Update on Cord Cutting (Cable TV) - 2021 version

[GenXguy]

I forgot to mention it, but I do stream a lot already. I have or have had subscriptions - I tend to rotate based on what I am interested in - from Apple TV+, Max, Hulu, Netflix, and Prime. I use a Fire TV stick for that. It's a pain to go from regular tv to streaming on the old tv I have. I need three different remotes.

I currently have problems with my wi-fi and have unstable Internet connections. It's a problem on Zoom and on Skype. Even when I'm just trying to stream audiobooks, I sometimes get problems. It's really annoying. So, if it costs me ten dollars more per month to avoid that, it's worth it to me.

So you mentioned streaming a lot, but you didn't mention having problems with that, only with Zoom and Skype. All your options look plenty fast enough, but sometimes people have internet issues due to internal issues like with wifi. I actually had to upgrade my wifi router to get my speed above ~30 Mbps a few years back even with wired, although I wasn't having drops or streaming issues even at that speed.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

I have 3 TCL Roku TV's currently, 40" in the Bedroom, 55" in the Bonus Room and 65"in the Living Room which I got last Black Friday for $228. I love the brand and have local TV access on each via an antenna taped on the window pulling in 50 channels currently. I think TCL also makes an Amazon FireTV version as well which my daughter has and they prefer it to Roku.
Fire TV does have a built in browser if you think that's something you might use, Roku does not. Many years ago I used to have a firestick plugged into my non smart TV's HDMI port to go to my local TV network websites to watch the morning news before they had apps and it worked great back then.
Have you ever checked out PlutoTV, they have hundreds of OTA free channels of all genres available live or on demand. You can check it out by going to PlutoTV.com to see what's available and if interested download the TV app. I usually have the older 70/80/90's TV comedies running all day as background and only actually sit down to watch TV at night on one of my paid subscriptions.
I have an older surround sound receiver so use 2 remotes, my daughters family has a brand new one and they control it via Alexa voice control and only use their FireTV remote.
Hope this helps.

 

[GenXguy]

Here's a recent review of some free streaming services. I think that Sling Freestream is the only one offering free DVR with their free streaming, which is for 10 hours, although I had an existing account prior to them introducing that feature, so that option still isn't available to me. Some people have created new accounts to get the DVR. https://www.early-retirement.org/forums/f54/how-do-you-get-live-tv-120317-5.html#post3044063

https://www.tomsguide.com/best-picks/best-free-streaming-services

 

[Route246]

Cancelled Directv a few days ago. We had it because of one add-on TV channel which is now terminating due to contract expiration (long story). We use YouTube TV and now mostly watch on non-TV devices. They are calling twice a day with all sorts of incentives. I tell them they could offer it free for life and we would still not watch it. They keep persisting. Can't blame this as it is an existential threat to their existence but there is no way they can compete with streaming services since their distribution model is to use satellites.

If it were my business and I knew buggy whips were going to be phasing out I would quickly try to brainstorm a new killer app for those satellites. Explaining to them I don't need any more buggy whips because I can't use them now in my Lamborghini yet they continue to persist.

BTW, couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people. Good riddance. You provided a marginal product with horrible customer service charging a punishing rate and now you're wondering what happened.

AFTER NOTE: I wanted something cynical and cutting to say here but I'm incapable of composing such prose. I asked Chat GPT to compose something for me. Wow!!!

Well, well, well, look who finally decided to peek out from under their rock of corporate incompetence! It's like witnessing a herd of clueless wildebeests finally realizing they've been wandering into a lion's den wearing steak-scented perfume. Oh, the sheer audacity to wonder what happened to their sinking ship of a business!

Let's do a quick recap, shall we? Here we have a company that managed to serve up a product so mediocre it makes beige paint look vibrant, accompanied by customer service that would make even the most patient saint consider a career change to professional volcano diver. And to top it all off, they had the nerve to charge fees so astronomical they'd make NASA blush.

But oh no, they couldn't possibly fathom why customers were abandoning ship faster than rats in a flood! It's like watching someone try to solve a Rubik's cube while wearing boxing gloves – utterly clueless and bound for failure.

So, to bid farewell to this grand spectacle of corporate calamity, let's raise our glasses and toast to their demise: "Here's to the end of a saga filled with more drama than a soap opera on steroids. Goodbye and good riddance!"

 

[Route246]

So you mentioned streaming a lot, but you didn't mention having problems with that, only with Zoom and Skype. All your options look plenty fast enough, but sometimes people have internet issues due to internal issues like with wifi. I actually had to upgrade my wifi router to get my speed above ~30 Mbps a few years back even with wired, although I wasn't having drops or streaming issues even at that speed.

