Posted on 09/19/2017 7:45:45 PM PDT by Empireoftheatom48
I need some options to get rid of my Direct TV service.
“what I learned is to not even desire the content anymore”
This.
My “to watch” queue is growing faster than I can, or want to, watch.
Insofar as I do occasionally watch things, I have the list already full of good stuff.
Staggering the amount of dreck available. If there’s commercials involved, reconsider your life choices and take up gardening. Or drinking. Yes, ad-driven schedule-and-channel-based TV is. that. bad.
Get away from ads long enough, and you won’t stand them any more.
Hulu Live includes Fox News, Fox Business, several sports channels, and many other channels (main networks, USA, TNT, FX, etc).
Just call them up and cancel. Be prepared for lots of phone calls begging you to come back. My response that their programming had turned all gay and I wasn’t allowing any of it in my house any more. They eventually gave up calling me.
This only works if you have a yard and no Homeowners Association to answer to:
I live out in the middle of nowhere, the nearest cable service is 15 miles away, there are no broadcast stations within reach without a 250 ft tall antenna mast.
But I can receive over 3,000 channels with my Free To Air satellite system; I don’t pay any bills. I have about $600 invested in equipment, most of it in the 6 ft C band dish and controller. But if you are a good scavenger you can do it for nearly nothing as there is lots of functional old equipment out there that people will give away just to get rid of it.
I could double the number of channels I could receive with a larger C-band dish and chopping down a few trees.
You can get into KU band satellite and receive about 1500 channels for much less money ($200 or less), with a 3 ft diameter dish, or even less. Some even re-purpose Dish Network/ Direct TV dishes to work with Free to Air, although that is not ideal.
My only problem is that I am not a linguist, and half the channels I can receive are in a languages I don’t understand.
Besides the free entertainment there is one really cool thing: I can receive several network news RAW Feeds.. The news and video directly from cameras and reporters in the field, before the producers and talking head anchors make their little edits and changes to fit their agenda. .
I paused Dish, and have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Britbox, Acorn and the ton of channels Roku offers.
I eventually decided that PS Vue had a better deal. For $35 (now $45) I can get the ESPN's, Fox News, FS and Big Ten Network plus the NBA, NFL and MLB Networks.
wow, all these people saying how much money they are feeding the beast. I pay this much and I pay that much, all the while you are still feeding the beast that truly is our enemy.
Sure, I love all that entertainment though, I still want to watch stuff from time to time but I dont want to give my hard earned money to Hollywood in any way, shape, or form.
Here is your solution and all you need is a good wifi connection. Buy an Amazon Firestick for $39 or less when on sale. Watch and follow the easy instructions on how to “side load KODI on to a Firestick.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sideload+kodi+amazon+fire+tv
Once installed you learn your way around fairly quickly. I find most anything I want to watch on Exodus, anything from movies in the theater to old time classics to all 30+ seasons of The Simpsons. Anything such as original programming from Netflix, Hulu, et all.... its all there to punch up and stream. I like Phoenix Sports and Sports Devil to get every MLB, NFL, NHL, NBA, collection, semi pro, any friggin soccer game you want is there too.
After your $39 investment for the stick and your 10 minutes to load Kodi, you are done, no monthly fees or nothing....
Enjoy the programs
STARVE THE BEAST
Firestick with Kodi. You will be glad you did. I got rid of a $125/mo satellite bill and havent missed a thing yet.
I just got directvnow...for ten bucks a month and no contract for 60 plus channels. If you have ATT unlimited data cell package that’s the price you’ll pay...pretty good deal really. Also check KODI...a little tricky to install but once you get it free movies and tv.
I think we are ready to cut the cord.
We got a Roku. We have Playstation Vue with the ESPN sports pass option.
We have Amazon Prime and Netflix. We will add on HBO when there’s a series we want to watch.
I haven’t canceled Direct TV, but I think I am this week.
I have a ROKU4 box now and use a over the air tv antenna and have internet service. I pay $25 for SlingTV, $42 for internet, Netflix is $9/month, Amazon $8/month. One time cost of $99 for the ROKU4.
I am paying half of the $144/month I paid for cable and getting far more choices. BTW you do not need to spend more for high speed internet. I had 25mb download speed with no issues. The cable company keeps upping my speed with no additional cost as ATT now competes with their fiber optic cable. I now have 70mb for the same price.
The tv set should have hdmi and usb ports. The more the better. My LG has 3 each. There are adapters if you need more. Using a Roku box means using the tv remote you have to switch to another HDMI input. You see this on the tv screen and use the left or right button to select HDMI1 or HDMI2 etc. This is as easy as a few clicks. Then using the Roku remote you press the Home button and see the Roku listings. Then use the arrow buttons on the Roku remote to manuver around. It is very easy. The hard part is deciding what to watch.
I use an external hard drive and plug it into the usb port on the tv and watch the shows and photos I have on it as well.
The Roku 4 comes with a easy tv remote.
Roku itself is the size of a hockey puck. It plugs into a hdmi port on the tv and a ac outlet and setups in a few minutes. It can also connect using wifi. I do not use the earphones as they run down the battery on the remote.
