HBO without Cable? Living the dream!

For many years now, I have been looking to save money on my cable TV bill, but then again, haven't we all? Well with every year that passes, I find myself watching less of the standard networks and more of the premiums. And of course, for these channels, particularly HBO, Showtime, TMC and Cinemax, we need to first have a cable or satellite provider. I find myself asking, why?

In the modern era, with Netflix, Hulu, Amazon prime, and everything else we can avail of online, why do HBO give into the greed of these companies? As a matter of fact, you can now have these services streamed to your TV without having a box attached.

In the last 12 months, we have seen both Direct TV and Charter, in dispute with major entertainment providers. This resulted in a black out, of many of our favorite channels. Now on our end, the price hike may be pennies. But on their end, well.... its hundreds of millions of dollars. So they are more than happy, in my opinion, to push to bill through our mail box (or email inbox). And how many of these channels do we watch. More importantly, how many do we not watch? Keep in mind we are paying for these channels, and the content that they spew.

If only the stand alone channels were available online, or through a box we could purchase and plug into our TV, right? Well the boxes exist. As a matter of fact you can pick up one of many brands for between $45 and $99. Be it Roku at the cheaper end, or Apple TV for as little as $99. The problem is not our ability to get our hands on that little box, or even a smart TV. The problem is, getting access to the content.

Personally, I pay over $100 a month for TV and internet ($70 for TV). They give me free HD (wow, like at this point, as if its a luxury), and a whole spat of channels I will never watch, or that I can see for free online. And then comes the hilarious part. $20 of this is for 2 premium channels. I gladly would continue to pay this $20, one of them being HBO and the other Cinemax. However, what is this extra $50 for? What they tell me, is that it is for my free HD DVR box (yeah they say its free) and the abundance of tripe I find from channel 1 through 600. And did I happen to mention, every single person receives a huge chunk of these channels free anyway? (local channels, with as much as a wire sticking out of the back of your TV to pick up the free signal). I mean really, how much should we be paying per channel? I am sure they are making quite a nice sum too, off of us, while we fill our brain with their advertisements.

Unfortunately though, as already stated, we need this $50 service, to access these premium channels. So why don't HBO, Cinemax and our other favorites, man up and cut the cord with us?

And for me, I have no idea. These premium channels have the viewers, they receive the revenue, and would continue to do so, even without the cable/satellite providers, because most of us who watch their stuff, would continue to pay for it. I for one think, that if HO were to begin this exit from the need for cable, then others would follow. They even have HBOgo, which allows you to watch content online or through one of the TV boxes. The problem is, that you still need a cable/satellite subscription of course.

To put forward a good point, I am sure, those people out their who are pirating the content, may even begin to pay for the likes of HBO stand alone, because it would then be simpler to just pay the 10 to 20 dollars to do so. Currently, there are websites out there that are asking people to sign petitions, asking HBO to follow through on this idea. And I for one am hoping that they do.

Let the people have one less bill per month (well one less major bill anyway), and HBO, I am sure they will flock to subscribe by the million. And maybe, just maybe, the other companies will follow.