We're generally happy with the decisions and choices we've made to cut the cord. Here are some observations after ten months.
Devices: We've tried the Amazon Fire TV Stick, Google Chromecast, and Roku. For our purposes, the Fire TV Stick is the most versatile and the easiest to use. It supports all of our TV streaming services, and it comes with an easy-to-use remote control. In particular, the Fire TV remote works great when skipping over commercials with the YouTubeTV DVR. Each time you click fast-forward it shows a small image of what's 15 seconds ahead, so you can judge whether to continue clicking forward, or to back up 15 seconds if you've overshot the commercial break.
(Note: The Amazon Fire TV Stick might not work well if you don't have an Amazon Prime subscription. We haven't tried that.)
Streaming Services: With our current subscriptions to Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, HBO, PBS Passport, and YouTubeTV, we have more good TV available than we have time to watch. Since we initially signed up, YouTube TV has increased their fee from $40 per month to $50, and they still haven't implemented surround sound. Disappointing, but I think it's still our best option.
Internet Service: Comcast Xfinity is still the only practical service provider in our neighborhood. AT&T offers only a lower speed service. In October, Comcast increased our Performance Internet download speed from 60Mbps to 100Mbps, leaving the upload speed at 5Mbps. Starting January 2020, our monthly fee will increase from $69.95 to $72.95. I don't expect Comcast to add any taxes or fees on top of the $72.95.
Our Comcast internet data service comes with a monthly cap of 1 terabyte. Overruns are very expensive, so we watch our data usage carefully. Typically, we stay under 500 or 600 GB, but one month we almost reached 900 GB. Cloud data backups, not TV streaming, was our biggest consumer of data in that peak month.
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