Cord Cutters Thread

[Soldierhorn 206]

On 1/9/2019 at 9:34 AM, MoJames said:

I started with Chromecast and it would work for me, but my wife/kids couldn't make the change. 

Got a fire stick and the remote/splash screen makes it beyond easy for them. I don't mind being hooked into Amazon as I'll probably just build up a digital movie collection through them anyway. And as far as pirating movies etc, I'm past that. Was talking to someone the other day about mIRC and sitting on different channels downloading screeners at Moore Hill. Was fun at the time, but now I'd just rather pay 5 bucks to rent it.

You can get different skins/looks for fire/stick.  I loaded my with kodi and then changed its default skin (look).  You just need to find something you will like.  There are all kinds of advice sites on the WWW

[mrhorn 1383]

Cord has been cut!  I've been with AT&T for a long time and made the jump.  I don't have AT&T fiber in my hood yet (even though the wires were put underground months ago and are still sticking out) so I went with Xfinity for Wifi only.  It's almost 8 times faster and $20 less a month.  Added YouTube TV and we're saving almost $200/month.  I'm loving YTTV and the quality of the picture kicks the shit out of what ATT had.  I didn't realize it was so bad with the pixelation.  I have a sub ATT account from family for LHN, HBO, Showtime, etc. 

 

[MNLonghornFUKM 8817]

I have a Tivo Roamio boxed up out in the garage doing nothing. Are you able to get the Roamio to pull in channels without a subscription?  Wasnt able to so when I went cold turkey, I boxed it up. 

Yea the benefit of the ota/apps with the roamio is no monthly subscription like you need with the bolt

[Soldierhorn 206]

10 hours ago, MNLonghornFUKM said:

21 hours ago, Soldierhorn said:

I have a Tivo Roamio boxed up out in the garage doing nothing. Are you able to get the Roamio to pull in channels without a subscription?  Wasnt able to so when I went cold turkey, I boxed it up. 

Yea the benefit of the ota/apps with the roamio is no monthly subscription like you need with the bolt

I'll try it again but I couldnt get it to pull any channels without a subscription. It's worth the effort because the Tivo channel menu and recording is still top notch compared to others.  

what I dont like about Tivo and Channel Master is that both use recording coding (proprietary?) that is not readable by other devices.  It would be nice to record stuff, like a game, and then take the hard drive into my office and play it while I'm working. 

[Soldierhorn 206]

Oh, I forgot to add....

Another reason I boxed up the Tivo was that I wanted it to stream/record to other TVs. At the time, each Tivo mini vox (?) required an additional service charge. That pissed me off and I boxed up the whole thing and bought a Channel Master DVR+.

[MNLonghornFUKM 8817]

Yea i believe the minis require a charge. I used roamio primarily for ota on just 1 tv

[NoName 16354]

On 1/14/2019 at 1:53 PM, HouTex said:

Over the weekend I installed two Roku Ultras with two of my TVs with ethernet connections.  IMO, the ultra is worth it for the RF remote, the earplugs, and the volume control.  They were $89 at Costco.  And I was having doubts about the ethernet adapters that I would need to use for the cheaper wireless-only Rokus.

The combination of YTTV, Philo, and HBO Go are working out very well.

awesome, glad to hear you are enjoying it!

[NoName 16354]

23 hours ago, Soldierhorn said:

$175 for one entertainment option hardly seems worth it. 

If you have no other options, you might IPTV services. I used Players Club IPTV and got all the sports channels I needed including LHN for $5 a month. Also, if you use a variable IP service (VPN) along with an IPTV service, it could easily show you being outside of Texas. I can pick which cities I want my VPN server to connect.

what do you use to watch it on your TV? XBMC/Kodi box?

[NoName 16354]

21 hours ago, MoJames said:

I was just reviewing the locals with both Youtube and PSVue (currently on DirecTV Now) and it appears Youtube has all my locals now, PSVue doesn't. But it doesn't appear you can add on HBO to Youtube? Is that accurate? Also, my wife loves the firestick, so Google might be out anyways.

