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Cutting the Cord of Cable TV
Today Mr. Rand and I have made the jump. Cut the cord. Dispensed with the services of the local monopoly. Boldly gone where more and more TV watchers are going. We have fired the evil and hated Comcast and decided to rely on a panoply of streaming services which, even collectively, will cost us far less than our ever-growing Comcast bills.
“When in the course of human events” – as they say – something about “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind,” etc., etc.
So here’s our thinking.
We’ve had Netflix since it was a service that mailed you DVDs, and Amazon Prime since Amazon invented Prime. Though we watch them more and more, and cable less and less, it never before felt quite possible to just do without. There’s live news. There’s sports. There’s a dozen or so channels carried on our cable system that we watch with some regularity. Netflix and Amazon don’t seem to replace all that. Or don’t replace it adequately. So what happened?
The final straw. The coup de grace. The killing shot, was our discovery of Sling TV as an option on our Roku box. A little research showed that it appears to have nearly everything we want from cable, at far less cost. As second homeowners, all the more so. One Sling subscription should theoretically – this is all new to us so that qualifier is important – work at both homes, work on computers and tablets, work on phones, etc. In short, one subscription, for a measly $45/mo. (for one of their most comprehensive packages), should work for both of us, almost anywhere.
No more shelling out $10/mo. per box for the rest of our lives to “rent” each of multiple cable boxes (which must cost about $50/ea. to manufacture). On the box concession alone Comcast has gouged us blind for the last 20 years. We have one old box that’s been sitting here for 13 years. (13 x 12 x $9.95 = $1,552.20. Do you think they made a profit?)
No more opening the cable bill in trepidation wondering whether this is the month they’ll decide to just randomly jack up the bill by 30 bucks. No more calling and pleading for a less extortionate package every three, six, or 12 months. And frankly, no more equipment to break, and need repair, by a guy who gives you a four-hour window to sit at home and wait and then he doesn’t show up until three hours after the window closed (if at all).
It’s a brave new world and we’re diving in. We’ll see how it goes, but it’s hard to imagine the frustrations will be enough to drive us back to where we’ve been. Anybody else cut the cord? What are your experiences?
Published in General
See my #71. There is.
Chromecast is a $35 stick that resembles a flash drive and plugs into the HDMI socket on your TV. It does, via your wireless net, what an HDMI cable would do: connects your computer (but wirelessly) to the TV so that what’s in (mainly, possibly exclusively) your Chrome browser is displayed on the TV. BUT, it also allows some smartphone apps to wirelessly display content to the TV. If you have an Android phone, I think you may also be able to play music, but I’m not sure. (The reason there’d be more features from Android is that Chromecast is Google … natch.)
About the only TV-network website I’ve had trouble Chromecasting is NBC. It’s almost as if they’re sabotaging it. Their phone app ALSO does not Chromecast. Stinkers!
We are a big family with lots of TVs. If I used Roku or Fire, I’d have to have a box for each TV, correct?
Gary’s answer (#71) is half right. It depends on your desired level of functionality.
Most tuner cards have the ability to pull in two HD signals. Your TiVo or cable/satellite supplied DVR probably has the capacity to pull in four.
The cards usually have their own processors aboard so, while it may not tax your processor, you have to make sure your power supply can handle the load. (Forget building one out of a laptop!)
Next, you need a capable hard drive. Video files are HUGE. Seagate (and others) manufacture high capacity drives specifically for video capture.
EJ knows this stuff better than I do, but I must point out that my homebrew DVR is a bog-standard generic PC bought in 2011, nothing special in RAM or hard drive, that’s still running Windows 7, and it effortlessly holds hundreds of hours of material, playing it without a glitch.
Thanks Gary.
@garymcvey Exactly what is your load? How many recordings can you make at once and what is your storage limits?
8 gigs RAM, 800 gigs hard drive storage. I can make two recordings at once, though I seldom do. It sounds like recording four streams is more of a priority for you than it is for me, as I’ve never looked into whether there’s a USB tuner that handles more than two.
Long term use on a laptop is probably not a great idea, as the process is drive-intensive, but I’ve often taken the tuner with me on travel. The Hauppauge unit includes a small antenna for that purpose. Generally in most cities I’ve found better stuff with sharper pictures than the hotel TV.
This is starting to remind me of a photo of a billboard I saw, on the web, for a septic tank company. Not sure if it was real or not.
But the copy read: SWIMMING POOLS FILLED!!! SEPTIC TANKS EMPTIED!!! NOT SAME TRUCK!!!
When I was in the States this summer, I looked at a Comcast booth in Kansas. I was shocked how expensive it was. I pay 40 Euro a month for 228 Mbps (that’s what I just tested it as), the medium-level cable package, and a land-line.
Netflix is now available here, but I don’t subscribe because the foreign selection is much weaker than the domestic version of it. I know people that used to use a VPN to get the U.S. version. I think Netflix has squelched that, however. I will probably pick up for a couple months next year so I can watch the new Star Trek series. It will be on Netflix OUTSIDE the U.S.
It used to be that I had to rely heavily on torrrents for my favorite shows, but we now have three competing cable companies. Game of Thrones is shown on my cable subscription on a channel called Sony Turbo 24 hours after it airs on HBO.
