ot: one more time - streaming TV service

[eddief]

my Comcast triple play bill kills me each month. No need no more for my landline, watch about 20 tv channels, and I think my internet speed is probably way more fast than this one person household could ever take advantage of.

Now considering DirectNow from ATT. Reviews of that one or any other? I tried Youtube TV put gave up when I realized no fast forward through commercials on many recorded shows.

[Spaghetti Legs]

Interested too and would have cut long a go if I wasn’t such a sports nut. I’ve reduced to one TV hooked to cable and another that is used for streaming via Apple TV.

[Idris Icabod]

We went DIRECTVnow a few months ago after constantly dealing with the bill creep. We did the package for $40 that gives us both the standard packages (I think they are called orange and blue) and a virtual DVR. We tried Hulu and Sling but Directvnow offered the channels we watched the most (I wanted the local channels because my friend is the news anchor). Performance wise it has worked without any issue without having to bump speed on our internet (not sure the current speed but we don't have the fancy hyper-sonic package). The interface is a bit clunky and the DVR function isn't as polished as I'd like but my 7 year old can work it easily.

We also have Netflix and Amazon Prime, so between all that there is always something to watch. I don't watch much in the way of US sports, I'm a Brit expat but if soccer is your thing then you'll be happy.

[buckfifty]

It depends on what you mostly watch. I mostly just watch sports, so I subscribe to hehestreams for nba and nfl. If the legality of the service doesn't bother you, each sport per year is $100. Still cheaper than cable. For tv, Hulu (not their live service) works well as the shows from the major networks appear the next day on their service

[Ralph]

I've been thinking about ditching cable and subscribing to the ROKU channel. Thousands of channels, and one bill every month. Can go anywhere.

What has stopped me is.....I mostly watch news (all of them....CNN, MSNBC, Blumberg, BBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, and especially CNBC, etc) , my wife likes old movies....especially British and Australian, and I like NASCAR races.....practice, qualifying, and the race itself and also IMSA and Indy. Even motorcycling racing. And we have 4 TV's on cable.

Not sure any streaming service will work for us. And I'm not a fan of digital antennas for my local area.

And definitely not a fan of our local cable service (Spectrum). Although service OK. Hate the price creep. And I could almost lease a cheap car for what they charge.

[SpokeValley]

We cut the cable (really satellite, DirecTV) over 2 years ago.

There's so much streaming content now it's almost hard to decide.

We've settled on Amazon Prime, who now has some live sports. (We don't watch sports regularly), Hulu, and Netflix. All three have some pretty darned good original content.

Tried Sling; good for HGTV, Food Network and some others. AXS has good concerts.

I think all of them have free trials and you can quit whenever you want (usually ends at the next billing period) so look around.

[saab2000]

I use Sling TV. Mostly happy but wish I could get local channels via the service instead of a digital antenna, which I couldn’t get to work in my house. So I have no local TV, meaning little NFL, which bums me out. If you’re not an NFL guy it won’t matter.

There are also some neat surprises on Sling that kind of make up for this. Music concerts and some rarely-seen Euro sports like ski jumping and luge and bobsled, etc.

Worthy of a peek at their offerings, that’s for sure. My internet bill is currently $20/month and I think Sling at my package level is around $55/month.

I also pay for Amazon Prime but don’t watch too much. Got that for my mother mostly.

Best thing about Sling is not contract. Want to cancel? Just sign in and cancel.

[echelon_john]

I like Fubo. Gets me NESN (for my Red Sox; assume other localities can get their local sports tv); network TV, major cable news channels, NBC Sports/Olympic Channel, and there's a Cycling channel. Total with the Cycling channel is ~$55/mo.

That, plus NBC Sports Gold (I think $30/yr), Amazon Prime Video, Netflix and iTunes on demand gets me pretty much everything I want to watch, for way less than we were paying for cable.

[saab2000]

Don’t understand why the telephone and cable companies don’t get more savvy with this and customer expectations. They are losing subscribers in droves.

[jamesdak]

I'd love a streaming service that lets me pick the few channels I watch and lets you pay per channel. Until then I'm not going back. Cut the cable 3 years ago with little regrets.