HBO isn't an add on to YTTV (Showtime and Starz are) but they have HBO Now as a stand alone that is available on basically any box you have - Roku, PS/Xbox, Shield - you can even cast to Chromecast with it.

[Soldierhorn 206]

1 hour ago, NoName said:

what do you use to watch it on your TV? XBMC/Kodi box?

Yeah, I loaded the IPTV on both the FireStick and Firebox.

Actually, come to think of it, I loaded a media player on Fire stick&box and then linked the player to the IPTV service with my login info.  Once it is set up, it works great.  I only searched and saved a few channels from the IPTV within the player because that is all I needed: LHN, ESPN channels, Fox channels such as FOX News, and FOX sports channels, etc.  $5 a month t is well worth it to me but I could see wifey and kiddies not liking the convenience of traditional point and click tv, OTOH, the technology is moving this direction anyway.  

There are literally hundreds of sports channels on kodi add-on channels. You would have to go through those and save the ones you like or add more. 

Edited to add: like several people have said, there several reasons to cut the cord but convenience is generally not one of them.  In the free market, convenience comes at a premium... and it should.  

Edited January 15, 2019 by Soldierhorn

[Archer 474]

We are right on the goal line for cutting the cords after years of me being pissed every time I saw the cable bill. 

 

We picked up a Roku Ultra on Black Friday, I was amazed at how much better the streaming is than through the PS4. We ordered the Amazon Fire DVR and got it set up last week. We have a regular antenna waiting to be installed this week and just signed up for 2 months of Sling to get the free Roku stick. I’m thinking this weekend or next will be the drop date. Looking like about a $150-200 savings.  

[Soldierhorn 206]

4 minutes ago, Archer said:

We are right on the goal line for cutting the cords after years of me being pissed every time I saw the cable bill.

We picked up a Roku Ultra on Black Friday, I was amazed at how much better the streaming is than through the PS4. We ordered the Amazon Fire DVR and got it set up last week. We have a regular antenna waiting to be installed this week and just signed up for 2 months of Sling to get the free Roku stick. I’m thinking this weekend or next will be the drop date. Looking like about a $150-200 savings.  

What do you think of the Amazon Fire DVR?  worth it?  

You will save enough to pay for everything in about 2 or 3 months. I have saved so much money in the last 11 years cutting the cord that I enjoy testing a few products every year. 

[Archer 474]

2 minutes ago, Soldierhorn said:

What do you think of the Amazon Fire DVR?  worth it?  

You will save enough to pay for everything in about 2 or 3 months. I have saved so much money in the last 11 years cutting the cord that I enjoy testing a few products every year. 

We haven’t used it much yet still trying to clean up the cable DVR before returning it. 

The wife went through and set all of her shows to record on it and liked the interface. We streamed the local news right after we set it up and everything was painless.

I was surprised that the antenna it came with was dedicated for the box, I had expected to be able to double it for OTA without WiFi. May have just been an oversight on my part, ordered another $10 ultralight antenna for OTA  

 

I’ll try to remember to update in a few months of use 

 

[mrhorn 1383]

Anyone having trouble using ATT sub accounts to watch LHN or other networks?  It worked when I made it for others, but now that I need it the accounts won't work.   Furk.

[Soldierhorn 206]

For anyone interested, here is a decent article comparing Hulu, Youtubetv, sling, Vue and Directv.  It's not a benchmark comparison but a good overview

Hulu Live vs. YouTube TV vs. Sling vs. Vue vs. DirecTV Now: Face-Off!
https://www.tomsguide.com/us/youtube-tv-vs-cable-tv-replacements,news-24578.html

[Horn_Spanker 524]

Everyplace says the nvidia shield is the best streaming box.  Not wanting to spend $150, I googled nvidia shild alternative.  Of the ones I saw, the Mecool M8S Pro L might be what I'm looking for.  Has wired ethernet and will take a USB external hard drive. 

Any experience with Mecool products or ordering from Gearbest

[tokamak 6431]

We are right on the goal line for cutting the cords after years of me being pissed every time I saw the cable bill. 
 
