Cord cutting is a very libertarian movement. It’s all about the individual choosing what they want to watch and when they want to watch it. It’s about giving your money to targeted companies and not subsidizing those you disagree with. It’s about the end of intrusive commercials. This started off as a younger generation trend, but has been rapidly picking up steam and the cable companies are hemorrhaging subscribers across all age groups. While a few dinosaur CEOs are still holding out, other television companies sense the impending death of the bundled cable model and are trying to develop their own streaming services.
In its purest spirit, cord cutting does not include ‘TV-lite’ streaming packages like Sling. I view these as being similar to methadone for the heroin addict. You still have to abide by the set viewing schedule, have commercials, and have to financially support channels you don’t watch. Just let it go. You won’t even know it’s there after a week. I usually bring a Roku with me when I travel because I can’t even stand to watch cable tv in hotels anymore.
If you still want to watch traditional TV after cutting the cord, you’ll need to buy a package like Sling. I’ve heard PlayStation Vue is the best of these, but again, that’s like saying a can of Boyardee is better than a gas station hotdog. Shift out of that mindset entirely and get yourself a steak. I also know there will be questions about sports packages. I don’t watch sports so don’t really know the details here. I believe MLB, NASCAR, and NHL have their own packages, and ESPN is creating one. They all eventually will.
What you’ll need
High speed internet- At least 8 Mbps. More is better, especially with multiple devices.
Streaming platform device- My opinion is that Roku is the best. They give you access to the greatest number of apps (called channels) within the platform. Both Apple and Amazon used to (and may still) restrict major competitors from their streaming platform. Roku doesn’t have this conflict of interest in their business model. There are also other options that include a Smart TV or gaming console. Make sure that the device is capable of handling 4K and HDR if your tv has this capability.
Subscription Apps or Channel Services- These are what you use to watch content. Content services are usually purchased on a monthly basis. Three different channels provide more content than a person can ever watch. Unlike with traditional Cable companies who drag you through the ringer, it’s extremely easy to cancel and add these channels online with a single mouse click, so some people even cycle through different services as new content is added. Some channels will make every episode in a season available at once to let you binge (Netflix), while others post new episodes as they air on traditional TV (Hulu, HBO Now).
Netflix– This is the staple in most streaming households. There is an incredible amount of programming available for $10/month. Most of the licensed content is so-so, but their original shows are quite good.
Amazon Prime– Meh. Their content is subpar and probably the worst value of all the major streaming channels. Definitely not worth it for $10/month. If you already have this for free-shipping and Prime Music, then it’s worth checking in every now and then.
Hulu– About $10/month for the commercial free version. This one depends on what you like. Hulu is the original joint venture of several traditional TV channels and their programming reflects that. There’s a lot of reality shows, dramas, and sitcoms that have new episodes available the day after they are broadcasted. It’s not something I would keep, but my wife really enjoys it.
Premium Channels HBO Now/ Showtime/ Starz/ Cinemax– It’s worth keeping at least one of these and they are easy to cycle through. Prices range from $8-15/month, though you can get discounts too. We have HBO Now and enjoy the original programming (Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones) and movie selection.
Vudu– Vudu is my favorite and probably most underrated channel. It’s a movie streaming service that lets you keep your own library of movies online to freely access from anywhere in the world. If you have a dvd collection you can actually add these to your streaming library. Adding regular dvds are $1 or upgrade to the high definition version for $2. They also have great deals on movies to purchase and add to your library. You can also rent 4K versions of new releases for a few dollars. Vudu does not have a service fee.
This right here will be the death of the cinema. My family watched Jurassic World last week on our 65’’4k HDR TV with surround sound. It was far superior in quality to anything at the theater, and we could have our food and drinks. I haven’t set foot in a movie theater in over a decade, and it’s very likely my kids never will.
YouTube– There is a lot of free content on YouTube that especially appeals to kids. Mine really like this show type called Surprise Eggs which, is pretty much as it sounds…. strangers open eggs with toys inside. I don’t know, I don’t get it, but it’s like crack to them. YouTube also offers a paid subscription model, but I think this is more of a younger generation thing and don’t know anything about it.
PornHub- Just kidding, this isn’t available as an app. Umm, let me take that back. As I researched this to make sure I was providing accurate information, I learned PornHub does in fact have an app available for Roku. Adult apps are banned from the Roku Channel Store, but it can be added manually using the channel code. Be sure to wipe down the remote after viewing.
Traditional TV Channel Apps- As I mentioned above, the execs at many traditional tv companies have seen the writing on the wall of the future of cable tv. Their response has been to start innovating their own streaming package. These will be similar to Netflix (i.e., commercial-free and on demand) and not at all like Sling, Playstation Vue, etc. Disney is working on one now that has an anticipated release of 2019 or 2020. There is also a streaming service available now for younger kids called NOGGIN that has shows like Backyardigans, Paw Patrol, etc for $8/month. Scrips (Travel Channel, TLC, Food Network) and Discovery have recently merged companies and are creating their own streaming channel that should be available for $5/month in 2019.
Digital antenna– This will let you pick up over the air broadcasts. Enjoy it, Grandpa.
I’ll end this by noting a common criticism of cord cutting is that it becomes as expensive as cable once you start purchasing individual streaming channels. At the cost of Internet plus $30 bucks for Netflix, HBO, and Hulu (plus free Vudu and YouTube), I don’t think this is the case at all. Even if it cost the same amount, so what?! Cord cutting is commercial free and let’s you watch what you want when you want it, so the value is immensely higher even at the same cost. I can’t imagine paying money to watch commercials. You may also hear your friendly Cable Company Rep offer to throw in a TV package for the same price as you’re paying now for just Internet. Don’t believe them. The price will jack up after one year and there will be a large number of add-on fees and taxes applicable immediately.
Cut the Cord! Vive la Révolution!
I’ve cut the cord a couple of times.
First.
That turned out great! Thanks Editor Fairy for adding all of the links.
Very good article! Edit fairy is special.
Thanks!
Very informative, I need to do this, and you just showed me how, Thanks!
Awesome, glad it helped!
Digital antenna– This will let you pick up over the air broadcasts. Enjoy it, Grandpa.
We have an outdoor antenna and a Tablo DVR. We also have Netflix and prime video.
