Doing Away with Cable - What do you have?
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Anonymous
I hear a lot of people saying they are doing away with their cable service. I need internet and a land line. (both for work). But thinking of doing away with our cable. Do you then solely use the computer to watch shows you would normally watch on the tv? Help me figure this out because the bill I am paying each month seems to go up up up 
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Anonymous
| If you ditch cable you need a smart TV (or an amazon fire adapter or the apple TV adapter). The smart TV hooks into the internet and then you can watch shows from the internet on your TV, plus netflix, amazon prime etc. |
Anonymous
| I have a blue ray player that streams Hulu, Netflix, amazon, Pandora etc. |
Anonymous
| We use a laptop and HDMI cable. Share Netflix with my SIL and HBOGO with a friend. Pay for HuluPlus. |
Anonymous
You don't necessarily need either of those. You can connect a regular computer tower to your TV with an HDMI cable. That way you can use the television screen as a larger computer monitor and connect to Netflix, Hulu, or prime from there. |
Anonymous
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We have Netflix and Hulu Plus, plus Chromecast to play the shows on the large TV. There are some shows (CBS) that can't be played through your phone to the Chromecast, but you can stream your computer screen direct to the TV.
HDMI/port cable is also an option, we just don't like the "mess" of the long cable. |
Anonymous
Isn't that a lot of work to boot a computer and always have to have one attached? We use our smart TV, but we bought this for the other TV (the dumb tv) http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GDQ0RMG/ref=fs_ftvs |
Anonymous
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I just looked into this recently. There's some streaming thing out that used to be called FreeCable. I forgot what the name is now. But it's like an app or addon that you can put on an internet device, like a Roku to access the channels. I think this is the link where I heard about it:
http://lifehacker.com/5900626/create-a-kickass-seamless-play-everything-media-center-the-complete-guide After looking into it more, I think I read that it has since changed it's name to something else. They have something equivalent for sports called SportsDevil. These types of things and options work better with a flat screen TV because most of the devices needed to stream from the internet only have a HDMI connection. I'm not ready to toss our tube TVs yet because they're still fully functioning. It does look like the Roku 2 has the connections needed to plug directly into a tube TV with the component connections (audio and video jacks). But I also decided it was kind of more trouble than it was worth at the moment. So didn't really look any further. |
Anonymous
| We use our Wii or xbox to connect to Netflix and got rid of Comcast. Do not miss Comcast and definitely don't miss their terrible customer service. They were a total ripoff. |
Anonymous
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Here is the more recent link:
http://lifehacker.com/5768174/power-up-your-xbmc-installation-with-these-new-add-ons FreeCable is now called USTV VoD (Video on Demand) Also XBMC is a media player that you can install on a computer. So to access the things in the link, you'd need to install XBMC on a computer and then connect the computer to your TV and internet. I think when I looked into it some of those add ons are available through other means, like Roku, which is why I was looking into the Roku. But as mentioned I stopped looking into it and can't find the links anymore. |
Anonymous
It's not a lot of work, but I also use lots of Excel spreadsheets when I work from home and I like having the TV as a large monitor. |
Anonymous
We have this too, it was $75 at costco 3 years ago so probably much less now. We have comcast and when we called to cancel cable they quoted internet only service as $5 MORE per month. We have the absolute lowest cable package (which actually includes free HBO) it is $85 per month. |
Anonymous
Where do you live and do you have enough bandwidth for streaming properly? |
Anonymous
My price isn't that low but it is one of the reasons why I decided it wasn't worth it. I think there's a discount if you have both internet and TV with comcast. So taking away the TV would add to the cost of the internet as well. So figured that the prices were close enough it wasn't worth it. But I also wasn't clear how the streaming/programs worked. ie if you go to the service and can watch shows real time, and how you find the TV schedules/listings(ie is it local listings, some place in California, etc), or if its something that you can access and play whenever you want, etc. |
Anonymous
City of Alexandria Yes, we can have two devices on wifi and stream from Netflix/amazon |