OT-ISO Cable tv alternatives
Sfariah D
Posts: 25,703
in The Commons
Long story short is that I am frustrated with cable tv at my home. What are my alternatives? I know I have netflix and hulu. I am unable at this time to do hulu tv beta as my hulu is free with my cell phone company. Not able to addon stuff to it. What I want is basically to watch the local NFL team and maybe be able to watch some on demand shows that I like to watch but never can remember when it is on.
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NFL. You can find free streams that people broadcast. Restreams of official streams. Quality isn't great sometimes, but it depends on what you want.
I guess there are ways to get NFL redzone and NFL network without cable, but I couldn't be bothered.
On demand shows. Everything is available if you search enough. Hulu Plus will get you more current stuff. The American major networks also put a lot out for free, typically not on the day of first broadcast though.
Directv Now might be an option. If you are on AT&T there are bundling options with your cell phone plan, but Directv Now is also available as a standalone which you should be able to stream via your internet connection.
We also have Netflix streaming and Amazon Prime. Original shows on both can be good. The Flash, bunch of Marvel hero stuff, etc. I can't say I use it much, myself.
My boy took over the main TV for Fortnite anyway. He hangs out online with his school buddies and his cousin (who lives five hours away).
I guess I could use my iPad for streaming... I just don't have the me time for that.
Here's a reddit dedicated to NFL streams...
https://www.reddit.com/r/nflstreams/
I have my own sources for steams, but there's a lot of people who stream content to share (I.e. Not for commercial use). Since it's a reddit, I figure it's okay to post the link.
I have sprint not at&t. Is directv now require any equipment?
Check the box scores on Tuesday. That's a lot of waste I'm glad to be rid of though. No professional or college 'big sports' and no cable and no satelitte and no paid streaming services. Too much money for bad returns.
Check out cordcutting.com. They tell you how to get almost anything streaming.
I also have direct tv now. no equipment and can use with any internet service. It streams to any device you want (I have it on my roku tvs, my desktop and my laptop)
It does live tv (all standard cable chanels depending on the cable package you choose)
Plus a lot of shows let you go back and watch previous episodes
So http://www.cordcutting.com ?
I have an MHL ROKU stick & don't pay for any streaming services but they have absolutely ruined ROKU in the past year with constant interuptions for advertising. You can buy an Android TV Box with Kodi installed on Amazon for $30 - $100+ and besides streaming TV you can play GooglePlay games on them besides the using paid streaming services. KODI does have free addons to connect to free streaming TV but those often are restricted by geography or unless you have a superfast internent connection just plain to slow to stream.
One thing I do is use Apple podcasts I just subscribe & download and also YouTube. Don't expect anything much from America entertainment businesses though that is modern from YouTube.
Is youtube tv in your area? If so it should get the local channels in your area and some sports channels, for $40/month.
Amazon Prime streamed Thursday night NFL games last season and will do so for the next two seasons.
I bought a Mohu Leaf HD indoor antenna for $65 from Amazon to pick up most of our local channels and PBS. If you're within range of your broadcast stations it might work for you. I got stations up to 60 miles away, but YMMV.
http://www.gomohu.com/
I've tried pretty much all the streaming service ... Sling worked really well...you want sports, check out FUBO ... they have sports. It was pretty laggy when I had it..about 10 months ago... Youtube TV is very good.
All of them you need a way to get it to your TV ... I have a ROKU 3 ... it works great..got it for half price when I subbed to Sling, but with Youtube TV I cancelled Sling. Up above it talks about commercials on ROKU..I've never seen any, unless its with the ROKU channel. Playstaion Vue was really bad as far as lag...terrible terrible. The content was great otherwise. I've never used direct tv now, but Sling is part of that company as well.
I know what you mean about cable my cable company just made it where you had to have a box even for basic can't just hook up to the TV anymore I keep looking at it and thinking OK I've got all these channels so why is it that all I can find to watch for the most part is 40 year old and older reruns.
As far as the major networks go I watch two shows NCIS and NCIS New Orleans
...I gave up on "pay for play" television services even before my telly blew up. Even back then I thought it was ridiculous that I had to pay to watch programming that was riddled with adverts. SOme channels were so bad that It seemed there were more adverts than programming in a given hour. I remember watching a film on TNT one time where per half hour the adverts dominated to the point I'd get 5 - 7 minutes of a film punctuated by 10 - 12 minutes of adverts (many of them bad local ones). Now I could understand this in "free" over the air broadcasts, but not services you pay 50 - 60$ a month for.
I remember in the early days, the advantage of subscribing to a pay service meant you didn't have to deal with adverts. That is what the monthly fee was for. Today we are paying upwards of 100$ or more a month to get spammed by adverts. Losing proposition.
On ROKU, you get the ads if you don't subscribe. Some channels are free and you can't subscribe but you get ads anyway. As I've never subscribed i don't know though that that gets rid of ads. It probably does for some & doesn't for others.
I will say that very old movies and series from before 1960 on ROKU are usually free, there are several channels. Of course you can mass download terabytes of old movies, series, and cartoons legally on YouTube and not worry about streams speed at all.
For new movies the good ones are so far & few between I just buy the BR or DVD when they are released like for Marvel super hero movies (not all of them but many).
My cable company recently "upgraded" us to cable boxes too. So far, I can't complain. I live in a condo, so the cable is included with our fees, plus I was paying $45 for 20 megabit internet. After the switch, they issued me 2 cable boxes and upgraded to 100 megabit for the same price. It seems like a great deal, but I only think they did it because their competitors are trying to move into the area.