The only thing we miss is the live sports on cable. In order to get what we want, it would cost a ton on sling and the alternatives, and we would still be paying for a ton of channels we wouldn’t watch. YoutubeTV was the closest to what we want, but we have Amazon Fire TV boxes on the TVs and YouTube doesn’t play nice with Amazon.
I should add that we get 40+ channels off the antenna, 20 or so that have remotely interesting content. Lots of old shows, game shows, old movies, etc.
The rest of the sports are coming. ESPN is trialing an ESPN-lite version now that I think is their precursor to offering a full version.
Cable is hemorrhaging subscribers and their model will become unsustainable as more customers and channels along begin to jump ship.
And some of the sports networks are actually removing cable content and putting it on streams. They keep that shit up and I may change, but I don’t see how the end result doesn’t became me paying the same for less convenience.
I was really ticked when I found the NHL app didn’t have the radio broadcasts of playoff games.
The other thing that ticked me off was WFAN saying you can listen to the game on wfan.com, and going there to find out they want to stick another app on my phone. This is why I prefer podcasts and listening via websites. I don’t want to waste my phone’s memory on apps if I can avoid it!
It’ll be interesting to see how it turns out. Right now sports on cable is being heavily subsidized by those who don’t watch. Over the next decade, I think the cable carriers are either going to have to massively raise prices on the remaining subscribers, offer sports-free packages, or convince teams to accept a great deal less in license fees.
Yeah, that’s a huge BUT to all of this. I haven’t crunched the numbers but some very brief comparisons have me thinking I’d pay about the same as I do for cable if I had to buy separate packages covering the various things I do watch.
Sports are coming. I think every major sport will be available within the next 3-4 years at most. Disney is pushing forward much earlier.
Yes, all the sports I watch are already available – in multiple different packages that add up.
Same here on the sports….and I’m so random as to how I watch stuff…..is this normal?:
* SEC football: every damned game I can work in, particularly UT and UGA
* MLB: STL Cardinals ( I watch and card out over 100 games each year )
* football bowls
* SEC baseball and softball ( card these out as well )
* majors tournaments or playoffs only: PGA, NFL, March Madness, NHL
* all F1; NASCAR x/c tri-ovals (oh so very boring)
* LadyVols basketball
* Tour de France
I have no idea how to harvest all this !?1?
and I really like the C-SPAN extras like BookTV, USSC audio, book fairs, documentaries, debates, think tank reports….anything x/c actual congressional coverage.
I already have the stuff suggested but just have not idea how to transfer the sports…so I’m stuck in 1994.
Once I can get the WIld games without the rest of the shit.
*chop*
Although, it’s still cheaper to bundle. You have to threaten to quit once a year, though…
Great article, SSD!
As I said elsewhere, the NHL app has the radio broadcasts, which I really like. I prefer to listen to the games since I’ll usually be on the computer.
I sprung for NFL Game Pass to get the Packer game audio, but last year the app only wanted to work on my tablet. They updated the app this year and it seems to be working on my phone.
Our radio guys are excellent, but I really like to watch the games. Problem is blackouts. I don’t really care about the out of market games.
I’m a long time NFL fan, since I was 9 years old. I’m pretty much done, they’ve already started up the protest shit again. Fuck them all, I hope they all go broke and dig ditches for a living. I don’t give a fuck what they do on their own time, but when I’m paying, hell no, fuck yourself.
Long time Packer fan here. Love the team, but progressively hating the NFL. Cancelled my subscription this year and will watch the games I can catch on the majors if and when I have the time and interest. My time and money is better spent on the NHL’s far superior product in my opinion.
My time and money is better spent on the NHL’s far superior product in my opinion.
This.
MLB has a subscription service for watching pitch by pitch. I don’t generally watch (or listen) live, but I understand it does allow that for all but the playoff games (but it does abide by blackout restrictions). I’m not sure about the price, because T-Mobile has been giving away a free subscription in the spring the past two years.
The MLB streaming is excellent: they have all the games you want and tons of extra app content (live stats), more than even I can digest. When I lived in the desert I’d subscribe between jobs.
Now that I live back in the proper South, STL is my standard FoxSports regional (as is ATL ), so I only pay by the game if I’m away from home.
Great write up. Right now I’m paying $20 for directTV because I called to cancel, so they made staying cheaper than the cancellation fee. After October I’m ditching them.
We cut 7 or 8 years ago and had DirecTV too. I ended up just eating the cancellation fee, but I think there was still about a year left on the contract and they wouldn’t budge.
It was like $400 to cancel or $200 to keep the service. I hate satellite TV.
My cancellation fee was only $20/month so maybe $180. At least twice that to keep.
It sounds like they’ve gotten a lot more aggressive with trying to stop churn.
Oh yeah. I cancelled and got a call from retention the next day. She was basically begging me to stay. Probably to protect the value of the company. If they are bleeding customers the stock has got to drop.
Between Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu and Vudu, we always have something to watch. We cut off cable service a long time ago and have never missed it.
Add HBO and you have our lineup too.
The girlfriend and I cycle through Starz and HBO when certain series (Game of Thrones, American Gods, Ash Vs. Evil Dead, etc) are released, and drop them when the last episode of the season ends. We keep Netflix year round, and have Vudu (which also has plenty of free movies with ads).
How is American Gods? I heard it got proggy, but I really enjoyed the book.
Not bad, the first season is only up to the big reveal in the book. There was one episode that leaned a bit heavy on the proggy side (a city that was worshiping guns and ammo, and living to the full leftist thoughts as to how those people would act), but they’ve kept most of the plot points from the book. The biggest issue is that the showrunners left after the first season, as well as some of the cast (Kristen Chenoweth – Eoster, Gillian Anderson – Media). Gaiman is stepping up with some assistance, so at least the plots and characters should be solid, and Gaiman has worked in TV before (albeit at the BBC).
Interesting, thanks. I’ll have to check it out then.
The wife and I cut the cord two weeks ago. There has been some adjustments needed. I miss having random shit show up on TV. There needs to be a random channel that lets you shuffle all of the site content and lets you zone out for a few hours. Essentially channel surfing via streaming.
There is one. I couldn’t find it with a quick search, but there is a random show generator out there.
I sometimes pull up an old sitcom or Planet Earth or something like that if I just want something on in the background without actually paying attention.
