Another Way to Save $$ and a Quick Update

Another way to Save $$ :
I found this neat article on live hacker which explains how you can save $$ by reducing your electric bill.  I think the Batman approach would be neat, just because.

Check it out here.


A quick update:

Things are still going better than expected.  We are waiting until the end of August to drop the DVD part of Netflix.  Then we will have a review on Redbox :) 

The one annoying thing that I found is no one records sports so I can watch them later.  A great example of this is the Formula 1 races.  When I had the DVR from Comcrapy I would just record the Race (adding a hour for overtime) and start watching it a hour late.  This would enable me to fast forward through the commercials.  Thinking about this more, couldn't it be possible to record a live stream from Ustream or something of that nature?  Anyone tried this?  The difficulty would be ensuring you get a good feed, which is my new favorite game.

Overall I can say that I have met my goal so far.  I have been able to watch everything that I've wanted to.  My next goal is to set it up so I can watch it whenever I want. 

Needless to say, CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

Netflix Price Increase

Wow, so far in this blog I've been raving about Netflix, but things are about to change.  We currently subscribe to their "unlimited + 1 DVD" plan which is currently $10. They are restructuring their pricing by splitting up streaming and disk by mail.  So now instead of 1 plan they switched me to 2, which puts us at $16 per month.  That's an increase of $72 per year, I sigh at them for doing this.

This makes this little penny saver upset.  However in doing the math we are still saving money by avoiding cable, just not as much.

We have came up with a couple plans for this:
A) Drop the DVD plan and rent from red box if we can't stream it,
B) Get rid of Netflix and go to Hulu Plus, and rent from Red Box

Any thoughts on Red box? Never used it but I have heard good things.

Other things I've considered :
C) See if Netflix has a really cheap dvd only plan with limits, looks like they don't,  lame...  The annoying thing is they provide one limited plan and it includes both limited streaming and limited DVDs. It also has a crap load of restrictions.  To sum it up, totally not worth it.  If Netflix was more customer centric they would introduce limited DVD only packages for people like me (lots of streaming and a couple DVDs per month).

All in all, it seems like a half cooked plan for desperate grasp at making numbers. I already seen people start to drop Netflix, I'm sure i'll see more. Please also keep in mind this does take affect until September 1st so don't move just yet :)

Here is the link to the Netflix blog, not much more information than I've provided except a super lame excuse.

What is everyone else's plan of action?

PS: Netflix is still great, and a great alternate from cable (and a lot cheaper), just wish they thought about current customers before they did such drastic things. That is all...

No Problem

Its weird, I thought I would have ran into all these issues trying to find things to watch but I haven't.   Im not complaining.  I think what I am slowly realizing that not having cable is great.  We have found our selfs not watching crappy tv, but watching things we actually enjoy via Netflix or streaming over the networks website.  We have not tried Hulu yet, but to be honest it seems that both Netflix and Hulu would be to much entertainment.  We hardly have the time to watch what we have now.

What is your flavor, Hulu or Netflix?

The choice is your.