PILOT SPIN
Pilot Zone => Pilot Zone => Topic started by: Lucifer on September 02, 2020, 03:41:56 PM
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Starting a thread for users to share their cable cutting and programming likes and techniques.
I'm a Firestick 4K user and have cut the cable company out of my life for over a couple of years. The content is becoming more available, running better and better choices.
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I assume that people considering cutting cable (or reducing cable) would be welcome
(and yes, I know this isn't POA where off topic discussions IS STRICTLY FORBOTEN!)
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Great idea, thanks four your help Oh Fallen Angel of the Nether World. I'm getting my firestick tomorrow and will report on how it streams Amazon Prime and others. I've been watching that on my computer, but would rather see it on the TV.
Und Herr Noel. Your papers are not in order. Vee have vays of making you talk.
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One of the things that is preventing me from cable cutting is that I have a few TVs without HDMI inputs (including one of the last HD widescreen tube TVs made, it's 20 years old and works perfectly).
Anyone have a component-to-HDMI converter that works?
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We recently moved and the only service I ordered from the cable company was internet service (500 mbps). All our TV watching is local digital over the air (OTA). We don’t watch much TV anymore - mostly just 10 PM local news. Anything special can be ordered over the net.
OTA digital is allegedly better video quality than the same material over cable - have not noticed much difference, but looks good to my aging eyes.
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No cable in our subdivision. We had DirecTV and then Dish, once we got adequate DSL speed we dropped it, first for Hulu Live and now have AT&T TV Now along with Amazon Prime and Disney+.
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TIVO makes a DVR specifically for OTA recording plus some streaming apps. Love it.
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One of the things that is preventing me from cable cutting is that I have a few TVs without HDMI inputs (including one of the last HD widescreen tube TVs made, it's 20 years old and works perfectly).
Anyone have a component-to-HDMI converter that works?
What do you plan to feed into the component signal jacks?
Since there are no TV stations anymore that broadcast analog NTSC signals, it is possible that the oldest TVs you have may not have the circuitry to decode digital broadcast signals received by any antenna you attach to their coax antenna connectors.
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WE cut the cable three years ago, and have amazon fire sticks on the TVs. Our internet is very good, 300Mb fiber up/down, so no issues with streaming. I started with Hulu mainly due to them offering all of the ESPN and other sports networks live. At the time, it was $35/mo. But, just like cable, once they have you hooked, and know more and more are cutting the cable, the prices went up. It was up to $63/mo when I terminated Hulu, and that's no loss as I'm now turned off to sports due to them being loaded with social programming. Still have Amazon Prime (although I hate to support Bezos), so right now it's that and the digital antenna.
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What do you plan to feed into the component signal jacks?
Since there are no TV stations anymore that broadcast analog NTSC signals, it is possible that the oldest TVs you have may not have the circuitry to decode digital broadcast signals received by any antenna you attach to their coax antenna connectors.
yup, I know about the older TVs having obsolete tuners.
The sources for these old TVs will be new cable boxes (gasp!) or something like Apple TV or even a laptop. Basically, the new devices only have HDMI outputs now... cable boxes without HDMI are being phased out by RCN and no promotional offers are available for those devices.
At one time we had 7 TVs (don't ask), none of which had HDMI inputs. I'm slowly converting things over to newer TVs (just bought my sister a new TV). We are down to 2 TVs without HDMI. One of those is on its last legs but is hardly used. The other is a beautiful HD widescreen tube TV (20 years old and still working perfectly). But only one TV has any effective internet capability.
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WE cut the cable three years ago, and have amazon fire sticks on the TVs. Our internet is very good, 300Mb fiber up/down, so no issues with streaming. I started with Hulu mainly due to them offering all of the ESPN and other sports networks live. At the time, it was $35/mo. But, just like cable, once they have you hooked, and know more and more are cutting the cable, the prices went up. It was up to $63/mo when I terminated Hulu, and that's no loss as I'm now turned off to sports due to them being loaded with social programming. Still have Amazon Prime (although I hate to support Bezos), so right now it's that and the digital antenna.