There’s also Pluto TV (free service with commercials) that has a schedule including streaming channels and such.
Thanks all.
Pluto is great. They have a MST3K channel!
Probably on topic – Ben Swann: U.S. Can Legally Propagandize Its Own Citizens
As an aside, idk what happened to Ben. He got some notoriety and, I assume, some money and now looks like Ryan Seacrest. Shave off the frosted tips, bro.
I don’t have unlimited data where I am. That’s one of the few bad things about living on a 1000′ foot driveway uphill. 🙁
I hear you. High speed internet ends 3 houses down from mine so I lucked out.
Keep an eye on 5G. We may see unlimited data from the next generation cellular network.
Much of my viewing would be sports and old movies, and my understanding is that when Netflix went to streaming. the streaming service offers very few old movies.
I believe there are several apps that exclusively focus on old movies.
Turner Classic Movies’ FilmStruck is one.
https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/filmstruck-on-roku-players-tvs-1202454519/
Yup Ted, we have Netflix dvd and streaming and the selection of old stuff on streaming sucks.
I just went to Vudu. Looks like it’s $2 to convert DVDs now and $5 to upgrade to hdx and $2 for Blu-ray.
They used to have a long-running promotion where took 50% off if you converted 10 more discs. I guess that might have ended.
A buddy of mine tried to get me to read some beach novel a few years back. Something like The Da Vinci Code. “Sorry, I only read the classics”. He mocked me for years over that.
Fuck TV. I’m sure there are decent shows out there, but can they compare to Shakespeare, Voltaire, Dostoyevsky? It’s fine to indulge once in a while, but I’d say it’s better to get the bulk of your entertainment from geniuses that brought light to the world. The Greeks understood that entertainment mixed with philosophical and moral instruction is essential to a functioning society.
/Old man rant over
*Not meant to be a shot at Semi Spartan Dad’s article. If it helps separating the wheat from the chaff, ?.
It’s okay, I knew there would be one of you… /kidding
I mean I have a library of thousands of books,go through about a book every other day, and live on 30 acre farm in the country with hiking trails and a fishing pond. Still enjoy watching shows and movies. I don’t see them as mutually exclusive.
For non-fiction shows, the amount of information that can be conveyed through video is staggering.
Sometimes a rerun of Threes Company is just what the doctor ordered. It’s opportunity cost, though.
No love for jail broken fire sticks with Kodi?
Also, Amazon Prime content is not sub par. Your mom is sub par. ?
YOUR FACE IS SUB PAR.
Amazon Prime does have some good content, but I don’t think it’s worth the price if you were to subscribe for that alone. Add in shipping, Prime Music, and it starts becoming a good deal.
They also have a lot of PBS shows for kids.
Me thinks they wanted to keep the cord cutting discussion on the up and up hence the non mention of K-TV
I miss the days of smuggly proclaiming that I don’t even own a TV, now everyone assumes that you have Nettube or AmazonGo or Sommat. I do have Prime because I buy a lot of shit and the shipping savings pays for it, but it takes me over a week to watch one episode of Bosch. I used to watch the bejeesus out of some TV but now can’t stomach more than 5-10 minutes at a time. I will, however, listen to Radio Classics on SiriusXM all day long. Phil Harris, The Shadow, Fucking Gunsmoke, Britt Ponset, X minus 1 , Johnny Dollar, Have Gun…now that’s the shizzle my Nizzles.
If I had a regular commute again, I think I would get SiriusXM.
I just did it, dropped cable TV completely. I have Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Sling. I did Sling quickly with Fire TV and just selected a package and got my wife’s Globo TV. Now, I think I’ve discovered that you can go totes A la carte? If that’s the case, I’m going to wait for wife to get home from Europa and decide what we want just a la carte. I only want Curiosity Stream and maybe History and Travel. Outside of that, I’ll leave it to her.
Vive la Révolution!
A la carte is coming. Travel is owned by Discovery/Scripps who is one of the most aggressive of the traditional channels in starting their own streaming channel.
History is partially owned by Disney. They are anticipating launching their own streaming channel next year but I don’t know if this will be on it.
We dumped Dish about a year ago in favor of Sling on Roku. We also have Netflix and Amazon. We probably could have haggled Dish down to the price we pay for Sling, but I just got tired of playing the game every 6 months. I wish we had done it years ago. The only thing I miss are some football games, but in the end that makes me go out and do something useful on weekends instead, so that’s really a win too. The digital antenna doesn’t work where we live unless we were to learn Vietnamese or Chinese, but the picture was amazing.
The one thing that bugs me about digital is that we’re just at the edge of the Albany stations’ range and were never able to pick up NYC stations at all even with analog. So when the weather isn’t as good there’s a problem with reception of most of the channels.
I prefer the digital subchannels for the most part anyway.
Ted, do you have a Roku box? IIRC, they have a couple (free) channels w/ B&W movies (although admittedly, they’re probably not the 1930-1950 best picture candidates). On the plus side, it’s a one-time investment of $15 or so
That’s a good point about the hassle the satellite companies and cable puts you through to modify or cancel. I’ve never understood the business plan of actively enraging your customers.
OT, and too lazy to go see if this has been covered.
NY Times and the radical feminist clique — but I repeat myself — are shocked that Title IX is not merely a club to be used against men. Was that not what was intended by,
“Mr. Reitman, who is now 34 and is a visiting fellow at Harvard, says that Professor Ronell kissed and touched him repeatedly, slept in his bed with him, required him to lie in her bed, held his hand, texted, emailed and called him constantly, and refused to work with him if he did not reciprocate. Mr. Reitman is gay and is now married to a man; Professor Ronell is a lesbian.”
Opposites attract?
Yes they do
Since I missed the thread earlier – someone posted a link to the Youtube channel for ADVChina a few weeks back. I’ve really been getting a kick out of their channel – as well as the individual channels for both participants. Incredibly informative, very classy and professional guys with some great tech skills – will probably shell out to watch their “conquering Northern/Southern China” travelogues pretty soon too. https://youtu.be/9loDBwp5ST0
Currently, I use netflix, prime, but I also subscribe to Crunchyroll for anime. Unfortunately, my bedroom tv will let me watch youtube and prime but the connection won’t work for netflix. I can watch netflix on a separate blu-ray player downstairs, my pc, or my xbox 360 (also prime/crunchyroll compatible).
