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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13523

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On 8/8/2018 at 12:28 AM, elfenix said:

the nice thing about binge watching is you can sub for a month, binge the shit you want, then drop that and go to another service for a month, rinse, repeat.  

Yep.  Determine your #1 HBO show and only subscribe during its 8-12 week run.  Catch up with every other show at that point, and then unsubscribe for another year.  Worst case you bought 3 months, maybe only 2.  

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RedDirtTexan
RedDirtTexan

FWIW.....I tweeted at @YouTubeTV and complained about them not carrying LHN. They wrote back and sent a link asking for suggestions on which channels to work on adding to their lineup. Here's the link

WithoutAClue
WithoutAClue
Nice Guy Eddie
Nice Guy Eddie

For me the best part of cord cutting is not that I saved money, I’ve dropped tv viewing by at least 50%.  If I have to drop it closer to 100%, not sure I will miss it.

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Gator Dave

Gator Dave 14

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Posted
11 hours ago, Shmitty said:

I just cut the cord.  Can anyone help me figure out how to set up streaming to my 3 tvs?  I'm looking to stream 3 separate channels to each tv so i can watch 3 games at once.  

Here was my setup from my cable days  

The answer is...........it depends.

If the games are all on one of the major networks (ABC/NBC/CBS/Fox), all you need is one good OTA antenna in the attic, and route to each tv with a splitter.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00RFLGH5E/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

If the games are on a cable channel (ESPN/Fox Sports/etc), you'll need a separate streaming device for each tv (Firestick/Roku/AppleTV), and a tv package subscription (DirectvNow/YoutubeTV/Sling/PS Vue/Hulu). Most of the subscription services include your local network stations these days (depending where you live), and in that case you wouldn't need the OTA antenna. Depending on the service, you might have to pay for more streams. I have DirectvNow, and you get 2 simultaneous streams standard, a 3rd stream cost an extra $5/month.

 

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dcbc

dcbc 14509

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Vue will support up to five streams simultaneously.  There seem to be weird rules to get there, but it seems like it will give you 3 to start with and two more when you set up one device as the home device.  We have a PS4 and 3 Fire TVs and can stream four at once.  We have a Tablo box to stream our locals from the OTA antenna, which was preferable to running cable.

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Dbeasy

Dbeasy 15093

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I’ve read this whole thread, and scanned it again. I still can’t figure out whether I can cut the cord. Here is our situation.

1. Based in Leander. Don’t know OTA quality there. Spectrum and ATT Fiber are the providers I think.

2. We have Amazon Prime, Netflix on demand and Netflix DVD’s. We will keep all of this.

3. We have one main tv for most viewing. We have two others, where one can just do Netflix and Prime. The other one needs functionality similar to the main tv, but not at the same time as the main TV. It will be on the patio.

4. We are mostly a sport-driven home. LHN, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, FS1, Fox Sports Southwest, are important. We watch college football a lot. We watch every Spurs game every year. Must have.

We like occasionally catching PGA, Astros, Rangers, Mavericks, Stars. Also like certain channels with sports: NBATV, TNT, FS2, TBS, Golf, SEC, BTN, PAC. But, if we had to give those up we could.

5. Outside of sports, no channels are that important. Local channels are important primarily because sports. HGTV, A&E, CNN, Food, TLC, DSC, AMC, NGC, TRAV, APL, AXS we watch a little bit. We could give them all up.

6. We need HBO for Game of Thrones and other things we like. We do like having movie channels on our current U-verse. But we realize we can do Redbox, pay per view, Netflix, etc to replace those.

7. Good quality and fairly low hassle factor are important. This is where I worry cutting the cord won’t work.

What is the best equipment and service configuration for our needs? Can we do this?

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BNB

BNB 100

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Posted (edited)

You should compare services to see what you get on each one.

https://clark.com/technology/tvsatellite-cable/streaming-tv-comparison-best-channel-lineup/

That's a pretty recent article.

How much do you pay now?  

1. Try out a cheap antenna from walmart, and go from there.  https://www.antennaweb.org/  I tend to trust .org sites more than others...

3. You can get a fire tv, or maybe a roku for $20-35 for every tv that will play any app.

5.  Get an Antenna from Walmart and see how your reception is.  Take it back if it sucks (antenna).

6. I have DirectTv now and HBO is $5 a month.  But if you have Att Unlimited all the way, I think it is free and you get $15 off DTV Now. Only Downside is no NBC in Austin. Comes with only a 20 hr DVR, which is fine for me as I catalog tv shows through other means.