I would advise to anyone who can afford it to invest in a mesh networked wifi setup. I happen to use TP-Link but there are many others. Prior to that I used Google mesh networking.

Do a search 'mesh wifi for home' and you will see a plethora of choices. Easy to setup, available on Amazon, Costco, etc. Put 7 nodes in our house and now every nook and cranny has 5-bars and we have no more wifi problems anywhere in the home and garage.

 

[AudiDudi]

Cancelled Directv a few days ago. We had it because of one add-on TV channel which is now terminating due to contract expiration (long story). <snip>

In 2012, we had a power failure and when it ended, my (owned) DTV box came on with an "internal short error" which was fatal. I called the company to cancel my subscription and they offered to send me a new box and charge me $10 month more. At the time I was paying $68/mo with no premium channels. I declined their offer.

I was sure they would call back within a week with some sweetheart "please come back" offer. They never called so, with no OTA available in the boonies, I've been streaming ever since.

 

[wmc1000]

I couldn't give up having a DVR option for my antenna, either. I still use it more than streaming, so I use a PC based DVR with SageTV software, which is becoming obsolete.

I switched from using Windows Media Center, (even with Windows 10), for almost 10 years to EMBY about 9 months ago. The basic reason was to allow us to stream our OTA DVR'd shows from our PC to any cell phone, tablet or tv in the house.

Took DW a few times to get the hang of EMBY tv app playback with our regular tv remote, (skipping thru commercials 30 seconds at a time with the forward button on the remote as she could previously click on the screen since it was being mirrored to the tv in the den. Now it is second nature again.

We use 2 silicon dust HDHR dual tuners connected to our antenna and the home network, so we have 4 tuners to record concurrently if needed.

Previously we had to pay $35 per year to channel direct for tv guide services after Microsoft shut down their free guide service a few years back and I liked that I didn't have to subscribe to a guide service with EMBY. Paid their one time $119 for the "lifetime" service. Hopefully they won't make a major change over the next few years and we will at least break even on the cost.

 

[GenXguy]

I switched from using Windows Media Center, (even with Windows 10), for almost 10 years to EMBY about 9 months ago. The basic reason was to allow us to stream our OTA DVR'd shows from our PC to any cell phone, tablet or tv in the house.

Took DW a few times to get the hang of EMBY tv app playback with our regular tv remote, (skipping thru commercials 30 seconds at a time with the forward button on the remote as she could previously click on the screen since it was being mirrored to the tv in the den. Now it is second nature again.

We use 2 silicon dust HDHR dual tuners connected to our antenna and the home network, so we have 4 tuners to record concurrently if needed.

Previously we had to pay $35 per year to channel direct for tv guide services after Microsoft shut down their free guide service a few years back and I liked that I didn't have to subscribe to a guide service with EMBY. Paid their one time $119 for the "lifetime" service. Hopefully they won't make a major change over the next few years and we will at least break even on the cost.

I've considered using Jellyfin to stream to one additional TV (for files and recordings that already exit), but I prefer to do most of my OTA DVR watching on my main large TV, and I always have other options for streaming on my bedroom TV or exercise room TV. I can probably keep my home theater PC with SageTV going for years, even if I might have to replace the power supply or a drive along the way. But then, I might feel motivated to make a change before I really have to.

SageTV also took away the free TV Program Guide some years ago. Since I just get an assortment of broadcast networks, I just use Titan TV to review the schedule of what's on, and I have repetitive records set up based on their usual times, so I haven't been able to justify subscribing to a third party program guide schedule provider like Schedules Direct.

 

[Midpack]

Cancelled Directv a few days ago. Can't blame this as it is an existential threat to their existence but there is no way they can compete with streaming services since their distribution model is to use satellites.

If it were my business and I knew buggy whips were going to be phasing out I would quickly try to brainstorm a new killer app for those satellites.

Not that I would recommend anyone sign up, DirecTV has had a streaming option since 2017 - but their rates/program lineups weren't at all competitive as they probably were afraid of cannibalizing their satellite product. Now way too little, too late...

https://streamtv.directv.com/streaming-tv-apps/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirecTV_Stream

 

[ShokWaveRider]

We fired Xfinity Internet after shifting to IQ Fiber. We have half the gbps and have a better connection speed than we ever had with Xfinity. We do not notice the difference from Xfinity's so call 800gbps than what we have now, and it is half the price.

 

[GenXguy]

We fired Xfinity Internet after shifting to IQ Fiber. We have half the gbps and have a better connection speed than we ever had with Xfinity. We do not notice the difference from Xfinity's so call 800gbps than what we have now, and it is half the price.