I take it you’re using a smart TV? Some of them will not allow standard apps which I find bizzare. I spent an hour trying to get HBO NOW to load on my LG before realizing it’s not supported.
Not watching with any TV apps – my Xbox 360, and two of my blu-ray players have embedded apps in the firmware (wish I could download new apps on some of them) – haven’t tried anything via the tv directly yet.
And for streaming dongles, I like the Chromecast. It’s cheap, and you can stream almost anything from an Android phone. The only major app that doesn’t stream to it natively is the Amazon Video one.
Chromecast is a great one too.
And since I’m feeling a little linky (2nd glass of wine after an absolutely fabulous batch of beef enchiladas and mexican rice, home-made, by me).
I came across this today. The Army has similar problems, just the results aren’t quite as notable (as crashing a ship).
That picture is amazing.
Chair Force is the same – readiness reports were basically lies. And it was usually a schmuck EM or LT that took the heat.
What the hell use is sophisticated technology if we can’t figure out how to train people to use it?
Similarly, what good are those layers of command structure overhead?
Lucky we don’t have any wars to fight that we really need to win.
Youtube TV works well, 60 channels including locals and a DVR-similar service for $40/month.
That sounds like a good deal. I’ve never used it but think YouTube was one of the early pioneers in streaming regular TV channels.
Great write-up Spartan. I’m ony phone so I skipped all the comments…I apologise if someone else already asked; i, by necessity am on satellite internet. For a whole 3 days now. We are on the 20GB plan. Is that amount of data enough to consider cutting the cord? We aren’t big movie watchers, but like random history and nature shows.
I don’t think it’ll be worth it for you. You’ll blow through 20 GB in a month. Last time I checked, we used 750 GB/month though it’s probably closer to 1K GB now. Granted we are heavy streamers and use a lot of high def and 4k.
5G is coming next year and may allow unlimited data for your entire household.
That is probably not going to be enough. I just pulled up my usage stats for the month, and with the girlfriend and I, we racked up over 100 GB of data (looking over the past several months, we’re hitting between 90 – 135 GB). Mind you, this is with both of us streaming in HD, and Steam pulling down new games and updates.
20GB down should be enough if you’re not doing anything else. Just make sure that if you’re watching something you don’t have anything else using the connection, or you’ll see drops in resolution, or caching issues, stuff like that. As long as you’ve got a straight shot with the satellite though you should be fine. Certainly no worse than satellite tv.
Oh, my bad, I thought you were talking about bandwidth. If you’re paying for 20GB of traffic per month you’ll blast through that in like two movies.
What’s the bandwidth for satellite? I have no idea these days but that’s probably going to be your bottleneck, followed by the relatively low data cap.
I haven’t actually checked it yet, but the advertised is 25Mbps
So, the biggest package (huh-huh) is 50 GB for $130. That includes 50 GB of bonus data between 2am-8am. If we exceed our allotted data limit, they throttle you down to 1-3 Gbps. Which, I think(?) isn’t terrible. I know it’s 2-5 times faster than tethering off my smart phone plan, which we had been doing for the last 2 years.
$130 is how much we’re paying for a ton of DirectTV channels we don’t watch. This seems like a no-brainer…
Yep, still a dinosaur here. Although movies we do through Prime.
Stir fried duck breast with black bean/garlic sauce tonight. Lot’s of fresh veggies. Happy tummy. The wife got a B.B. this time.
Prime’s got some solid movies. Dinner sounds good!
We’ve been cordless for, oh, three years now. We’ve got gig-speed Fios (we crush bandwidth in this house) and have had Prime for years with a discount for working for a university, so the natural step was to get a Fire TV, which is our main device. After a lot of experimentation, we’ve settled on Netflix, HBO Now, and Hulu with the Live add-on. That gets us all the network tv we care about, we can watch live sports that we have any interest in, and we have tons of movies to watch. I’d never go back, to be honest. There’s so much crap I don’t care about on cable compared to what I do it’s not even funny. The one thing I miss is TCM, and there’s an app for that. Thing is, we don’t even watch less tv, we just watch better tv, and on our terms.
I wish we could have Fios here, though 180 Mbps seems to work.
Part of what I didn’t like about Cable was subsidizing all of that crap. Once networks are forced to sink or swim, the quality will improve. I think the original programming from HBO and Netflix is far superior than any of the traditional networks.
I don’t want to support CNN, MSNBC, or all the other uber prog networks. If I could pick just the shows I want I would be happy, which is basically what I do with VUDU.
This is my thing right now. On my Sling package, I still have ESPN and CNN. So, I already changed that to the other package which will at least kill off ESPN, but CNN remains. But at least if I am not misunderstanding, I can go to total a la carte on Sling and kill off CNN also.
Yeah, we had the Fios Triple Play package for a few years. I think the first “wait a minute…” moment was when they told me that it was actually cheaper to get landline service (which we never used) than to get Internet and TV as a duo. The final straw was when we just sort of started gravitating towards on-demand programming, especially when most of it was Netflix, and we started to get bottlenecked by our bandwidth. That and paying something like $275 a month for TV we didn’t watch.
The big roadblock was watching, of all things, the Washington Redskins. We’re a ‘Skins household, but our cable market winds up being Baltimore, and a lot of the streaming services seem to agree. Fios would at least let us get DC channels, so we’d be able to watch DC games even if the Ravens were playing at the same time, mostly. But once we came to the conclusion that a.) the Redskins are awful, b.) we’d rather watch games at friends’ houses or out at bars, and c.) the money we save by dropping cable easily pays for the bar tab spending a Sunday watching football on the patio of a local bar, the switch was easy.
“PornHub- Just kidding, this isn’t available as an app. Umm, let me take that back. As I researched this to make sure I was providing accurate information, I learned PornHub does in fact have an app available for Roku. Adult apps are banned from the Roku Channel Store, but it can be added manually using the channel code. Be sure to wipe down the remote after viewing.”
Who needs PornHub when you can buy this?
https://www.pipedreamproducts.com/showdetail?Full_Number=PD3560-00
That’s uncalled for. I suppose you want me to trick you guys into clicking on a naked Triggly Poof link again?
You just discovered the cure for priapism!
