I have a basic cable package which includes free HBO that Comcast offered me for $5 more per month than what I was paying for internet alone. They've called me and offered this deal to me for the past two years which I happily accepted since HBO Now is $15 per month by itself. I do not have a cable box hooked up to any TVs however. I use Apple TVs and Rokus in my home and just log into the appropriate apps with my cable subscription info.

As I explained much earlier in this thread, I use a Tablo OTA DVR system for over the air local channels. This connects to my router and the anntenna connects to the Tablo (meaning you only need 1 anntenna instead of 1 for each TV regardless of how many TVs you have). I pull up my local channels through the Tablo app on my Apple TV or Roku and can record or watch live anything on the major networks for free after paying the set up cost for the Tablo and necessary accessories. I've shaved about $100 per month off of what I was paying for DirecTV when I was with them a couple of years ago and I get pretty much everything I was using except for NFL network which isn't worth $100 a month to me. My wife and I have Hulu and Amazon Prime as well. We had Netflix, but felt it was unneccessary to keep the subscription active on an ongoing basis when a lot of what they offer is on Prime with the exception of original content. We'll re-up Netflix for a month every once in a while to binge watch certain shows, but no need to shell out $10 or $12 a month. Everybody wants to get hooked up to the teet.

StroudCrowd is right in saying it's not there yet by comparison to the convenience of a normal cable/satellite subscription with a master guide and built in DVR, but it's close enough for myself and many other people. I've just become more defensive in my spending as I've gotten older and the $100 per month I realized I'd be saving will add up over the years (and already has over the past 2+ years since I decided to cut the cord) and the savings basically paid for the Tablo system within a few months which made the decision to buy it an easy one for me. With my basic (almost free) cable package, Tablo, Hulu, Prime, HBO and sometimes Showtime or Netflix, my wife and I get 99% of what we were using with DirecTV for a lot less. There are cheaper, less legal ways to get content, but everything I do is on the up and up. If Comcast doesn't call me with the sweetheart cable deal again after my year is up later this year I'll probably re-up with SlingTV or PS Vue. The offer they gave me tells me how much they must be hurting from all the lost subscriptions and I can't say I have any sympathy for them or any other telecom company. The industry has had crap customer service for years and has tried to out do itself in making up new fees every year. They can't get away with that in the current environment.

---