What media player do you like to view video files with? I use my SageTV PVR application for some, but for others videos, it doesn't work, so I use VLC Player.

 

[ShokWaveRider]

What media player do you like to view video files with? I use my SageTV PVR application for some, but for others videos, it doesn't work, so I use VLC Player.

I have a Dune Max Vision 4K with 8tb of disk. I download the media files to it and then play them back as we choose. We do not view any series until I have all episodes of a given show before we view them. I delete all the content that we have viewed or deemed not to our taste.

 

[audreyh1]

My Netflix increased about $9 starting last month, but we’re still spending little - ~$31 a month not counting Amazon Prime video which we don’t watch that much. We have dropped everything but “the basics”. T-mobile still covers a good chunk of our Netflix subscription.

In fact the price increase - we haven’t been watching Netflix much at all. So we could drop it. However in general I’ve really enjoyed their international series programming. These days Apple TV+ has dominated our viewing and after that PBS. The amount of terrific programming on AppleTV+ these days is staggering!

Anyway we’re paying nowhere near what cable cost even 10 years ago.

Use AppleTV box on two TVs with direct Ethernet connections. The big TV is a 4K TV.

 

[explanade]

Speaking of endangered products, local TV stations are only alive because of live sports, particularly the NFL.

The broadcast networks could keep paying more and more for TV rights but that means it's harder for local affiliates to keep the lights on.

Sure big NFL games bring ratings and advertisers will still pay for placement. But how much longer?

Most of the interesting non-sport content is available now on streaming or only on streaming.

A couple of years ago, they ratified ATSC 3.0 to bring 4K to broadcast. Well few stations bother to upgrade to transmit 4K content and few people bother to get TVs with ATSC 3.0 tuners.

They want to load it up with all kinds of restrictions so there wouldn't be DVRs with the same capabilities we have now.

Sinclair, the company that developed and got the ATSC 3.0 standard ratified, hoped that they could get mandates fro the govt. to put ATSC 3.0 tuner chips on smart phones, which would raise costs and use up more battery life.

That didn't go anywhere but they still talk here and then about trying to get mandates, so that for instance people could buy subsidized ATSC 3.0 tuners, just as about 20 years ago, when HDTV arrived, they gradually shut down analog TV signals and subsidized digital tuners for people who didn't buy HDTVs.

In any event, 4K over broadcast likely will never happen.

 

[GenXguy]

Speaking of endangered products, local TV stations are only alive because of live sports, particularly the NFL.

There's still a lot of other stuff on regular OTA broadcasts than NFL. In fact, NFL is off season now. I still use my OTA quite often, and most of it isn't for sports. It's HD, which is good enough for me. It's free.

 

[Time2]

There are obstruction and reception issues. I've talked to people in my apartment complex who have tried over the air with little success. So, I'm not going to do the over the air tv.

You might be correct with this assessment, but, your particular apartment may have better placement or a window that happens to work. If one of those neighbors still has their antenna, see if you can borrow it for a test. Have you put your location in Rabbitears to see what is available?
https://www.rabbitears.info/searchmap.php Drag the pin to your state, zoom in, move the pin closer to your location, continue this until you are on your apartment. Then click GO in the box below. You will see all the stations in your area with signal strength and a good, fair, and poor rating.
I get about 40 stations, in my area, my daughter near Tampa, gets close to 100 channels. Remember each station has 2 to 7 sub channels. So, if you see 6 Good signal stations, that may be closer to 20 actual channels you could get.
Regarding the wifi, whatever product you are having poor wifi with, see what frequency it is using. If it is 2.4Ghz, change it to 5GHz or vise versa. I have one room where 2.4GHz works much better that 5GHz. If your Router is old, might be a newer model would help. Or changing the location of your Router. Check to see if you neighbors are happy with the router they have.
If you can't borrow an antenna, you can build a temporary one with Cardboard, aluminum foil and a length of coax. During a visit with my daughter, I built one and she used it for 5 years even though it was cardboard and foil!. Pretty simple to build, just make sure you get a good connection between the aluminum foil and coax wires. You might cut the cardboard to have a tail, or glue one on to secure the coax to, so you don't keep pulling it away from the aluminum foil connection. You will need to strip the coax back so you have the center conductor and the outer braid long enough to make the connections. If anyone attempts a build, feel free to PM me, I'd be happy to help! Plans below.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9cmsjtl00z0ko0p/Dale's antenna build..jpg?dl=0


P.S. my daughter is now in her home. I built an outdoor model with PVC pipe and aluminum flashing. They get close to 100 channels, it's up 20 ft on a chain link fence top rail.