Does anyone have any advice on a simple inexpensive way to receive digital broadcasts on an old analog TV?
Yes, of course, buy a new TV. They’re dirt cheap. I just saw a 70″ Samsung 4K smart TV for $1000.
Costco has a 65” Vizio for $620
I have a 60″ Vizio Smart TV. It’s only 1080, but it’s 240hz. It’s a nice TV, but I will not recommend Vizio, the TV is very slow to respond, it almost reminds me of having to boot up a CRT monitor. My next TV is definitely Samsung. I know it will be expensive, because once you’ve gotten use to the 240hz, you can’t go back to all that motion blur.
Here:
https://youtu.be/uNQF1AwWMjM
No one? The “digital antennas” seem pretty straightforward, but the conversion boxes seem overly complicated.
I think I saw an infomercial for the gizmo you need but… I haven’t had an analog TV in a long time so didn’t pay attention.
It’s for my mom. She already has a new TV with cable in the living room. But she’s against getting another cable box for her bedroom. So buying a new TV is out of the question. So I just ant to make it work like it did before broadcasters went digital.
Sorry I don’t remember the name of the device but the commercial made it look dead simple to use.
Here’s another option. Although if you can get a better name brand for less, like Best Buy’s Insignia, I would suggest it. Ematic Converter Box
The conversion box hooks up much like an old VCR and broadcasts on channel 3 on the TV. You then change channels on the conversion box. This is what we have on our old CRT 32″. It’s the way Columbo was intended to be watched. The conversion box was like $20 at BestBuy.
3 teens and the wife and I blow through 1 to 1.5 TB of bandwidth in a month easily but I can shut off those services and monitor my own usage. so much better than cable or satellite
What is bandwidth? There is still such a thing? I haven’t heard anything about it in more than a decade.
Sorry, we occacisionally utilize 1.5 TB of data over a 30 day period. Our data cap is 1TB and I pay the extra amount to cover our utility of the backbone in which I see no reduction of data rate for over usage.
Where are you?
Vegas area
OK, my apologies, I will no longer ask about intimate body parts. I existed in time before we had our ISPs embedded in our sexual organs.
Lol…you guessed it
What’s your ISP?
Now we are getting personal
I just checked and we’re averaging 1 TB/month.
We’ve got Prime anyway, but I find I more often find what I’m looking for (usually recomendations from this lot) there than on Netflix.
I’m not keeping records so my lived experience may not be valid.
Prime has some good content, but I wouldn’t recommend some sign up for it just for the video service.
I’m not as a big of fan of Netflix’s movies, but I think their original series programming is quite good.
I canceled NetFlix a while back because I stumbled across their original series “Vox Explains…” which had come after a few other shitty prog fests. That and finding out Susan Rice was on their board and them laundering a shit ton of money for Obama. Obviously they didn’t want my money.
Oh and most importantly the netflix app on my smart TV absolutely reeked. It never remembered my user/pass. And it would crash randomly far too often.
That last gripe is really the main reason I dumped them. I think Prime Video has a lot of good content. But I mostly watch TV shows and not movies.
I haven’t reach the point yet of cancelling, but it did cross my mind each time.
The execs at Netflix are going to alienate a good portion of their customer base if they don’t reel it back. They used to have a star rating system for their content. They spent a lot of money on an Amy Schumer (I think) stand up that immediately received an average 1 star rating. They responded by pulling the star rating system and instituting a thumbs up/down approach. I got a kick out of that but just shows how tone-deaf they are.
At the risk of getting shitcanned… I saw her do stand-up once and she was pretty funny. But it was before she got woke.
I think a lot of those comedians are sort of funny when they are just starting out. The problem is that once they hit the big time, the suits start mangling them to conform to what they want to market. So any originality is stripped away from them and they sell out being funny for riches.
Totally understand. I’d sell out too.
That is one of the reasons I think Chapelle is so good. To walk away from that payday because the business side was getting ready to suck his soul out.
Oooh, you just reminded me of one of my pet peeves about Netflix. I really don’t like standup comedy specials and Netflix is lousy with them. There doesn’t seem to be any way to filter them out either.
Trying to browse comedies on Netflix and 2 of 3 seemed to be standup shows by someone I had never ever heard of.
They must be to streaming services what poker tournaments are to sports channels. Dirt cheap content that is just good enough.
I take an apolitical approach to Netflix. So far, they’re still putting stuff on that I value, so I keep paying them. I’ve got no interest in Vox explaining a damn thing to me, but I’m happy to keep sending them money if they keep putting stuff I actually do like on. If they start trending further towards Vox and away from stuff like Stranger Things, that’ll be a different story. There are just too many good alternatives.
Oh yeah, if any of you guys like anime, Crunchyroll is free with commercials or I think $7 for commercial free.
http://www.crunchyroll.com/
I’m watching citrus now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus_(manga)
Good gawd, that would be like playing JRPG games, I’ll just kill myself instead.
Go ahead, more bizarre cartoons for me.
Totally didn’t see that coming
It’s right of there with M Night!
https://youtu.be/4LGu1sOvxYs
Mmm. Spicy crunchy tuna roll.
Any of you want to donate to Peter Dork or whatever his name is, who got fired from the FBI today? I contribute 2 fuck Us and a Woodchipper beer. The beer will have holes in the can of course.
Pop the beer, drink half of it, fill it back up with the resulting piss and serve it with a smile.
I gave a hearty guffaw and a wiseass smirk. I think he likes those, so hopefully he appreciated it.
Not sure if anyone else remembers, but if not, get off my yard, snappers! But back in the 80s, I had big dish satellite TV and I had it for like 10 years and you could do total a la carte everything. That thing was so much fun. Then the cable companies managed to kill that off, I guess, and TV started to suck.
I just want a la carte with my existing cable service. Yeah, and rainbows could shoot out my butt.
I think it’s possible to get it with Sling. Again, I’m not 100% positive yet… But I will let everyone know in a few days. Of course, you still have to have intertoobz.
Sling’s not entirely a la carte–had it for about a year–but there’s a lot of a la carte features. You still get a standard package of stuff. I thought it had a better UI than Playstation Vue, which is pretty good itself, but it’s live sports stuff wasn’t as good in terms of resolution. It was great for college football, though, and had a lot of soccer, if you’re into that sort of thing.
