Cut the Cord

[iMacRW]

Hi guys. Just cut the cord with DirecTV. Loving it so far. Using my AppleTV connected to my 55" LED TV. Have a 15mbs internet connection and it seems to be streaming HD Content without buffer so far (Cross fingers I won't have to upgrade to faster plan).

Anyways, would love to hear your experiences with doing the same. Are you buying episodes from iTunes Store, using Hulu Plus?

Also any good apps that will tell me where to stream the shows I like to watch from, and where to get the best deals on them? I'm thinking about adding a Roku HD Stick to the mix, and putting it in the bedroom and then replacing my current appleTV with the new one that will be coming out soon and moving the current one to the office.

 

[alent1234]

if i didn't watch sports i would just have netflix and maybe Hulu plus

otherwise i'm on TWC on 20/2 and can stream netflix and HBO Go or my time warner cable live TV at the same time

your speed is not that big a deal, it's more how close are you living to a population center and how far away on the internet is the content

 

[JoeShades]

If local sports were not blacked out cord cutting would be massive. i have no choice but to keep cable

 

[frunkis54]

the one frustrating thing about Netflix and crackle is the are always removing content I went to rewatch 24 the other day since it is starting a new season next month and Netflix went and removed it. but ive seen it with other programs as well.

 

[Alrescha]

the one frustrating thing about Netflix and crackle is the are always removing content

This is what keeps me buying media (in one form or another) and storing it/backing it up locally. I would happily pay a monthly fee to be able to reliably watch what I want to watch, when I want to watch it.

The previous comments about sports and blackouts also apply , but in that case the result of my not being able to pay MLB/ESPN directly for local games is that I do not pay them anything (I watch what games I can over the air, but otherwise I am out of the sports-watching business).

A

 

[Lord Hamsa]

Gotta join the chorus that says without sports, I'd have cut the cord already. The few TV series I care about, I'll get via antenna (for broadcast) or buy on disc or from the iTunes store. I've tried Hulu and it bites; Netflix is good as long as, as noted above, they don't lose the rights to show something you're in the middle of.

I've got plenty of stuff in my own library already that I could easily spend less than a quarter of what I pay for cable or satellite each month and still get the shows I want to see.

Except sports.

 

[rlogan814]

umm as far as sports go, you can get the broadband package for whatever sport, except nfl for now, and watch it that way on apple tv. The local blackout only applies to games that night. Try watching your team on your schedule, not theirs. It really works for hockey. I'm a penguins fan, but each game is blacked out for 2 days, but after that i go back and can watch the whole game commercial free. So i'm 2 days behind my team as far as watching, but with hockey, you have to go out of your way to get scores that would spoil the outcome. If you cut the cord you won't have ESPN to spoil results for you anyways, so being a day or two behind is all relative. Now that baseball has started up i just make sure to keep the same 2 days behind schedule with my sports podcasts. Of course the downside to this is you can't have conversations with your friends about last nights game. The positive is that you get to watch your team any time meaning instead of catching the last couple innings of your team's game you can watch every inning of every game at your convenience. Cut the cord already, you'll be so much happier. you really only need 10mb/s internet speed to not have anything buffer. try it.

NHL app is the best - commercials edited out, top quality
NBA apple tv app is the worst - commercials not edited out so you have to fast forward every time out break
MLB apple tve app is somewhere in-between - sometimes the commercials are edited out, sometimes not. Sometimes during breaks you get a camera showing you whats happening on the field during the break which is pretty cool.

 

[cdavis11]

Cut the cord 4 years ago.

Originally went with a combination of Roku and AppleTV. Once AppleTV got Netflix, and more importantly for me, MLB.tv I disconnected the Roku boxes.

I found that after about a month cable free we were feeling cut off, so I put up an attic mounted antenna. That gives us a handful of local channels - just enough to cover the news and network sports. That's plenty.

Over the years we've purchased a few season passes through iTunes and those have worked out very well.

I record shows from my antenna using EyeTV and 2 Silicon Dust HDHR tuners. That has worked out extremely well.

I'd highly recommend it - it's easier to do than you think especially if you're not a hardcore football fan who needs red zone and all DirecTV has to offer. If you can handle having *just* the Sunday network games, then you're all set.

 

[JoeShades]

umm as far as sports go, you can get the broadband package for whatever sport, except nfl for now, and watch it that way on apple tv. The local blackout only applies to games that night. Try watching your team on your schedule, not theirs. It really works for hockey. I'm a penguins fan, but each game is blacked out for 2 days, but after that i go back and can watch the whole game commercial free. So i'm 2 days behind my team as far as watching, but with hockey, you have to go out of your way to get scores that would spoil the outcome. If you cut the cord you won't have ESPN to spoil results for you anyways, so being a day or two behind is all relative. Now that baseball has started up i just make sure to keep the same 2 days behind schedule with my sports podcasts. Of course the downside to this is you can't have conversations with your friends about last nights game. The positive is that you get to watch your team any time meaning instead of catching the last couple innings of your team's game you can watch every inning of every game at your convenience. Cut the cord already, you'll be so much happier. you really only need 10mb/s internet speed to not have anything buffer. try it.