But yeah, I mostly watch TVLand and AntennaTV, so it's mostly reruns. If I wasn't already paying for it, I wouldn't have cable tv at all.
Have you tried getting over the air TV from an antenna? I bought a small Mohu Leaf antenna and hooked it up with a $12.00 amplifier from ebay and I pick up every station in a 30 mile radius of where I live. I get ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, Ion,PBS and lots of other stations. Most local NFL games are on network TV.
My main TV is hooked up to a computer. I installed an old Hauppauge Win-PVR 1600 tuner card I had lying around, hooked the antenna up to that and use Windows media center or nextpvr to watch and record straight from the antenna.
I also have a Roku, Netflix, and Hulu. Roku has a lot of free movie and some TV sites.
Cord cutting is the coming wave. Streaming is where it is at now.
i cut cable for 2 years, but was using the cable company internet service, which pricing kept going upo. it bacame less expensive to sign back up for cable servie than to purchase streaming services. Its a huge money game ... I had been using Netflix and Amazon Prime for a long time, so still have that, plus subscribe to Hulu ...
btw..those Mohu Leafs work great. thats what i was using for OTA ...crystal clear HD.
EXACTLY! Ridiculous to say the least! I cut cable about 3 or 4 years ago now.... don't regret it in the least. I'm not a sports fan though so can't help with that.
I live in the UK and I've never subscibed to any pay TV service. I use freeview and I'm happy with it.
I like really like NCIS. We get it on UK freeview, we're at least a year behind the subscibers but I don't really care. If you keep getting new episodes why does it matter if you are "up to date" with a fictional series? We get a lot of other stuff. I like Fantasy and SF but I end up watching more crime fictions because we get so much of it. I haven't seen any Game of Thrones on freeview yet but Shannara was very good. One of our channels is showing Bones, starting from the beginning at a rate of 10 episodes a week. I record these with a USB stick TV receiver and watch them when I want to. This device is great too, like the old days of VHS but digital quality, none of this iPlayer nonsense where you can only keep stuff for 30 days and only watch it on deviced that they support.
I use magic marker to draw pictures on my window and stare out through them for hours at a time. Is this normal?
Actually, I've exhausted anything interesting on DishTV, NetFlix and Hulu so I've pretty much devolved to just YouTube on my SmartTV. It keeps throwing up suggestions and I rarely have to do a search. All sorts of interesting and weird things keep popping up in the suggestion lists. I spent hours watching the lava in Hawaii until it made it to the sea then that became boring too. Current thing seems to be old "Space 1999" episodes and "Are You Being Served" episodes and a few serious science discussion panels.
Before I emigrated from the UK to New Zealand, I only watched Freeview (Sky is a ridiculous price). The exception was Game of Thrones which a friend recorded for me. I remember an executive on GoT being interviewed and "boasting" that their show was the most pirated/downloaded - as though he were proud of the fact. A few years ago pirating was very common but reasonably priced internet streaming services like Netflix and Amazon have taken over now and they even seem to be crushing Sky. Now that I'm in New Zealand I don't bother with Freeview (even though they have their version here). I just have Netflix and Amazon which, together, are only a fraction of the cost of Sky. Also, I share Netflix with my son (which is allowed) so it is even cheaper.
Amazon fire stick TV
with a Amazon prime account of $120 a year you have unlimited TV and streaming movies
I was with direct tv for 14 years we dropped this year for Amazon when they started charging $127 dollars a month for family TV package when i started with direct tv it was only $39.99
Solution for me was for the cost of one month of cable or steatite I can stream tv cheaper in HD with tons more options on firestick
and I can pick up all my local channels for free using a arial
Cable & Satelite cutting must be getting really popular as I've had only PBS via a cheap $20 RCA antenna for almost 10 years now with no streaming subscriptions at all. I do have to pay for internet via a cable company and that cable company keeps trying to trick me out of my 'lifetime contract' they signed me up for so that can raise my internent rates through the roof but I'm not biting. To punish me they will probably keep my internet speeds at 450K while everybody else's goes up but I'll just continue to download from various free archives of old public domain films and music and buy BRs or DVDs of the new stuff.
Yeah, it's been about 4 years since I dropped DishTV satellite service. The only thing I miss is their DVR that I had to send back to them. Cable and satellite TV have priced themselves out of the market. ATT just got the go-ahead to purchase Time/Warner so I expect that they'll be pumping out Warner film library shows via some streaming service soon. Where I am I have no TV antenna reception so I use telephone company DSL service for Internet and watch free YouTube stuff and $11/month NetFlix ad-free shows but that's it no more cable or Satellite services for me.
we stick with the cable. Even with the expansion packages for prime channels such as Starz and HBO, it's cheaper than satellite and we can record more on our cable then we could on the dish. We have 4 people in the house all with boxes and we can all record at the same time using different channels and can record 2 channels at once. None of the satellite companies could do that. They require you to watch the shows and you can only record on one at a time.
Over air with antenna might work if I still have a traditional tv. I choose to get rid of the tv and use an hdmi monitor instead.
My DishTV subscription included a DVR box that would record two programs simultaneously. And just before I dropped them they were offering a DVR that would record 4 programs simultaneously.
I don't want to scare you but you need to stay away from open windows and have someone else start your car in the morning. If you have a lifetime contract, you're a marked man. How dare you stand in the way of corporate profits? Corporations are people too, you know. Lol.
Yeah, but they're gonna put the screws to you until you give up that contract.