7. You should be able to get a free trial to any service to see if you like it. 

 

In my opinion Cord Cutting is mainly about cost, channels,  then ease of use and menu ease, then Dvr(Or higher based on use). 

DVR, I just got a 4 tuner Network TV Tuner for local channels.  I thought setting up a DVR would be easy for that for free, but I was mistaken (It may be on a windows PC, I am trying on my linux server, or Android TV, and there are a lot of things to do, and I will post them when I figure it out.)

Like I stated in another post, the cheapest is a refurbished HDHomerun...

You can buy a HDHomerun, and pay another $35/yr to record whatever you want over the air to your PC for an easy setup.

 

 

Edited by BNB
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BNB

BNB 100

Posted
Posted

I guess they changed the edit time.  

Yeah, I looked into my situation and for me it was the thing to do for me at the time living alone and watching one tv at a time and not using their boxes.

I am grandfathered on the DTVNow plan and get all the channels you mention for $40/mo(was $35 until recently) and I didn't need DVR.

You just have to do the math for you, try out services with a device that lets you and see if you would be happy with that.

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BNB

BNB 100

Posted
Posted (edited)

One other thing to consider.  I call the cable company once a year for my Mom, Grandma, and sister.

They are all overpriced.  So I spend about an hour on each call with ATT or TWC and get their bills down $50+/mo (incredible what they charge).

 

But also, I have a country home with no internet, and TV signal, I recently got Tmobile, so I can now stream my DTVNow at the cabin in the hill country, so that is a huge plus for me, or if you are on the go....

Edited by BNB
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BNB

BNB 100

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Posted
Every at&t fiber plan has a 1tb monthly data limit except the $90 plan. Will over-the-top, Netflix, prime usage put you over this limit? If so, having to pay $90 for internet you might as well just buy U-verse or direct tv.
On a different thread it only takes 4mbs to do a stream, so...
 
I only pay 50 with tax 100mb for Google fiber.
Thats all I need living alone, I could pay 70 for 1gb but why?
It all depends on your cable bill...
 
 

I wouldn't say every. I could pay 70 for the. I have my mom on a lesser plan with att.
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Lobwedgephil

Lobwedgephil 1139

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4 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

Every at&t fiber plan has a 1tb monthly data limit except the $90 plan. Will over-the-top, Netflix, prime usage put you over this limit? If so, having to pay $90 for internet you might as well just buy U-verse or direct tv.

Look for deals, that unlimited plan can usually be had for around $70. 

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dcbc

dcbc 14509

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Posted
13 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

I’ve read this whole thread, and scanned it again. I still can’t figure out whether I can cut the cord. Here is our situation.

1. Based in Leander. Don’t know OTA quality there. Spectrum and ATT Fiber are the providers I think.

2. We have Amazon Prime, Netflix on demand and Netflix DVD’s. We will keep all of this.

3. We have one main tv for most viewing. We have two others, where one can just do Netflix and Prime. The other one needs functionality similar to the main tv, but not at the same time as the main TV. It will be on the patio.

4. We are mostly a sport-driven home. LHN, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, FS1, Fox Sports Southwest, are important. We watch college football a lot. We watch every Spurs game every year. Must have.

We like occasionally catching PGA, Astros, Rangers, Mavericks, Stars. Also like certain channels with sports: NBATV, TNT, FS2, TBS, Golf, SEC, BTN, PAC. But, if we had to give those up we could.

5. Outside of sports, no channels are that important. Local channels are important primarily because sports. HGTV, A&E, CNN, Food, TLC, DSC, AMC, NGC, TRAV, APL, AXS we watch a little bit. We could give them all up.

6. We need HBO for Game of Thrones and other things we like. We do like having movie channels on our current U-verse. But we realize we can do Redbox, pay per view, Netflix, etc to replace those.

7. Good quality and fairly low hassle factor are important. This is where I worry cutting the cord won’t work.

What is the best equipment and service configuration for our needs? Can we do this?

From Leander, you should be able to get all the locals.  The antennas are about 170 magnetic (south) from Leander. 

http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d9038071a2ee8da

Likely, you can just pop a cheap antenna onto the TV and pull them all.  We use Tablo as a DVR for locals and to stream the locals to all of the other TVs in the house.  It has worked well.  We also can watch locals remotely with the Tablo app or with Plex. 