I reluctantly got Amazon Prime for the movies and some TV programming. I cut cable over two years ago and don't miss it. So I am digital antenna and streaming only now and Amazon is the only thing I pay extra for at this point. My monthly spend is still less than half of what I was paying for Cable/Internet.
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I finally cut the cord to the cable company, and I now have more selection and lower cost.
1 . You have to have a good internet service.
2. ROKU. There is a ton of stuff you watch or listen to with it. And a whole bunch of it is free.
I chose ROKU over AppleTV or any of the other streaming devices because it has an optical audio out that goes to another streaming device that streams audio to my hearing aids. I can watch and listen with the volume as high as I want and nobody else can hear it.
3. I just signed up for YouTube Streaming Television. It has a bunch of live TV, including news channels, and it has tons of recorded tv series and so many movies that I may cancel Netflix and Prime Video.
All of this costs less than a mid range cable package and delivers a lot more content.
The only problem is that we don't watch much Television, so we are still spending way too much for something we don't use much of. Although we are watching more than we did pre-Covid. But at least with this setup we rarely ever decide to watch something and find out it isn't offered with our "package". We pretty much have access to everything. Especially if you include the android streaming device that scours the internet and is able to find and play almost ANY movie or TV series ever created, for free. But often the performance is spotty with a lot of hangs and "loading" messages.
Oh, one more thing; since we live in hurricane country, we like The Weather Channel, which is almost impossible to get if you don't have cable TV. But I did find one app that works on ROKU. FRNDLY. It only has about 15 channels, and most of them are Hallmark channels, but it does have the live weather channel for $5.99/month on a month to month basis. I plan to start it up just before the first threatening hurricane and cancel it around the end of hurricane season.
Internet $60
Amazon 13
Netflix 12
YouTube 70
TWC 6
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Total: $161.
Still way too much but we pretty much have everything, so when company comes over and they want to watch a golf or Tennis match or listen to classical music, or country, or jazz, we have it.
I think we can also pick up almost any Pro Sports game, except we don't watch them any more. My wife the liberal doesn't like sports and I don't like what sports has become. She doesn't know why I suddenly don't like sports any more and that if fine with me.
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I should have added, I have an antenna on the roof so we can get locals if we ever decide to drop what we have. I would have to add an additional antenna though as the NBC affiliate is in a different path or add a rotor. Our TV has Roku built in and the sound bar I just got has FireTV built in.
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TIVO makes a DVR specifically for OTA recording plus some streaming apps. Love it.
That’s good to know. I was wondering about how to record shows in this new environment. I’m not sure I remember the last show I truly watched live.
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https://www.groundedreason.com/ota-dvr-without-cable/
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https://www.groundedreason.com/ota-dvr-without-cable/
Neat. I didn't know such a thing existed.
We're very rural. Rooftop antenna barely gets a signal, Our ISP is 5MBPS on a good day. DSL is not an option. Bummer that a huge bundle of fiber goes right down the main road less than a mile from us but we can't use it. We have Dish, and while it's not great I do like the ability to record multiple channels at once.
NBC is in a snit with Dish so NBC removed their local channel. HBO is owned by DirecTV or something like that so it was removed from Dish a year or so ago. Channels that used to be part of a package are now split to x and xprime, with xprime being a pay service and x being crap. Thank goodness I can still get CNN. Not.
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Neat. I didn't know such a thing existed.
We're very rural. Rooftop antenna barely gets a signal, Our ISP is 5MBPS on a good day. DSL is not an option. Bummer that a huge bundle of fiber goes right down the main road less than a mile from us but we can't use it. We have Dish, and while it's not great I do like the ability to record multiple channels at once.
NBC is in a snit with Dish so NBC removed their local channel. HBO is owned by DirecTV or something like that so it was removed from Dish a year or so ago. Channels that used to be part of a package are now split to x and xprime, with xprime being a pay service and x being crap. Thank goodness I can still get CNN. Not.
Here it is the local ABC affiliate. Cox Media Group is the owner and the local radio station that runs Limbaugh is also Cox Media Group so they run this ad many times a day about how Dish has taken them off the air despite their very fair offer.
