But with each of these options—from TiVo to Tablo to Fire TV Recast and beyond—the prices can vary widely once you factor in subscription fees, DVR storage, and additional hardware requirements. When calculating the cost benefits of cord-cutting, it’d be helpful to know what an over-the-air DVR really costs over time.

To that end, I’ve put together a price comparison for some of the best, most popular, and cheapest over-the-air DVR solutions. Head to TechHive for a detailed chart and discussion of your options. (I’ll try to get the same chart into our DVR buying guide shortly.)

Philo is blaming the change on rising programming costs, which have also prompted price hikes for YouTube TV, Hulu with Live TV, Sling TV, PlayStation Vue, DirecTV Now, and FuboTV over the last year or so. Even if these options are cheaper than cable, they’re still dependent on the same TV networks, whose demands for more money have also caused cable prices to rise on a regular basis. I suspect the problem will get worse before it gets better, as more people opt out of pay TV bundles entirely and the networks keep squeezing an ever-shrinking subscriber base.

For more of Philo’s perspective, CEO Andrew McCollum was mixing it up with commenters on Reddit earlier this week.

TiVo’s automatic ad-skipping: One week after Tablo started rolling out automatic ad skipping for its over-the-air DVR, TiVo appears to be doing the same. Dave Zatz reports that the “Auto Skip” feature’s been landing on large numbers of Bolt, Roamio, and Mini DVRs since late last week, and that the option appears when you select a SkipMode-enabled recording.

With TiVo, ad-skipping is limited to primetime shows, but that’s because the company employs humans to mark up the recordings. I yet to check out Tablo’s ad-skipper, which relies on computer algorithms to detect commercials, but my experience with Plex DVR’s ad skipper is that it’s not always perfect. In any case, these are great new options for those of us in range of broadcast towers.

CNN joins Pluto TV (sort of): The free streaming service Pluto TV has received a dose of cable news from CNN, though it’s not the same as what pay TV subscribers get. Instead, Pluto’s CNN channel is a collection of clips, strong together into a round-the-clock stream. In that regard, it’s somewhat similar to Pluto’s Fox Sports channel, which mostly airs talk shows instead of live sports.

I wonder, though, if CNN is starting to feel the pressure from streaming news alternatives like CBSN, Cheddar, and Newsy, which offer free live news both inside Pluto TV and elsewhere. Just as we’re now seeing TV networks scramble to build their own streaming services, cable news networks may be realizing that the next generation of viewers will slip away if they don’t stop clinging to TV bundles. (Incidentally, Fox News just brought its own non-cable streaming service to Roku players.)

Sony’s live TV service has really stepped things up over the last year, adding lots more local channel coverage, improving its reliability, and adding neat new features like split-screen channels on Apple TV. And with other services raising their prices, Vue isn’t really at a price disadvantage anymore. It’s worth checking out if you haven’t recently.