Cut the cord (1 Viewer)

Well I cut cable off today. Don't miss it yet. Got hulu Netflix and sling. Only thing I am missing is sling won't work in bedroom in tv cause I only have a chromecast in there. Any suggestions or even other things to look into. Gonna add an antenna later but realized I gotta decide what tv I want it to go to. Unless I can split it. Any ideas on that?

Sign up for 3 months of Sling in advance and they'll give you an Amazon Fire or Roku sticks for free. Perfect for your bedroom.

The interesting question is - if you are paying for cable service through Dish, are you a really a cord cutter?

Lol I guess ur right I'll still save about 50 bucks a month tho. I thought about signing up but I had already signed up for it before they announced that and they said it's for new customers only. Imagine that

I imagine you could get the deal with a different email/account. 3 months of service costs just a bit more than the Roku Stick by itself or about $20 more than a Fire TV stick. If you're interested in having one or the other stick then you may as well also have about 3 months of Sling TV for (almost) free.

True didn't think of that I'll see what I can do tomorrow when I'm off work and see

Horace Dedieu has done the math and believes Peak Cable has already passed:

http://www.asymco.com/2015/03/19/peak-cable/#identifier_0_7041

We cut the cord years ago but actually have kept directv until 2 months ago just for Sunday ticket and DVR function for the locals. I think some find it hard not being able to channel surf 300 hundred channels but we found with a Roku, Netflix, Amazon prime, Vudu and UV movies, over time, we learned there is a lot more available out there going this way. Its not a downgrade imo, its an upgrade.


Before I got rid of directv I purchased a Tivo Roamio OTA for $50 and $15 a month because a good DVR is hard not to have now days. Not sure what we are going to do for Sunday Ticket now but I refuse to continue to pay them $1500 per year for the right to give them another $300 for S.T. I did subscribe to Dish sling deal but really haven't found we use it much. Maybe if directv would come up with there own and have Sunday ticket as an option...Hmm.... I hate monopolies and walled gardens....


p.s bjballer.....The antenna can easily be split using coax.....

Those channels which used to be “pure” became polluted and undifferentiated as each tried to be the other.

[4] - A pursuit no doubt driven by seductive but toxic market research

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Nice to see someone's noticing--
Usually within the industry, networks and parent-corporations are holy, blameless creatures, and there's some mysterious factor within the audience.

Once the corporations began holding onto their vintage reruns and movies, looking for some property that they could own as well as sell, it became a question of "Why are they watching someone else?", and the channels became a merry-go-round of each pursuing the other's hit.

With Chromecast you can watch YouTube videos on television. There is so much free content available I spend more time watching YouTube than Netflix

Carl Johnson said:

With Chromecast you can watch YouTube videos on television. There is so much free content available I spend more time watching YouTube than Netflix

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Except for what seems to be the new loophole that users can air TV episodes on YouTube if they're "mashed up" by the user--

This was to allow creative editing, but instead created the system that user channels have to air TV episodes in a frame-window border that already takes up most of the image, or slightly speeded up to alter the sound or music.


....Ya gets what you pay for, at least as far as YT and the sVOD channels are concerned. (On cable, you don't.)

Well, tail between legs time. LOL

Had the OMG moment a week or so ago when my wife, who is NOT into tech, out of the blue says she would like to ditch Directv and look at just Netflix and Hulu and OTA. Wait...WHAT??!!! This from the woman who told me many times it "wasn't worth it, too much hassle" when I floated the idea by here. Me thinks she was influenced by some kind of Facebook postings by friends or similar.

Ok I said, we are out of DTV contract so we can "suspend" the account for 6 months and test the cord cutting method.

Last night we pulled the trigger. We are now streaming apps from her fav. channels (HGTV, Food Network, TLC) and other channel apps. We have Netflix and Hulu set up.

Last night was our first run and training session. Everyone so far understands how it works. I reconfigured my HT so the OTA goes through the A/V system, the Harmony remote has been reworked. I made it as simple as possible. So far, so good (knocking on wood).

My wife did comment that we have to watch some shows "Live" like Dr Oz since we can't record it. At that point my A/V geek side came out to tell her we COULD buy a Tablo or Channelmaster DVR and record all we want from OTA channels (we have about 40 OTA channels now). She actually was receptive to the idea. So I'm off to research OTA DVR's. I may post a new thread about that topic later.

So, for now, we are in with both feet and have invested about the cost of one month of DTV to get started. After that no more additional fees other than one...see below**.

** One big side note, we are using my moms cable tv login to sign in to the random TV apps to watch full episodes. Had we not have that option, we would NOT be cutting the cord since watching shows without that login would be a royal PITA. So we are going to pay mom a bit of $$$ per month to use the login.

How are you streaming HGTV without a cable or DirecTV account? I tried to do that for my wife, and the HGTV app on Roku wants me to sign into our cable account. We have Comcast, and that is not one of the providers which are listed.

I was trying to do this because I am trying to reduce the number of cable boxes in our house, as Comcast raised the price in January of their crappy non-HD digital tuner adapters to $6 per month. I ended up getting rid of two boxes, since Comcast now provides an Xfinity app for Roku which gets me all our Comcast Xfinity channels. However, it does not run on older Roku's, and I have one older device left attached to a TV in her workout room. I just wanted to give her HGTV in there.

The Xfinity app is a little clunky, but it does provide HD picture quality, while the DTA's did not.

Look at the last part of my post.

** One big side note, we are using my moms cable tv login to sign in to the random TV apps to watch full episodes. Had we not have that option, we would NOT be cutting the cord since watching shows without that login would be a royal PITA. So we are going to pay mom a bit of $$$ per month to use the login.

I thought I saw the Xfinity sign in option on HGTV's app??

Alf, thanks, I'm not sure how I missed that.

I have checked a couple of times, and Comcast does not show up. I am not sure if I ever tried "Xfinity", though. I will have to check again.

EDIT: Just checked, and neither Comcast nor Xfinity are options when I try to authorize via the weblink provided -- http://hgtv.com/roku .

Well we put final nail in Directv coffin tonight.

Bought a Tivo Roamio 4 tuner DVR. Has lifetime Tivo subscription included. It also incorporates our Netflix and Hulu accounts into the guide etc. My wife was quite pleased to hear what all it can do. Setting it up as we speak and will start playing around with it soon.

Will probably buy Tivo Mini to go into living room main TV set up so we can access all recordings etc.

Calling DTV tomorrow to say adios.

Good luck!

Expect a hard sell from the DirectTV rep on that "goodbye" call.

Directv cancellation call took about 11 minutes. Girl was quite nice, chatted about her family that lived in a town by us. Went over the process of returning cable card etc. Pretty painless.

NOOOOOW....the whole DTV sales team is another issue. LOL

Since cancelling Saturday, I have received no less than FOUR Directv calls. We didn't even answer the first 3, on 4th one I answered and politely but firmly told the lady to QUIT CALLING us. She sounded a bit taken aback by my tone, and she said "Uhh...ummm...yes sir, ok." LOL.

So far Tivo has been the big saving grace to all of this transition. Wife is happy with things and only other option we will explore is getting a cheap TCL Roku TV for the bedroom so she can just click on a TV channel icon and start watching various online channels (TLC, Food NEtwork etc) vs. using her phone, which is a tad cumbersome and confusing for her. I'm fine using my phone.

Alf S said:

Since cancelling Saturday, I have received no less than FOUR Directv calls. We didn't even answer the first 3, on 4th one I answered and politely but firmly told the lady to QUIT CALLING us. She sounded a bit taken aback by my tone, and she said "Uhh...ummm...yes sir, ok." LOL.

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Good job!