I can’t speak for the Windows software, but MythTV can make more than two simultaneous recordings from a two-tuner unit when you factor in subchannels. You have to configure it ahead of time for the maximum number of simultaneous subchannels per tuner, but it’ll do it. It’s only useful occasionally, but does happen. FWIW, I use a Hauppage 2250 PCIe card in my custom media server, w/ 16 Terabytes of usable storage. It’s not full. (-:
Some, but not all, of the Sling programming is on demand. I haven’t yet figured out how useful that will be.
Far as I know, yes. We have 3 Roku boxes, probably headed for 5. But they’re only like 50 bucks, so it’s not a huge investment.
Oh, plus Sling gives you a free one with a 3 month opening subscription.
Thanks Owen. I think I might buy one and give it a try.
Patou is lovely! I have Levi and Xena. Levi was ‘fired’ from his job as a farm guard dog up the road because he kept running away to come and visit me. Eventually, his owner just gave him away. He’s the most gentle giant (170lbs) of a dog I’ve ever known.
Xena belonged to a couple in Philadelphia who kept her and her sister in an apartment (???!!!???). They got divorced. The wife wanted the sister dog, and neither of them wanted Xena.
Oddly enough, for a dog raised in a city apartment, she has all the right ‘guarding’ genes for the sheep and goats, and Levi, the farm dog, is hopeless.
Apparently there is a “Dog/Puppy” group on Ricochet. I’m weakening, having sworn off groups from the beginning. Do you know of it? Would you like to join?
Oh, and Levi always barks at the WildBlue Internet satellite guy when he comes to reorient the dish. Thus, do I keep this thread on track . . .
Sold!
I LOVE On Demand. I still have Time Warner Cable for that. But some (most) channels don’t let you fast forward through the commercials. The ones that do cause me to love them.
Such first worlder old person response. I did not own a TV for the first 6 years I lived by myself. Never have paid for cable yet I probably watch a bigger variety of TV shows than you did with cable.
I see a business opportunity here (not for me – for someone who knows what they are doing).
Cut The Cord Company. Hire us to come to your home, figure out your favorite channels, and do the work of getting them into your home.
One time fee – and you get a free refrigerator magnet.
I know it would work, because right now I want to hire that guy.
Most of the folk doing this are in the home automation / home theater market.
You mean legally?
Remember back in the old days when you could get your hands on a “magic box” that unscrambled every channel?
I’m not saying I had one, because I don’t know if the statute of limitations has run.
Here are a couple of interesting links from a guy I follow on twitter. It’s primarily for those folks wanting to build a media center around a Windows PC (which he calls a Woku):
https://www.thurrott.com/music-videos/75863/byopc-lets-build-woku
https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/76098/byopc-use-mini-pc-woku
Here’s another option – a Kangaroo PC:
http://www.kangaroo.cc/
Also, a Plex server is an option for some people, especially if they have large DVD collections. There is a Roku app that works with the Plex server:
https://www.plex.tv/
I was a very early subscriber to DirecTV, back in the day when Thompson Electronics (RCA after the GE spinoff) had the exclusive rights to make the receivers. Hughes was behind the early DBS technology and the first set of smart cards that authorized the reception of signals other than the demo channel were known as “H” cards.
There was absolutely no security feature built into the system. It was programmed with a card reader similar to what hotels use to program room keys. A simple swipe and you got everything. If you unplugged the phone line from the receiver DirecTV couldn’t do anything about it.
At one point I was offered $500 for my card. Being an honest guy I turned it down.
Finally, the company got smart and started to send the updates down the satellite stream. Leading up to Super Bowl Sunday in 2001 they started sending bursts of what was seen as meaningless code, meaningless as it seemed to have no purpose other than to harass the hackers. These lines had to be present to continue to decode the video so hackers incorporated them into their work. Finally, a week out from the game DirecTV sent out one last burst of code that assembled all the meaningless lines into a comprehensive program that fried 98% of the “H” cards.
With a bit of corporate panache the first 8 computer bytes of all hacked cards were rewritten to read “GAME OVER”.
That story is deserving of its own post. That is just classic!
Just thought I’d provide an update on Sling — two weeks in.
Thanks for the update. I have been considering Sling Box ( Roku fan). Do you think Sling Box is going to be worth the expense?
Is Sling Box different than Sling TV? We have Sling TV. I think it might be worth it, depending on what you watch. So much of TV these days is stuff I couldn’t care less about, so it is kind of a way to zero in on a few things for relatively few dollars compared to cable. It’s got CNN and MSNBC, but not FoxNews. I find that useful, even without Fox. You can subscribe to HBO through it, which I like, at least for Game of Thrones season. There are other special subscriptions available for small extra costs too. I’m waiting to see what happens when NFL season starts to see if I can get much football on it. That again is something I happen to care about.
All in all, I’m pretty sure you can save $$$ with it. The only question is whether you can put together a package, through Sling or Sling together with other one offs, that includes everything you really care about getting.
That’s on the content side. If you were asking about Roku boxes themselves, then yes, definitely. Love them. They’re the access device you plug into your TV that lets you subscribe to the services/content providers/channels you want. They’re super flexible and very inexpensive.