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Ready to cancel cable

Rod

Rod

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Staff member
Joined
Jan 4, 2001
Messages
10,327
My cable bill continues to go up, and I don't  need so many channels.  I am thinking of signing up with Sling TV, which offers a fair selection of channels for only $20/mo.  Anyone use it?  Any alternatives aside from Netflix and Hulu?
 
Thanks! :)
 
I already was paying for Netflix/Hulu/Amazon Prime/MLB.TV. I really haven't missed cable.
 
Between Netflix and Amazon Prime, my Marine keeps up quite well.
 
Who are you going to use for internet service?  
 
We're pretty much screwed around here; Comcast is by far the best game in town for performance.....but the cost is painful if you don't have cable and phone to boot.
 
If it were not for the sports shows...it'd be gone. 
 
Haven't we had this thread every few months for like 4 years? 
 
Sling is cool, but be aware that you can't watch it on 2 devices at the same time.
 
We dropped cable a while back and only use Netflix/Amazon Prime/Chromecast to watch pretty much anything with no commercials.
 
I pay for the AT&T Power level of internet and I'm quite happy with the performance as we can stream a HD movie and never deal with buffering issues.
 
Cable less for close to 4 years, can't remember. Between Apple TV, Roku and Chromecasd....we're set with Netflix/Amazon/etc. movies on the Apple TV are a little more expensive, but we always forget to return the dn Redbox movies by 9 anyway, so it's a wash.
 
I have a VPN router set up here so I still get US programming. My family mostly watches anime so we have funimation, crunchyroll, Netflix and currently use my brothers HBOGO until we can get eh HBONow feature working. 
 
I have a special package from Fios that gives my local TV, HBO (with HBO Go) and 25/25 internet. Then I use Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. <$100/ month when all is said and done.  Happy as a clam. I have done MLB.tv in years passed, but haven't signed up yet this year and don't really miss it all that much (mostly listen to ball games anyway).  
 
We have an Amazon Fire TV in the living room and a Roku upstairs. PBS also has a pretty good app for both. It has a ton of content (including a bunch of back episodes of This Old House). I even bought a little $40 digital tuner that has DVR capabilities. I plug in a USB thumb drive and I can record football games in the winter.  
 
Pipe Smoker said:
I have a special package from Fios that gives my local TV, HBO (with HBO Go) and 25/25 internet. Then I use Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. <$100/ month when all is said and done.  Happy as a clam. I have done MLB.tv in years passed, but haven't signed up yet this year and don't really miss it all that much (mostly listen to ball games anyway).  
 
We have an Amazon Fire TV in the living room and a Roku upstairs. PBS also has a pretty good app for both. It has a ton of content (including a bunch of back episodes of This Old House). I even bought a little $40 digital tuner that has DVR capabilities. I plug in a USB thumb drive and I can record football games in the winter.  
Click to expand...
 
Which tuner did you get and are you happy with it?  I bought a Viewtv At-163 for $35 in March and I am not crazy about it.  It freezes pretty regularly and I either have to wait several minutes for it to reboot or unplug it.  I'll be watching a recording and it will go blank.  Sometimes starting the recording over works and sometimes not.  I tried some USB2 thumb drives which didn't work (I expected that though).  I spent another $20 on a 64GB USB3 thumb drive that seems ok.
 
I shut off Directv about a year ago and now have Netflix, Amazon, and OTA TV.  I was paying about $130 a month with no premium channels.  I have 6Mb Uverse for internet which has been fine for streaming on a couple of devices.  That's my only internet option other than satellite which really isn't an option.
 
I expect the media content delivery landscape to change over the next several years.  I use a friends Comcast login credentials to watch HBOGO and Golf Channel since you have to have pay TV for most of those.  You can watch some network programming (CBS for one)  without pay TV but they make you sit through the commercials.
 
I expect that soon as more people abandon pay TV, HBO and the others will start offering their own streaming pay service or they will bundle with existing streaming providers.  They will no longer be willing to abide by the limitations imposed on them by pay TV.
 
