I'm in uncharted territory...streaming TV

[DirtySteve]

I have Youtube TV. Gonna ditch it and get Hulu/Live TV. I get live TV plus Hulu and its cheaper than YoutubeTV. They all keep creeping up in price every few months tho. Gonna be cheaper to have cable again soon!

I was thinking about doing that, but Hulu live is only a little less than YT tv and this October Hulu is raising the price and it'll cost more than Youtube Tv.

 

[Dogs of Doom]

my recommendation is...

find what you can for free 1st & see where that leaves you. Typically, you have whatever channels your TV comes w/. I'm not sure what LG offers. Samsung has quite a few channels, many of them coincide w/ the free channels you get, either w/ Tubi, or Pluto. You can get those & they have a little different variety.

Then, if you feel you are still wanting, you can look into what specific stuff you want., then decide what is worth it for you to upgrade for the money.

Distro TV is a bit different, has some cool content. Has a couple music concert channels.

I have a firestick, so my viewing is pretty unlimited. You can install pretty much anything they have to offer & even some things they don't by jailbreaking it. You can turn it into a kodi box. In that, you can incorporate almost anything you can use on any other box - doesn't have to be illegal stuff. (as it has the reputation for). but you can get yourself into trouble that way too, if you so choose...

Best bet is to look into all these app's. The biggest limitation will be on your device, because most of the android, or whatever devices, can fill up pretty quick & that will also wreak havoc on your RAM, so performance will suffer, if you have too many useless app's installed. Find out what you need & delete the ones you don't need. Learn how to clean your system, flush the memory, cache, etc. & clean up old app's.

Try to figure out little hacks for better performance, on your devices...

 

[LPMarshall hack]

Are they really? These assholes raise their prices every two months it seems.,

I was thinking about doing that, but Hulu live is only a little less than YT tv and this October Hulu is raising the price and it'll cost more than Youtube Tv.

 

[PelliX]

find what you can for free 1st & see where that leaves you.

Then, if you feel you are still wanting, you can look into what specific stuff you want., then decide what is worth it for you to upgrade for the money.

... but Marshall don't have a TV station... ?

 

[DirtySteve]

Ok, after giving this some time and trying my best to get used to it I think I'm going to go with direct tv or cable. I'm missing my DVR and being able to record shows so I can fast forward thru the ads, I'm missing being able to switch back and forth between channels easily with a last channel (or previous channel) button, I miss being able to punch in a channel number on the guide instead of having to scroll thru the whole fucking list and hope I don't miss what I'm looking for because the channels aren't numbered on Youtube tv. I just don't think this streaming only thing is for me. I can still use a couple of apps I like, Paramount and Netflix is probably all I'll need to subscribe to, I already get Prime for free because I'm a Amazon Prime member already, but so far there's not much there that interests me.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I guess I'm too old school for this. It may cost a little more, but I'm going back to what I know.

 

[paul-e-mann]

Ok, after giving this some time and trying my best to get used to it I think I'm going to go with direct tv or cable. I'm missing my DVR and being able to record shows so I can fast forward thru the ads, I'm missing being able to switch back and forth between channels easily with a last channel (or previous channel) button, I miss being able to punch in a channel number on the guide instead of having to scroll thru the whole fucking list and hope I don't miss what I'm looking for because the channels aren't numbered on Youtube tv. I just don't think this streaming only thing is for me. I can still use a couple of apps I like, Paramount and Netflix is probably all I'll need to subscribe to, I already get Prime for free because I'm a Amazon Prime member already, but so far there's not much there that interests me.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong, but I guess I'm too old school for this. It may cost a little more, but I'm going back to what I know.

Youre doing it wrong! Just get a Roku stick, thats all you need, no Netflix, cable, etc.

I just got an HDTV antenna $45, I can get 28 free local channels, that and Roku I'm all set

 

[DirtySteve]

Youre doing it wrong! Just get a Roku stick, thats all you need, no Netflix, cable, etc.

I just got an HDTV antenna $45, I can get 18 free local channels, that and Roku I'm all set

I'll look into it.

 

[paul-e-mann]

I'll look into it.

I'm kidding! Youre not doing it wrong, youre doing what works for you. My way is cheaper, but whatever works for you...

 

[colchar]

I live in Australia

You have my sympathies.

Cable and satellite TV, although available, hasn't been a huge big thing here over the years. Most people come from a background of free-to-air broadcast. We still watch a lot of that, and the 5 tradional networks each have a handful of free to air channels. But I'm old-ish, and I think many people just stream these days. The networks also have their streaming services, which are handy. You can watch what's live, and also catch up on old shows.

We also get the big streaming services, Netflix, Prime, Disney etc We just use Netflix and the free ones. But one frustration is that the shows we used to watch free-to-air, are now all spread across many different services each with a fee.

Most Aussies can get adequate unlimited broadband to support all that. But for us, we are a bit remote and in a technically awkward place, so our only options for reliable communications are by satellite, and cell phone when it behaves. We have only just been able to get a plan versatile enough for our needs. It works fine using a fixed satellite, for streaming, VPN, video conference and internet. Many in our position are changing to Elon's Starlink Seems great, but it's much more expensive and, I dont really trust that guy!

Your time should be spent designing and building attenuators, not watching TV. Get back to work!!!

 

[Cal Nevari]

So I just moved to a new apartment in a new city and decided to ditch the dish/cable and stream TV this time. I'm not tech savvy and it's really weird, but I'm slowly figuring it out.