We picked up a Roku Ultra on Black Friday, I was amazed at how much better the streaming is than through the PS4. We ordered the Amazon Fire DVR and got it set up last week. We have a regular antenna waiting to be installed this week and just signed up for 2 months of Sling to get the free Roku stick. I’m thinking this weekend or next will be the drop date. Looking like about a $150-200 savings.  

How are you using the Amazon DVR with Roku devices? I thought it was only supposed to work with Fire devices.

[Archer 474]

2 hours ago, tokamak said:

How are you using the Amazon DVR with Roku devices? I thought it was only supposed to work with Fire devices.

We’re not. We already had the Roku before we ordered the Recast. We did the combo deal with the Recast, Fire Stick and antennae that basically gave you a free Fire stick. 

 

Looking back we might have been able to save a little by going with the Fire Recast Combo and skipping the Roku. We haven’t tried streaming through the Fire Stick yet but have been blown away by the Roku. I also much prefer the direct app buttons on the Roku remote. 

[rantanamo 143]

7 hours ago, Horn_Spanker said:

Everyplace says the nvidia shield is the best streaming box.  Not wanting to spend $150, I googled nvidia shild alternative.  Of the ones I saw, the Mecool M8S Pro L might be what I'm looking for.  Has wired ethernet and will take a USB external hard drive. 

Any experience with Mecool products or ordering from Gearbest

 

The Shield costs more because it does a lot of things the others can't.  The gaming capabilities alone make it worth the money.

[tokamak 6431]

16 hours ago, Archer said:

We’re not. We already had the Roku before we ordered the Recast. We did the combo deal with the Recast, Fire Stick and antennae that basically gave you a free Fire stick. 

 

Looking back we might have been able to save a little by going with the Fire Recast Combo and skipping the Roku. We haven’t tried streaming through the Fire Stick yet but have been blown away by the Roku. I also much prefer the direct app buttons on the Roku remote. 

Got it. We switched from Fire devices to Rokus a couple years ago because Roku is kinda like "Switzerland" in this market. They tend to get everyone's apps, whereas Google/Amazon/Apple all fight with each other (no official YouTube app on Fire, for example). Generally we've been happy with Roku. Unfortunately, everything I've read online says that the Fire Recast blows away all other OTA DVRs.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13515]

Definitely agree that cord cutting content is about to be come fragmented but a true cord cutter will just decide to stick to 1 or 2 services.  If you’re missing out on a show from another service you will either do without, use someone else’s password, or binge during a free trial.  

I wonder if Hulu is going to become a victim of this change.  Used to be that Hulu had almost everything except cbs shows.  Perhaps they can continue to progress to original content but I find myself rarely turning it on.  If it wasn’t for the the $1/month deal I jumped on last month, I might have cancelled it.  

But then again I feel that my tv watching has decreased significantly over the last 6 months.  

[Okie State 3821]

I'll just reduce my TV watching even further before I pay $100+/month for service again. I only watch a handful of channels/shows as it is.

[Gator Dave 14]

On 1/28/2019 at 12:07 PM, Okie State said:

I'll just reduce my TV watching even further before I pay $100+/month for service again. I only watch a handful of channels/shows as it is.

Exactly. The more they charge, the more people will cut back, and the more people cut back, the more they realize they can live without. If it came down to it, I could survive just fine on the OTA stuff I get for free with a $30 antenna. Just find a way to bootleg the handful of UT games a year that I need cable for. Turns out I don't have the time, nor the want-to anymore, to watch 250+ channels and 8 different tv series spread across 4 different platforms. It's actually extremely liberating.

[GHOSTUSER 361]

Good article in thr WSJ about free streaming services today.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/free-easy-and-legal-how-to-stream-great-tv-and-movies-without-spending-a-dime-11549202400?mod=trending_now_4

Free, Easy and Legal: How to Stream Great TV and Movies Without Spending a Dime

In a world where Netflix, Hulu and HBO subscriptions start to add up, ad-supported streaming TV and movie services don’t cost anything

David PierceFeb. 3, 2019 9:00 a.m. ET

My wish list included live sports, “The Walking Dead,” and all the reality singing shows I could get my mitts on. But I spent most of my time watching... other stuff: old action movies on TNT, cable news, anything and everything HGTV.