LarryH said:
 

Which tuner did you get and are you happy with it?  I bought a Viewtv At-163 for $35 in March and I am not crazy about it.  It freezes pretty regularly and I either have to wait several minutes for it to reboot or unplug it.  I'll be watching a recording and it will go blank.  Sometimes starting the recording over works and sometimes not.  I tried some USB2 thumb drives which didn't work (I expected that though).  I spent another $20 on a 64GB USB3 thumb drive that seems ok.
Click to expand...
 
I have the Homeworx HW-150PVR. I use a cheap 32gig Sandisk thumb drive and I have had no troubles recording. I can get one full length football game and a handful of TV shows before space becomes an issue, but I typically DVR things that I intend to watch as soon as I get home. With an OTA antenna the thing is absolutely fantastic. It names and numbers the channels properly. It pulls program information as well as a program guide, so you can actually schedule recordings by the show (rather than by date and time). 
 
The problem I have is on Verizon's end. Since I pay for local service I can use Verizon's QAM channels. Verizon's QAM doesn't play nicely with any tuner. It initially downloads more than 300 channels, most of which don't have any content. The other problem is that Verizon doesn't broadcast any information over QAM, not even channel name, and, of course, none of the channels are numbered in a manner that makes sense, they're all 8 digits with a random hyphen thrown in for fun. Even when you manually name channels, the names will disappear after a while. 
 
Pipe Smoker said:
 
 

Which tuner did you get and are you happy with it?  I bought a Viewtv At-163 for $35 in March and I am not crazy about it.  It freezes pretty regularly and I either have to wait several minutes for it to reboot or unplug it.  I'll be watching a recording and it will go blank.  Sometimes starting the recording over works and sometimes not.  I tried some USB2 thumb drives which didn't work (I expected that though).  I spent another $20 on a 64GB USB3 thumb drive that seems ok.
Click to expand...
 
I have the Homeworx HW-150PVR. I use a cheap 32gig Sandisk thumb drive and I have had no troubles recording. I can get one full length football game and a handful of TV shows before space becomes an issue, but I typically DVR things that I intend to watch as soon as I get home. With an OTA antenna the thing is absolutely fantastic. It names and numbers the channels properly. It pulls program information as well as a program guide, so you can actually schedule recordings by the show (rather than by date and time). 
 
The problem I have is on Verizon's end. Since I pay for local service I can use Verizon's QAM channels. Verizon's QAM doesn't play nicely with any tuner. It initially downloads more than 300 channels, most of which don't have any content. The other problem is that Verizon doesn't broadcast any information over QAM, not even channel name, and, of course, none of the channels are numbered in a manner that makes sense, they're all 8 digits with a random hyphen thrown in for fun. Even when you manually name channels, the names will disappear after a while. 
 
Click to expand...
 
I'll have to check into that one.  I don't have to worry about getting FiOS.  I'm not sure I'm ever even going to get U-verse TV.  Thanks for the reply.
 
I've also been thinking about cutting the cord, but our internet is so-so here in MS, and there isn't a ton of competition. That said, I thin we'll give it a go. I like that you can get the $5 extra package for sports with Sling, and cancel it after you've used it (I'm only interested in it for football). 
 
The only real negative I see with Sling is the lack of a firm cloud or on demand service for all channels. I think some, like AMC, offer a 3 day replay feature or on demand, but it is confusing because there's some shows that are blacked out. This lists them all LINK
 
if it was up to me, I'd  have cut it a long time ago.  Between cell  phones cable bills, we could have a really nice new car!  I have a slingbox (which is not sling tv but made by the same people  I think) and its a good unit so long as you have a good  internet connection anyways.
 
Just for the record cable sucks especially getting anything repaired with Uverse.  They can kiss my hairy bung. 
 
Sorry........was in automated hell trying to figure out how to get a new main cable box.  I told the guy "Justin" that the main box was not working and he proceeded to ask a bunch of inane questions about the box, the system and was trying to diagnose the problem.....  I told him at the beginning of the conversation that box had gone bad....1 hour of stupid crap.  End result.....mailing me a new box.
 
Thinking about signing up with Sling, for just a few channels (ESPN mainly).  Rod, did you ever sign up and if so, what's your experience?
 
I got rid of Directv a couple months ago and haven't missed it. Bought a cheap antenna for local channels and it works great. I have a small desktop computer hooked up to the TV for Netflix, Hulu and surfing the web. I download any movies I want to watch. Haven't missed the $110 bill at all.
 
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