Since you list LHN, your choices are narrowed to PS Vue or DTVnow.  We have had Vue for a couple of years and have been happy with it. 

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Dbeasy

Dbeasy 15093

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From Leander, you should be able to get all the locals.  The antennas are about 170 magnetic (south) from Leander. http://www.tvfool.com/?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=29&q=id%3d9038071a2ee8da

Likely, you can just pop a cheap antenna onto the TV and pull them all.  We use Tablo as a DVR for locals and to stream the locals to all of the other TVs in the house.  It has worked well.  We also can watch locals remotely with the Tablo app or with Plex. 

Since you list LHN, your choices are narrowed to PS Vue or DTVnow.  We have had Vue for a couple of years and have been happy with it. 

 

 

Super helpful post. Appreciate that. I noticed YouTube TV has a lot of sports programming. Too bad no LHN. We watch b-ball, baseball, volleyball and of course football on there.

 

Anyone looked at fubo?

 

Are Spurs on Fox Sports Southwest here in Austin?

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Nice Guy Eddie

Nice Guy Eddie 13523

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Posted

couple of items for potential cord cutters to consider:

  • If you're looking at the live streaming options (Hulu Live, DirecTV Now, Youtube TV, etc.) they usually offer 1 week free trials.  You don't need to cut the cord with your current cable company to try them out.   Sign up for a trial, and then don't use your cable TV for a week.  See what you think of the experience.    (You will need a roku/apple tv, amazon fire stick/google/smart TV) unless you only want to watch on a laptop or ipad.
  • Don't  worry that if you cancel the cable TV, its a permanent decision.  You can go back in 1 week, 1 month, 1 year.   You're not committing to anything.   
  • I've told anyone that if you're comparing a $150 cable package vs a combo of streaming services that cost you <$50, you have to accept that you will lose something.  The question is whether the loss is worth $1200/year for you?  
  • When you have fewer channels, you watch less TV.   And I don't know anyone that doesn't see this as a positive.
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Buzzrock

Buzzrock 14942

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I was all set to try out the 3-month DirecTV Now promo to get the 4K Apple TV, but a) they switched it to 4 months and b) at $40 a month. So now it's a $160 experiment. Still a good deal on a new Apple TV, but my old one works fine and I don't have a 4K TV.

Question about DTVNow and ESPN: even though the lowest tier doesn't have ESPN U, can you still log into the ESPN app and watch those games?

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BNB

BNB 100

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I wouldn't think so. I have created a att.net account under my mom for that issue in the past.

You can always use a temp email like I have bnbspam@gmail.com. Then try out the dtvnow for 14 days, then sign up under your normal email to get the deal...

 

 

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nycHorn

nycHorn 3041

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Back on the Shag, some benevolent gentlemen had some ATT Uverse subaccounts with LHN.  If anyone has one going forward, I'll gladly donate to your beer fund.  Shoot me a PM.

I cancelled cable after last football season.  Right now I'm on Hulu Plus which isn't bad for some live sports, but haven't tried to traverse a CFB season yet.  

Thanks.

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Anton Chigurh

Anton Chigurh 3319

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Posted
Signed up for the DTV Now trial. You can’t pause live tv? I’d rather have that than a DVR. Do any of the streaming services let you pause live TV?


YouTube TV. Also has the best DVR and UI.

The only con for it is no LHN, NFLN, or Discovery Networks (yet). Everything else is the best of the bunch in my opinion.

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Buzzrock

Buzzrock 14942

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Further exploration with DTV Now has yielded more findings.

It would appear that my old Roku in the bedroom doesn’t allow pausing live TV, but it works on my iPhone 8.

My older Apple TV doesn’t have the DTV Now app, but I can stream to it from my phone which works ok. I can even do other stuff on my phone while streaming (like create this post).

It will be interesting to see which devices allow pausing live TV with DTV Now. That’s going to be a hard requirement.

