Cord cutting

After literally years of resisting, we finally took the first steps toward cancelling cable. (We also still have a land line. And an answering machine. Those aren't going anywhere though, at least not for now -- a land line is still by far the most reliable communication tool in an emergency, and as long as PG&E is playing these power outage games I want to hold onto it.)

The main reason we held out so long: live sports. I wasn't about to accept any option that didn't allow me watch Giants baseball on a DVR. Most of the streaming services didn't have that kind of thing for a long time, and MLB's own service has a blackout on local games. (I hear it's a great option for following a team when you don't live in its media market, though.) The last few times we researched this question, no one option had everything we needed. And everything still has a few gaps, but after doing some research we decided that our best choice was YouTube TV. So we'll give that service a trial and see how it goes.

T order a Roku stick; it arrived a few days ago, and he set it up today. So far, all we've used it for is to watch YouTube videos and test Amazon Prime and Netflix, but it seems fine. I'm really going to miss our Tivo, though. On that, we were early adopters (T bought one through a co-worker, on a friends and family deal, in 2000), and I've gotten really used to its interface, and especially its high-quality universal remote. The Roku remote refuses to talk to our A/V receiver, so we can't use it to adjust volume, and that's going to get annoying fast. Still, it's probably worth it to save at least $50 a month. It's an experiment, long overdue, and I look forward to seeing how it goes.