trying to cut the cable

vanity ^ | 3/13/21 | Dad was my hero

[Dad was my hero]

I'm considering dropping cable, cutting the cord so to speak. My cable provider (Spectrum) has been to my house 3 times over the issue of dropped audio and pixelation. The issues have been so pronounced that it can make some shows almost unwatchable. They are coming again today but I spoke with a neighbor that also has Spectrum and he said they have the same issue, so I am sure it is somewhere in their lines feeding my development.

I'm not much interested in going to a satellite dish, I've had both dish and direct TV before. I dropped dish eventually because of loss of signal and they wanted to charge me to fix it. It later turned out the issue was the base mounting came loose d/t poor installation. But I went to Direct and had the pixelation issue with them and any storms. Being in FL, we have a lot of storms during the afternoon and I don't want to have shows I'm watching interrupted with pixelation again.

I have 3 TVs and 3 DVRs (probably only need one DVR now). What I am looking to replace is the channel lineup AND the recording function I had with the DVRs. I bought a Roku streaming stick plus and got that functioning last night. It appears that I can get almost all of the channel lineup if I download the AT&T app within Roku. My questions are:

Can I record (to a cloud maybe) shows I want to see? How? Can I record one show while watching a second or record two shows while watching something else I recorded or a third show live? How?

I still having 3 TVs, do I need to get two more Rokus to use the other TVs? Only one TV in the house is a "smart" TV, the other two are older flat screens but not "smart". The Roku is currently on the smart TV. Do I need to buy two more Roku sticks to use on those TVs? Do I also need to get two more AT&T subscriptions?

So how does this work, I'm not a highly technical person.

[Timmy]

Been through Hulu and Sling. I settled on Fubotv.com. I think it’s the best content, presentation, and price of the TV streaming services.

[Hootowl99]

Thanks for the tip on IMBD.

Cheers

[logi_cal869]

If you’re lucky enough to have multiple high speed internet providers, price them all and I bet you might find you stick with Spectrum.

The difference between ‘cable tv’ and streaming is that ‘cable’ is received by Spectrum via satellite and piped to your box. The streaming originates absent that medium.

We ‘cut the cord’ - so-to-speak - almost 15 years ago now it seems, and have few-to-no buffering problems.

The issue with ‘cutting the cord’ is analogous to ‘dieting’; you won’t miss it after it’s gone. Some shows I can find online posted by others.

I don’t miss it. AT ALL.

Dump the cable; go streaming. Buy a Roku and explore your options

[Starboard]

Thank you for the helpful info and recommendations. We have Amazon Prime which offers a lot of free movies but that’s basically the only streaming service we get.

The barrage of commercials and PC garbage on cable drives me crazy. I’m going to check out IMDB as I can endure a few ads by simply muting them.

We don’t watch series programming. Mainly Fox Business, Tucker on Fox, and a smattering of shows on History, Discovery, and a few other channels.

If you’re interested in learning about a wide variety of subjects check out the Great Courses which provide college level lectures on numerous topics (about 280 courses). The monthly subscription fee is just $7.99 via my cable provider, but it may vary depending on how you access the service. Its a great bargain.

[Pagey]

We finally cut the Spectrum Boxes from our home in Jan,I don’t need Fox News or Sports anymore. Bought a Roku tvs + have Roku + Hulu only. Roku has Newsmax, America’s Voice w/ Steve Hammond Warroom + plenty of other whole channels to Wade through. We got the Fastest New Router through Spectrum ,and only get charged for that by them per month. HUGE TIP: Keep your present Spectrum Box until you have decided WHICH Streaming Services you choose.( Take your time reading online + decide what You REALLY WANT/NEED to see on your TV. ) Only when you’re 100% satisfied w/ your New Setup (and Not Until Then) THEN you Cut off your Cable company, if it rolls over an extra month, trust me, it’s worth it. Make sure if you buy a new TV that it has at least 3 HDMI Slots on it, at a minimum. My bill used to be 201.00 per month,for the last 16 years, now I’m down to under 80.00 per month w/ Roku on 4 Tvs throughout the house. Most Streaming Services allow a Full Week Free to get Familiar w/ what they offer too. We’re much happier now.

[Governor Dinwiddie]

Hulu can be as little as $6 per month if you don't need all the fancy networks. There are lots of inexpensive or free streaming services like Pluto, Plex, Crackle, Tubi, Klowd.tv ($30/year), Acorn ($60/year). My favorite free network is Tubi because it has a wide choice of genres and an extensive library of films.

[4bye4]

Go here you could spend a lifetime on this one site. This is just one search i did you can do your own and explore more, they used to have a few Sky King episodes lol..

https://archive.org/

[be-baw]

“We’ve tried Hulu Live, Youtube TV, Direct TV now, sling.”

Which of those are you using now?

90+ % of what I watch I get on Fox, Fox Sports Detroit, Fox News and Food Channel. I watch two shows on ABC, about a half dozen on Fox, and one each on CBS and NBC. I could do without the four broadcast networks, but I’d prefer to have Fox broadcasting network.

[luckystarmom]

Switched from Youtube TV to Hulu Live when Youtube increased the price.

I’m tempted to get rid of Hulu Live too. We’ve stopped watching the news. It seems I just watch the food network and HGTV.