 

[Qs Laptop]

Speaking of endangered products, local TV stations are only alive because of live sports, particularly the NFL.

What other major sports are available on over-the-air TV stations besides NFL football? There are none in my market (Mpls/St. Paul.) There are a couple markets where MLB teams are over the air for selected games. But NHL hockey and NBA basketball? I don't know of any.

The broadcast networks could keep paying more and more for TV rights but that means it's harder for local affiliates to keep the lights on.

Sure big NFL games bring ratings and advertisers will still pay for placement. But how much longer?

For as long as the NFL will have them.

Since there are only 18 NFL regular season games, making it a destination event for viewers, I suspect the networks will continue to pony up the big bucks.

 

[GenXguy]

What other major sports are available on over-the-air TV stations besides NFL football? There are none in my market (Mpls/St. Paul.) There are a couple markets where MLB teams are over the air for selected games. But NHL hockey and NBA basketball? I don't know of any.

Quite a bit on the weekend in my market. There's an NHL hockey match and 2 NBA games this weekend, also some college conference championship games, NASCAR race, PGA golf, Soccer, and more. Sometimes on Saturdays, I have seen 3 or 4 college football games on at the same time on different OTA channels. Sometimes there's MLB and others. It's not everyday, of course. I watched the women's Big 10 championship game last weekend on OTA and another big 10 game about a week prior.

 

[pb4uski]

Better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all

.... There are obstruction and reception issues. I've talked to people in my apartment complex who have tried over the air with little success. So, I'm not going to do the over the air tv. I don't want a hundred channels, sports channels, etc. I want the basic networks. ...

According to all the online maps, there should be negligible OTA reception at our rural summer home... yet with a cheap $40 YAGI antenna in the attic, I get all the major channels except Fox, whcih we don't watch very often.

My point is don't give up so quickly. You can buy a good quality antenna and try it out and if it doesn't work then return it.

How we ended up on OTA is a bit of a funny story. We had subscribed to YTTV (streaming with locals) for $50/mo. A month later, they added a few channels that I could care less about and jacked the price up to $65/mo. Made me mad so I cancelled that day in protest knowing that I had a few weeks left on the month that I had last paid for and could always start it up again if I wanted to.

A while later I stumbled across a webpage that had you attach a coax cable to the tv and hold the other end on the screw slot of an electrical outlet and run a channel scan. I was totally surprised when I got decent reception for our local NBC affiliate. I then figured that if this cockamayme thing can get NBC what I might get from a real antenna, so I went to Walmart and bought a few antennas. Sure enough, I got many more OTA channels than I expected to so I kept the best antenna (that happened to be the cheapest) and returned the rest.

So now we use the antenna with a Fire TV Recast OTA DVR for locals for our 4 tvs and streaming for cable channels like Golf Channel, CNN, HGTV, CNBC, etc. For the cable channels I can use my credentials from the cable TV that is included in our association dues for our Florida condo that would otherwise be wasted money since we are not there.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

I've posted this before, I bought a $5 indoor antenna on Temu, got it in less than 10 days, taped it on a window facing the mountain where the local TV translator tower is located about 20-30 miles away and it pulls in 50 channels, some local, some empty but the ones I want the most and get are the Los Angeles networks, ABC, NBC, Fox and KCOP. If you live in the city these little antennas will pull in a bunch of channels just by taping in a window. A cheap way to test what's available to you and of course you can buy one on Amazon for 2 or 3 times the price if you don't want to deal with Temu and return it if it doesn't work.

 

[Route246]

Not that I would recommend anyone sign up, DirecTV has had a streaming option since 2017 - but their rates/program lineups weren't at all competitive as they probably were afraid of cannibalizing their satellite product. Now way too little, too late...

https://streamtv.directv.com/streaming-tv-apps/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirecTV_Stream

Fine print: due to contractual restrictions they cannot stream certain add-on packages. They don't tell you this. You have to find out the hard way once you get activated. There are other gotchas like this with add ons.

Example:

International add-ons for DIRECTV customers when connecting via Satellite
Call 855.972.1015 to speak to an international programming representative.

Brazilian programming BrazilianDirect? $29.99/mo. + tax


SporTV Channel $19.99/mo. + tax ?