I’m guessing you mean bitrate and resolution. Did it look blocky and digitized? Or did it look fuzzy and soft?
Those are still hanging around. Typically for people wanting SAT TV from different regions of the world is what I think.
I still have a 10′ fully functional dish. I just don’t live in that house, but it was still working last time I was there. I loved that thing.
I’m confused about praise for Netflix and Hulu (?), and contempt for Amazon Prime. Prime is part of a larger service so $10/mo isn’t an accurate representation.
Prime, for me, is mainly for getting free shipping from the shitloads of stuff we buy on Amazon. The video is just an extra. But as far as movies are concerned, I find it much better than Netflix.
^Pretty much this.
As a streaming service, I think Prime is a poor value at $10/month. I agree it’s a good value when you add in free shipping and other benefits, but that’s outside the scope here.
I’m not a big fan of Hulu and would not keep it just for myself. My wife and kids really enjoy it though.
Thanks for the piece – very useful!
Thanks!
I don’t buy very much from Amazon but I never pay shipping. I have to wait a week but so what.
I’m the same way. Plus their shipping estimates are bullshit. They once told me this oddball test cable from China would take a month. It showed up in several days.
Amazon is really convenient since it’s a long drive to closest big box store. We buy pretty much everything from either Amazon or Costco.
Oh definitely – I just don’t buy a lot of stuff period, mainly because I live alone I guess.
I like the delivery to the door, but what swung my wife into the Amazon column is that it is easy to buy obscure crap like vacuum bags for our old vacuum cleaner or furnace filters.
So much easier to buy that shit from home where you can look at the make/model and get exactly what you need. Unlike standing in the store and wondering if that is what you need or not.
What happens eventually, is that you get an Amazon warehouse in your state, like we do here in MD. So let me tell you what to expect. You will see Amazon’s world class, maybe unprecedented level of customer service take a rapid downhill slide. You’ll get 2 hour or even one hour delivery for it, though, a pretty much unheard thing before now though. My analysis? None.
We do Netflix and other unnamed services for our TV viewing. Kids have subs for games. It truly is an awesome time for services
It truly is an awesome time for services
Definitely. I think we’re going to see content choices explode over the next several years when it’s reached critical mass.
I use Playstation Vue and it works very well. I still like the live TV feel every now and again, but it has an extensive library of free on-demand content, a free DVR and supports up to 5 devices. It’s worth it just to avoid having to pay for Comcast (I have CenturyLink fiber optic, 1 Gig baby!).
Yea, I’ve head repeatedly that Vue is the best of the traditional tv streaming services.
We did Vue for awhile. Horrible UI if you’re using an Amazon Fire TV remote, IMO, but the live streaming was great. Beats Sling hands-down in that regard, and better than Hulu Live, which is pretty good. Vue is excellent for NFL, I noticed, and we watched the Stanley Cup playoffs on it and it was indistinguishable from an HD cable feed.
Thanks for the info!
That’s exactly what Tulpa would say. I picked up another of those BB sampler packs tonight. And I was thinking… this is exactly what Tulpa would not buy.
Whatever, Tulpa
I’m glad to finally write something up. I hope some of it might have been helpful.
Also: does anyone use ESPN+? I’ve been toying with the idea but I can’t decide.
I have ESPN now, ESPN+ I dumped with cable. Now I want rid of the rest of their prog bullshit asap.
I’d like all the tennis to go back to Tennis Channel.
If I drop cable, I doubt I would subscribe to anything ESPN since they focus mainly on sports I don’t watch. Just some soccer matches but likely not worth what they would be asking for.
But yes ESPN+ is a perfect example of content that I used to watch on cable and now can’t. English and German 2nd league soccer, for example.
Check out fubo.tv. TONS of soccer.
Yeah, they’re definitely on my radar. Plus they have MSG which covers most of my hockey needs. No Tennis Channel though 🙁
I used to do MLS Live and was very disappointed when they switched to ESPN+. I miss all the out of market games.
I miss all the downmarket EPL matches that NBCSN used to be so proud of offering us until they offloaded it all last year. Yeah, fuck you, too.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b3/d7/94/b3d794d71b4ed6ad6fd4e0432e612408.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/0f/5a/bd/0f5abd114f58952dba8f60554f7ff43b.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/88/cd/9d/88cd9d8450069e2a9da47e2f8834a9cb.jpg
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DiTjVygU8AA83Dh.jpg
https://thechive.files.wordpress.com/2018/06/something-something-clever-flbp-47-photos-256.jpg?quality=85&strip=info&w=600
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/eb/66/be/eb66be80c02734ce8b34e5594b26d5d7.jpg
Mary Anne for the win.
Been a ”cord cutter” my entire adult life, it’s always saved a lot of money. I kind of wish I could go back to the days of no cellphone, but the instant access to the totality of human knowledge at any time I want is too irresistible.
Of course it is. And has always been. Sorry, luddites, you are fucked, and that includes you, socialist democrats. Suck it, luddites.
I admire your optimism…
I can’t even.
https://hotair.com/archives/2018/08/14/ny-times-advice-column-tackles-white-guilt/
That’s as far as I got but no fucking way that’s real.
The whole “white guilt” thing is clearly an attempt at fucking over individuals while being able to say, “No, you all have it, so it’s fair.” I preferred it when they admitted it was unfair (affirmative action), but it had to be done to fix society. Now they screw you AND blame you for forcing them to do it.
Interesting piece on cord cutting and the costs of channels if ala carte came.
I think that the problem is that everyone would drop ESPN @ $8/mo in a heartbeat. I wonder how much they are spending lobbying Congress to block any attempt at ala carte pricing?
Interesting, and yes, I’ve heard that ESPN is the bête noire in all of this. In fact, I read somewhere it’s wayyyy more than $8 a month. More like $35.
Is that you Nick Gillespie?
I want my HGTV, DIY, FYI, alien shows, American Pickers, Forensic Files, Hoarders, science-y stuff, and How It’s Made, and shit like that. I have Amazon Prime, which I think is somewhere between awesomesauce and okay. I found DEAD LIKE ME, BOARDWALK EMPIRE, and a few other series like that on Amazon Prime that I wouldn’t have gotten any other way (because we don’t have HBO). We can get on-demand stuff from the cable company. But really, I mostly only watch channels that aren’t anywhere but cable.
