Cutting cable

Decided to cut cable. Hate the majority of the channels, plus I detest my cable provider. Before I do, what is the best way to watch TV without cable? Get a Roku and stream all the best shows thru Netflix, Huluplus etc. I have always had cable so I am a bit of a novice in this area. Any help would be much appreciated before I officially cut the cord.

Many devices allow you to watch Netflix, Hulu, HBO, etc. on your TV. Generally, here are some guidelines:

  1. If you want to play games also, get Xbox One or PS4. (~$400).

  2. Otherwise, if you own an iPad or iPhone and want to stream media from those devices, get Apple TV ($100).

  3. Otherwise, get Roku ($50 to $100).

All these devices will give you the same access to streaming video providers. The difference is cost and extra functionality.

Bonus option: If you buy a new TV, it might come with “smart” features that will let you connect to Netflix etc. without peripheral devices. However, these things tend to not function well (Samsung Smart Hub, for instance, is prone to failure) so you might want to get a separate device anyway.

I dont have cable, I have a Roku 3, PS4, iPad and Nexus 7… I probably use them all equal amounts.

I use netflix and mlb.tv for baseball (only thing I really care about) and eztv.it to watch my non-netflix shows. I use Plex media server to stream the shows from computer to my tablet or tv (normally tablet though).

You’ll be fine- only thing that sucks is when a baseball game is blacked out b/c its televised locally. Also, you can get an over-the-air HD antenna to watch CBS, NBC, ABC & etc for free. There’s also an app called Aereo to stream these nationally broadcast channels for free but I dont think its avaialble in all areas yet.

I honestly don’t know why you would pay for cable when you can get Netflix or torrent anything you would want to watch. I don’t even have a TV, I just watch everything on my huge ass epic win 39" monitor (100x100 Excel capability, omfg).

I regret not buying the 60" monitor and wall mounting it instead… why? Because YOLO.

So, several things come to mind.

Who provides the Internet feed – your cable provider or somebody else? If cable, how much do you really save by giving up those channels?

Do you care about HBO-GO? You still need regular HBO service to get it.

Hulu Plus: You can’t fastforward through commercials.

Netflix and Amazon have their own shows but you cannot get other stations on those services.

quote=thommo77]

Decided to cut cable. Hate the majority of the channels, plus I detest my cable provider. Before I do, what is the best way to watch TV without cable? Get a Roku and stream all the best shows thru Netflix, Huluplus etc. I have always had cable so I am a bit of a novice in this area. Any help would be much appreciated before I officially cut the cord.

[/quote]

Thanks guys. The only reason I have kept cable for so long is because of ESPN. They have the rights to quite a few sports that I enjoy watching live so this will be the biggest pain when it comes to ditching cable.

I plan on getting an HD antenna for free channels and either 1) Roku or 2) Apple TV. I have an iphone and ipad so it may be worth getting Apple TV. I am not a gamer so I do not need an XBox or PS4.

Thommo, I don’t have the links at work, but you can get the live streams to any sports event off the internet. Unless you mean you want to watch sportscenter in which case I don’t know why. We have cable in my apartment, but I mostly use HBOGO and HULU (not Plus) to watch shows. I could live w/o cable it’s really expensive and doesn’t provide that much benefit. The only plus is with guests. You don’t really want to be selecting stuff to watch as much as throwing on something or skipping between channels.

Sports and HBO are the reason it’s hard to cut the cable. I think I’m going to get Chromecast and see how well it works.

use this for sports

http://gofirstrowus.eu/

http://www.vipboxus.co/

http://www.frombar.com/

You can get HBO on Apple TV or Roku. I assume you have to pay for the subscription, of course.

I use these for sports. The quality isn’t the best but it’s free. I download torrents of tv shows I want to watch and have an indoor antenna for local stations- I get 13.