NHL app is the best - commercials edited out, top quality
NBA apple tv app is the worst - commercials not edited out so you have to fast forward every time out break
MLB apple tve app is somewhere in-between - sometimes the commercials are edited out, sometimes not. Sometimes during breaks you get a camera showing you whats happening on the field during the break which is pretty cool.

It is virtually impossible to not know what happened in a game by the time i would be able to watch it and last time i had MLB.tv they say 90 minutes after a game ends it is available, that was not the case

 

[rlogan814]

It is virtually impossible to not know what happened in a game by the time i would be able to watch it and last time i had MLB.tv they say 90 minutes after a game ends it is available, that was not the case

I've had MLB.tv for 5 years and only realized that you can change the date for games this year. I wouldn't go by the available 90 minutes after the game ends, it never work. live 2 days in the past, watch every game on your schedule, its fun

 

[JoeShades]

I've had MLB.tv for 5 years and only realized that you can change the date for games this year. I wouldn't go by the available 90 minutes after the game ends, it never work. live 2 days in the past, watch every game on your schedule, its fun

How can you go two days without knowing how the game turned out

 

[rlogan814]

How can you go two days without knowing how the game turned out

It's only for local blacked out games. if you follow multiple teams, you're gonna be behind anyways - if you watch every game. I couldn't do that for Football, but basketball, baseball, and hockey are almost better this way. you can binge watch everything.

 

[Lord Hamsa]

umm as far as sports go, you can get the broadband package for whatever sport, except nfl for now, and watch it that way on apple tv.

"Whatever sport" being defined as a subset of sports that happen to be the most popular in the United States. Considering that the two main sports I follow are NFL and EPL, that doesn't help.

 

[alent1234]

umm as far as sports go, you can get the broadband package for whatever sport, except nfl for now, and watch it that way on apple tv. The local blackout only applies to games that night. Try watching your team on your schedule, not theirs. It really works for hockey. I'm a penguins fan, but each game is blacked out for 2 days, but after that i go back and can watch the whole game commercial free. So i'm 2 days behind my team as far as watching, but with hockey, you have to go out of your way to get scores that would spoil the outcome. If you cut the cord you won't have ESPN to spoil results for you anyways, so being a day or two behind is all relative. Now that baseball has started up i just make sure to keep the same 2 days behind schedule with my sports podcasts. Of course the downside to this is you can't have conversations with your friends about last nights game. The positive is that you get to watch your team any time meaning instead of catching the last couple innings of your team's game you can watch every inning of every game at your convenience. Cut the cord already, you'll be so much happier. you really only need 10mb/s internet speed to not have anything buffer. try it.

NHL app is the best - commercials edited out, top quality
NBA apple tv app is the worst - commercials not edited out so you have to fast forward every time out break
MLB apple tve app is somewhere in-between - sometimes the commercials are edited out, sometimes not. Sometimes during breaks you get a camera showing you whats happening on the field during the break which is pretty cool.

MLB is $130
NBA is $180
NHL is also around $150
you can find a TV/Internet package for around $100 to $120 with almost any provider and it's the same as paying for the sports streaming and you can watch the games live.

 

[rlogan814]

MLB is $130
NBA is $180
NHL is also around $150
you can find a TV/Internet package for around $100 to $120 with almost any provider and it's the same as paying for the sports streaming and you can watch the games live.

You can watch live games with the broadband packages too, just not local games. typically the broadband packages are cheaper then trying to get it through cable. Also, last season i was able to get nfl sunday ticket for $99 buy getting the special edition madden through amazon. you don't have to cut the cable if you don't want to, but sports shouldn't be the reason holding you back. there are other ways to watch sports, you just get a little behind if you follow a local team. none of this applies to the nfl. I couldn't watch a game 2 days late for football. on the other hand, i've been enjoying binge watching Minnesota Timberwolves games all season.

 

[JoeG4]

While I know I fail at being a guy because I don't have much interest in watching sports, I'm kinda glad I don't because it's pretty expensive.

Anyway, I think there's an ESPN channel on the roku boxes. Not sure if it's free or not, but a quick search yielded that

 

[rlogan814]

While I know I fail at being a guy because I don't have much interest in watching sports, I'm kinda glad I don't because it's pretty expensive.