I have Youtube TV, Paramount +, Hulu and I think I have Prime because I have a Amazon Prime account, but I haven tried it yet. I'm missing being able to hit the "last channel" button to switch back and forth between shows, but really that's the only thing that's annoying me right now. I suppose I'll get used to it before long. I'm thinking about getting Netflix too, but damn the cost are adding up.

I bought a new LG smart TV just for this. My previous TV was a regular (dumb) LG and I loved it, but I'm starting to think the LG smart TV wasn't my best choice.

Anyway, just wondering what you guys do, am I behind the times, is everybody streaming now or do you prefer your dish/cable TV? Just fishing here, not really asking a question. Just hoping to learn something. Right now I feel like...

This is definitely a good time to ditch the cable or satellite, as there are tons of choices out there. To state the obvious, what you should get depends upon what you want to watch. Sling offers several good packages, the Blue and the Orange, for $40/month each as well as a combined package of the two for only $55/month.

My wife and I agreed to ditch the cable about a year ago and don't miss it (or the outrageous cost). We got Sling for a while but were watching it so seldom, we eventually cancelled that. Sling makes it easy to start and stop the service so we have had it off and on several times over the past year.

My wife's only interest is in Chinese melodramas, which she can stream using Amazon Prime Video. We get free news and such with our LG Smart TV so we have that at no cost.

My only interest is pro football, so last year we got Paramount+ (free with T-Mobile), Peacock ($10 for the whole year, increasing to $20 this year), and we already got Amazon Prime Video with our Amazon account. That meant football on CBS on Sunday, the Sunday Night Game of the Week on Peacock (NBC), and Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime for just $10! The only game unavailable was Monday Night Football on ESPN. It did not make sense to me to pony up an extra $40 a month for Sling Orange to get ESPN.

This year, I decided not to get Paramount+ (which would have been $5-10/month) but bit the bullet to get NFL Sunday Ticket (on YouTube) for a discount of $350. In theory, this package should allow one to watch any NFL Sunday game but in practice this ain't necessarily so. There are several games that are blacked out, such as the CBS and Fox games of the week. Also, it does not include the Sunday Night, Monday Night, or Thursday Night games (on NBC or Peacock, ESPN, and Amazon Prime). It's fun to be able to watch (some) out of market games, but not worth $450, so I'll probably cancel at the end of the season.

Again, depends upon what you watch, but having both YouTube TV ($65/month or $780/year) and Hulu ($60/year) seems overkill, especially since you already get Amazon Prime Video and Paramount+ ($120/year). Might consider ditching YouTube TV and getting Peacock ($20/year). This would lower your annual cost to just $200! (Currently you're paying about $960, right?) If you watch a lot of movies, Netflix might be a good option as well, but there are tons of movies on Hulu, Peacock, P+, etc, as well as loads of free movies and other free content via your LG Smart TV.

Hope that helps!

 

[DirtySteve]

Right now I have Youtube tv, Amazon prime, Netfix, LG tv channels but I never use it because I don't like it, Hulu and Paramount +. I'm probably going to cancel Paramount because most of what I watch on there are also on Netfix, but I like the rest of them. I'm still missing my DVR, I miss being able to record shows so I can FF thru the ads when I watch them.

BTW I don't care in the least about any sports packages, I hate sports and don't watch any at all...ever.

 

[Resident 217]

We don't have time to watch too much TV and I don;t like to pay for it.
We donate to free sites like https://www.knowledge.ca/

There's some interesting shows on there - we like the dramas from the other countries.

My sister gave me a Roku but I didn't like it.

 

[Caffeinated]

It's a conceptual wall. Streaming TV is set up to allow a person to choose what and when they wish to view. It's not a spoonfed environment.

 

[paul-e-mann]

It's been a month since I got rid of cable, I don't miss it at all. TV antenna and free Roku channels that's it...

 

[circles]

It's been a month since I got rid of cable, I don't miss it at all. TV antenna and free Roku channels that's it...

Sold my Trinitron in 85', never looked back, haven't missed anything. Only reason we have cable now is for Lisa to watch it in a spare room.

I have not tried any streaming services.

 

[paul-e-mann]

Sold my Trinitron in 85', never looked back, haven't missed anything. Only reason we have cable now is for Lisa to watch it in a spare room.

I have not tried any streaming services.

If you don't watch TV then you are set, or get a Roku stick for a one time fee of $50 and you will have thousands of streaming channels, obviously you need internet to stream...

 

[purpleplexi]

I just bought an Android TV. My prime account didn't work because I'm not in the UK which sent me down the apps rabbit hole. It's a steep learning curve but I installed Kodi on it and installed an add-on called Seren. I've opened an account with something called real-debrid which costs €3 per month which apart from my internet cost is the only thing I pay for. I can watch literally anything - in fact the problem is wading through it all trying to decide what to watch. Also it works like a champ - no buffering, great picture quality up to 4k. Back in the UK I pay for cable. That'll probably get ditched when I get back.

 

[Whizzercone]

My networks are OTA from an antenna pointing out a garage window, then I have a few of the others like Hulu for Reservation Dogs. Netflix screwed me, so I get Big Mouth by others means...

 

[Whizzercone]

If you don't watch TV then you are set, or get a Roku stick for a one time fee of $50 and you will have thousands of streaming channels, obviously you need internet to stream...

Roku Premiers are $20 and Roku Ultras are $34 at Walmart ATM.

 

[paul-e-mann]

Roku Premiers are $20 and Roku Ultras are $34 at Walmart ATM.

I think I paid $50 a couple years ago for the voice activated Roku, non voice was $35.