We Cut the Cord Today

[Rich Riddle]

I went to the Cable TV office and dropped off the Card that was in the Tivo unit. The representative said about 10 to 20 people a day cancel. Cable TV just didn't stay competitive with streaming services and antenna TV. We have RVEAL (buy the box and no monthly fee) and can watch just about any movie we want. I think RVEAL also allows us to watch live TV and shows the wife likes. I won't miss the sneaky little price hikes Cable charges such as the one that is going into effect in a week.

[Pat Barry]

I went to the Cable TV office and dropped off the Card that was in the Tivo unit. The representative said about 10 to 20 people a day cancel. Cable TV just didn't stay competitive with streaming services and antenna TV. We have RVEAL (buy the box and no monthly fee) and can watch just about any movie we want. I think RVEAL also allows us to watch live TV and shows the wife likes. I won't miss the sneaky little price hikes Cable charges such as the one that is going into effect in a week.
So many options available today and this is first I have heard of RVEAL. How is this different from ROKU, Firestick, blah, blah, blah??

[Rich Riddle]

So many options available today and this is first I have heard of RVEAL. How is this different from ROKU, Firestick, blah, blah, blah??I can't speak intelligently about the differences because all I have is RVEAL. We purchased RVEAL at the farm and it operates on KODI if that is the proper spelling. We can watch live TV at the farm as well as TV shows and lots of movies. RVEAL also allows you to search the Internet if memory serves correctly. I really like the lack of a monthly bill and everything is legal and legitimate. I know some people sell Firesticks that access paid programming for free, but that just doesn't seem the way we want to go.

[Jim Becker]

The one thing to be careful with anything based on the KODI platform is that that system is rife with copyright infringement issues and there is currently a lot of scrutiny because of that.

[Rich Riddle]

The one thing to be careful with anything based on the KODI platform is that that system is rife with copyright infringement issues and there is currently a lot of scrutiny because of that.I read up on that and found this..."Kodi users who are tweaking the Kodi software to run Kodi Add-ons which provide copyrighted movies using peer-to-peer (P2P) or bittorrent are 100% at risk of getting sued for copyright infringement."

We don't have any of the add-on features using our RVEAL to violate copyright. It appears these add-ons are similar to what people have been doing with Firestick in order to access unauthorized videos.

[Jim Becker]

I only mentioned it because the scrutiny is pointed at the device manufacturers and it could affect support if some firm loses a legal battle. For now...enjoy!

[Rod Sheridan]

Hi Rich, living in an urban area, I dropped cable years ago when broadcasters went with digital transmission. I installed an antenna and we use that.

We have approximately 20 channels, including TVO and CBC (national and provincial broadcasters) as well as 3 PBS channels from Buffalo, and of course a bunch of local stations.

The video quality is great of course, no bills, (except for an annual donation to TVO and PBS).

We also last year cut the telephone service as I carry a cell for work, Diann has a cell and the kids don't phone, they text.

All told we dropped $2K a year in communication costs, and last year I went from DSL to Fiber for internet and cut $400 a year from the internet bill............Rod.

[Pat Barry]

I can't speak intelligently about the differences because all I have is RVEAL. We purchased RVEAL at the farm and it operates on KODI if that is the proper spelling. We can watch live TV at the farm as well as TV shows and lots of movies. RVEAL also allows you to search the Internet if memory serves correctly. I really like the lack of a monthly bill and everything is legal and legitimate. I know some people sell Firesticks that access paid programming for free, but that just doesn't seem the way we want to go.
I've got the Amazon service and for a time we also had Netflix. I've found that while there are a ton of movies in the listing, there are very few that I care to watch. I spend a lot of time clicking from screen to screen and don't find much I haven't seen already or care to watch. For example, lots of foreign films it seems. I'd be curious if there is a better selection on RVEAL.

[Perry Hilbert Jr]

the cable company has us, because they are the cheapest provider of high speed internet. The TV is only an extra $25.00 er month.

