How do you get TV over the internet?

Me ^ | 11/4/18 | Rancher

[OregonRancher]

If we cut the cord, what is the best way to get TV via the web?

[kalee]

Ping

[PA-RIVER]

I also loaded the amazon fire stick app to my phone, and I can use my phone to work as a voice enabled remote.

[CedarDave]

It sounds like you are in the same predicament as me or maybe a bit worse. CenturyLink offers 12 mbs in my area which would probably be too slow for streaming. Xfinity offers high speed cable with internet but is probably costly if I want only internet.

Question - do cable companies up their rates if you use their internet to get competing TV via these services?

[JPII Be Not Afraid]

Directtv Now and the fire tv stick (4k). Works great! $40 per month.

[frogjerk]

HILARIOUS FAT FINGER!

[ProtectOurFreedom]

No computer hooked to your TV. But your "streaming device" will hook to the TV and to your Internet. All the streaming devices come with a dedicated remote control. Here is a Roku Express Streaming Player with the Roku remote:

We have a Sharp Roku TV with Roku built in. You just use this remote to control the TV and content from any source. We have another Sony TV with a Roku Ultra attached to it and the Internet. It's a slightly bigger box than the Express, but the same remote control:

If you have Spectrum cable in your area, look at their "Spectrum TV Choice" service. They deliver a subset of cable channels to you over the Internet. We buy our Internet service from them with the TV Choice product. You get a basic cable line-up and you get to choose 10 additional a la carte channels. The Internet and TV Choice run us about $70 per month which is a good deal.

[Grimmy]

I use Roku. It plugs into the TV’s usb slot. It comes with lots of free shows and movies to watch.

I also sub to Spectrum’s low end package which gives me all the local channels plus 10 channels (not premium like showtime, etc) that I picked for 21 bucks a month.

[tje]

I love Perry... My wife thinks otherwise.

[UB355]

We went with Spectrum TV choice. 10 cable channels and all locals. We replaced 2 set top boxes with roku streaming sticks. We kept one 6 channel DVR to be able to skip commercials. lowered cable bill by $56.00 a month.

[TomGuy]

I have Cox cable and internet. I have not asked about internet-only costs, but have read previous postings that claim Cox raised their rate for internet-only.

My mid-level cable is 50 (upped to 100 and frequently gets 120) Mbps with 1 Tb of upload/download. That part of my cable bill is about $70. I purchase my own router/modem.

Satellite, mobile and phone company cannot even come close.

[upchuck]

We solved it by not watching TV.

More FReepers not watching TV. Good!! At least 90% of TV, anymore, is garbage.

I've not watched TV since 2008 (10 years) and feel no worse for it.

I can stay very informed by reading threads here on FR (oh, by the way, have you contributed to the FReepathon yet?) and reading online newspapers like NY Post, etc.

[OregonRancher]

Service here is 90$, internet is 100mbps

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Unfortunately most of the streaming services have morphed into what they were trying to replace. Ala carte is still a myth.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

We chose Spectrum TV Choice, too. Happy with the service overall, but there are three pains in the neck:
1. You cannot enter a channel number and jump to it with the Roku remote. You have to scroll up/down through all channels.
2. You cannot permanently exclude channels from the list. You have to see every channel all the time in the lineup.
3. There are no channel filters, so I cannot exclude junk that we will never watch (shopping, jewelry, local high school sports, etc). Nor can I apply a filter to see “Sports” only or “Movies” only.
4. Channels show up 2, 3 and sometimes even 4 times in the lineup. Spectrum says that’s because you see SD, HD and some other “D”. When channels are duplicated that many times, it makes it harder to scroll up/down through everything (see #1 above).

[Aevery_Freeman]

Snow and ghosting are analog problems, Pixelation is the digital equivalent especially during bad weather and/or solar events (not at all uncommon).

I'm about 35 miles from the broadcast area and have a couple of dozen "keeper channels" but there are more.

[vannrox]

There are a bunch of ways.

When I lived in the USA, I bought a TV adapter card. I put it in the desktop computer, and hooked my Dish Satellite to it. later, when I moved from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, I connected it to the high speed DSL directly and used a service.

In China, I use torrents for all my movies. I just go to a place like PirateBay or some other similar site. Then unpack the torrent using VUZE and go ahead and watch. Torrents take some time. Rare movies might take a week to completely download, where fresh releases can be downloaded in a minute. The problem with torrents is that sometimes you end up getting a movie in French or Italian. Kinda weird watching Die Hard in Russian. LOL.

For most of my viewing pleasure, I use Chinese APPS. They are sort of like Netflix only instead of 99% being American movies and shows it is a mixture of movies and shows from all over the world. All with Chinese subtitles.

With Netflix you pay $5 a movie. With the APP you pay $5 a year. SO I am a member of two or three such apps. It gives me better coverage. For instance, I get a great movie selection with one, but have to use the other to watch the Walking Dead. In general, once you join the APP, most American movies are free. However, you won’t find obscure or unusual movies. Those you will need to torrent.

[Do_Tar]

You can also get a free Kodi install for your PC. It runs the apps as an android box. Great to play with before buying a dedicated box.
In fact a friend ended up just plugging his laptop into the TV.

[Georgia Girl 2]

Get a Rokku box.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

I had actually built a $600 home theater box to run SageTV about ten years ago. I ran KODI on it for awhile, and it worked fine.

The advantage of the Android TV box over that was my SageTV box had a 350 Watt power supply, so it was costing a lot more than the Android TV box to run since the TV box is basically using cell phone componentry.

[Dartoid]

Bump