Thanks go to my son-in-law for good ideas on saving money. Last weekend he alerted me to the new YouTube TV.
The main reason I chose my current TV provider, DirecTV, is that I can record four shows at once. The service costs me $87 per month.
I am now trying a free month of internet-based YouTube TV. I like it. It has all my favorite channels and shows. Starting next month it will cost me $35 per month. I can record as many shows as I wish, since the recordings are saved in the cloud.”
YouTube TV just came out a few months ago. Apple TV was added a few weeks ago as a device that will stream shows to my big screen TV.
In 2009, when the Apple TV came out, I bought one – the first-generation Apple TV. I remember being excited that I could watch my home videos on the TV screen.
A year later, after buying a big screen TV, I gave the Apple TV to my daughter. She recently returned the Apple TV, and it went into a box.
When I read that I will need to use an Apple TV to stream shows to my big screen TV, I was so happy that I had one in my box.
Until, that is, until I found out I will not be able to use my first-generation Apple TV. It just won’t work. So today, I ran out to Best Buy and picked up the Apple TV – fourth generation.
The Apple TV responds to requests from my old friend, Siri. So Siri and her cousins — Alexa (Amazon’s Echo Dot), and the silent but responsive avatar that resides in the Amazon Fire stick — will sit side by side near my big screen TV.
Next month, two of our cell phone lines will be free from contracts on our very-poor-reception provider, Verizon.
My son-in-law came through again when he alerted me to the low-cost cell phone provider, Cricket Wireless.
This plan boasts their coverage area is larger than that of T-Mobile and Sprint. A $40 per month line for my wife and me comes to $80. But with our four lines (including daughter and son-in-law), we will get a $30 reduction in price. So we can expect to pay about $65 per month for the two lines.
With YouTube TV, the Cricket cell phone plan, and keeping my current provider, Spectrum, for house phone and internet, I expect to save close to $200 per month. Hey, that’s $2,400 a year. It’s a good feeling going with the newbie services for TV and cell phone, and saying farewell to the giants DirecTV and Verizon.
Hey, son-in-law, what is next? I await the next big change in the exiting world of technology.
Who knows? One day, sooner than we think, we might all become avatars as we visit each other via holograms.
Mr. Ebsen may be contacted at robertzebsen@gmail.com