (14) of bouzouki, guitars, banjo, and more, perfect for adding texture and character to contemporary acoustic arrangements. We’ve added funky country guitar (5) with PG favorite Brent Mason, along with classic pedal steel styles (5) featuring steel great Doug Jernigan. There are more country songwriter styles (8) that provide intimate, rootsy foundations for storytelling and modern Americana writing. Finally, we have “background soloing” acoustic guitar (12) with Brent Mason — simpler, but still very tasty acoustic lines designed to sit beautifully behind vocals or act as a subtle standalone solo part.
Check out all the 202 new RealTracks (in sets 468-488)!
And, if you are looking for more, the 2026 49-PAK (for $49) includes an impressive collection of 20 bonus RealTracks, featuring exciting and inspiring additions to add to your RealTracks library. You'll get new country-rhythm guitar styles from PG Music favorites Johnny Hiland and Brent Mason, along with modern-pop grooves that capture today’s radio-ready sound! There are also new indie-folk styles with guitar, bass, 6-string bass used as a high-chording instrument, acoustic guitar, and banjo. Plus, dedicated "cymbal fills" RealDrums provide an added layer that work very well with low-key folky styles with other percussion.
The 2026 49-PAK is loaded with other great new add-ons as well. Learn more about the 2026 49-PAK!
2026 Free Bonus PAK & 49-PAK for Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac®!
With your version 2026 for Mac Pro, MegaPAK, UltraPAK, UltraPAK+, Audiophile Edition or PlusPAK purchase, we'll include a Bonus PAK full of great new Add-ons for FREE! Or upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK for only $49 to receive even more NEW Add-ons including 20 additional RealTracks!
These PAKs are loaded with additional add-ons to supercharge your Band-in-a-Box®!
This Free Bonus PAK includes:
- The 2026 RealCombos Booster PAK:
-For Pro customers, this includes 27 new RealTracks and 23 new RealStyles.
-For MegaPAK customers, this includes 25 new RealTracks and 23 new RealStyles.
-For UltraPAK customers, this includes 12 new RealStyles.
- MIDI Styles Set 92: Look Ma! More MIDI 15: Latin Jazz
- MIDI SuperTracks Set 46: Piano & Organ
- Instrumental Studies Set 24: Groovin' Blues Soloing
- Artist Performance Set 19: Songs with Vocals 9
- Playable RealTracks Set 5
- RealDrums Stems Set 9: Cool Brushes
- SynthMaster Sounds Set 1 (with audio demos)
- iOS Android Band-in-a-Box® App
Looking for more great add-ons, then upgrade to the 2026 49-PAK for just $49 and you'll get:
- 20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums with 20 RealStyle.
- FLAC Files (lossless audio files) for the 20 Bonus Unreleased RealTracks and RealDrums
- MIDI Styles Set 93: Look Ma! More MIDI 16: SynthMaster
- MIDI SuperTracks Set 47: More SynthMaster
- Instrumental Studies 25 - Soul Jazz Guitar Soloing
- Artist Performance Set 20: Songs with Vocals 10
- RealDrums Stems Set 10: Groovin' Sticks
- SynthMaster Sounds & Styles Set 2 (sounds & styles with audio demos)
Learn more about the Bonus PAK and 49-PAK for Band-in-a-Box® 2026 for Mac®!
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