Author Topic: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?  (Read 10179 times)

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Offline hankster

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #25 on: December 25, 2016, 01:26:04 AM »
Does Comcast make more money on TV or internet?

My guess is TV. Internet with basic TV was $20 per month cheaper than Internet alone. To me that means that TV is bringing in enough money to lower the price of internet.

Offline DaleReid

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #26 on: December 25, 2016, 07:28:11 AM »
My internet rides on the cable company's wire, so I cannot.  The way we use bytes, downlink from Hughes is far too slow and expensive beyond belief.  DSL stops a few miles from us, despite the fact that the phone lines are carried via fiber to within 1/2 mile of us, and DSL would likely be too slow.  I have a set of antennas on my tower that allows me at least one and usually two copies of each major network, and then a whole gaggle of independents and old movies on the subchannels. 

Our local cable is so enamored with stuffing as much as they can onto their pipe that their idea of High Def and what  you see from an off the air high def station is mind blowing for quality difference.  I helped set up my mother in law's new apartment and was making many calls to tech support to see what settings I had wrong, knowing what a network high def picture should look like and what we were seeing.  A friend is the chief tech for the cable company and he quietly admitted that they are compressing the hell out of all the high def stuff.

Of course we all hear about the European or Japanese or Korean gig/sec for $15 / month.  How I can wish.

I now  have only our phone line (about 1/4 the price of Ma Bell with way more services) coming in on the coax, plus the internet, which was cheaper when you got basic TV too, but then with the phone option that changed and I dropped the tv immediately.

Rural areas seem to be very difficult to get reliable, inexpensive internet service. 
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Offline WeatherHost

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #27 on: December 25, 2016, 07:52:44 AM »
Rural areas seem to be very difficult to get reliable, inexpensive internet service. 

Density.  The three miles of road I'm on has about 10 houses and not all of them want internet.  No cable here at all.  Somebody tried a WISP, but they didn't do very well.  Probably too many hills and trees causing dead spots.

In some places my 500' of road frontage would have 10 houses and at nearly 500' deep, my lot could take 3 or 4 rows of 10 houses.

There's just no incentive for companies to spend the money to build a better network.  They ran fiber down the main roads a year or so ago which allowed speed increases, but the copper down the side roads is 30 years old or more and will likely never be replaced unless damaged by storms.

 

Offline chief-david

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #28 on: December 25, 2016, 10:41:45 AM »
Best thing for rural is Over the air. Phone. Antenna. A company near the farm is doing internet OTA. They have repeaters on top of grain elevators in the area. Biggest thing to worry about is trees and the curvature of the earth.

Mom and dad had a Verizon Jet pack. Worked for the little that mom used it. They would have never streamed anything.



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Offline corwyyn

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #29 on: December 26, 2016, 03:29:49 PM »
I let my TV service go about nine months back, I just couldn't see paying for it when i work 12hr nights and sleep most of the day.  I picked up an Amazon Fire Stick on sale and side-loaded KODI so I can stream the few network shows I normally watch along with any movies I think might be good (just watched 'Die Hard' Christmas eve), plus I have my Prime membership so I can go thru there and find things to watch.  I had a subscription to Netflix but found I wasn't even watching that very often so let it lapse.
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Offline W3DRM

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #30 on: December 26, 2016, 03:54:15 PM »
Living in the rural areas of the country can be a disadvantage for some things. I have no OTA service capability because I have a mountain blocking my view of the transmitter towers on Mt Rose outside of Reno. I do get a bit of a signal but it's too weak to give good quality reception. We have no DSL here either. The only thing available, other than satellite, is Charter cable at 60mbs and $59.99 a month for internet only.

So, I'm stuck with Charter for Internet and DirecTV.

Hopefully, someday the low orbit satellite services for the US will become a reality and will provide decent coverage regardless of where one lives and at a price that is affordable. I don't know what the latency will be for the low orbit birds but it would certainly be a lot better than what Hughes is providing. A neighbor of mine had Hughes satellite for his business and it was horrible with the very noticeable delays and high monthly costs.
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Offline WeatherHost

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #31 on: December 26, 2016, 03:54:41 PM »
I challenge any of you to just turn it off.  Pick a duration ...  24 hours, 48, 72 ... whatever you think you can handle.  Just turn it off.  No programs at all.

I was one of those bad Jonseing Junkies  I had it on almost 24 hours a day, even if I wasn't in the room.  All night while I was asleep.  It was so normal to be on, that I'd come home from shopping to find I'd forgotten to turn it off before I left.

Then I turned it off.  And I have not missed it at all.  I have no idea what programs are even on any more, but I'll bet Gilligan's Island is somewhere.

If the web goes down and I can't use it for extended periods, I have some recorded stuff I could watch if I got bored enough.


Offline ocala

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #32 on: December 26, 2016, 04:10:23 PM »
I challenge any of you to just turn it off.  Pick a duration ...  24 hours, 48, 72 ... whatever you think you can handle.  Just turn it off.  No programs at all.

