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Boob Tube Help?

Bill Arnold

Bill Arnold

1974
Staff member
Messages
8,633
Location
Thomasville, GA
Our local CATV company is changing from classic cable TV delivery to streaming service using Amazon Fire as the interface. Our Samsung TV hosts many streaming services, but the cable bunch chose not to deliver in a way that allows us to see it without the Fire box. They are providing more channels, but higher rates, etc.

I've been looking at alternatives to CNS (the local cable provider), including and alternative to their Internet service. It appears that HughesNet is the best alternative for Internet - other options don't offer service in our area. I've also looked at other streaming services, but made a decision as yet. We aren't interested in an "all sports" package, but would like access to NASCAR and college football at a reasonable price.

Recommendations from our knowledgeable crew here? (this from a guy who spent over 30 years in able TV engineering!)

TIA
:wave:
 
We had to add the fire box to 3 of our 4 TVs, to allow us to subscribe to YouTube TV (the 4th TV supports Fire directly). The remote with the Fire TV adapter (so small it hardly counts as a "box") is FAR better than my son's Apple TV remote - at his house I would gladly add a fire adapter to get the better remote.

For Internet we dumped AT&T and T-Mobile, and now are using Spectrum, but Google Fiber is being installed in our neighborhood, and when I see the cost will likely upgrade to Google. Once you have solid internet service, there are lots of Streaming options.
 
For the internet side only…

If it’s the hughesnet with the landline uplink and satellite downlink I’d look real hard at starlink instead.

If you can get just internet from your current cable provider (you usually can) and ditch the tv part that might also be a good option and just stream whatever you want from other places.

Hughes has really high latency, and generally terrible uplink speeds (downstream isn’t terrible but the latency makes some things flakey and for streaming you can sometimes get stutters because of how the uplink works not acking down bytes sometimes).

I haven’t watched regular tv basically ever except a year in college 30 some years ago when a roommate had cable anda few times in hotel rooms so I actually can’t speak to what’s an actual substitute very well. We (well loml) do use Amazon streaming, Apple TV, Hulu, and maybe something else I don’t know about but I’m only vaguely familiar with watching the rare movie on them and she mostly does that part.
 
We dropped the Direct TV satellite a few months ago in favor of YouTube TV. Very satisfied although the DVR function is not as clean as the D TV we are getting used to it. I get all the NASCAR, Indy, and F1 races, qualifying and practice. The only channel YTV does not have that I would like is History, but I can stream most of that for free from the History app and share it to my TV. YTV also has sports packages available. for the standard package they are half the cost of DTV.

We use T-Mobile internet. Speeds were quite low for a long time but recently never lower than 100MPS and sometimes as high as 300MBS.
 
I was going to say avoid hughenet myself, go with either a cellular T-mobile like service or Starlink. Might check to see if your electrical company has internet services too, ours has ran fiber to our farm, just awaiting getting connected as they are still in a testing phase of the system.

I think my wife has us signed up for about every streaming service and youtube TV. If you can get Local TV over the air, you can save money and use it and only subscribe to movie and other streaming services that don't have the local channels. We don't get any local over the air, so Youtube TV gives us those channels and can do recording of shows to watch or stream later.

We use Roku devices, which support all the apps for streaming. I configure one device and all my changes are installed on the others to use too. One remote to control Roku and the TV. Our primary TV's have the Roku remote that has headphone jacks, so my wife can watch without any sound on the TV. She gets up way earlier than I do and can watch shows without waking me.
 
Thanks for your input, everyone.

A CNS (cable company) came by to check our system because we were getting too much buffering on the streaming service, plus I had an issue getting the modem to connect after starting the conversion of our WIFI from a router/extender arrangement to mesh system. During the conversation with him, he said he has CNS only for Internet and uses YahooTV for most programming because he saves a lot!
 
Another thumbs up for YouTube TV. I am using Fire TV. I have a line of sight internet by a local provider which provides a whopping 10/3 Mbps. And it works for my needs.
 
firstly - I do not fo;;ow ANY sports stuff at all. NO - baseball, football, nascar, soccer or any other such thing.

We dropped DISHnet and the other big Dish *forgot the name) a very long time ago.

We have internet only. Youtube, Disney +, netflix, prime and so on.
We don't miss any of those other services.
Occasionally (5 - 10 time annually) we will pay $2.99 or so for a movie.

Been like this for way more than 10 years
 
Bill Arnold said:
Rennie, which services on YTV have NASCAR?
Click to expand...
I get all the NASCAR stuff on Fox sports 1 & 2 (though USA carried one or two races last year). ESPN caries the F1 and Indy races. This is all included in the basic YTV package. They also have some other sports packages available but I don't get them. As far as I can tell that covers every MASCAR race (trucks, infinity, cup) and most of the qualifying.
 
Question to the group...are there any online services that allow recording of shows, specifically local news and QVC? I would have dropped our cable service years ago and switched to streaming, but my wife likes to record the morning news and various QVC segments to view later. She also records various movies, but on-demand streaming would make that unnecessary. Any suggestions?

Also, are the online versions of sporting events (like auto races or specific football games) available on demand? For example, I watch every Formula 1 race, but I record them automatically and watch them on my own time schedule.
 
Vaughn McMillan said:
Question to the group...are there any online services that allow recording of shows, specifically local news and QVC? I would have dropped our cable service years ago and switched to streaming, but my wife likes to record the morning news and various QVC segments to view later. She also records various movies, but on-demand streaming would make that unnecessary. Any suggestions?

Also, are the online versions of sporting events (like auto races or specific football games) available on demand? For example, I watch every Formula 1 race, but I record them automatically and watch them on my own time schedule.
Click to expand...
YouTube TV. I record local programs all the time.
 
Vaughn McMillan said:
Question to the group...are there any online services that allow recording of shows, specifically local news and QVC? I would have dropped our cable service years ago and switched to streaming, but my wife likes to record the morning news and various QVC segments to view later. She also records various movies, but on-demand streaming would make that unnecessary. Any suggestions?

Also, are the online versions of sporting events (like auto races or specific football games) available on demand? For example, I watch every Formula 1 race, but I record them automatically and watch them on my own time schedule.
Click to expand...
Once added to the library for future recording past events, up to 18 months old I think, become available to stream on demand. This goes for F1. I'll check but I'm pretty sure most of last seasons episodes of the Max Verstappen show are available.
 
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