Neal Waterstreet

Switching back to streaming…

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Well, today is the day… After a couple of years with cable, I’ve decided to again go the streaming route. Having cable was sufficient but I think streaming will work a little better for me now.

Here are my three main reasons for switching back:

  1. Gigabit Fiber. We have more consumers now than we did a few years ago. I’m seeing some evidence that we need more bandwidth.
  2. Channels. Just like everyone else, we watch less than 10 channels. All the rest are not needed. Now that almost everything is available this is an easy choice. This is one space that has significantly improved since we switched back to cable.
  3. Access control. We have a Circle to control access to the internet at home. It’ll be much easier to control television access without cable.

Here is the setup I’ll be using:
AT&T Fiber for internet. This is a big difference from what I currently have. Several of my neighbors have it and are happy with it. The price is a little bit more than needed for streaming but we wanted the extra bandwidth.

Roku for the main access point. There are other alternatives here but we will stick with this for now. We can always switch over to Xbox or just use the TV itself.

SlingTV for television. There are many choices of services now and it’s really hard to decide which one to go with. We chose SlingTV since there are international options. I did look at Hulu Live TV and YouTube TV too. DirectTV Now would have also been an option but there wasn’t a way to bundle with Fiber. I also selected the optional DVR. I haven’t used that yet.

Plex for local media. Plex is perfect, no complaints there.

One are I don’t have a solution for is local channels. Looks like I’ll need to set up the antenna again. This isn’t a big concern and I’ll need to dig up my old antenna.

T-Mobile announced they will get into television. I’ll take a look at what they offer. They usually make a big splash when they jump in.

This set up should work pretty well for us for now. I’d like to see what others are using though. The big test will come next year when GoT starts back up.

Cutting the cable cord… 1 Year later

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It’s been a year since we cancelled cable. After the initial adjustment, its been much smoother than expected. Streaming services like Netflix, Hulu and Amazon provide more than enough to watch. It seems like most companies are beginning to pay attention and at least making an attempt to meet the streaming demand.

Even with all of the content, here have been a couple of times that I’ve missed it.

Sports and News

Not being able to watch MNF was awful, but I got by somehow. CBS got the new Thursday night NFL deal, so that will help. This was the first year that I didn’t watch the majority of the college bowl games. The MLB package is available for purchase on Roku, but there isn’t enough time to watch enough games to make it worthwhile. The Winter Olympic coverage didn’t show many of the sports I wanted to see and none of them live. The World Cup is going to be rough.

Sports is easily the biggest programming issue that remains with cutting cable.

As a news junkie, not having 24 hour news has led me to read much more than before . There are still times that it would be nice to have CNN/Fox/BBC.

System

The plan originally was to go with a HTPC, but then Roku, Plex and Aereo came into the picture and that combination seems to work well. No complaints here and I haven’t made any modifications this setup. Aereo’s DVR service isn’t perfect but it is good enough and I am still hoping they expand their channel selection. I purchased a Chromecast but haven’t really used it very much.

If anything happens that disrupts what I currently have I’ll look into a HTPC, but for now there is no need.

Savings

Now that the set up costs are paid for the only costs are the monthly service fees and any movies that we purchase.

Overall

At this point i don’t see any way that I’d ever go back.

Aereo after 1 month

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I’ve been using Aereo since it was in beta in Atlanta. Some time has passed for me to really test it out and I still like it. Recording is very simple and the menus are easy to navigate. Prior to that, I had not been able to record shows since cutting cable and was watching mostly Netflix. I forgot how much easier it makes watching what you want with a DVR. That is probably not a good thing. One concern I had was the amount of space available for recording, but my drive is not even come close to filling up so there is no problem there.

Anyway, a month in there are a few improvements that I would like to see.

  • Improve the picture quality – Some of the channels can be a little grainy. This does not happen enough to be a big problem, but it does happen enough to be noticeable. It could just be an issue with the local channels.
  • Speed up the launch time – Starting a recorded show can be painfully slow at times. The behavior is similar to Netflix, but with a longer wait. Rewinding and Fast Forwarding also experience this. I’m not sure if this is just me or not.
  • Still no app for Android.

Overall
I think Aereo is here to stay. The service is good will get better over time. I just wish more channels offered a digital subscription.

Update – Cutting the cable cord

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It’s been almost 4 months since I cut cable service. At this point I have no regrets at all. The amount of money I save every month more than compensates for the convenience of what I had with cable. Here is an update on some of the concerns I had.

Roku or HTPC
I think it is perfect. I’ve added several channels and some are good, some not. The USB support along with Plex is big. I am also very happy that it continues to receive new channels regularly. PBS/PBS Kids was just added a few weeks ago. I hope many other channels follow in the coming months.

DVR
I was looking at some options, but I was accepted for the beta for Aereo. We are just getting it in Atlanta and it is a game changer. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s similar to having an OTA antenna with DVR support included. Aereo has all of the OTA channels, plus a few that I will probably never watch. The big win here is with the DVR service. It has 20 hours with the base service and 40 hours with the higher level. Roku already has an Aereo channel.

Local channels
Aereo solves this too. The channels look almost as good as OTA and at least equal to what I had with cable. If my ISP goes down, I still have the antenna as a backup.

Overall
I was a little worried that I would spent the money to get everything set up and then go back. I don’t think that will happen at this point. My best estimate is that I spent 2 months in what I had payed in cable to get all the equipment. This includes the Roku, antenna, hard drives, etc… Now my only costs are the streaming fees for Netflix, Amazon Prime and now Aereo. All of this easily totals to less than $20 per month.

I think the set up that I have is simple to put together – if I can do it anyone can. Everything that I have is available out of the box, with a little configuration for Plex and the antenna. There is definitely some functionality that I don’t have that a HTPC would provide, but so far it is more than good enough.