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Cutting the cord

I have Roku, Sling, Hulu, PBS and Paramount+. We have to do something about ESPN before college football season but we have time to research that.
Our problem is that cable lures you in with the first year and then the price skyrockets. We were paying $219 a month for Internet and Cable before we left our previous house. This current setup cost about $160(Roku and PBS) to set up and about $40 a month.
 
I have dreamed about the day when I can cut the cord and get my life back again. I cant honestly say techno has improved the quality of my life. I used to do so much more with my spare time. Now I spend way too much time looking at a screen for both work and play. (Yes, I know, there is an off button). I could live with just radio, newspapers and a good public library.
 

FarmerTan

"Self appointed king of Arkoland"
I have dreamed about the day when I can cut the cord and get my life back again. I cant honestly say techno has improved the quality of my life. I used to do so much more with my spare time. Now I spend way too much time looking at a screen for both work and play. (Yes, I know, there is an off button). I could live with just radio, newspapers and a good public library.
We are going to remodel soon-ish. Our plan is to put the TV in an inconvenient place.

Lol, THEN tackle "devices!" Baby steps...
 
wife needs certain shows, so I oblige, but toned it down a bit, got basic hulu with disney, around $15, netflix 15, and prime.
since hulu doesnt carry my cbs show, I put up an antenna, (real one gets orlando 60 miles away) and dialed it in. I record all mine and her shows to my plex media server 8tb, I bought a HD home run 4 channel tuner to get up to 4 shows recorded. and then play them back later,
 
I started with an Amazon Firestick 4K, but kept having trouble with the stick rebooting in the middle of a program or movie. Then once it started rebooting, it would do it every few minutes.

I contacted Amazon after I had done all the troubleshooting that I could find online. After Amazon CS heard what I had done, they said they would replace it since I had already done everything they knew to do. The replacement worked fine for a while, but then it started kicking us out of Apps. It didn’t matter which App, Hulu, ESPN, IMDB, Disney, it did it on all of them.

We then bought a Roku Ultra LT at Wally World. It has performed beautifully. We see an occasional buffering for about a second, but that is it. We have 500 mbps Internet, but occasionally, it must hiccup. I think that is what was happening with the firestick, and it just lost its mind when it happened. I also think the stick was overheat. It’s awfully small, and it gets really warm. Plugged into our surround sound, it just doesn’t get enough air flow around it. The Roku is a larger box that sits wherever the HDMI cable will reach, warm to the touch, but not hot.

Would I do it again, you bet. My cable bill was about to go to $300. That included $90 for Internet, which I still get through Cox, but I only pay $75 a month for all the stuff I watch on the Apps. Bear in mind I could lower it still by putting up a mud flap and chopping Hulu down to basic, but I didn’t want my wife to have to deal with changing inputs. Also, I can’t get everything on the mud flap that I can get through streaming Hulu live TV. ABC would drop from our lineup. I could also drop my Internet speed to the lowest level and save another $40. But I’ve gotten spoiled with my web surfing speed.
 
We had a local cable TV package since the day we got here, but found we were really only watching BBC news and sport (me). Then we gave up with BBC news post-Brexit, can't stand the bias, which I never dreamt I would say about Auntie so we decided to bin it all. Saved about $80 a month. Instead, I got Apple TV and a VPN. We watch iPlayer and YouTube. I have taken a subscription to NOW TV so I can watch Test Matches and the F1 on Sky but that may well get binned after the UK summer. I also subscribe to Rugby Pass so I have access to Premiership rugby and hopefully the Lions next month.

However, not having internet is not an option... WFH will not be going away, ever and working without email, Teams and Zoom is utterly impossible.
 
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FarmerTan

"Self appointed king of Arkoland"
The last few responses clearly illustrate why I would be happy to disconnect from all media except radio and newspaper. It seems one needs an electronics engineering degree just to watch a TV show.
Yes. I'm ashamed to admit that my eyes glazed over.....
 
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