I have an antenna TV in the kitchen, hooked to am amplified antenna. One by one three of the local stations stopped broadcasting in anyway that I can receive them. One's tower is only 6 miles away (west) and their two channels completely disappeared from the air about two months ago. I sent emails to them, but all I got was a cryptic message that their broadcasting platform had changed. The next closest station, only 12 miles away also disappeared from the airways. Even on cable five of the channels from those two stations have completely disappeared. So now all I get are the two channels from a station 15 miles east of us. I tried resetting and reprogramming the tv, I complained to the FCC and still haven't gotten any explanation.

I recently read an article about a guy in the next county over that put up a 50 ft tower with an antenna. He was getting nearly 40 channels (Phila, Baltimore, Central pa AND EVEN dc) over the airwaves and suddenly he said 12 of them disappeared.

i recently read that the FCC permitted some broadcasters to sell their frequencies to cell providers, but they were to continue broadcasting on alternate frequencies, arranged with other broadcasters. Well that screwed us all to heck.

[Keith Outten]

We dropped our cable TV on New Years eve. We are currently receiving 23 channels over the air plus some programming via the Internet. For us it wasn't so much the cost of the service, the quality was degrading and it seemed foolish to pay for commercials that consume 20 minutes of each hour.

[Rich Riddle]

I've got the Amazon service and for a time we also had Netflix. I've found that while there are a ton of movies in the listing, there are very few that I care to watch. I spend a lot of time clicking from screen to screen and don't find much I haven't seen already or care to watch. For example, lots of foreign films it seems. I'd be curious if there is a better selection on RVEAL.Pat, I can't speak to what you want to watch, but I had a similar experience with Amazon and Netflix. I like westerns, crime, action, etc. and there are lots of those on RVEAL. I can watch John Wayne, Sean Connery, Clint Eastwood, etc. Dozens of their moves are on there. It's a pity John Wayne hasn't made new movies in quite some time.

By the way, RVEAL has a similar return police as Festool. You can return their units any time in the first 30 days for any or no reason and receive a full refund if you don't like the merchandise.

[Michael Weber]

Pat, It's a pity John Wayne hasn't made new movies in quite some time.
It is :rolleyes:

[Izzy Camire]

Rich, I see it gets Encore I like westerns does it get Encore western channel? What about INSP?

[Peter Kelly]

Thanks for this reminder. Cut off the TV part of my Fios package yesterday and purchased a G1100 router. Should cut the bill from $120 to $58 / month for 75/75.

[Jim Becker]

Thanks for this reminder. Cut off the TV part of my Fios package yesterday and purchased a G1100 router. Should cut the bill from $120 to $58 / month for 75/75.
Peter, if you find that you still want local channels, you can get that for about $13 a month and it doesn't require STBs with modern TVs. That's how I halved my FiOS bill a few months ago. OTA didn't work for us because "the one" station I watch in the morning for news (WPVI ABC) is on a VHF channel that just will not pull in from an antenna on our roof no matter how fancy I tried. Owning your gateway is a good way to save money, too...'glad you made that move. I've been on FiOS so long that I have the older Actiontek Rev I as my gateway and "back in the day" there was no cost for it at all. (wireless is provided by a mesh system, not the VZ router)

[Peter Kelly]

Wasn't it WPVI that used to run Captain Noah & His Magic Ark in the 1970s? Completely forgot about that.

[Jim Becker]

Wasn't it WPVI that used to run Captain Noah & His Magic Ark in the 1970s? Completely forgot about that.

That was one of the ground breaking shows that originated in this area. :)

[Peter Kelly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnXLUaOSCsMThe lyrics really make it.

[lowell holmes]

We have Xfinity phone, TV, and on line computer service. It is superior to what we had before.

[Rich Riddle]

I had installed a decent antenna in the attic above the garage last summer in anticipation of cutting the cord. Made the connections through the house today and we have 51 channels available on the "air." That's more than enough "live tv" combined with the RVEAL.

[Bill George]

But you can't get current HDTV or DYI Network, or Gold Rush or American Pickers or History Channel or a lot of others. My son has off the air something, and he watches a Lot of movies old and new. I do not watch movies, But Science Channel and the others listed above. With Direct TV current billing with one HD Receiver and one large screen set my bill is $103 a month. Yes I would like to cut the Dish but so far no one has a service that lets me pick and choose. ??