Finally cut cable a few months ago. However as several people mentioned I wasn’t ready to give it up entirely and lose ESPN and other live sports channels, so I did a lot of research and went with a hybrid approach. I already owned a Slingbox, so I moved that over to my parent’s house and paid them to add another cable box that would be dedicated to the Slingbox so there wouldn’t be any channel fights. You can use the Slingbox mobile app or web app and send it to a tv via AppleTV or Chromecast, but that was a little clunky so I got a WD TV for $90 which has a remote and native app. I wish the Roku had a native Slingbox app but I’ve been very happy with the WD TV. I’ve had some issues with buffering but for the most part it’s been very reliable and a cheap way to get cable HD. Also get a $10 antenna and get OTA TV in HD for free.

TLDR: Set up a Slingbox at a friend’s with cable to keep all your channels for

In terms of pay service I’m down to Cable internet, Netflix, and Amazon Prime. I had been using a smart samsung blue ray and XBOX 360, but I converted to Apple TV. For HBO go and watchESPN I use mom and Dad’s passwords since they have no idea how to use those anyways. I ditched hulu plus and could probably do without netflix.

For TV, I’m definitely going to check out this Aereo app. Cloud based DVR? Sign me up.

I can also stream pretty much anything I download to TV via apple TV or a blue ray, and there is a program I use called Media Converter if I need to change formats.

Umm guys streams are avalilable for free on the net about an hour before any sporting event starts.

US Supreme Court is going to hear the case to shut down Aereo in a few weeks. The NFL and MLB have both filed brief opposing Aereo, as have the US Justice Department and the US Copyright office. So, I wouldn’t expect Aereo to be around much longer. Too many deep pockets don’t like it.

Of course they don’t like it. Explain to me what the problem is? As far as I know there is still an antenna picking up the broadcast, and its no different than me going out an buying a TIVO unit and just recording over the air channels?

I might have to go with the slingbox approach.

^ I’m not saying I’m with the NFL and MLB, but in their eyes the problem is that a guy from Boston who moves to Miami isn’t going to pay for MLB TV and or the NFL package so he can watch the Pats and Sox if he can sign up for Aereo instead and get both along with all the other Boston channels.

Directv is what I like…way better than cable.

Streaming sports on-line sucks

^ depends on the sport and how much u want to pay. If u pay the nfl, nba, mlb and nhl, u will get HD quality streams. If u want the free option it’s hit and miss. I find baseball games have decent quality as do Monday and Sunday night football games.

When I first quit cable (probably 4 years ago at this point), I was using a digital antenna on my TV for anything I wanted to watch while it was on and then my PS3 connected to my computer to torrent anything I needed when it wasn’t on broadcast. When they announced that the new gaming systems would kind of suck for a similar approach, I decided to look for alternatives. After a significant amount of investigation, I ultimately came upon an approach that I am currently using.

This approach is probably overkill for most people. I built a home theater PC and installed XBMC on it, then connected the machine to the TV. Basically it’s like having your own Roku or Apple TV or the media side of the PS3/XBOX360, but better. If push came to shove, I could probably have bought just a long HDMI cable and connected it to the receive. However, there’s benefits to having a custom machine (you could easily do it cheaply for the price of a new consol). The main reason for XBMC is that it is pretty much customizable to your heart’s extent. I don’t have any issue with worrying about media files being the wrong format (PS3 is terrible on this). Also, the AppleTV that you can jailbreak (or at least that is most popularly jailbroke) didn’t allow High Definition video played on it. XBMC can be a bit finnicky, like you have to have your media files organized just right to use it to its fullest extent, but it is damn pretty when you get it right. The biggest difficulty has been getting remote controls to work properly. Simple remotes work fine, but I don’t have a simple remote…People have also connected PVRs to XBMC to basically make it a DVR also. Haven’t gotten around to that yet.

The other thing I did, which is probably optional in the grand scheme of things, is I moved all my media files from my main computer to a dedicated FreeNas system (basically a server). This is mainly due to the sheer volume of media I have. FreeNas can allow you to use a file system that provides easy back-up, though it requires a plethora of drives to do it right (and you really need server memory). The benefit to seperating the HTPC from the server is that they really have different design objectives. One is meant to be lean and quiet (small solid state hard drive is all that’s needed) but also sufficiently powerful graphics to play HD video, while the server you can keep in a seperate room (louder) and just fill it with hard drives, a bunch of memory, and a cheap-ish processor.