Anyway, I think there's an ESPN channel on the roku boxes. Not sure if it's free or not, but a quick search yielded that

you have to have a cable subscription to have access to it, just like hbogo or any other channel being offered over broadband

 

[Alrescha]

you have to have a cable subscription to have access to it, just like hbogo or any other channel being offered over broadband

I believe this is true, with the exception of ESPN3.

A.

 

[alent1234]

You can watch live games with the broadband packages too, just not local games. typically the broadband packages are cheaper then trying to get it through cable. Also, last season i was able to get nfl sunday ticket for $99 buy getting the special edition madden through amazon. you don't have to cut the cable if you don't want to, but sports shouldn't be the reason holding you back. there are other ways to watch sports, you just get a little behind if you follow a local team. none of this applies to the nfl. I couldn't watch a game 2 days late for football. on the other hand, i've been enjoying binge watching Minnesota Timberwolves games all season.

yeah, but living in NYC i want to see the Mets, the Nets and the Giants. not another city's team
NFL is on broadcast here with almost all the games being on OTA if you wanted to watch them. NBA is all cable. MLB is mostly cable with only a few games on broadcast

i did MLB TV last year and didn't like it

i did the cord cutting thing for a little over a year and it's fine if you don't watch a lot of TV and only do Netflix and/or Hulu. $50 a month for internet and $8 for netflix. but when you start paying for netflix, the sports apps, and everyone else trying to nickel and dime you with content it's the same price as cable TV. only difference is that netflix will have entire seasons of older shows you can't even get on demand anymore. and i hear comcast is expanding their on demand catalog

 

[oneMadRssn]

My biggest gripe with Cable is commercials. I understand the broadcast channels having commercials, those channels are free over the air. But cable channels having so many commercials is getting ridiculous when I'm paying over $1200/year.

If I'm paying such a substantial amount of money, I don't want to be advertised to so much. This has been getting worse in my opinion. These days, it seems like a 30-minute show on HGTV is about 15-minutes of commercials. So HALF the time I'm watching commercials. Same with Modern Family on USA. It's crazy. An hour-long Costmos episode has about 20-minutes of commercials. That's still way too much. Time-shifting with DVR is still a pain; having to actively self-edit out commercials in real-time gets tiresome. This is also the reason I refuse to pay for Hulu Plus. Make up your mind - commercials or subscription; I won't tolerate both.

It's true that when you add up the monthly costs of cutting cable (internet cost, netflix, amazon prime, mlb.tv, smartDNS, the occasional itunes movie rental or season subscription), the costs savings might be minimal. But the pleasure of not having any commercials seems worth it to me.

 

[Alrescha]

But the pleasure of not having any commercials seems worth it to me.

This.

I will happily pay for the privilege of not seeing commercials (and if I am paying, I expect to not see any - I am looking at you, Hulu Plus). I admittedly have a pretty foul attitude toward advertisers and marketing (i.e.: I think 99% of it is trying to get you to buy things you do not want, do not need, and probably cannot afford).

So in the end, I simply will not pay for anything that has commercials. I do watch OTA television occasionally, and seeing (but not hearing - thank you, mute button) is the price I have to pay for that.

A.

 

[NukeIT]

Cut the cord 2 months ago and still loving it.

Majority of what I watch is Netflix, OTA and NHL Gamecenter plus a little BBC iPlayer

I record OTA with eyetv, can stream most of primetime, but find it easier to load into iTunes and play thru Apple TV instead of always having to airplay from MacBook.

For NHL and BBC I subscribed to unblock-us so am not regionally blocked out.

BBC is used for Formula 1 and Top Gear.

 

[thatoneguy82]

Haven't watched TV for a long time. I've pretty much been using ATV with Netflix, Hulu+ and iTunes Store. I also added an Amazon Fire TV since I'm a Prime member since there are shows on there that Netflix/Hulu+ don't have and sometimes are cheaper than iTunes.

Also, to be on the safe side, I've upgraded my FiOS service to 75Mbps/35Mbps so I can watch TV and still surf/download without any lag.

 

[D.T.]

I may eventually CTC. I’ve done some light experimenting with various services to figure out the actual costs of sub’ing shows, monthly rates on Hulu+, etc. I just haven’t been able to get my head wrapped around a really seamless solution for the whole family.

While I know I fail at being a guy because I don't have much interest in watching sports, I'm kinda glad I don't because it's pretty expensive.

Hahaha, same here. Though funny enough, my BILs (and other acquaintances) who are hardcore into football don’t actually _play_ any sports. They just watch and talk about them (and wear jerseys).

I’m the one who surfs, skims, kayaks, trains and road races/tracks cars on the weekends.

 

[blueroom]

Cut the cord 3 years ago.
ATV3 and WMC7 with a pair of HDHomeRuns on two antennas pointing 90° apart. Xbox 360 extenders.
I considered eyeTV but: 1. can't split tuners 2. yearly subscription fee 3. no extender support.