We received an android tv as a gift and decided to cancel cable about two years ago. We weren’t watching much TV and figured it would make more sense to actually have to pick something out rather than just flipping through channels or having Law and Order in the background.
The biggest thing I didn’t fully grasp was that everything, content-wise, is in the services you pay for. There are a few channels that offer their new content after it’s on TV within their own apps, but there’s no good way to watch live TV most of the time beyond an antenna without paying for a package like hulu, sling, playstation vue, or carrying a cable subscription. A lot of the apps out there require you to identify an account with someone they have a contract with (a tv provider) in order to stream the live broadcast (especially sports). So many stations advertised how you can stream their content, I figured more of that live stuff was out there on it’s own, there really isn’t much live without a subscription.
Once you get past that, there’s a lot you can buy with what we were paying for cable (~$70/mo more than just our internet now), we spend about half of that on subscriptions and then buy a couple movies through a streaming service when we want to. We have NetFlix, Prime, and HBO Now as subscriptions. NetFlix is tops and awesome, I don’t know how they provide so much for $10ish a month. Prime we had already and 90% of the movie selection is pretty weak, but they drop in a few big name movies and have some really great original programming they produce. There’s so much else you get with that service (music, shipping, etc) that we’d have it anyway. HBO Now is probably about 100 movies at a time and all their original programming. My wife loves a few of their shows, so we have it, it’s about $15/mo.
I’ve never run out of things to watch, but honestly the kids dominate the TV time right now. If you have shows you love, make sure you find a way to get them. For example, my wife buys Walking Dead because they don’t have the latest episodes on any of the services we have. I occasionally wish I had access to some sporting event, but other than that I can’t remember ever feeling like I missed anything.
Interfaces and everything are OK, every now and then they’re all frustrating, HBO is especially bad, but any trouble is really pretty rare. Separately it’s a little weird to have to update and reboot your TV, wait for it to connect, etc, but again that’s fairly rare (once a month?).
On the upside, my kids have no idea what a commercial is, they think it’s another show that’s come on and we keep having to explain what’s going on. They just don’t exist on 95% of the content they’ve seen. They also have no idea why you’d have to wait for a show to come on, they usually just pick and play. They think “normal” TV is “news and weather”.
Overall, totally recommend giving it a try. Worst case is you get a great deal to sign back up with a cable provider as a new customer.
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