Ok.... Reading up on KODI

[Jim Becker]

Bill, if you have reasonably good high speed Internet service, you can have "cable like" streaming with many of the so-called "cable" channels from providers like Hulu and YouTubeTV. You'll need that same HSI for KODI, too...or any other streaming source. It may have already been mentioned, but there's a lot of scrutiny on KODI at this point because of the platform being used for unlawful access to content. So you'll want to look at other potential solutions, too. Also DirectTV Now provides the same content you get now via the dish, but via the Internet to various consumer-provided set-top adapters, such as AppleTV, Roku, etc. You might look at switching if your HSI can support streaming.

[Bill George]

Well I did a lot of online research and found Playstation Vue same channels I have now but about 1/2 the cost. Can be streamed on five seperate devices at the same time. On the other you have to go to prirated sources.

[Bill Dufour]

We have slow dsl service so can I use a dvd recorder to buffer a show/movie and watch latter without the pauses?
Bil lD

[Bill George]

We have slow dsl service so can I use a dvd recorder to buffer a show/movie and watch latter without the pauses?
Bil lD

Can you use it with Playstation Vue? I seem to remember some restrictions.

[Dave Cav]

We have a Sony Playstation Vue subscription. We watch it over relatively slow DSL (10 to 13 MPS) provided by CenturyLink, our landline service. We normally watch it via WiFi over a Fire box since I have a Prime subscription as well. I also occasionally watch PSV on my cell phone at the gym over their WiFi. Watching it over DSL isn't optimum, but it works for us since normally only one person at a time is watching it. When the new house is finished I'll have Ethernet cable between the router and the Fire box so it may improve, or I may look into cable internet (Comcast) in the future. My wife watches about 99% of the TV in the house so I really can't speak to the content.

[Mike Null]

We're about to discontinue cable tv as Charter/Spectrum are nothing less than thieves. They are the only cable game in town and I need wifi but we are dropping tv and phone which will save us about $100 a month but we will spend $44 for Sony Playstation Vue. I've tested the others and didn't find the interface friendly. I didn't test DirectNow but their reviews are so bad it didn't seem wothwhile. I'll have to buy new Rokus for 2 sets and I'm going to buy Ooma as we want to keep our conventional telephone even though it is voip.

I've used a cell phone for my business for years and wouldn't switch. I also discontinued faxes years ago.

[Brian Henderson]

We're about to discontinue cable tv as Charter/Spectrum are nothing less than thieves.

I will agree they are very dishonest. I was going to switch to them as Frontier has horrible customer service, but they promised me I could have the same 100/100 I'm currently getting. When they got here, they installed it and it was only 100/10. They want to charge me more than I'm currently paying for Frontier and get less service. No thanks. I told the installer to take it all back with him and cancelled. Frontier still sucks, but at least I only have to talk to them once every couple of years.

[Bill George]

I will agree they are very dishonest. I was going to switch to them as Frontier has horrible customer service, but they promised me I could have the same 100/100 I'm currently getting. When they got here, they installed it and it was only 100/10. They want to charge me more than I'm currently paying for Frontier and get less service. No thanks. I told the installer to take it all back with him and cancelled. Frontier still sucks, but at least I only have to talk to them once every couple of years.

I am agreeing with all I read here. Century Link here in Iowa at least in my area was a big improvement over Qwest who they bought out, reliable now but still lucky to get 5 or 6 Megabytes whatever download speed. Mediacom who I hate because of past customer service and attitude is the other game in town, but it is Fiber and just a 100 ft or so from my house. The DSL is 26 gauge copper ran in the 1960's. Direct TV online service seems to mirror the dish packages, they leave out good channels to make you pay for a upgrade. Thanks AT&T, for the SOS.