[Pollard]

Go ahead and pay AT&T if you want but there are free streaming apps out there. KlowdTV is one and pluto.tv is another. Both should be available on your smart TV. You shouldn’t really need a roku on a smart TV. It should have streaming apps already or available to install.

[Weirdad]

This product migh be helpful. It will cost some up front for the box plus the tv guide lifetime subscription (thought there is a monthly version also to try it):

Site:
https://www.tablotv.com/

The best product probably:
https://www.tablotv.com/products/tablo-quad-ota-dvr/ <-— especially if you want to record shos on at the same time, a 2 tuner would be OK otherwise

How they work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuPBes44jlg (I have not watched this)

You should get a latest type (not making MPEG or MPG, but one using H264 or H265 compression, technical but easy to read on the product) (like the above have) that compresses the video well before it sends it on WiFi to your smart TVs. There are other products with this company and outside like at BestBuy and they choke if the compression capability is not good.

Your Smart TVs (or dumb TVs hooked to a Roku box or AppleTV) will NOT need to be hooked up to anything other than a power cord to use this, they connect by WiFi.

You need one antenna to hook to the Tablo box with it also. Indoor antennas often work, an old roof TV antenna can be hooked up and will often work very well.

They have another product that hooks directly to one TV also by HDMI cable, although I am not sure that version is as useful and flexible. You could use that as a recorder for broadcast TV and guide only, you could connect for the TV guide wirelessly.

The Tablo box connects by wire to the antenna and to your internet router. Or it can connect by WiFi to your router but connecting the box with a network wire is best, simple if it is close to your router.

It receives the local TV stations (up to 4 at a time), sends than into the Tablo box, and can records up to 4 shows at a time to a hard drive in the box that you snap in, I recommend a 2.5 inch “SSD” type drive what is all solid state, faster, nothing spins in that. On your apps it looks just like a TiVo or other typical program than lets you schedule shows etc. (You have to subscribe to the TV guide for that. For a fee you can get commercials removed from what you record.

Then it broadcasts on your WiFi in your house (and probably outside) and you can watch it wirelessly all over, on Roku apps, AppleTV apps, other manufacurer devices, and very conveniently iPhones, iPads, etc.

You can also watch your local TV on your phone and other devices while you are far away, there is a way (ways) to connect to your box while you are traveling or anywhere, even in a foreign country. Children far away can watch live Friday night 1030 pm sports recaps back at home, for example.

So that gets you local (and maybe pretty far) TV and news and the sports that are still on normal broadcast TV.

For all the other stuff you basically have to subscribe to services (Amazon Prine Video; Netflix; CBS, now Paramount+, various sports packages, etc) — usually while holding your nose since they are typically leftists.

This might cost $200 to $400 up from depending on how you do it, but it will probably pay for itself and be worth it.

(Sorry this got long and complicated as I typed, but I hope it helps. I cannot answer back today, apologies.)

[phoneman08]

If you’re in an area where local channels can’t be picked up via an over-the-air antenna, and care about local programming, Locast.org works well. The free version however does have annoying ads asking for you to “donate”. I rarely watch anything on network TV, but I do “donate” $5 bucks a month during football season which makes it just like normal TV. But, if an antenna works, use it. The resolution is much better.

Another thing I’ve not seen touched on is check what the data cap is with your internet package. Mine, with Comcast, is 1229 Gb per month I’ve approached 1000Gb a few times when watching a lot of 4K content. If you leave TVs on all the time as background noise like I tended to do with FOX news once upon a time, you may need to pay attention to usage.

[stylin19a]

Not sure how they get away with this

https://watchnewslive.tv

some channels can’t be accessed - they want you to download their VPN or be using a VPN for some of the channels.

The delay from the actual TV is about 3 minutes - i didn’t look at all the channels.

[CA_soon_gone]

Roku, Firestick, they all do the same thing and you need one for each non-smart TV. I’m talking hardware, not subscriptions.

[lucky american]

Get a smart TV and pay for your internet streaming. Newsmax app is free. There’s a myriad of things to watch for years of enjoyment.

[Dad was my hero]

Spectrum tells me I have the best box right now. They were out today and claimed they fixed the problem so this week I’ll get an idea if that’s true.

[ConservativeMind]

What is an example of a channel you cannot get over Roku? With Hulu, YouTube TV, HBO Max, and nearly every other cable network provided within a Roku app (of course, there may be charges), you might only need an antenna for getting local station content.

Heck, there’s multiple ways to get live CNN on Roku:

https://cordcuttingreport.com/2021/01/19/stream-cnn-live/

[Sawdring]

so apart from the internet and little jobs around the house I don't have much else I can do except watch TV

Buy yourself an Xbox and Red Dead Redemption. Learning to play the game is like teaching a man to fish instead of giving him one.

[Seruzawa]

TCM requires the cabletv logon.

[frogjerk]

Anything over 100 Mb is overkill for streaming. Gig internet service will not improve your streaming quality one bit.

Not true. If you have multiple devices streaming at the same time you need more bandwidth, that is a given. The issue comes that comes up is that most homes will have bottlenecks because their firewall and wifi become chokepoints because they do not have the throughput to take advantage of the large pipe they are paying for.

I have wired my house with Cat6 where I can and I have gigabit switches with multiple bonded trunks to handle the bandwidth and vlan traffic. Wireless covers my whole house. I will be upgrading my firewall to enable 500mb throughput for regular traffic. Why? Because this is what I do for a living.