[Bradford]

I switched to Directv Now from Directv a year ago and am happy with the decision. Overall, considering the cost difference, it is all we need. We use Apple TV 4 for the interface, which they gave me for free when I signed up. It is good, better than good enough, but not great like satellite was.

The pros are: Price, a better channel line up for what I watch, and easy access to missed programing. For example, last week I got to the tv 30 minutes after a program started and I was able to start it from the beginning and watch it even thought I was halfway through the time slot and hadn't selected to record. I also love that I can watch tv on my computers and ipads, so it is easy to watch a game in the garage while working on my bikes or the news in the kitchen while cleaning dishes. When the kids are loud downstairs, I can just pop up to the office and watch on my computer, or when I'm in a hotel room I can watch my news back home. In addition, the virtual DVR works well enough.

The cons are: slow to start up and change channels, picture quality is less than satellite and can fade in and out (between great and good enough). When we started last year, our internet speed topped out at 10 Mbps and it was fine most of the time, annoying too much of the time, and useless when my wife was uploading photos. Now my speed is 20 Mbps max and things are fine 95 or 98% of the time. Not always perfect, but mostly fine. That being said, it is still less reliable than cable or satellite.

We committed to a 6 month trial but haven't considered going back. We are also at a point in our lives where we are not heavy tv users.

[eddief]

unlike youtube tv, it appears directnow lets you fast forward through commercials on all recordings.

Originally Posted by Bradford

I switched to Directv Now from Directv a year ago and am happy with the decision. Overall, considering the cost difference, it is all we need. We use Apple TV 4 for the interface, which they gave me for free when I signed up. It is good, better than good enough, but not great like satellite was.

The pros are: Price, a better channel line up for what I watch, and easy access to missed programing. For example, last week I got to the tv 30 minutes after a program started and I was able to start it from the beginning and watch it even thought I was halfway through the time slot and hadn't selected to record. I also love that I can watch tv on my computers and ipads, so it is easy to watch a game in the garage while working on my bikes or the news in the kitchen while cleaning dishes. When the kids are loud downstairs, I can just pop up to the office and watch on my computer, or when I'm in a hotel room I can watch my news back home. In addition, the virtual DVR works well enough.

The cons are: slow to start up and change channels, picture quality is less than satellite and can fade in and out (between great and good enough). When we started last year, our internet speed topped out at 10 Mbps and it was fine most of the time, annoying too much of the time, and useless when my wife was uploading photos. Now my speed is 20 Mbps max and things are fine 95 or 98% of the time. Not always perfect, but mostly fine. That being said, it is still less reliable than cable or satellite.

We committed to a 6 month trial but haven't considered going back. We are also at a point in our lives where we are not heavy tv users.

[zap]

We looked extensively before continuing with att uverse tv package. Unfortunately there are still a few channel combos I want......ESPN for F1 races and local sports for NHL games. Had to sacrifice NBC Olympic channel though so fewer bicycle races.

[morrisericd]

This post had me on the phone with Comcast for almost an hour yesterday trying to whittle my $260/month Triple Play package down. My biggest issue is high speed internet. We need it and anything over 100 Mbps is over $100 - just for the internet. Get rid of the phone and limit your channels to the most basic (except HBO - my kids would kill me if we couldn't watch Game of Thrones in April) and you're at $212 (plus or minus). The best I could do was $241 which included 1G internet plus every channel known to man and Netflix included (previously paying for Netflix separately). It's less, but I'm still not happy. They have us over a barrel here - Comcast is our only local high speed option.

I want to cut the cable but any streaming service is $40. We kind of still want the phone (older parents). Add those up with $100 internet and you can get to $241 pretty quickly!

One question - has anyone bought their own 1G EMTA (we need the phone jack, I was told) modem and gotten rid of the $13/month rental fees Comcast charges? Internet searches turn up lots of options but this forum always steers me in the right direction.

[unterhausen]

can't help with internet phone, but our land line is now a cellphone. I think it went down to $24 a month including the box.

Verizon put fiber on the big road down the street. Their website says their internet is available at our address, but they don't have fiber in the ground, so not really. The really attractive thing about that is they don't offer TV in our area. We just got an offer from Comcast for triple play for $150, which is probably cheaper than what we are paying now. I assume they are worried about cable cutters.