Looking for good cord-cutting advice

cdavis11 said:

That's hilarious - they have found a way to charge people for NOT using their service?

Unreal.

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It is hilarious, but the practicality is that once you quit Dish you have to send the DVR box and the receiver from the satellite dish itself back to them in the mail. As I recall (I quit Dish over a year ago), they'd send you the box for packaging, but you'd have to pay the shipping charge, which was not cheap (I forget exactly but I seem to remember it was > $25 since that is a heavy box to ship).

So this "pause" service might make sense for someone to use for a couple months if they are not sure they really want to quit Dish.

Giuly said:

You could put that free USB port of yours to use and add an elgato turbo.264 HD hardware accelerator dongle, to speed up the conversion process to iTunes. Works seamlessly with EyeTV.

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I've considered it, but the latest news I've heard is that a new HDHR product coming out this summer is going to have built-in on-the-fly transcoding so that it outputs the program stream in H.264. Meaning there will no longer be a need to transcode from EyeTV to iTunes. The recorded program will show up as an iTunes-compatible file in the first place.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/08/silicondust-announces-two-new-hdhomerun-network-tuners-with-tr/

So I figure my money will be better spent on one of those new HDHR's than on the elgato turbo device. The elgato device will probably take an hour show and convert it for itunes in 20 minutes instead of 90 minutes (after the program finishes recording). But either way, we'd need to wait. And our current practice of just waiting until the next day to watch the program works fine for us. But if the program came in as h.264, we could potentially watch it immediately on Apple TV upon the start of recording. . . or at least immediately after it finished recording.

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Michael CM1 said:

You might have to translate the link on the new HDHomerun for me. If I buy the Dual model now, will it be upgradable to this new firmware that keep me from needing to encode? If not but there is a model coming that should be less than $100, I think I'll just wait on that.

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If you are really interested in the new HDHR, I'd advise waiting to purchase an HDHR model until late summer when hopefully the new one will have come out.

It's supposed to come out some time "mid-summer". But anything I say at this point about release date and price is speculation.

That said, when I got my HDHR3 over a year ago it was ~$125 on its own (without the EyeTV software). So I'd expect the new version might cost more than $100 when it first comes out.

Another note: Elgato used to sell the HDHR3 (the one I have) in combo with EyeTV software for like $180 or something like that. But if you go to Elgato's website now, they no longer retail the HDHR3. Not sure why they ended that relationship with Silicon Dust (the company that makes the HDHR). But my point is we also can't assume the new HDHR will work with EyeTV, although I would expect it to.

dgalvan123 said:

It is hilarious, but the practicality is that once you quit Dish you have to send the DVR box and the receiver from the satellite dish itself back to them in the mail. As I recall (I quit Dish over a year ago), they'd send you the box for packaging, but you'd have to pay the shipping charge, which was not cheap (I forget exactly but I seem to remember it was > $25 since that is a heavy box to ship).

So this "pause" service might make sense for someone to use for a couple months if they are not sure they really want to quit Dish.

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That's it exactly. I'm testing out the idea of dropping cable. I have enough stuff to watch realistically without a subscription to Netflix or Hulu, as I have neither now and rarely turn on Dish anyways, but before I go through the process of unhooking everything, shipping it back, regretting it and paying all those startup costs to have it hooked back up... I'm just gonna try pausing the service.

Well, I can't even do that, unfortunately. The apartment complex that I'm in has a weird setup with Dish which keeps me from Pausing my service, so I just dropped down to the cheapest package. If I can go a month without using it, I'll just call and cancel it at that point.

Unfortunately it's not as easy to cut the cable in Canada. Any canadians here have managed to do it in a legal manner?

Michael CM1 said:

I don't watch any AMC shows -- well, I don't hate Hell on Wheels but AMC had a spat with Dish when it was on. But I do like Deadliest Catch and Whale Wars. For all of those, you basically have the iTunes option of buying them. If you're saving $40 or $50 per month and those shows maybe cost $30 or $35 for a whole season, you're still saving money if you only have a few of those shows you watch.

OR you can wait a year for Netflix. HBO is the really smart network. You pretty much have to subscribe to HBO or buy the stuff on BD/DVD/digital to watch the shows. I'm hoping the rumors of a standalone HBO Go coming in the future to Internet providers are true.

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So does that dongle (no jokes or everyone gets fired!) work alongside the other hardware that captures the video? It looks like that's the case. I'm assuming it has some sort of processing power that does that faster than a standard computer CPU. Am I at least in the ballpark?

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Or just wait for the show on BD, I picked up Season 2 Game of Thrones for $29 when released.

AppleDApp said:

Unfortunately it's not as easy to cut the cable in Canada. Any canadians here have managed to do it in a legal manner?

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i'm in canada. what can't we get that the us can? i have american netflix, hulu plus, all the sports packages...

linds15 said:

i'm in canada. what can't we get that the us can? i have american netflix, hulu plus, all the sports packages...

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How do you get american netflix and hulu plus.

AppleDApp said:

How do you get american netflix and hulu plus.

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unblock us. great service

Correction: Sorry, I mistook AMC for A&E. It is A&E that has an app in the US iTunes Store that has other shows that can be watched on an iOS device and then can be Airplayed to the ATV. You might need a VPN if you are outside the US.

As for American Netflix and Hulu, yes, unblockus is great and you will also have to set up a US iTunes account on your ATV for Hulu plus to appear.

Good for you OP. I consider the writing pretty shoddy for most TV shows so I don't miss paying for all that tripe. For the handful that we still watch, we get them free OTA. Otherwise, we pay for movies a la carte via Redbox or Vudu -- we didn't even spring for extra hardware as both of those providers play through our Blueray.

expectdelay said:

how do cord cutters watch AMC?

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You can iTunes rent The Walking Dead the next day.

Michael CM1 said:

There are some good shows out there. But I don't want to pay for 100 channels so I can get 15 I'll watch, five of which are free over an antenna. I get about 8 "news" channels yet don't get MSNBC, which I want to watch maybe two programs once a night.

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I get my news either from the radio on the way to work, on the web or through the free app on my Blueray player. Every time someone cuts the cord, it's a nail in the coffin of big cable monopolies who operate like they do because they can -- another example of dirty money in Washington. The good news is however, consumers are slowly breaking the hold of the cable companies through the power of the free market.

Michael CM1 said:

I have this feeling that Apple is working on an improved Apple TV experience...

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I'm not sure how Apple's offering will fit into the growing array of content providers but I like seeing more competition in the marketplace as this will benefit consumers.

Good job cutting the cord and good luck reducing your debt.

if i could get my mom to cut the cord, then pretty much anyone can, its just a matter of time before content providers will sell their product direct to consumer. sports started doing it, and ill gladly pay them 100 a season to get all the games