X
XXL TideFan
Guest
Better be careful......your wife is gonna thump that gourd for you.
Don't worry about those. No subscription needed. There are plenty of eThots on the Net who will show it all without a subscription.
Just noticed CBS All-Access has a free month trial sub offer going through the 2nd of December. Star Trek: Discovery and Picard make that worth the effort of remembering to cancel. 
@XXL TideFan I see they have the rights to DS9 as well.
@XXL TideFan I see they have the rights to DS9 as well.
X
XXL TideFan
Guest
Just noticed CBS All-Access has a free month trial sub offer going through the 2nd of December. Star Trek: Discovery and Picard make that worth the effort of remembering to cancel.
Bummer dude. Cut my cord on 8 Dec. Seriously get 40+ channels with a $20 indoor mouse pad size antenna. If I need to, I’ll get a Hulu or something to finish the seasonnn.../ holidays with.
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What difference does that make? It's streaming, cast it
X
XXL TideFan
Guest
Wasn’t very clear was I? Bummer was because of locking up all of the Trek franchises.
I see you can grab a year of Hulu at $1.99 a month...you have until tomorrow.
www.hulu.com
Watch Thousands of Shows and Movies | Hulu
Stream full seasons of exclusive series, current-season episodes, hit movies, Hulu Originals, kids shows, and more. Watch on your TV, laptop, phone, or tablet. Free trial available for new and eligible returning subscribers.
www.hulu.com
It’s $5.99 now on that link after the free trial period.I see you can grab a year of Hulu at $1.99 a month...you have until tomorrow.
Watch Thousands of Shows and Movies | Hulu
Stream full seasons of exclusive series, current-season episodes, hit movies, Hulu Originals, kids shows, and more. Watch on your TV, laptop, phone, or tablet. Free trial available for new and eligible returning subscribers.
Another option, $12.99, get Disney+, ESPN+, and Hulu.
www.disneyplus.com
This is interesting.
Disney Bundle: Get Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+
Your favorites from Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. All for one low price.
This is interesting.
Just saw this thread, so I'm chiming in a little late...but if you're considering cutting the cord, some of the information below might be useful. It's a little wordy and it may get a little geeky for some. Please excuse.
Bottom Line:
My Comcast bill got to be about $230/mo about 5 or 6 years ago and their service sucked. I now pay $69/month for internet (abt 110 down and 12 up) and $50 for Youtube TV. I do not miss cable TV one bit and will never overpay those bastards again.
My setup:
For the cable modem - I got a used DOCSIS 3 (Arris 722) on EBay for $30. Now I don't have to pay Comcast to rent one.
For land phone line - I got a OBi200 VOIP phone adapter. Now I don't pay Comcast (or phone company) for that service. T-Mobile was offering SIM card for .99 cents a few years back. Cost me $20 to transfer the land line I've had for 25 years over to their mobile service then transfer that number over to the Obi system. Now I have free phone service anywhere in North America free for life (internet required, of course).
For wireless network: I use a Netgear Orbi mesh. I have over 30 devices attached and it's a real improvement over my old Nighthawk 7000 both in terms of stability and signal.
For local TV:
I'm in ATL area so I get a butt load of OTA channels (abt 100, but 15 or 20 worth watching). I put a 20 ft antenna with amplifier that feeds into my coax distribution box on the back of the house - so every TV in the house gets a local TV feed.
I've got Rokus on all the TV's, so in addition to OTA, I can also get any of my HTPC or Youtube TV content on any TV. I also have some Chromecasts for people who prefer that for streaming from their phones.
For Home Theater/Local Content:
I use a dedicated Home Theater PC server running Windows 10 Pro on an AMD Ryzen 5 with 16GB RAM. Handles Plex server, and everything else with ease.
I use a couple of HD Homerun Extends attached to my router so I have 4 tuners that can record OTA programs and stream them H264 (or original format in MPEG2) across my home network as well as stream through Plex. Not NEEDED for watching TV since I have the OTA feed - but it works well with Plex Live TV which has a pretty nice (free) built-in TV guide - better than most TV built-in guides.
If you're into Home Theater I highly recommend Plex (huge improvement over the old XBMC and Kodi days). Plex Pass is their highest level of membership. I paid a one time $79 for lifetime membership many years ago. Money well spent. Plex Pass has a Live TV/DVR option (standard Plex does not) that can strip commercials automatically and place them neatly into libraries with auto-downloaded visual art. Very slick. Plex also has a very nice interface with ability to share across servers - so my son who lives across town has his own Plex server he shares libraries with me. If I want to watch something he has I simply select his server and voila. The downside is you streaming remote servers costs against your monthly ISP allocation. Plex is great. They've a very active development team and are constantly adding new and improved features.
The OTA/HDHomerun/Plex setup is nice because you can stream local TV over your home network and not have it count against your monthly internet limit that your provider may impose (provided you stream local to your network).
