Previously published on the “Student Affairs Women Talk Tech” Blog, here’s my last posting with a few additions.

As of December, my husband and I pulled the plug on our cable. We decided to take the plunge, save some money and figure out if we could handle living without a DVR.

We’ve been Amazon Prime and Netflix streaming members for awhile, and having a small kid at home – we usually catch most general movies via Redbox or Amazon rentals anyway. So we tacked on Hulu Plus and watched to see what happened.

For one, our bills from Time Warner are now a more manageable $57 for internet only and the new addition is a $7.99 month subscription for Hulu Plus. Here some thoughts about each:

– Amazon Prime. We bought the Amazon Fire TV box and it allows us to access Netflix, YouTube and some other apps that we’ve discovered like Pluto.TV that have channels you can view with like all Katy Perry videos, all Fail videos, or all puppies all the time. It’s actually pretty cool and you can view it online here. We have been very pleased with this box and this is compared to a “smart” Blu-ray player we had that was supposed to be highly rated but ended up having terrible connections, bad user interfaces for each app and general issues.

– Hulu Plus. This is where I miss the DVR like crazy. Yes, I can watch my shows on Hulu. But its the day after. AND some of my favorite shows aren’t on there. Downton Abbey – NO. Mad Men – NO. So that’s the downside. I don’t mind watching Scandal the next day, but it’s not as fun as live tweeting it.

– Speaking of PBS and Downton Abbey…We did buy an antenna that allows us to get like 7 channels and PBS is one of them. So I still get my Downton Abbey…but I have to watch it live. Again, no DVR. {A note about the antenna, we have noticed remarkably better picture quality now that it is winter and there aren’t any leaves on our trees.}

– For kids. My little girl goes through phases. First we found shows she would watch in the morning via Hulu. Netflix is always her app of choice in the evenings, but now she’s back to watching PBS shows in the morning utilizing our antenna. Hulu is not as used as much for her. AND her new favorite thing is watching “blind box” toy openings on YouTube. So YouTube is the new hotness in our house [which we access from the Amazon Fire TV box].

– Chromecast. I should mention that we do have a Chromecast device but we love our Amazon Fire TV box so much more. I’ve never found a need for it. We used it originally to throw YouTube up on the screen from a browser, but the Fire TV has a great YouTube app, so yeah – don’t need the Chromecast device anymore.

So far we have been ok with the change, but it would be nice to still have the DVR. Oh well. I can deal for the amount of money we are saving.