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https://www.bestbuy.com/site/tivo-edge-for-antenna-500-gb-black/6413699.p?skuId=6413699
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I received and installed Fire TV Stick 4K last night. It was really easy to install and set up. The streaming wokrs great and it works wll with Amazon Prime video. Thanks to Lucifer for the recommendation. O am considering other free and pay streaming services but want to keep my monthly spend low.
So far:
Comcast (I hate them as they are Dems) Hi Speed Internet - $60 per month
Amazon Prime - $12.99 per month
Total - $72.99 per month
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I received and installed Fire TV Stick 4K last night. It was really easy to install and set up. The streaming wokrs great and it works wll with Amazon Prime video. Thanks to Lucifer for the recommendation. O am considering other free and pay streaming services but want to keep my monthly spend low.
So far:
Comcast (I hate them as they are Dems) Hi Speed Internet - $60 per month
Amazon Prime - $12.99 per month
Total - $72.99 per month
Youtube is free and has loads of full length movies and documentaries. And the streaming is exceptionally good.
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Youtube is free and has loads of full length movies and documentaries. And the streaming is exceptionally good.
Youtube is pretty good, always content I'm interested in watching.
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Youtube is free and has loads of full length movies and documentaries. And the streaming is exceptionally good.
Yes. I've watched it on my computer, and now will watch on the TV.
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Youtube has the great old movies. I like westerns from the 40's through the 60's. Also the old war movies.
If you are a NASA fan, tons of original NASA films on the space program. Also lots of military training films.
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The Fire Stick is certainly a game changer for me. I'll need to explore more free viewing options.
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Youtube has the great old movies. I like westerns from the 40's through the 60's. Also the old war movies.
If you are a NASA fan, tons of original NASA films on the space program. Also lots of military training films.
So many old gems, like the GM/Jam Handy series on how things work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYAw79386WI
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The Fire Stick is certainly a game changer for me. I'll need to explore more free viewing options.
If I get an internet-ready TV, can I presume I don’t need the fire stick?
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If I get an internet-ready TV, can I presume I don’t need the fire stick?
Correct.
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Watch the user interface. Our Internet-ready TV has a HORRIBLE user interface that forces us to point the remote at the screen and try to move a little dot to the right place. Nine times out of ten when we click it moved just enough to point to something else. It way sucks. It's worth a little more to have a device you can use easily. Check out the interface before purchase.
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Watch the user interface. Our Internet-ready TV has a HORRIBLE user interface that forces us to point the remote at the screen and try to move a little dot to the right place. Nine times out of ten when we click it moved just enough to point to something else. It way sucks. It's worth a little more to have a device you can use easily. Check out the interface before purchase.
Maybe it is better to get a Fire Stick you know is easy to use and set up with all the capabilities rather than an internet ready TV? Then one Lucifer recommended that I got was really easy and works great.
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Watch the user interface. Our Internet-ready TV has a HORRIBLE user interface that forces us to point the remote at the screen and try to move a little dot to the right place. Nine times out of ten when we click it moved just enough to point to something else. It way sucks. It's worth a little more to have a device you can use easily. Check out the interface before purchase.
Agreed. Not only is my TV interface hard to use but it doesn't do NEARLY as much as my ROKU device. And it makes zero sense to go back and forth when one device can do it all. Perhaps it is because my TV is 3 yrs old, but so is my ROKU and the ROKU keeps getting updates.
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We just bought a new TV and it’s internet ready and I don’t know if the interface is good or bad, maybe it’s just me but I can’t run the thing.
Anyhoo that TV will show us Netflix and Amazon Prime in addition to regular cable which we have not cut because my husband watches some channels. He and I rarely want to watch the same thing and he dominates the TV so I just stream on my iPad in another room. I’m thinking of subscribing to Hulu so I can watch “The Path”.
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We just bought a new TV and it’s internet ready and I don’t know if the interface is good or bad, maybe it’s just me but I can’t run the thing.
will the TV allow you to connect a bluetooth keyboard?
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Or get a TV with Roku built in.
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will the TV allow you to connect a bluetooth keyboard?
I have no idea. ;D