For ESPN and other "premium" channels:
I've tried Sling, Playstation Vue, DirectTV Now. IMO, they all have significant issues that are hard to live with. I'm now using Youtube TV for the past year or so. For me, the choice is not even close - Youtube TV offers the channels I want to see plus there is no maximum storage limitations for recordings. You can record every single show/game/whatever with no restrictions. The interface is much more intuitive (to me) and there are also apps for LG (probably other) TVs so everything is integrated with your TV remote if you have a fairly recent TV. Also has apps for Roku, etc. Another nice feature of Youtube TV is it's very easy to configure the stream quality. So, if you've a maximum of say 1TB/month like I do, you can set the quality lower if need be (144,240,360,480,720,1080). My mother-in-law keeps the TV on all day/night so I set her TV to 360. She's spent her life watching non-HD broadcast content so she doesn't know the difference. LOL.
I'm inherently of the anti-Google/California-corporate-colossus mindset. However, they DO have a superior product at this point in time.
For super premium content:
...and other shows I want to download and binge watch - I use Broadcast The Net (BTN) torrent site. I can download any show (HBO, Showtime, BBC, whatever) usually within an hour of it airing. Not sure if they still take members, but I got an invite way back when they first started (10 or 15 years ago?). I think invites are hard to come by. If you get the opportunity - take it.
I used Utorrent as a torrent client for years, but the advertising and bugs got so bad I switched over to an open product called qBittorrent. Just do it. Don't waste your time with Utorrent.
So....
I don't have/need/want Hulu or Netflix or any other streaming service. I have everything I need. Youtube TV is the only subscription I pay for.
I spent a lot of years trying to cut the cord and make everything work starting back before the technology was available to do everything I wanted to do. As of the past couple of years, all the technology pieces are available and easy to use. This setup is configured and everything just works with very little maintenance.
Hope this helps someone.
Chuck
Bottom Line:
My Comcast bill got to be about $230/mo about 5 or 6 years ago and their service sucked. I now pay $69/month for internet (abt 110 down and 12 up) and $50 for Youtube TV. I do not miss cable TV one bit and will never overpay those bastards again.
My setup:
For the cable modem - I got a used DOCSIS 3 (Arris 722) on EBay for $30. Now I don't have to pay Comcast to rent one.
For land phone line - I got a OBi200 VOIP phone adapter. Now I don't pay Comcast (or phone company) for that service. T-Mobile was offering SIM card for .99 cents a few years back. Cost me $20 to transfer the land line I've had for 25 years over to their mobile service then transfer that number over to the Obi system. Now I have free phone service anywhere in North America free for life (internet required, of course).
For wireless network: I use a Netgear Orbi mesh. I have over 30 devices attached and it's a real improvement over my old Nighthawk 7000 both in terms of stability and signal.
For local TV:
I'm in ATL area so I get a butt load of OTA channels (abt 100, but 15 or 20 worth watching). I put a 20 ft antenna with amplifier that feeds into my coax distribution box on the back of the house - so every TV in the house gets a local TV feed.
I've got Rokus on all the TV's, so in addition to OTA, I can also get any of my HTPC or Youtube TV content on any TV. I also have some Chromecasts for people who prefer that for streaming from their phones.
For Home Theater/Local Content:
I use a dedicated Home Theater PC server running Windows 10 Pro on an AMD Ryzen 5 with 16GB RAM. Handles Plex server, and everything else with ease.
I use a couple of HD Homerun Extends attached to my router so I have 4 tuners that can record OTA programs and stream them H264 (or original format in MPEG2) across my home network as well as stream through Plex. Not NEEDED for watching TV since I have the OTA feed - but it works well with Plex Live TV which has a pretty nice (free) built-in TV guide - better than most TV built-in guides.
If you're into Home Theater I highly recommend Plex (huge improvement over the old XBMC and Kodi days). Plex Pass is their highest level of membership. I paid a one time $79 for lifetime membership many years ago. Money well spent. Plex Pass has a Live TV/DVR option (standard Plex does not) that can strip commercials automatically and place them neatly into libraries with auto-downloaded visual art. Very slick. Plex also has a very nice interface with ability to share across servers - so my son who lives across town has his own Plex server he shares libraries with me. If I want to watch something he has I simply select his server and voila. The downside is you streaming remote servers costs against your monthly ISP allocation. Plex is great. They've a very active development team and are constantly adding new and improved features.
The OTA/HDHomerun/Plex setup is nice because you can stream local TV over your home network and not have it count against your monthly internet limit that your provider may impose (provided you stream local to your network).
