Cord Cutting refers to the act of canceling your cable or satellite television service and replacing it with the over the air transmissions or subscriptions to streaming services.  If you are wondering why cord cutting is so popular then keep reading for the advantages of cord cutting.  It’s not perfect, so I will also discuss the disadvantages of cord cutting.  Note that cord cutting can also refer to canceling your landline phone service and switching to a VOIP service or cell phone.  Don’t worry if you have never heard of VOIP.  I will explore that further in a future post.

Advantages of cord cutting

The main advantage of cutting the cord is saving money.  It can be significantly cheaper or even mostly free to cut the cord.  I say mostly free because you do need to buy an antenna, but after you buy an antenna, over the air transmissions are free.  This is enough for many people.  In the case of streaming, it’s convenient to have a huge choice of shows and movies at your fingertips.  There are also some shows that are only available from a streaming service.

To get an idea of what free television options are in your area, go to AntennaWeb and enter your address.  I’m sure you will be surprised at what free options are available to you.  Just note that some of the listed channels are what is possible, but picking up all those channels will depend on your antenna and its orientation.

Disadvantages of cord cutting

Of course, there are also disadvantages.  If you subscribe to many streaming services, they can add up to as much or more than you were paying for cable or satellite.  It can be more complicated too, depending on the number of services you use.  It may be annoying to have to update apps and log in again from time to time.  You will also need to keep your internet service in order to stream video.  Some internet providers will charge you for data use if you do not have television service with them, so you will need to read your fine print.  In my area, AT&T U-Verse may charge extra for data over a certain threshold.  Spectrum (formerly Time Warner Cable) does not do this as of this writing.  If you know what they are doing in your area, please let us know in the comments.

I will explore in more detail the various antenna options, streaming devices, DVRs and streaming services over the next several posts.