As we’ve moved to streaming and swapped those 600 channels for Netflix or Hulu or Amazon Prime, a lot of that other stuff has gone away. HBO, Netflix, Hulu and the rest are competing for high-end, glamorous “peak TV”—which is whatever viewers tend to shell out money to keep watching. 

But what about the reruns, classic films and late-night cartoons? More important: What if I actually don’t want to pay for streaming TV?

Not every streaming service costs $10 a month. Plenty of them offer wide selections of TV shows and movies and don’t charge a dime. Just be prepared to watch a few ads Photo: Emily Prapuolenis/The Wall Street Journal

There’s a whole set of streaming services designed for exactly this purpose that don’t get talked about enough. They rarely have the latest and greatest, but they have huge libraries where you can poke around—I bet they’ll have something you like. They’re the internet’s version of basic cable, offering all the channel-surfing you’ve been missing. And yes, they’re completely free, as long as you don’t mind watching a few ads.

When I say free, I mean it. For the purposes of my testing, a service didn’t qualify as free if you have to pay for something else, like an over-the-air antenna or a cable-TV login. The services on this list don’t cost a nickel, as long as you already have a phone or laptop, or a smart TV or streaming media player such as Roku or Amazon Fire TV. (I’m betting you have one or more of those.) Some don’t even make you set up an account before you start. Just open the app and click Play.

Newsletter Sign-up

There are lots of services worth checking out. Yahoo View has a large collection of currently-airing TV shows. YouTube and Vudu, which mostly offer movies to rent or buy, also have a rotating selection of free titles. Freedive, a new service from Amazon-owned IMDb, has both TV and movies. You can watch anime on Crunchyroll, documentaries on Snagfilms and local news on Stirr.

If you have a library card, you might be able to watch movies through a service like Kanopy or Hoopla, both of which have solid selections. If your library doesn’t already support such a service, you should request it.

The list keeps going, down virtually every interest and genre. But I found four services in particular that have become part of my usual TV-watching circuit:

Like most other free streaming apps, Tubi TV works on smartphones, in web browsers and on the most popular streaming platforms. You don’t need to log in to use it, but if you create an account you can do things like sync watchlists. Photo: Emily Prapuolenis/The Wall Street Journal

Tubi TV. It’s a clearinghouse of every kind of TV and movie, and the closest a free service can come to being Netflix. (There’s even a section called Not on Netflix, which is a pretty good burn.) It scores better in movie selection than TV shows, and offers virtually nothing from the past few years, but its library is enormous. I particularly like the “Weekly Watchlist” section, which shows off some of the service’s best stuff.

My picks: “Up in the Air,” “Memento,” “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Reservoir Dogs,” “Tucker & Dale vs. Evil”

Pluto TV is all about live, linear TV; it packages shows and movies by genre or topic, giving you a never-ending channel of stuff to watch. Photo: Emily Prapuolenis/The Wall Street Journal

Pluto TV. This is live, linear TV for the internet. It’s organized mostly by subject, so you can go to the Action Movies channel and there’s always something on. The on-demand library is fairly anemic, but it’s excellent for mindless channel flipping, and the closest thing you’ll find to the cable experience of our ancestors.

My picks: “Dog the Bounty Hunter,” “Speed Racer,” “Hell’s Kitchen,” “Storage Wars,” “Layer Cake”

Sony’s Crackle service offers more A-list content than you might expect, plus a library of original shows such as ‘Rob Riggle’s Ski Master Academy. Photo: Sony Crackle

Crackle. Sony ’s free streaming service goes heavy on the fast-paced drama and high-stakes epics; it also has more A-list content than any other service I tried. It even has “Seinfeld”! (A few episodes, anyway.) There’s a decent set of original shows in here, too. Of all the services, Crackle was the one that had me clicking Play most often.