I was one of those bad Jonseing Junkies  I had it on almost 24 hours a day, even if I wasn't in the room.  All night while I was asleep.  It was so normal to be on, that I'd come home from shopping to find I'd forgotten to turn it off before I left.

Then I turned it off.  And I have not missed it at all.  I have no idea what programs are even on any more, but I'll bet Gilligan's Island is somewhere.

If the web goes down and I can't use it for extended periods, I have some recorded stuff I could watch if I got bored enough.
I couldn't do that.
I like the old sitcoms and sports too much.
Besides the wife loves Walking Dead. I think she would divorce me before losing that show.
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Offline ValentineWeather

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #33 on: December 26, 2016, 04:25:03 PM »
Sports has been part of my life since I can remember and changing now makes zero sense. And what would the reason be to same a few dollars ? There needs to be some convincing reason my life would be be better without TV.  Plus I've become more political so how would I keep up with all the fake news?   :-P
Randy

Offline WeatherHost

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #34 on: December 26, 2016, 05:07:07 PM »
It was sort of a test at first.  The Challenge above.  What convinced me as much as anything else, was the power usage savings.  The HTPC, DVD Player speaker amp, the Dish receiver and the TV sucked a LOT more power than I realized. My usage dropped considerably when I shut it all off.  Something like 5 or 6 KWHs per day.  This is a small house by many standards and I don't use a lot of other power except for HVAC and food storage, so that amount was something like 25-30%.  I almost always stay under 15KWH a day now when HVAC usage isn't at peak.  Even then I usually stay under 20.




Offline Scalphunter

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #35 on: December 26, 2016, 05:13:53 PM »
Not every one sits and watch an idiot box 24/7 WeatherHost. Some of us gets off our duff and go do something useful  even if it  out sitting on an pond with rod in hand. I find too much to do  and some time not enough hours to do it all in an day. As for your challenge  there hardly any TV here  worth watching. Catch evening weather espically if going to put the bird in the air to get idea what going on.  Radio provides enough new etc and  don't have to sit to listen to it.

John

Offline Bushman

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #36 on: December 26, 2016, 06:12:36 PM »
John gets it.
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Offline Maumelle Weather

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #37 on: January 05, 2017, 08:49:04 PM »
When my wife and I moved into the country 2 1/2 years ago, we went from a 24Mb U-verse connection to a 3Mb U-Verse connection. We had Dish initially, but after they hiked the price up we moved to DirecTV. After the one year "special for new customers" was up, our bill jumped 50%.  We said no. Saving ourselves $70/month and got a couple of OTA HD amplified indoor antennas for watching local stuff, and my wife uses PSVue (We pay $30/month for the Vue) all the time, and loves it. It isn't HD quality, but its sufficient for her. She is the one who watches TV shows, not I.
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Offline ValentineWeather

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #38 on: January 05, 2017, 09:07:33 PM »
About what we have the minimum Dish package $20 because no antenna reception for the local networks. Think Dish gets dropped (no contract) once NCAA and NFL FB is over and just stick with PSVue. Vue is HD  (720p) 1280 x 720 using FireTv box, looks good enough even better than the HD lite Dish puts out.
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Online DoctorKnow

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #39 on: January 06, 2017, 08:41:21 AM »
I've got two CBS stations now, the new one from Wilmington is only 720p, and is sharing the same channel with ABC and CW. You can tell the picture is not good when you look at the ABC from New Bern, and CBS 1080 from Greenville. However, this may happen all over the country with broadcast when they reduce the number of channels down from 51 now to 30ish max due to sell of to wireless companies.

Offline ValentineWeather

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #40 on: January 06, 2017, 11:11:38 AM »
I have a couple 720P stations ABC, FOX out of Sioux Falls that really look bad. 720p on PSVUE streams are solid 60fps @5200 bitrate using H.264 codec and looks much better including all (720P) broadcast stations affiliates ABC, FOX, ESPN while the Sioux Falls stations have graininess, halo's and artifacts around FB players with Dish.

I've contacted all stations, FCC, and Dish about it. The problem is Dish network with their HD lite and lack of bandwidth takes even the 720P signal and compresses it more and it starts looking bad. That same 720P looks great on OTA antenna and probably even MPEG2 cable feed.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2017, 11:53:19 AM by ValentineWeather »
Randy

Offline Andy G

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #41 on: January 06, 2017, 11:45:03 AM »
Planning on cutting the cord Monday. Waiting until Monday because of the NFL game on ESPN Saturday.
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Offline dan43

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #42 on: January 06, 2017, 12:30:07 PM »
I haven't had cable TV for several years, except for about 8 months ago when I got tired of having nothing to watch and got it back only for a couple of months.  Big mistake!  When I got fed up with watching commercials and nothing but garbage and paying through the nose for it all, I called them up and had them cancel me again.

I now use Kodi for my media centre and have local access to everything I could possibly want to watch, and there are a ton of free live and streaming apps on Kodi, one should never have to have or use cable again.  You can get tons of Sports, movie, animation, adventure, documentary... the list goes on.