TV GLOBO Channel $19.99/mo. + tax

Chinese programming ChineseDirect? $12.99/mo. + tax

Mandarin Direct? III $16.99/mo. + tax

Filipino programming FilipinoDirect? $37.99/mo. + tax

TFCDirect? $26.99/mo. + tax


PinoyDirect® $25.99/mo. + tax

Italian programming (More Italian add-ons avail at checkout) Rai Italia Channel $10/mo. + tax

Rai Direct $17/mo. + tax

Italian Direct? $20/mo. + tax

Italian Direct? II $25/mo. + tax

Korean programming KoreanDirect? $30.99/mo. + tax

KoreanDirect? Golf $35.99/mo. + tax

KoreanDirect? Lite $19.99/mo. + tax

Russian programming RTVI $15/mo. + tax

Vietnamese programming VietDirect? Plus $19.99/mo. + tax

SBTN Channel $14.99/mo. + tax


The truly insidious part is they have alternate programming that is allowed with streaming but it is different, generally inferior and not worthy of consideration:

International add-ons for DIRECTV customers when connecting via Internet
Brazilian programming Keep up with the latest Brazilian TV.
$30 00/mo. + tax. Includes TV GLOBO and SporTV

Korean programming
Get top channels of premium Korean entertainment. Starting at $30
99/mo. + tax.
We carry the following channels: SBS, MBC, LifeS, KBS America, EBS, YTN, TAN TV, MBN, SBS Plus, Arirang TV, and CTS

Vietnamese programming Get the ultimate Vietnamese TV experience.
$20 . 00/mo. + tax.
Includes the following channels: SBTN, Vietface, VGN TV, VIETV, S Channel, Film24H, Vien Thao TV, HONVIETV, and TViet

 

[Trooper]

I really wish I could do away with live TV - either streaming or corded - but I like sports so ESPN, FS1, the various Turner networks and RSNs are needed. Additionally, DW likes the flavors of HGTV and True Crime shows that are tough to get w/o some form of Live TV service.

 

[explanade]

There's still a lot of other stuff on regular OTA broadcasts than NFL. In fact, NFL is off season now. I still use my OTA quite often, and most of it isn't for sports. It's HD, which is good enough for me. It's free.

First of all most people do not watch local stations and broadcast networks through OTA, mostly through cable.

Now local stations are starting to be streamed through Peacock and Paramount Plus though the latter is struggling.

But the point is, the non-NFL stuff is declining in viewership.

So local affiliates have exclusive rights to NFL games for their markets. The Thursday Night games belong to Amazon but if there's a game involving say the Arizona Cardinals, a local station will be able to simulcast the game so that people don't have to subscribe to Amazon Prime.

Otherwise, even fewer people would bother with local stations. But now they get most of their money from retransmission fees. That is, cable systems cut deals with broadcast networks and affiliates or local stations of those networks get some of those retransmissions fees.

I believe those fees are the biggest part of their revenues now.

Back in the day, the local news shows were huge cash flow generators. But who watches local news now?

People can get weather online and sports on ESPN, which is going to be better than any local news sports dept. Now too, most of the coverage of local teams come from regional sports networks. They hire the most reporters. So no NFL games are shown on those regional sports networks but they have hours and hours of pre and post game shows and then also other shows during the week.

Then there's ESPN and NFL Network blathering about the NFL year round.

So nobody is watching the local news for sports coverage.

In any event, yes the local stations broadcast content that are of interest to other people.

However, most of this non-NFL content is losing viewership and not making much money.

So the NFL rights is what keeps these local stations alive. They're the reason cable TV pays those big transmissions rights.

Remember a couple of decades ago, NBC let NFL rights go. They paid a dear price (low ratings and low ad revenues) so they paid a high price to get it back for the Sunday Night package.

The broadcast networks can't survive without the NFL.

But as rights fees increase every 10 years, the broadcast networks see declining audience.

Will they be able to pony up more and more money? They have no choice.

And the affiliates are dependent on them and the NFL, which probably subsidizes some or all of this other programming.

 

[GenXguy]

First of all most people do not watch local stations and broadcast networks through OTA, mostly through cable.

With ATSC, I know a lot of people started using antennas again, and people keep cutting the cord, so I don't know what the exact numbers are, but someone paying $150 for cable is a lot different than getting free OTA, which I've been doing for a decade. I still watch broadcast national and local news from OTA along with some misc. talk news shows.

I'm not concerned about the distant future, so many things can happen that most people will probably predict incorrectly as usual, and I don't see anything changing much in the next few years. So I'm just going to keep DVRing my free OTA. I still use that more than streaming.

I like watching NFL since I never have to pay for it to see most of the games I want to see, but if I had to start paying to watch, that might be enough for me to call it a day and give up NFL as I have with almost all other sports, which I did to free up my time for other things.

 

[ncbill]

Yep ATSC 1.0 has been around for 15 years now & will be around for years to come.

Hopefully ATSC 3.0 will eventually replace it but right now most people don't seem all that interested.

Especially since many stations have been stupid enough to turn on encryption which has cause reception problems with ATSC 3.0.