My picks: “Superbad,” “Alien,” “The Bourne Ultimatum,” “Whiplash,” “Community”

The Roku Channel is a useful library of free stuff, aggregating content from various services. And you don’t even need a Roku player to use it. Photo: Emily Prapuolenis/The Wall Street Journal

The Roku Channel. Roku’s own offering is really a meta-service, a collection of free content from lots of other channels and services, all playing inside one simple interface. It’s really helpful and—here’s the interesting part—it doesn’t require a Roku box to work. All you need is a web browser or the free Roku app.

My picks: “Paddington,” “Dawson’s Creek,” “Gattaca,” “This is Spinal Tap,” “Walker, Texas Ranger”

One thing most of these services share? Ads. Some services will show you an ad before a show or movie starts, others will take breaks throughout to tempt you with homebuying services and toilet paper. Crackle went to commercial the most in my tests, along with YouTube’s free movie section; both had nine breaks in a two-hour movie. After years of ad-free Netflix binges, the interruptions felt a bit jarring, but it’s nothing compared to cable… and you pay for cable!

What do free streaming services have in common? Ads. You won’t see as many as you did on cable, but prepare for a few minutes of every hour to be spent in commercials. Photo: Emily Prapuolenis/The Wall Street Journal

Tom Ryan, chief executive at Pluto TV, said that because digital ads can be personalized and more effectively targeted, companies don’t need to run as many ads to make money. They are also collecting data on what you like and watch, to improve their personalized recommendations and to serve you more targeted ads. In many cases, companies share that data with studios and producers. It’s good to be aware that even if you don’t sign up for an account, these services are collecting—and sharing—a lot of information about you.

Ultimately, I suspect our streaming life will include a mix of ad-supported and subscription-based services. After all, every time another streaming option appears, the chance I’ll pay for yet another $10-a-month subscription actually goes down.

“The average American household is not going to subscribe to Netflix and HBO and Amazon Prime and Hulu and Disney+ and ESPN+ and YouTube Red and God knows how many other services,” said Farhad Massoudi, Tubi’s chief executive.

A recent study from set-top box maker TiVo found that the average household subscribes to 2.75 services. That number has gone up over time, but it won’t rise forever: The same study found that more than 80% of people who canceled cable did so because of price. But a free service? Free is a nice price.

For more WSJ Technology analysis, reviews, advice and headlines, sign up for our weekly newsletter. And don’t forget to subscribe to our Instant Message podcast.

[Archer 474]

We officially cut yesterday, looks like about $180 net savings per month. We’ve spent the past couple months gathering all of our equipment and trial running everything and were finally ready to pull the plug.  Happy times at the Archer house. 

[Dbeasy 15068]

One item often not considered on cord cutting is home phone service. Many folks like having a separate home phone number. They like using cordless phones while home and want to give out a number other than their cell number occasionally.

My setup is google voice plus a device called obitalk. I have a home number thru google voice for free, and the obitalk device plugs into the cordless phone base and the router to provide dial tone, and the phone service. It’s a one time $35 fee. It’s fairly easy to install and we now have home phone service with no monthly fee.

[KaiserSoze 998]

One item often not considered on cord cutting is home phone service. Many folks like having a separate home phone number. They like using cordless phones while home and want to give out a number other than their cell number occasionally.

I cut mine in 2003 and it has never been an issue.

[Gator Dave 14]

I cut mine in 2003 and it has never been an issue.

Yeah I haven’t had a landline since my college dorm. I can’t imagine why you would need it when you have a phone in your pocket at all times.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13515]

1 hour ago, Gator Dave said:

 

Yeah I haven’t had a landline since my college dorm. I can’t imagine why you would need it when you have a phone in your pocket at all times.

 

Some people have poor cell service at home.  And if you work from home at times, it can be unacceptable that customers, vendors, and coworkers can’t hear every few words from you.     

[Dahobbs 17625]

2 hours ago, Gator Dave said:

 

Yeah I haven’t had a landline since my college dorm. I can’t imagine why you would need it when you have a phone in your pocket at all times.

 

Yeah, last time I had a home line was... uh... 2007? As I recall the only calls were telemarketers and robo-dialers. 

[Francisco 2.0 32395]

15 hours ago, Archer said:

We officially cut yesterday, looks like about $180 net savings per month. We’ve spent the past couple months gathering all of our equipment and trial running everything and were finally ready to pull the plug.  Happy times at the Archer house. 