There's a neat utility for Kodi called PseudoTV (or PseudoTVLive if you want to use the PVR option) that acts just like TV.  It has a context rich menu system and you can watch everything on your media centre on demand.  (http://www.kodi.tv)

You can also get what's called a Roku (or Roku 2) which has a lot of free streaming media content.  I have one of these set up in my bedroom with the Plex app so I can wirelessly access my media centre in the living room and watch a little tv before I go to bed if I feel so inclined.

The only cable I pay for is my Internet cable, and that's $68 +tax monthly.  In this day and age of technological advances, one doesn't need cable TV anymore.  You can watch everything you could ever need or want to watch on the Internet if you know where to find it, commercial free.

You might also want to get an antenna for your TV, then you can plug that in and get up to about 10 local "air" channels depending on your location.  I got mine a long time ago and can watch local news while having my dinner, but get most of the major stations - CBC, CTV, CTV Two, Global, OMNI (Multicultural), a CBUFT (French), MeTV, and a few more, all in HD...  One of the best entertainment investments I've ever made.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2017, 12:34:32 PM by dan43 »

Offline ValentineWeather

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #43 on: January 06, 2017, 01:04:24 PM »
Planning on cutting the cord Monday. Waiting until Monday because of the NFL game on ESPN Saturday.
I hear ya, I have ESPN on PSVUE streaming and doesn't look bad at all.
Randy

Offline Intheswamp

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #44 on: January 06, 2017, 01:04:58 PM »
Planning on cutting the cord Monday. Waiting until Monday because of the NFL game on ESPN Saturday.
Alabama/Clemson plays Monday night...ESPN...National Championship...just sayin'.....  :grin:

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Offline Intheswamp

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #45 on: January 06, 2017, 01:10:46 PM »
The only cable I pay for is my Internet cable, and that's $68 +tax monthly.  In this day and age of technological advances, one doesn't need cable TV anymore.  You can watch everything you could ever need or want to watch on the Internet if you know where to find it, commercial free.
"You can watch everything you could ever need" *IF* you have a fast enough internet speed.  Dan, my lame Centurystink 1.5/.25Mbps DSL internet struggles with anything over a standard definition youtube video.<sigh>

They did just announce that they're offering higher speeds in my area...a whopping 3Mbps!!!!!!!  ...for over twice the money!  :evil:

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Offline ValentineWeather

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #46 on: January 06, 2017, 01:21:20 PM »
The only cable I pay for is my Internet cable, and that's $68 +tax monthly.  In this day and age of technological advances, one doesn't need cable TV anymore.  You can watch everything you could ever need or want to watch on the Internet if you know where to find it, commercial free.
"You can watch everything you could ever need" *IF* you have a fast enough internet speed.  Dan, my lame Centurystink 1.5/.25Mbps DSL internet struggles with anything over a standard definition youtube video.<sigh>

They did just announce that they're offering higher speeds in my area...a whopping 3Mbps!!!!!!!  ...for over twice the money!  :evil:

Ouch! Look what I get with PSVUE Elite Slim package streaming $45 month. 99% channels are HD. 720P.
Randy

Offline dan43

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #47 on: January 06, 2017, 02:10:38 PM »
"You can watch everything you could ever need" *IF* you have a fast enough internet speed.

No, I meant that if you have your media stored locally, as in .MP4 files on a local hard drive attached to your media centre, you could then watch everything you could ever want or need.  Perhaps I wasn't clear on that.  I apologize.

I suppose if you have a weak connection, watching things online isn't for you... maybe having them stored locally is a better option for you.

Did you know, as the owner of a DVD, you are allowed to make a digital copy for yourself?  So if you have the entire Gilligan's Island series on DVD, you can make a copy of each of the episodes and store them for later watching, without having to pull out your DVDs.  At least that's what the rule in Canada is, I'm not sure where you are but the rule might be different.
« Last Edit: January 06, 2017, 02:15:04 PM by dan43 »

Offline Andy G

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #48 on: January 06, 2017, 02:13:51 PM »
Planning on cutting the cord Monday. Waiting until Monday because of the NFL game on ESPN Saturday.
Alabama/Clemson plays Monday night...ESPN...National Championship...just sayin'.....  :grin:

Gotta work. I work evenings but my coworker who is from Alabama wont be working. He has taken many Mondays off in early January lately?  :grin:
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Offline WeatherHost

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Re: Anyone joined or thought about Cord Cutting?
« Reply #49 on: January 06, 2017, 02:35:03 PM »
They did just announce that they're offering higher speeds in my area...a whopping 3Mbps!!!!!!!  ...for over twice the money!  :evil:

For where I am, I was surprised to get 25M service a year or so ago.  It's about $60/mo and takes two pair of phone wires, but it works fairly well ...  when it works.  Outages are not uncommon for some reason.  I usually get somewhere near 20M on speed tests.


 

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