[Brian Henderson]

I am agreeing with all I read here. Century Link here in Iowa at least in my area was a big improvement over Qwest who they bought out, reliable now but still lucky to get 5 or 6 Megabytes whatever download speed. Mediacom who I hate because of past POS customer service and attitude is the other game in town, but it is Fiber and just a 100 ft or so from my house. The DSL is 26 gauge copper ran in the 1960's. Direct TV online service seems to mirror the dish packages, they leave out good channels to make you pay for a upgrade. Thanks AT&T, for the SOS.

We had to upgrade to FiOS because Verizon flat out told us that they'd rather pay the fines for not providing us service than replace the old copper line that we were using. We had techs out at least 2-3x a month searching for copper pairs that hadn't corroded into uselessness. The second FiOS was available, we were the first house that had it installed and I've loved it ever since. When we moved, the first criteria was that it had to be in a FiOS-enabled neighborhood. I will never go back to copper again.

[Jim Becker]

Same here, Brian. First in the neighborhood (actually even "port 1" on the tap) and I'd not go to anything other than fiber if I have a choice in the matter.

[Simon MacGowen]

I went to the Cable TV office and dropped off the Card that was in the Tivo unit. The representative said about 10 to 20 people a day cancel. Cable TV just didn't stay competitive with streaming services and antenna TV. We have RVEAL (buy the box and no monthly fee) and can watch just about any movie we want. I think RVEAL also allows us to watch live TV and shows the wife likes. I won't miss the sneaky little price hikes Cable charges such as the one that is going into effect in a week.

No TV here for more than 15 years, saving more than enough for a SS ICS!

There is nothing worth seeing other than news which is free on the net anyway.

Simon

[Matt Meiser]

We technically uncut the cord this week. I upgraded to Comcast gigabit service. I could do internet-only, or for $30 less I could take a TV/Internet combo with the Latino Channel Package. The rep said I can self install the one set-top box she had to send me whereever I want. Perhaps on a shelf somewhere she said. As one coworker pointed out, it should make for an interesting change in our junk mail. :D

[Jim Becker]

So will you be posting in Spanish now, Matt? :) :D :p

[Carlos Alvarez]

We dumped our TV provider almost 15 years ago. I'm constantly amazed by what people still put up with to stick with normal TV. The garbage the throw at you between shows, the ads, the TV talking head idiots. Our society would be a better place if fewer people were exposed to that garbage.

[Matt Meiser]

So will you be posting in Spanish now, Matt? :) :D :p

Si Señor :D

[Carlos Alvarez]

Copper is far from dead and isn't necessarily a problem. Also fiber isn't perfect and has its own problems. Source: Have been a network engineer for over 30 years.

We have copper-based gigabit service from Cox. It's just fine, and very reliable. We work from home so it's constantly being used.

[Al Launier]

Interesting thread. My monthly Comcast Triple Play bill is $194.40. Of the couple hundred channels (???) we watch perhaps a dozen or so, period! I need to change! Starting from scratch, don't have current communications tech-speak, or know-how, but need to look into.

[Rod Sheridan]

Interesting thread. My monthly Comcast Triple Play bill is $194.40. Of the couple hundred channels (???) we watch perhaps a dozen or so, period! I need to change! Starting from scratch, don't have current communications tech-speak, or know-how, but need to look into.

Hi Al, we got rid of cable TV and went with an off air antenna.

Now that the broadcast is digital the quality surpasses cable and satellite, and that's from a guy who works for a satellite company. The Comms guys at work tell me that off air is only one layer below studio camera, I believe it having watched it for 3 years now.

I don't know if that's a viable option where you live, however for one months cable bill I was able to purchase and install an antenna.........Rod.

[roger wiegand]

We have fios internet, but the package price for internet, phone, and TV is only about $15 more than internet alone, so we have all three despite seldom watching TV. The landline phone is good because we have almost nonexistent cell service. My newest mobile works pretty well using the internet for connection, so our need for that may be limited. Unfortunately that's the number most people have for us.

The local TV news is so bad I (in the "if it bleeds it leads" style) can't imagine installing an antenna to receive it. The programming is worse, if anything. Give me a good book and a wide range of music to listen to any day!