Congrats on joining the club.

 

My internet package is the same as it was before the cutting ($100 per month) but tv is only $40 vs the $120 or so my last Cox bill was (November '17).

We were pretty cheap as it was at the time with Cox; only 1 HD box, no DVR service, no premium channels....and it was going up another $10 or so in January '18 (and it has gone up again in January '19)

 

 

[Lobwedgephil 1139]

5 hours ago, Dbeasy said:

One item often not considered on cord cutting is home phone service. Many folks like having a separate home phone number. They like using cordless phones while home and want to give out a number other than their cell number occasionally.

My setup is google voice plus a device called obitalk. I have a home number thru google voice for free, and the obitalk device plugs into the cordless phone base and the router to provide dial tone, and the phone service. It’s a one time $35 fee. It’s fairly easy to install and we now have home phone service with no monthly fee.

Very few people still have home phone service. 

[Landomatic 3813]

On 2/4/2019 at 5:03 AM, Dbeasy said:

One item often not considered on cord cutting is home phone service. Many folks like having a separate home phone number. They like using cordless phones while home and want to give out a number other than their cell number occasionally.

My setup is google voice plus a device called obitalk. I have a home number thru google voice for free, and the obitalk device plugs into the cordless phone base and the router to provide dial tone, and the phone service. It’s a one time $35 fee. It’s fairly easy to install and we now have home phone service with no monthly fee.

What the fuck?  Who still has a phone in their house?  How old are you?  Seriously...my 75 year old parents haven't had a home phone for like 5+ years and they hung onto it longer than anyone I've ever known.  Literally the last two homes I've bought haven't even been wired for it.  Home phone?  Really?

 

[MNLonghornFUKM 8817]

Yea not sure where he was going with that hot take

[Gene Parmesan 4008]

On ‎1‎/‎30‎/‎2019 at 1:01 PM, Gator Dave said:

Exactly. The more they charge, the more people will cut back, and the more people cut back, the more they realize they can live without. If it came down to it, I could survive just fine on the OTA stuff I get for free with a $30 antenna. Just find a way to bootleg the handful of UT games a year that I need cable for. Turns out I don't have the time, nor the want-to anymore, to watch 250+ channels and 8 different tv series spread across 4 different platforms. It's actually extremely liberating.

This is really what cord cutting to me was about in the first place.  I never sat out to replicate my cable experience in a cheaper streaming platforms.  I simply was fed up with the cable price and I was only at around $160 / month for both cable/internet 5 years ago when we did it.  It was just a spontaneous decision when I was on the phone trying to renew a contract.  That void is so easily replaced with other (hopefully more productive) stuff.

[HouTex 1878]

1 hour ago, Landomatic said:

What the fuck?  Who still has a phone in their house?  How old are you?  Seriously...my 75 year old parents haven't had a home phone for like 5+ years and they hung onto it longer than anyone I've ever known.  Literally the last two homes I've bought haven't even been wired for it.  Home phone?  Really?

 

My patio home was built in 2015 and it has some kind of barrier that prevents cell service inside so we had to have an internet-based home phone service through Comcast.  We also had an AT&T mini cell tower inside the home that worked sometimes, but was not completely reliable for cell service.  AT&T discontinued that service a few years ago and now with my Orbi wifi mesh network I finally have reliable wifi calling inside my home (Comcast's built-in wifi is not good enough in my home without a mesh network).  We keep the home number because it doesn't cost anything, but we rarely use it now.  So if you don't get good cell coverage in your home and if your wifi doesn't work great and you don't want to spend the $$ for a good mesh system, I can see why some people still use a home phone.

[kevwun 15798]

If you are looking at a mesh system and do anything special with your DNS servers for location masking for Roku or anything else, you have to be careful which one you buy.  Most of them will not let you change your DNS servers or really do anything other than basic routing.  I just went through this and ended up buying a Ubiquiti airCube to allow me to give my wife's office better wifi coverage with an ethernet connection to my router.

