Can people really change?
Well, they're gonna need to, right?
If they wanna save money on their TV subscriptions,
they gotta get rid of cable and satellite
and sign up for the streaming services, right?
Well, the answer's actually a little more complicated
than you might think
and that's what we're gonna talk about today.
So whether you are a big proponent of streaming
and cutting the cord and all that stuff
or if you are holding on to that cable subscription
for dear life,
either way, you're gonna wanna watch this video.
I've got some numbers that might surprise you.
So let's dive in.
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Now, first things first, make sure you subscribe
and hit that bell icon down below
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when we're back with another video just like this
but for today's video I'm actually gonna request
that you share this because whether you are a young person
who's been trying to convince your parents or grandparents
to switch to streaming
or if you are a parent or grandparent
who's been trying to convince your young person
to stop bugging you about switching to streaming,
you're gonna find some good info either way.
This is going to be an interesting one.
I bring all of this up because I had an experience
just a couple weeks ago with my parents
where I found out that they were paying Xfinity
for TV and internet $270 a month which blew my mind.
I thought it was absolutely insane
and so I said you gotta switch to streaming and they said no
and so we called Xfinity and got their bill lowered a little
but frankly not a lot
and so after that I tried one more time.
I said, look, you're gonna save so much money
if you just switch to streaming
and they looked at me and said it's not worth it
and you know what?
They convinced me that they were right
but that's what we're gonna be talking about today
is whether it's worth it to switch
from cable or satellite over to streaming
and what you're gonna get for both of those.
We're gonna be talking not just about price
but also about priorities
so I hope you'll stick around for this
but first things first, let's go talk about the prices.
Now, it turns out it's actually really difficult
to compare apples to apples
when we're talking about traditional TV service
versus streaming TV service
but here's what I was able to come up with.
I took the top three nationwide traditional providers,
two cable, one satellite
and the top three streaming providers.
Now, I took their base package and if they offer one
kind of a mid-tier package as well
to kinda look at that cost jump there.
You can see down here with the streaming providers,
Hulu and YouTube only have one package.
They keep it pretty simple that way.
Now, I looked at it over the course of two years
but I took their base advertised cost.
I am not adding in anything like HD fees,
equipment fees, installation fees, nothing like that.
Base advertised cost and here's what I came up with.
Over the course of two years with almost no exceptions,
your traditional TV providers are going to be much,
much more expensive than your streaming providers.
You can see that here.
The mot expensive streaming provider is gonna be YouTube TV
over the course of those two years
then I looked at channel count
and you can see pretty easily
that the channels that you're getting
on the traditional providers
far outstrip at least in number,
far outstrip what you are getting
with your streaming TV providers
and so if we look at cost per channel
if that's how we're judging the value
of what we're getting here
then we're looking at eight to $10 per channel
over the course of two years for your traditional providers
and on the streaming ones, it jumps high really fast
up to $18 bucks a month for Hulu Live
which is a monstrous cost
compared to what you're getting up here
for the streaming TV providers but wait a minute you ask,
what about all the other stuff like installation fees
and DVR fees and HD fees and all the other,
bundling internet and TV together,
what about those variables?
Well, you're absolutely right.
Those are important too but they simply don't fit.
Every time I tried to add one, it kinda blew up my chart
and I couldn't figure out a good way
to compare apples to apples other than base price,
minimum cost over two years.
So every time you add a variable,
what you're doing is adding your priorities.
So you've just gotta know what your priorities are
and then start your research from there
on what's gonna be most helpful to you.
So it might be that your absolute number one priority
is to have the lowest monthly cost possible.
If that is your priority then streaming is undoubtedly
going to be better
than almost any traditional TV service out there
but maybe you're really concerned
about getting all the channels you can possibly get.
I never wanna run into a situation
where I want that channel and I don't have it.
In that case, cable and satellite
are gonna be much better bets than most streaming services.
Contracts are a big thing.
When it comes to contracts, there are no contracts
on any streaming service that I'm aware of.
There are contracts on traditional TV services.
With cable, you can usually opt out of a contract
but you're gonna pay an extra $10 a month.
You can see how messy this all gets.
So ultimately, your number one priority
might be I want to have as simple a bill as possible.
Well, as you can see with YouTube TV and Hulu Live,
those are about as simple as it gets.
They just say pay this much a month
and you get this many channels, end of story
and what about your personal style of watching TV?
If you're somebody who loves to have TV on
in the background all the time,
well, if you're doing that with streaming,
you're actually gonna run into data cap problems potentially
with your internet provider
but if you say you bundle with Xfinity
and you get cable TV along with your internet,
well, that cable TV isn't counting
towards your internet consumption
and so you're not gonna run into any data caps.
Pretty convenient.
So yeah, you can see that ultimately it's just a question
of priorities.
What is your top priority?
So to finish the story about my parents,
this is really what it's all about is priorities.
So I called Xfinity with them
and the guy on the line says all right,
so you got this $270 package,
I can get you one that's similar for $120 and I said sold
and he says, okay, let me crunch some numbers real quick
and he comes back and he says,
all right, that'll be $220 a month
and I said what, you just said it was $120, what gives
and he says, well, HD fees and DVR and equipment fees.
Essentially, my parents wanted to have TV on
around the house all day
and they wanted it available in five different rooms
at any time and they wanted their DVR.
So their style of TV watching
required that they spend at least $220
and they were willing to pay it.
So the question is whether you are willing to pay that.
So I wanna get your opinion in the comments below.
Give me your best case for why somebody
should either stick with cable and satellite
or switch to streaming services.
Give it your best shot and on your way down there,
give this video a like if you liked it
and give it a subscribe if you loved it.
Thanks for watching, guys.
We will see you on the next review.
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