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Godzillatron

Godzillatron 292

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Posted
You should compare services to see what you get on each one.
https://clark.com/technology/tvsatellite-cable/streaming-tv-comparison-best-channel-lineup/
That's a pretty recent article.
How much do you pay now?  
1. Try out a cheap antenna from walmart, and go from there.  https://www.antennaweb.org/  I tend to trust .org sites more than others...
3. You can get a fire tv, or maybe a roku for $20-35 for every tv that will play any app.
5.  Get an Antenna from Walmart and see how your reception is.  Take it back if it sucks (antenna).
6. I have DirectTv now and HBO is $5 a month.  But if you have Att Unlimited all the way, I think it is free and you get $15 off DTV Now. Only Downside is no NBC in Austin. Comes with only a 20 hr DVR, which is fine for me as I catalog tv shows through other means.
7. You should be able to get a free trial to any service to see if you like it. 
 
In my opinion Cord Cutting is mainly about cost, channels,  then ease of use and menu ease, then Dvr(Or higher based on use). 
DVR, I just got a 4 tuner Network TV Tuner for local channels.  I thought setting up a DVR would be easy for that for free, but I was mistaken (It may be on a windows PC, I am trying on my linux server, or Android TV, and there are a lot of things to do, and I will post them when I figure it out.)
Like I stated in another post, the cheapest is a refurbished HDHomerun...
You can buy a HDHomerun, and pay another $35/yr to record whatever you want over the air to your PC for an easy setup.
 
 

Regarding #6, got an email that DirectTV Now has added NBC. Traveling so have not been home to verify.
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Dbeasy

Dbeasy 15093

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Posted

Ok, here is the plan:

1. Att 100 MB/s fiber internet. ~$50/month before taxes. If they are dicks, I’ll get the same from Spectrum for the same price.

2. Three 2nd gen Fire Tv boxes, one for each TV. $70x3=$210. If I buy a smart tv I might drop one of these.

3. Vue or DirectTVNow to get LHN, FSSW at$49-55/month

4 $50 antenna for Local HD channels on one TV purely for backup or reducing steaming load.

I pay $185 all in today for U-verse and movie channels, phone, average internet. I figure I’ll save $30-50 per month. Ok. Not great. And I lose phone.

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3adays

3adays 454

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This is my first month of cutting the cord and my ATT U-verse internet has already gone of over the 1024 GB  and will be $10 for every 50 GB moving forward. I’ve never considered us heavy data users even though my wife works from home. I may need to look at spectrum, the U-verse internet speed sucks anyway. 

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Dbeasy

Dbeasy 15093

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Posted
This is my first month of cutting the cord and my ATT U-verse internet has already gone of over the 1024 GB  and will be $10 for every 50 GB moving forward. I’ve never considered us heavy data users even though my wife works from home. I may need to look at spectrum, the U-verse internet speed sucks anyway. 


That is surprising. I read an article that you’d have to stream 9-12 hours every day to hit the cap, not including whatever other data you use (4 mb/s streams). Of course two to three TVs streaming would mean 3-4 hours per day which is very possible. Ugh. First chink in the armor Ted.
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UnivTex34

UnivTex34 1763

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Yeah, we’ve had the cord cut for 3 years now, before we had Google Fiber, we had TW and they let you look up the stats every month. During football season we were averaging 3-4 TB per month. This was 2 years ago. That is 4 TV’s streaming via Vue/ESPN app. GF does give us stats, but I imagine it’s more at this point. Neither my wife or I work from home.

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BNB

BNB 100

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Posted (edited)

So happy they changed the Guide location to the first on the left for DIRECTVNOW.  It sucked having to scroll all the way over to get to the guide.  It's the little things.

I read they are now going to offer 50 and 100gb plans for people who want that.

The latest update still shows beta dvr though.

FYI for those with Android Tv's.  On my Shield TV, I had to turn on location services for DTV Now to get the latest version to work.  Settings, Apps, Dtvnow, Location Services.

 

 

Edited by BNB
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BNB

BNB 100

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So this is one of my favorite apps for my TVs.

Notifications for Fire TV by Christian Fees.

For Android(there maybe something for IOS). It works on my Fire TV and Android TV.   It allows me to see on my tv's any notifications from my phone (calls, txts, etc) instead of having to pick up my phone constantly.  I can see it would be a pain with 2 users, but living alone I love it.

 

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Dbeasy

Dbeasy 15093

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I chickened out and bought AT&T fiber 100 mbps with U-verse U300 and hbo for $110/month before taxes, and with a $50 account credit. Every cord cutting scenario left me with the same or higher price, fewer channels, concerns about data caps or throttling, and questions about stream quality and remote control button push hassle.

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