Edited February 5, 2019 by kevwun

[Landomatic 3813]

I love my eero

[kevwun 15798]

It is a neat system, but it's limited if you want to tweak anything in regards to how your network operates.

[HouTex 1878]

I like my Orbi system.  It gives us complete wifi coverage in our home and so far it's extremely reliable.  At around $170 from Costco it wasn't cheap, but it was worth it for us.  The location masking issue is a good point, but that's not an issue for me.

[Landomatic 3813]

2 minutes ago, kevwun said:

It is a neat system, but it's limited if you want to tweak anything in regards to how your network operates.

Yeah I really don’t give a shit how it operates...as long as it operates.  Kind of like having an unlocked phone.  I could give two fucks.

[kevwun 15798]

Most people won't, but if you need to be able to do some of that stuff it's better to know it's not going to work for you before you spend $300 or $400 bucks on a mesh system.

[MoJames 8244]

What the fuck?  Who still has a phone in their house?  How old are you?  Seriously...my 75 year old parents haven't had a home phone for like 5+ years and they hung onto it longer than anyone I've ever known.  Literally the last two homes I've bought haven't even been wired for it.  Home phone?  Really?
 

It's pretty nice to have a VOIP setup when you live in the mountains and are on call.

[ztejas 43475]

I pay $50/mo for badass internet. I have Amazon prime. I recently got rid of Hulu and I don't have Netflix. 

I mostly stream what I can find (especially sports, but there are some good websites for animated TV which is most of the TV I watch). 

But, I watch everything on my PC monitor. If I had a nice TV I would probably just chrome-cast everything. 

Most movies I just see what's on Amazon or resort to more frowned upon means. 

[henrygandorf 29192]

ok, so this is happening, and i have a few questions.

we're about to get a new living room tv, so the timing works out to finally ditch spectrum (don't get me started).  we're likely going to get roku (we already subscribe to most streaming services) and either directvnow or youtubetv.  based on what we watch, i think directvnow makes more sense at a comparable price.

here are my questions:

-the guy at best buy was trying to talk me into a tcl tv with roku built in, because my wife likes the ease, and i like not having to teach her how a bunch of remotes work.  i used to be a samsung snob, but we've had a vizio tv in our living room for years and its been a real champ (it actually still works great, we're moving it into the bedroom).  can anyone report on tcl and is the built in roku worth getting a "lesser" tv?  it'll be bigger than our current living room tv so anything will seem better right now.

-directv-now vs youtube-tv?  the channel selection seems to favor directvnow, especially with potential add-ons, which we'll likely do.  but is the lack of dvr storage an issue?  we tend to tape a lot of shit and decide whether we're gonna get to it later.  is the on-demand reliable enough to stop taping every-fucking-thing on tv?

-i like to download a lot of stuff thru torrent sites, and back in our old house, we had a hard drive hooked up to our router and networked everything so that we could access the files through an old xbox.  it was super convenient because i could just download huge files and drop them straight onto that drive.  now i have to either put them on a zip drive and plug that into the tv, or plug my laptop into the tv via hdmi- neither of which is ideal.  if i get a new hard drive to try to replicate the old system, will my tv or roku be able to access this without much setup or know-how?  i don't mind plugging the drive into the router or even into the tv if i have to.

-since we're cutting the cord, we'll need a solution in the bedroom as well, so we'll likely get another roku in there.  i know there are some different versions, but will the most basic one do what we need it to in there?  what is the difference in the super cheap version and the deluxe?  i haven't done much roku research, which honestly is part of the reason i'm considering the tcl.  we're gonna end up saving money on this, but i don't want the ease of access to go away, which is my biggest fear.

 

also for any of you assholes shitting on a home line.  we have one because we live in the hills and cell service is shitty.  i also work primarily from home so need a dedicated landline, and sometimes it's nice for not everyone to have access to my mobile number.  only close friends or our parents use it outside of work calls, and when bundled, is pretty inexpensive.  i've never heard of obitalk - but i like the idea of completely free home phone service.  is this something i should be looking into?

Edited February 7, 2019 by henrygandorf

[elfenix 34310]

may have been previously answered but since these things seem to change all the time, what are the options for getting the astros? 