For ESPN and other "premium" channels:
I've tried Sling, Playstation Vue, DirectTV Now. IMO, they all have significant issues that are hard to live with. I'm now using Youtube TV for the past year or so. For me, the choice is not even close - Youtube TV offers the channels I want to see plus there is no maximum storage limitations for recordings. You can record every single show/game/whatever with no restrictions. The interface is much more intuitive (to me) and there are also apps for LG (probably other) TVs so everything is integrated with your TV remote if you have a fairly recent TV. Also has apps for Roku, etc. Another nice feature of Youtube TV is it's very easy to configure the stream quality. So, if you've a maximum of say 1TB/month like I do, you can set the quality lower if need be (144,240,360,480,720,1080). My mother-in-law keeps the TV on all day/night so I set her TV to 360. She's spent her life watching non-HD broadcast content so she doesn't know the difference. LOL.
I'm inherently of the anti-Google/California-corporate-colossus mindset. However, they DO have a superior product at this point in time.
For super premium content:
...and other shows I want to download and binge watch - I use Broadcast The Net (BTN) torrent site. I can download any show (HBO, Showtime, BBC, whatever) usually within an hour of it airing. Not sure if they still take members, but I got an invite way back when they first started (10 or 15 years ago?). I think invites are hard to come by. If you get the opportunity - take it.
I used Utorrent as a torrent client for years, but the advertising and bugs got so bad I switched over to an open product called qBittorrent. Just do it. Don't waste your time with Utorrent.
So....
I don't have/need/want Hulu or Netflix or any other streaming service. I have everything I need. Youtube TV is the only subscription I pay for.
I spent a lot of years trying to cut the cord and make everything work starting back before the technology was available to do everything I wanted to do. As of the past couple of years, all the technology pieces are available and easy to use. This setup is configured and everything just works with very little maintenance.
Hope this helps someone.
Chuck
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I think the big things about cutting or not are internet service and number of TV. In a 2 parent house with 3 kids cutting the plug can be too expensive if too many watch the same services at the same time. And you also need much higher tiers of internet service in that case. Were it me and my wife only, we could probably cut it and save. It being 4-6 TV in the house running at a time we probably would pay more. Now, if my MIL were to pass I might do it anyway. She really complains if she can't get certain channels.
Yeah, I see what you mean. In my setup - for Youtube TV you can have 6 accounts - but you can only stream 3 concurrently. And for HD Homerun you would need one tuner per concurrent user - including anything that might be recording at the time. So, 4 concurrent max in my case.
If your kids watch primarily the same type of paid content like Disney+ or whatever then that would allow you to get around the Youtube TV concurrent users issue. I think Disney+ allows 4 concurrent streams at once. It's only my wife, myself, and my MIL living in the same house. But we watch my 2 1/2 YO grandson 3 or 4 times a week and he watches the heck out of Youtube Kids and some shows I've downloaded for him on Plex. He also watches some Disney and Disney Kids which comes with Youtube TV.
If your kids are like him and love the same shows (over, and over, and over, LOL) then downloading local might work and wouldn't use IPS bandwidth. I have 4 seasons of Blaze and the Monster Machines, 8 seasons of Paw Patrol, etc... When we get through all seasons I just restart with season 1. LOL. That works fine for now. We'll see when he gets older...
My MIL absolutely had to have FNC and HGTV. But as her dementia/Alzheimer's has progressed and she's now bedridden - I can tune the TV to almost anything including local channels and she doesn't know the difference. Bless her heart.
She was a real estate broker for over 40 years. She likes the real estate shows like Flip or Flop or whatever. Problem is, with her dementia she thinks the people on TV are actually in the room with her. She waves, talks to them, answers back, etc. Before she was bedridden, we'd catch her trying to walk out the front door saying she has to "go show a house" or "do some paperwork". Had to get a Ring camera for the front door just to make sure she didn't run off in the middle of the night. LOL. Also a good thing that indoor door knobs like the ones in her area of the house are reversible...
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i have amazon prime and disney+. i'm hoping to get rid of satellite SOON. the only holdout is my mom. she lives with me and pays the (staggering) $138/month bill.
my sister got her a smart tv for christmas (i got myself one, as well) so we're trying to convince her to give up the dish and get rid of that insane bill. i've showed her all the shows she can still get with either hulu+ or youtube tv. both are about the same per month (factoring in the same levels of channel line-ups); which is a little less than half what the current satellite bill is. i think the only thing she'd lose is diy (which she rarely watches anymore, anyway) and a couple other channels she frequently watches.
i've showed her how many other shows and movies she could watch and that we'd just get hd antennas for the local channels.
my sister got her a smart tv for christmas (i got myself one, as well) so we're trying to convince her to give up the dish and get rid of that insane bill. i've showed her all the shows she can still get with either hulu+ or youtube tv. both are about the same per month (factoring in the same levels of channel line-ups); which is a little less than half what the current satellite bill is. i think the only thing she'd lose is diy (which she rarely watches anymore, anyway) and a couple other channels she frequently watches.
i've showed her how many other shows and movies she could watch and that we'd just get hd antennas for the local channels.
