Internet and Cable TV costs way too much now. Any better options?

How about the 4g way? Fast enough i think.

I just reduced my cable to basic, my phone to basic and kept my internet. I bought a Roku stick and an Amazon fire stick to try. So far I like Roku best. My bill went from $173 to $101.
Look into the Plex app. If you can find someone who will share their collection with you, you'll have more movies and tv shows than you'll ever watch.

Whatever cable package you get, 95% of it is junk. Commercials, trailers, promotional BS and all that annoying crap. Unless you watch 8 hours of TV a day I just cannot see the point of having cable. If you're the kind of person that watches maybe 1-2 hours of quality shows in the evening then Netflix or Amazon Prime Video are more than enough and only a fraction of the cost. 
 

For the basic channels, which I assume you mean the local Over-The-Air channels, consider an antenna. As long as your TV is newer and has a digital channel tuner and you are within range of the broadcast signals, you can enjoy the local OTA stations for free. Actually the OTA signal is superior to cable transmissions because no compression is involved.

When I was in the process of cutting out SatTV (Dish) via the TELCO bundler, I was made an offer I couldn't refuse for DirecTV.  I got a call from Dish offering to cut my bill by $60/mo forever with no contract.  I told them they would get another chance when the 2 year deal I just got with DirecTV was done.
 
They used to respond well to calls complaining about price, offering a year worth of discounts and such.  Then they quit.  That's when I started looking around.  I was prepared to go completely with OTA and Roku/Netflix, but I do love DVR.
 
I'm down from $200/mo for POTS, internet and SatTV to $150.  That's $1200 over the next 2 years.  I'm happy for now.

patm300e
2 words - Live Sports. 
 
The cable companies have a monopoly on them and they currently are the only reason I have cable... sigh...
I have an Emby Server for movies (Like Plex, but works on ripped DVDs without converting them). 

 
Well, we get more live sports than we'll ever be able to watch and we don't have cable.  We have Dish.  I used to have DirecTV and that was much better than cable as well.
 
We DO have to put up with Comcrap for our internet service, but that's the only thing.
 

A couple of years ago, after Comcast (our local provider) had been slowly raising our rates every year, I finally had had enough. When their customer service would not reduce our rates (it was going to be hiked to $161/mo for basic cable & internet), I cut the cord and dropped the cable altogether and just kept the high speed internet service for $60/mo. I got a pair of digital rabbit ears and got free HD signals of local broadcasts over the air. About a year later a Comcast rep called out of the blue and offered a deal to get us back. A one year promo for basic cable, double our existing internet bandwidth (from 15 to 30megs up/down) and they threw in HBO to sweeten the deal for only $11 more a month ($71/mo total). Maybe because of past history (of me walking away from high rates), Comcast offered to extend the same deal another 2 years (until October 2017) when the one year promo was about to expire!!!!!! Being a huge Game of Thrones fan, how could I pass on basic able, free HBO and double my internet speed for only $11 more a month with the rate locked for two more years!. 
 
The point to the story is you have to be willing to walk away from your cable for an extended period of time. That is when your local provider will come back to you with an amazing deal to get you back.
 
Cheers,
 
Billy Buck

bitflipper
No cable here. An antenna gets me local news, and Netflix provides all the entertainment I can possibly handle. 
 

Ditto 

At the end of your contract do not renew! And then just choose internet only package. As for TV get a roof antenna and watch the air channels. Now the phone find the lowest price and go for it.
 

Here in Arkansas...I live right on the edge of the digital antenna circle. That why we decided to keep a basic cable for $23, but I could do without it. With a good streaming device, I'm happy. Next time we will cancel everything but the internet too.

I know some of you folks are old enough to remember the original introduction of cable TV in the 60's, and remember wondering why you'd pay for something that was already free. 
 
Cable companies countered consumer resistance on these main points:

• signal quality was better
• there were no commercials (yes, kids, really)
• movies were not censored or edited
• having many channels made room for niche interests and educational content
• it was cheap, around $10 a month

Point #1 was made moot by the switch to digital. Even if you're using an antenna (assuming adequate signal strength) the sound and picture are as good as cable (sometimes better).
Point #2: Not only are there more commercials on cable than there used to be on broadcast TV (which were limited by law), with cable you are required to receive multiple all-commercial channels that can't be blocked.
Point #3: movies are routinely censored and trimmed for time because cable eventually adopted the same on-the-hour scheduling format as broadcast TV. Some titles never get played for political (or PC) reasons. 
Point #4: where did the educational content go? It's all Bigfoot, ghosts and UFOs now. It seems educational content doesn't sell enough advertising.
Point #5: the cheapest package I can buy here is over $100 a month, and includes none of the channels I'd watch.
 