Hoarders FTW – guilty pleasure.
From what I have seen a lot of the streaming services offer a basic package that includes the most common cable channels. I don’t think you’d miss any of the stuff in your list.
OK, maybe HGTV – I don’t recall seeing that in my research but I don’t look for it so… not sure.
Matt Paxton is my spirit animal. “We’re all only 5 bad decisions away from shitting in a bucket.”
Heh. I seem to remember they re-booted it recently and then it disappeared 🙁
In my job I get to see firsthand the sights and smells of hoarders. In the past year alone I’ve been in two places where the hoarding was of the trash variety, as in literally not getting rid of garbage until it was chin high. The rats had a rat problem. It still kind of amazes me how common hoarding is.
What do you do?
Hoarding shows make me feel better about my minimslist approach to housekeeping AND motivate me to clean.
Ha! You would have to have an extremely minimalist approach to come anywhere close. It seems the most common things I have seen people hoard are papers, junk mail, old paperbacks. So bad that there are practically tunnels that you walk through in their homes.
Own a small locksmith biz that has a number of real estate and property management clients. The other day worked at a 15 million dollar mansion, tomorrow it could be a crack house.
When you say streaming services, you mean like Roku and stuff like that? I feel so dumb about this shit since we haven’t had a decent source of internet service for 3+ years now.
I am not familiar with Roku (isn’t that a piece of hardware?) but I mean basically any TV over Internet.
I really need to get up to speed with this stuff. I’m tired of paying over $100 to DirecTV for shit I can get free (or nearly) off the internet. Fuck them.
Well, the gist is, it’s not free, will never be free, but it will probably be less than you’re paying now. And you might not get everything you want.
OK, “free” was a little hyperbole, but yeah, I get what you’re saying. I guess I totally get the top-level view of it all, I just need to figure out the details and what my options are. Thanks to S-SD, you and others here, I’m getting closer…
Yea, Roku is a hardware to enable streaming.
Common TV streaming services include Sling, YouTube TV, and Playstation Vue. Those will include most of the channels/shows Mojeaux mentioned.
Roku does offer their own channel now as well. It and several other channels either offer limited free or ad supported content.
Son, we kept a sub for Sling specifically for My 600lb Life. Talk about guilty pleasures, try judging the morbidly super-obese while you’re pounding light beer and eating baked Chee-tos.
Well since you fessed up, I will too…
For similar irony I watch a lot of CrossFit on TV.
And I thought I was bad for subbing to HBO just for Big Love, but at least that had Bill Paxton.
See, those are the channels I’d get rid of if I could go to streaming. 😉
So I saw a trailer on youtube for the Papillon remake which is billed as being “based on a true story” when there is reason to believe the book was really a novel with autobiographical elements and elements of the lives of other prisoners.
This is an interesting subject. good job on write up SSD
My own experience is sort of odd because i never really had a cord to cut. We never had cable TV in my family as a child, then by the time i had made my own home, i’d configured the home-entertainment to be “music and movies” and TV was a non-concern with the exception of news and sports. If i wanted to see a show? i’d dl episodes and watch at leisure
there have been some different experiments with how i’ve done things (i’ve subscribed to SEC + ACC networks to watch college sports) but basically ignored pro sports… or network tv.
so i consider myself sort of cord-cut since… early 2000s or so.
but i think there is an open question of ‘wither sports’ because ESPN sucks donkey balls and there is clearly some strife between individual sports and the way they get remunerated by the networks. I expect there to be some future change in the way sports gets delivered and i think a smart VC firm might see an opp here to break the back of the existing system.
As for movies… I have a sad sort of story: I spent like 5 years w/ a netflix mail account, copying DVD’s and building this enormous (~somewhere between 500-700 things) library of hard-copy DVDs
and then i started storing them on hard drives. so now i’ve got 6 giant boxes of DVDs and a stack of old 250gb hard drives knee high.
and they’re all just 720p. Basically “shit” compared to what you can stream.
so, perfectly useless, with the exception of the occasional good DVD commentary. still not sure what to do with all that shit. Some of it is archival and important – like, i think the “World At War” DVD series is such great shit, i just want to keep forever. but other things are just gratuitous. 100s of movies that look better in other medium.
anyway…. i think the idea of ‘breaking loose of cable companies’ is to be applauded, no matter what the use-case. Tho i think the sports thing is a big ?? who-knows
I’m with you there, what a great series. I had some (most…all?) of it on DVR, but sacrificed it for other…dumb shit. Good on you for securing it for perpetuity.
I think there’s maybe a dozen of those sorts of things in my collection
e.g. i have dvd archives i’ve made of things like
– “10 muhammed ali documentaries (plus all his fights)”
– “every shaw bros kung fu movie (w/ commentary by stoned people)”
– a number of limited-run TV shows like the british “The office” or “the young ones” or the Simon Schama “history of britain” BBC series; (or the James Burke “Connections” series)
– all the ken burns shit
– all the errol morris shit
– all the Alfred Hitchcock shit
– all the Kurosawa shit…
…and… you can quickly see why i still have hundreds of DVD boxes in storage
Go on…
That’s cool. I have almost all the Hitch shit…but it’s on VHS. Which, now that I think about it; why the fuck do I still keep those things? I guess I just can’t get myself to throw Hitch away, even though(-if I still have it) I’m not sure where my VCR player is. Hell, my DVD player hasn’t even got connected since we last moved 3 years ago.
Agreed that the delivery of sports is kind of broken at the moment. Interested to see how it sorts out. With all the money that ESPN won’t be able to skim off everyone’s cable bill any more, imagine the impact on the salaries of various sports figures.
Oh, and re 720. I have decided that am not in the least troubled at the appearance of my DVD’s on HDTV. And I swear they look even better though my new Xbox One for some reason.
It’s upscaling, with good hardware it works well, even for 480p.
Thanks Gilmore.
If you copied the DVDs exactly, you may be able to upload them to Vudu for a couple bucks and upgrade to the High Definition or 4K version for a couple more dollars.