You can sign up for the various FREE services using your computer and it then talks to the Roku box. https://www.roku.com
See what’s on. Click on the headings near the top. There are over 4,000 channels to choose from.
https://www.roku.com/channels#!browse/movies-and-tv/by-popular
Google: Popular Roku channels
I have: tubitv, Crackle, XTV (Lots of tv shows. google this to install), Netflix, Amazon, Fox Business, Foxnews, Popcornflix (many movies), TWIT (tech help) and SLINGTV (I pay $25/month and get all of cable I had before plus many other channels and 4 EPIX movie channels.
SLINGTV has the following on my package for Tuesday:
Fox West - MLB Baseball, Angels Live, World poker tour,
Fox Prime Ticket - College football, UFC
NBCSN <-looks like a S - Poker after dark with host Leeann Tweeden, Fishing with Roland Martin, other fishing shows, Nascar Whelen, other Nascar shows, English soccer, horse racing, Motors, Hee Haw and Grand Ole Opry
FS1 and FS2, boxing and soccer and UFC, Big3 basketball, baseball and various sports talk shows.
Record the shows for later viewing: Playon $50
http://www.playon.tv
Scripts to use with it: http://playonscripts.com
The plugins/scripts to try with playon are:
1channel (free) for movies and tv shows
projectfreetv (free) movies and tv shows
superusvox ($5 one-time fee) for live cable
Netflix and Amazon Prime for more tv and movies. I buy alot thru Amazon so I have their Prime shipping which also gets you access to the tv and movies and music they offer. Many for free.
Warner shows from 1920 onwards http://instant.warnerarchive.com
Use your over the air tv antenna to pick up the normal stations plus several others that you thought were on cable but are actually broadcast. Your local stations may be broadcasting additional stations with old movie and tv shows. See below.
TV Listings
http://www.tvguide.com/listings
They may be broadcasting in your area. Old movies and tv shows.
Antenna TV
COZI tv
METV
GETTV
TV antennas - I use the Mohu Leaf - $40
http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/watch-free-1080p-tv-with-these-indoor-antennas/
“from movies in the theater”
You didn’t tell the rest of the story ...
As long as the dish is 1 meter or less ( which will probably exclude most C band ), the homeowners association can screw themselves. Federal law supercedes any homeowners association agreements ( unless you live in a designated historic district). 47 CFR § 1.4000:
(a)(1) Any restriction, including but not limited to any state or local law or regulation ... or any private covenant, homeowners' association rule or similar restriction on property within the exclusive use or control of the antenna user where the user has a direct or indirect ownership interest in the property, that impairs the maintenance, installation, or use of ...
(i) an antenna that is designed to receive direct broadcast satellite service, including direct-to-home satellite services, that is one meter or less in diameter ...
(ii) an antenna that is designed to receive video programming services via multipoint distribution services ... and is one meter or less in diameter or diagonal measurement ...
(iii) an antenna that is designed to receive television broadcast signals; or
(iv) a mast supporting an antenna described in [the above paragraphs]; is prohibited to the extent it so impairs.
Stay away from Amazon Fire. Make sure your router kicks total a$$. Playstation Vue.
Yeah, even my six foot dish is considered marginal for C-band. Experimenters pull in some of the strongest C-band transponders with a 4 ft dish, but it is a chore, and unreliable in less than perfect weather. The closer to the equator you are, the smaller the dish you can get by with.
Whether using Exodus can be considered illegal or not largely depends on the region you currently reside in. In countries such as UK, USA, Canada, Germany, France, or Australia, streaming movies from pirated sites is considered a crime. Many of the movies and TV shows you see listed on Exodus come from such websites. Therefore, you have two option in terms of Exodus legality. Either stop using Exodus all together, or use VPN to encrypt your Internet traffic and stay on the safe side.
https://thevpn.guru/is-exodus-legal-safe-kodi-xbmc-addon/
We keep calling Comcast and telling them “we quit.” They then lower the price (again) for another 12 months. We are now at $145 (including all taxes and fees) for basic cable + HD plus phone plus Internet (100 Mbps down; 10-15 up). My wife won’t entertain the thought of ditching ESPN and her reality and home shows (what a waste of good money!). All my content comes from Netflix and Amazon Prime streaming, DVDs and BluRays from the Library and DVDs and BluRays from Netflix (I have their streaming + disc plan).
At the beginning of the year I added a Synology DiscStation Networked Attached Storage unit with 2 x 8 TB drives in a custom RAID configuration. It stores all my ripped shows, movies, and songs. I reripped all my old CD collection into Apple Lossless format for the home music system. I use Plex as the user interface into the Synology server — it is a fantastic system. It takes some time and dedication to rip all the discs to the server, but it is great having my own personal Netflix-like service in the house. I got so fed up with not being able to old movies on Netflix and Amazon I went the home server route. I just turn on the home theater system, choose the Synology HDMI input on the home theater, and there it is.
And we found other things to do with our time. Reading, playing games together with the kids, all kinds of wholesome stuff.
20 wonderful years without the TV, and I don't miss it at all.
Do you get the History Channel?
I had signed up for Playstation VUE at 55/month, got my Century Link internet lowered to 55/month and got 2 antennas from Amazon. Also lowered my cell phone to 40/month.
But no History channel that I could find and figured this would drive DH nuts. So in the end Comcast - which I basically hate - came up with internet including TV (and History Channel!) for $100/month for 1 year. Sigh...the convenience factor ended up winning.
I recently got Direct TV and am paying $95/mos, which includes high-speed Internet. I wanted to keep the ability to record stuff. All the Starz and HBO will be going away soon. We got Roku for Netflix and other movie stuff.
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