So the cable industry is in a tizzy over the rate at which they are losing subscribers (11% in the last 5 years, and accelerating). When I went into the Comcast store to return my equipment, there were 20 other people there - none were buying, all were returning their equipment like me.
 
Cable stocks are falling, and we'll see even more consolidation as the trend continues. Pretty soon there will not only be just one cable company in your town, but only one across the entire nation. As the number of cable companies dwindles, so does the chance that the remaining providers will adopt the innovation needed to survive.
 

@ KenB123
Great - Thanks Ken!
 
I've found some on Bestbuy for $15. Seems you're right about the location and local interference.
So we'll try that one first. The reviews on it are as good as any.
 
@Bit - I was born in 1961 and remember our tall antenna tower out back, and Dad taking it down when cable came to town. We still had a black & white TV then.
 
I also remember ads being only squeezed in when there was time for them on Johhny Carson. He'd hold up a can of soup and say a few things about it, and that was it!
 
My how things have changed. Now among all the other things we've all seen and discussed in this thread, they squeeze a banner here and a runner there even during the very shows we're paying cable to watch - and that's between the commercial breaks FFSakes!
 
Even on the weather channels they've got something up in one corner or another.
And in the hockey games all along the boards, and even under the ice surface with the rest of the lines for the rink - Sheesh!
 
I wish Google hadn't purchased Youtube, because their ads and pop-ups are equally annoying.
At least with the small ones on the actual video display, they can be clicked off with the 'x' in the corner once the clip starts.
 
 
 

bitflipper
...
Cable companies countered consumer resistance on these main points:

• signal quality was better
• there were no commercials (yes, kids, really)
• movies were not censored or edited
• having many channels made room for niche interests and educational content
• it was cheap, around $10 a month

...

 
You forgot the PSA's, for which they will plug in some quasi religious this and that (some of it questionable of course) so that it satisfies the FCC demand for a certain amount of these in every 24 hours. Most stations will cram them on a Sunday morning, or a late night thing, that has the smallest audience possible, to prevent losing commercial revenue.
 
Movies, have another issue. The versions are different for various reasons. The releases are like this ... prime/theaters, airlines, this and that, and then pay per view, and then DVD. The airline version has to be G rated, regardless, so a lot of words and this and that are muted, and passed over. The pay per view market is the same, since it is on people's homes, and they do not want any bad publicity from parents or the FCC.
 
Thus, now you can see another bad side of things ... the inevitable "remaster" (just like music!) so that you can add the other details that otherwise got taken down. And in some cases, it's still missing stuff.
 
But "music" is no less different. I saw the experimental show of "The Wall" in SF with quadraphonic sound and all that, and it was 20 minutes longer. Because of the LP limits, this got cut down to 80/84 minutes to fit in the albums ... and the rest of the material for the most part is half of the next album "The Final Cut" ... and some of the visual/video  material came from the film, and if you take a look at its "story", it all fits inside "The Wall" very well ... but everyone seems to ignore that! The TV side of things is even worse than that when it comes to movies and shows!
 

bitflipper
...
Cable stocks are falling, and we'll see even more consolidation as the trend continues. Pretty soon there will not only be just one cable company in your town, but only one across the entire nation. As the number of cable companies dwindles, so does the chance that the remaining providers will adopt the innovation needed to survive.
 

This is, actually, the scary side of it for me ... and one day the FCC busted up AT&T, and it continues to grow and control the whole phone environment. because they had the money for the infrastructure that no one else had. Cable is tougher, because ... all that is left ... are addresses and portions of new areas that do not have cable and it costs anywhere from 20K to 25K (sometimes not including all the labor) to get ONE BLOCK's worth of houses wired ... thus, the return has to be favorable and the density very important to your investment survival.
 
Now you know that the FCC are a bunch of junkies and stooges, because they know that 10 to 15% of ALL Americans can not get cable, and NEVER will since no one can afford to wire those far out of reality locations, and the big corporations will not allow WIRELESS Internet, to those areas, because you will have a gross and indecent fight for every single company out there, not to mention that one of them has to put somewhere within reasonable distance, an antenna that costs over 75 million to be able to bring service to you! In a big city, that's is not an issue ... in NY/LA/SF and the like, you just replace the antenna with a better one because the cash flow is there ... out in the country? No such thing!
 
But this is the weird part ... wireless was invented more than 120 years ago ... and we still on wires?
 
That ought to tell you what you need about the FCC and the Government!