“If you copied the DVDs exactly”
yeah, that’s not bloody likely. the default was to strip out all the bullshit FBI warnings and silly intersitial studio-adverts.
so i dont think i own a single commercial DVD that i didn’t strip down to “the useful bits”
even if i had, i doubt i’d ever feel happy about giving $ to some 3rd party to let me see “better picture version”.
i mean, as an example: you can’t really get much benefit out of a “1080p” version of a 1960s print that….. nobody actually re-mastered for 1080p in the first place
meaning… i think in many cases, i expect obscure films dont benefit much from format changes. maybe they do; but i think there are likely cases where DVDs may look better than HD boots floating around the net
Ask me about the six boxes of DVDs in my shed. And the dusty Blu-Ray player that’s there to give a single shelf some purpose in life.
If they were DVDs they were 480p, no matter how you ripped them. To most people though resolution isn’t the thing they notice, it’s bitrate, and that you can change, however it will never be better than the source material. However, if something is shot in 1080 (or on 35mm and rendered in 1080 from the source) you can downscale resolution with a high bitrate and have it look better.
yes, sorry , correct.
i was probably thinking of the “best available digital transfer” at the time that HD versions were available (mid 2000s)
but i agree that there’s little benefit/difference w/ source material that’s grainy to begin w/
unless they do some special -remastering, which does occasionally happen.
The problem is, I’d like a hard copy (well, at least have the 1s and 0s) on something in my possession if things go tits-up.
^^That.^^
I do not “buy” movies on Amazon Prime, although I will rent one every so often. Most of the things I watch on Prime are “free” (like Boardwalk Empire and Dead Like Me).
When I buy ebooks and music on Amazon, I can keep the music on my PC, and I have a mechanism to keep my ebooks (I think most people do, but don’t know how to do it). The music isn’t locked down. The ebooks are, but I can crack them if I have to.
I buy CDs at the thrift store and rip them. I toss the jewel cases, put them in sleeves, and keep them stored in a nice, tidy box. I burn the music I get sans CD.
So the ebooks are not physical, but they are accessible to me as long as the tech is. I can’t afford to have that many paper books in my house. Hello, an episode of Hoarders. I can’t afford to buy all the music I purchase in CD format because I only ever buy That One Song on every album, unless I’m getting it at the thrift store.
But if I want a movie or TV show badly enough, I’ll buy it on DVD. I just can’t handle paying $12.99 for a license to watch a movie if I can get it on DVD.
*sigh* Dead thread.
Have I mentioned that the cable guy was here for 2 1/2 hours the other day to supposedly fix one missing channel? It was two when I made the appointment – both soccer channels that I pay extra for and watch frequently. Long story short, it was obviously not a hardware problem, it was a problem on their end, nothing was fixed, and I heard nothing back from them after they promised to fix it on their end.
So… yeah. I am close to cutting the cord than ever. As recently as last year I was dead-set against it but not any more.
There remains one concern. My internet service is provided by the same company that provides the cable, and there’s no good alternative in my region.
Bastards. I have the same ISP/Cable issue, but its still worth it. I think the options are going to open up over the next 5 years for ISP service across the country.
So what you’re saying is he didn’t fix your cable?
Bow Chikka Wow Wow!
Dear forum,
I never thought this would happen to me…
I have the ‘skinny bundle’ for my Dish, my PC is connected to my TV so anything I watch there can go to the TV, and Netflix that I barely watch anymore except Marvel shows and Voltron. I have an over the air antenna, but where I’m located I can’t really get much so I have to pay extra to get the local networks on my Dish. Except for the few Netflix shows I’ve mentioned, I haven’t been impressed with pay online content for a few years. Netflix has lost a lot of content and not much outside those few titles that I’m interested in watching.
Another thing that keeps this out of my reach is internet speed. My country WIFI usually only averages 900k, and a lot of the streaming services I’ve tried other than netflix aren’t built to work with slower speeds.
My wife lobbied Netflix for a month when they dumped MASH.
Netflix downscales I thought for slower connections.
Yes, Netflix works well for slower connections, other streaming services don’t.
And yeah, they downscale, but then my PC and my TV upscale, circle of life.
Beauty of technology. Compression is a glorious thing
With my viewing habits, it seems preferable to just *buy* the few movies and TV shows I really need on DVD when the price is right. I don’t care about watching new shit right away, and sure I like some movies but I don’t need access to every movie at every time.
Yeah, I buy all movies I like as soon as they are out. But my brain needs new information everyday. I need a way to fill that void of information.
Thanks for the great article, Semi-Spartan Dad!
I think we’re stuck with DirecTV for a while…or until we either live someplace where they broadcast the Ravens OR OMWC gets so thoroughly disgusted with the NFL (or the Ravens) that he wants to stop watching them.
We have Comcast Internet, which we completely hate and which drops us about 10 times per day, but our options are Comcast, AT&T DSL, or HughesNet. Since we both regularly work from home, we need the (promised) speed of Comcast.
Yeah, with my work Hughsnet, which offers a better bandwith, would never work do to the data caps, I could surpass their caps in one day.
ugh I couldn’t imagine getting dropped that much with paying for a service I expect to be there.
Before completely cutting the chord, I would cancel DirectTV for up to six months at time with the promise I would turn it back on within that 6 months. I think I did that twice before dropping it altogether.
Any chance you’ll be around the weekend of August 25th? Gonna be in Chicago that Friday and somewhere in the area the rest of the weekend. If I have some free time Saturday or Sunday, would you guys want to get together?
3 hour lunch and I forgot my headphones so no YouTube for me. C’mon guys, there has to be some news we can ridicule.
I read a story about a gaijin in Japan who forgot his headphones. What an asshole.
Ooh, another joint effort?
I haven’t done joints since college.
That’s a good topic. Joints>Bongs<Pipes.
I used to make custom bongs from sippie cups, even though I didn’t smoke anymore.
I made one out of a daruma doll that my friends absolutely adored.
Hmmm. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daruma_doll
Holy fuck, it’s a long video, but the guy was Kane in the WWE gave a great speech at FEE last year.
Now you’re just fuckin’ with me and my lack of headphones. Not gonna work cuz I’ve already seen it. Akanbe!
Asian women get mad when you call the asiental.
I get free DVDs from the library. Lowest cost of them all – can keep movies for 7 days, TV series for three weeks. Only 15c fine per day if you go over.
No cable here, hasn’t been in the house in maybe 8 years? I go to other people’s houses, or nail salons, and see cable, and I’m sort of frustrated by all the garbage on it, programming and commercials included.