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Shinare
SEXNOCULAR
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Joined: 17 Mar 2004
Posts: 13332
Location: Up your butt with a coconut!!
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Dropped DishNetork and went full-on streaming
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I started typing this in the "My Cox" thread but since it turned into more of a tale of my dropping Dishnetwork I thought I would start its own thread.... sorry for the length. Cant really sum up in a tl;dr.
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Thought about changing to a fat cox now that I have dropped dish and gone full streaming. Cox would be much faster than my U-verse internet but at substantial additional cost.
I thought I would give what I already have a try for a while. Only a couple times when my wife, myself and my son are all on different TVs streaming things does it seem to slow down a bit.
My Dishnetwork bill (no premium channels mind you) was over $150 a month for 2 hoppers and 2 joeys and "America's top 250" package. Now I'm only paying about $40 a month for Hulu "Commercial free*" and Sling TV (with additional latino channels package) plus the free over the air locals of course. Also giving netfilx a try as well. The only major drawback is no DVR, so no pausing and rewinding (unless you are on a station on Sling that allows that which is not many) or are watching netflix or hulu.
I'm a huge fan of Roku. When I decided to do this I tried the Amazon FireTV stick, the Roku stick and Roku 3, and I already had 2 chromecasts. After trying all of those I think Roku is by far the easiest, most convenient, most responsive to use. Had I the funds, I would have gotten all Roku 3's but only got one of those, for the rest of the TV's in the house I got the Roku Stick which is still pretty nice, just don't seem as snappy as the 3. I returned the Amazon FireTV Stick. Its major fault was "jerky" streaming, as in when the camera panned in a show, instead of being smooth, it was almost a jerky motion. I put the chromecasts on sledom used TV's so I can "cast" things to them if ever I need. The problem with chromecast is you have to dick with your phone to cast something, and then dick with your phone some more to stop casting, then start casting something else. You have to have the apps on your phone, and they have to work well with chromecast and your phone, which is hit or miss. Just a major pain when all I want to do is turn on my TV and watch something.
Now my thoughts on actually living with full streaming only content. Not everything I want to watch is on Hulu or Sling. I really REALLY like "Doc Martin". Its only available on ANOTHER streaming service that streams Brittish TV shows. I have no desire to pay for an entire streaming service just to watch one show, and it's not available on the free "PBS" roku app which has just about everything else on PBS (go figure). Not having my complete library of over 200 "Wheeler Dealers" episodes to watch whenever I want to on my DVR sucks as well. For my wife its been no problem at all. Sling TV has all of her spanish channels and even more, and they all are "DVR like" in that you can go back several days and watch shows, pause, and rewinde/fast forward over commercials, etc. And since thats almost all the TV she watches (Novellas) its been fine. She also like real life crime shows which are available on Hulu and on Netflix. Shes happy.
I hope that Sling TV gets more channels, but I feel its worth the $25 a month I am paying with the expectation that they will be adding channels in the future.
More to come later...
*not actually commercial free on some channels grrr _________________ For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.
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Mon Apr 11, 2016 12:29 pm
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Shinare
SEXNOCULAR
![](images/avatars//3653515694fe1ef6b4ecba.jpg)
Joined: 17 Mar 2004
Posts: 13332
Location: Up your butt with a coconut!!
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So, another lesson learned is that straming requires much datas. On average, since switching to streaming only, my AT&T Uverse has been clocking me at 650+ GB of data used each month. AT&T has recently gone the way of Cox and just about all other internet providers to charging for higher or unlimited (if offered) data caps.
When AT&T decided to charge for higher data caps, the cap for the max tier I can get at my house was 600GB per month. I was just barely over this, and if I ALTERED mine and my family's TV viewing habits, perhapse I would squeak in under that cap without being charged overage. Being forced to ALTER my TV viewing habits was NOT going to happen, so I looked into other options. Cox's data caps are WAY TOO LOW and they did not offer ANY "unlimited" cap. I would need to order their "Ultimate" data package to feel reasonably comfortable I would not be charged overage. Cox Ultimate is $99 per month, a joke, especially when compaired to adding "unlimited data" to my current UVerse plan, which would still cost less.
Moral of the story: Television providers are hemorrhaging customers to streaming and are scrambling to figure out how to still be able to charge people and make money. I imagine that pretty soon it will not be as attractive to cut the cord and go full on streaming based on increased plan pricing or decreased data caps.
The good news is that AT&T just announced that the data cap for the current tier I am on has been increased from 600MB to 1TB per month. That should be comfortible for us without extra cost.
tl;dr: If switching to all streaming, be mindful of your internet provider's data caps and costs for overage. _________________ For with what measure you measure it will be measured to you.
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Wed Aug 17, 2016 11:25 am
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blu
Step on my cubes.
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Joined: 19 Mar 2003
Posts: 4638
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I've gone to a Tivo Roamio OTA DVR. It has a nice interface for DVR all of my OTA channels, and fully integrated with Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon. I pay $9.99 a month. The only thing it is lacking is Sling TV. It does integrate with Plex though, which I use as well.
If I want to watch something, I can search and it searches OTA, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon (Prime and pay), and gives me every option for that show, on whatever service it is available on.
It has multiple tuners and slave boxes for other TVs that don't cost anything monthly.
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Wed Sep 14, 2016 12:49 pm
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