[henrygandorf 29192]

16 minutes ago, elfenix said:

may have been previously answered but since these things seem to change all the time, what are the options for getting the astros? 

i used reddit last year for free streams, and i'm never going back to anything mlb related (extra innings, mlb.tv, etc).

[elfenix 34310]

2 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

i used reddit last year for free streams, and i'm never going back to anything mlb related (extra innings, mlb.tv, etc).

probably should have said this is for a friend who probably won't do anything like that.  i get mlb.tv from tmobile for gratis every year and set my VPN to los angeles.

Edited February 7, 2019 by elfenix

[Longhorn94 2452]

32 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

because my wife likes the ease,

whoa, whoa, whoa... you got married?

[Dahobbs 17625]

42 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

ok, so this is happening, and i have a few questions.

we're about to get a new living room tv, so the timing works out to finally ditch spectrum (don't get me started).  we're likely going to get roku (we already subscribe to most streaming services) and either directvnow or youtubetv.  based on what we watch, i think directvnow makes more sense at a comparable price.

here are my questions:

-the guy at best buy was trying to talk me into a tcl tv with roku built in, because my wife likes the ease, and i like not having to teach her how a bunch of remotes work.  i used to be a samsung snob, but we've had a vizio tv in our living room for years and its been a real champ (it actually still works great, we're moving it into the bedroom).  can anyone report on tcl and is the built in roku worth getting a "lesser" tv?  it'll be bigger than our current living room tv so anything will seem better right now.

-directv-now vs youtube-tv?  the channel selection seems to favor directvnow, especially with potential add-ons, which we'll likely do.  but is the lack of dvr storage an issue?  we tend to tape a lot of shit and decide whether we're gonna get to it later.  is the on-demand reliable enough to stop taping every-fucking-thing on tv?

-i like to download a lot of stuff thru torrent sites, and back in our old house, we had a hard drive hooked up to our router and networked everything so that we could access the files through an old xbox.  it was super convenient because i could just download huge files and drop them straight onto that drive.  now i have to either put them on a zip drive and plug that into the tv, or plug my laptop into the tv via hdmi- neither of which is ideal.  if i get a new hard drive to try to replicate the old system, will my tv or roku be able to access this without much setup or know-how?  i don't mind plugging the drive into the router or even into the tv if i have to.

-since we're cutting the cord, we'll need a solution in the bedroom as well, so we'll likely get another roku in there.  i know there are some different versions, but will the most basic one do what we need it to in there?  what is the difference in the super cheap version and the deluxe?  i haven't done much roku research, which honestly is part of the reason i'm considering the tcl.  we're gonna end up saving money on this, but i don't want the ease of access to go away, which is my biggest fear.

 

also for any of you assholes shitting on a home line.  we have one because we live in the hills and cell service is shitty.  i also work primarily from home so need a dedicated landline, and sometimes it's nice for not everyone to have access to my mobile number.  only close friends or our parents use it outside of work calls, and when bundled, is pretty inexpensive.  i've never heard of obitalk - but i like the idea of completely free home phone service.  is this something i should be looking into?

Don't buy a TCL tv for the Roku. Buy the TV you actually want. That may be a TCL as they can be a good value buy, but there is no reason to strap yourself to an inferior TV if you don't have to. Go to Rtings.com to help make your decision. 

The Roku Stream Stick+ is very nice and can be had for $60 (that is what I bought it for at Microcenter).  It has 4k, hdr, a remote, and an enhanced wifi receiver. The next model, the Roku Ultra, has a headphone jack, which some people really like. Not worth the $30 bucks for me.  Oh, and the remote can control your TV too (or at least things like volume and power). You don't really need much else at that point because you'll be starting on the Roku screen everytime. 

I like youtube tv. Do the free the trials and see what works best for you. 

As for the hard-drive, it is going to have to be hooked up to a computer somewhere in order to be networked. You can setup a plex server to distribute whatever you put on there. And you can install the Plex app on your Roku to access it. It isn't complicated, but it isn't quite as easy as you made it sound. 

 

Edited February 7, 2019 by Dahobbs