EDITORIAL - What happens when your Xfinity/Comcast Cable-TV bill tops $200 a month? You learn new (and relearn older) ways to save money on your television entertainment expenses. Over the last year, we have done everything we could think of to cut our cable bill but found the only way to really save money with Xfinity/Comcast is to forget about cutting the bill and just Cut the Cord. So that is what we did and now we have more great TV than ever before.

First thing we did was return all of our cable boxes to Xfinity/Comcast. These were costing us between $10 and $15 each per month. We replaced them with Roku streaming devices that have access to the Xfinity app. The Roku Xfinity/Comcast’s app gives you another way of watching the cable company's programming without the expensive cable box rentals. By doing this we started to save about $45 a month. 

However, that savings was short-lived because every time we found a way to cut our cable bill, in just six months the cable price would find a way to creep back up to $180 then $190 a month. So we asked the cable company how much we were paying for just our Internet. Surprisingly the answer was only $80 for Blast speeds (300 Mbps) and 1.2 terabytes of streaming. So how many streaming apps can we add to our Internet for a hundred and twenty bucks?

As we would find out, quite a few.  We now pay for Netflix, Showtime, CBS All-Access, Hulu, Peacock, Disney+, ESPN, Prime and Sling. Sling is our most expensive app at $30 a month and gives us access to over 50 of the best of cable TV channels. When HBO Max becomes available for the Roku devices we will be switching from Sling to Philo which is very similar to Sling but costs ten dollars less; but does not include Warner Media channels like CNN, Adult Swim, TBS or TNT (which are all available with a $14 subscription to HBO Max).

Disney+, Hulu and ESPN are all ABC-TV owned and are bundled at $12.99 a month. Each of these apps are also available individually for around $6 -each. This is the same $6 price we pay for CBS All-Access. Being that I am back in college, we found student discount rates for both Showtime and Amazon Prime. And because we kept Xfinity/Comcast as our Internet provider we get Peacock from NBC/Universal free of charge. 

The one nice thing about the apps on your streaming devices is you can cancel them any time and turn them back on when there is something you want to watch. Also almost all the apps come with free trials, some with up to seven to thirty days of free viewing. So if you wanted to watch Jennifer Aniston in ‘The Morning Show’ on Apple TV but did not necessarily want to add the service to your plan, how much content can you consume during your free trial?

So in total we now pay around $50 in streaming apps and $80 for our Internet per month for a savings of about seventy dollars. But we did not have access to the Central Valley’s local programming. Like I said we learned new and old ways of watching television. After a phone call to Ventura TV and Appliance in Fresno, for the first time in forty years we have an old fashion TV antenna on our roof. 

This is not your daddy’s TV antenna with only five or six channels. We get around 100 of the Central Valley’s over-the-air digital broadcast TV channels, some even broadcasted in 4k HD-video. Some of the 100 channels are repeats, some are low power stations that we would have better access to in Fresno, and of course we also get all the popular local network channels like ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, WB, METV and PBS.

Of the over 800 channels Xfinity/Comcast gave us for $200, we probably could only name 50. More is not always better, sometimes it's just more. Plus how many times did I try to watch one of those channels after midnight to only find the programming I was paying for had been replaced by a Xfinity/Comcast placed infomercial?

With that said, of the 100 channels you can watch over-the-air, more than half of them probably would not appeal to the general public. There are a lot of foreign language channels (Spanish, Hmong and Armenian) and quite a few religious and home shopping type channels. But there are also a plethora of news, sports and entertainment channels to go along with the popular local network channels to make an antenna well worth the one time expense. Did you know that when Minor League Baseball is back on the diamond, the Fresno Grizzlies even have an over-the-air station broadcasting their home games free of charge?

Just a little side note about more taxes charged by Xfinity/Comcast, as part of your cable bill you are paying a local tax for local broadcast channels and local sporting events. As a cable TV subscriber you are paying a tax for local channels that are distributed free on over-the-air. Well once we cut the cord, we stopped throwing that money away too. 

Now we paid Ventura TV about three-hundred bucks to hook up our $85 antenna to our five TV’s using Xfinity/Comcast’s existing wiring in our house. They included a $30 amplifier to the system and isolated our Internet line away from the TV lines. Now we have crystal clear digital channels of local programming for what we would have paid for a month and a half of cable service. 

I’m sure you could install the antenna yourself, but at my age I am not only not climbing on the roof, I am also not going under the house to move wires. Ventura TV sent over two twenty-something-year-old guys to take care of the entire process while I stayed in my air-conditioned house.

Some might say that the $300 was a little expensive for a TV antenna but if you want it done right, hire a professional. Plus the $300 is a one time cost and before the guys left, every TV was perfectly tuned in. Your price might be different, you would really have to call Mark Shirin over at Ventura TV to see what kind of system is best for you.  On the other hand, if you know what you are doing, take care of the installation yourself. It’s not rocket science. Rocket Science is for satellite TV and I want nothing to do with that. 

So with a little bit of new technology,  we have some of the best streaming apps that gives us just what “we want” from Cable-TV and after a one time $300 expense, we have the best of old school television with over-the-air digital broadcasts. Will we miss the old way of watching television from Xfinity/Comcast? Maybe, but not as much as I missed that $200 a month I used to pay for 800 of a lot of nothing channels.  

Cutting the cord is the best thing I could have ever done for my bank account. I do not know if it is for everyone, it works for us. Sit down with your family and write down the cable channels you have to have, then check out the streaming devices available at Walmart. I personally like the Roku devices ($29.95-$89.95), but recently there have been some issues with apps like Peacock and HBO-Max fighting with Roku,  holding back their services from the millions Roku and Amazon Fire Stick users. So maybe you might want to look at the Apple-TV ($149.99) or the new TiVo 4k Stream ($49.95). 

There are a lot of choices out there and lots of ways to save on your television entertainment. Give Ventura TV a call today and see what kind of antenna system they can put together for you. They even have options for antenna-based DVR’s. 

While your savings may vary, you will not be disappointed in ditching Xfinity/Comcast and ATT television and cutting the cord but keeping the Internet. It’s the one thing Comcast does right.