Moving into a new home in next 30 days. Considering the 1 GB speed for wifi and going to a streaming service like YouTube or Hulu for cable. Looks like both have full lineup of channels. I did talk to someone recently who raved about YouTube. Looking for other feedback before making the leap. Unfortunately in Vegas, Fios isn’t here. Choices are Cox, Direct and Dish.
I’ve been a YouTube TV subscriber for about 4 years now probably. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Between YTTV + internet + a few rotating subscription services like Netflix/Paramount+/etc., my bill decreased at least $100/month.
The only real considerations are
(1) you want to make sure you have either a smart TV or a streaming stick at each location you watch TV with any regularity, whether it be a Roku/Apply/Google product. Each has their own interface and app selection, but it really ends up being a preference thing
(2). Sports, if you’re interested in that. My local baseball team is only cable, unless you buy the $20/month subscription, which is pretty damned pricy. For football, my team is out of market, but YTTV recently bought Sunday Ticket, so that’s reinforced my choice there. But you’ll definitely want to research this if you plan on watching a lot of sports.
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Helpful. Currently, we only have 1 TV and it is a Smart LG which seems to have the YouTube icon on first screen. We are likely buying 2 more, for den and outside that would be Smart as well. Cost including HBO, Showtime and Starz is $100 versus $180 now with cable. I can upgrade from 500 to 1G for internet speed and still save $60-80.
I watch more soccer on USA and Peacock than anything since it is early. I will catch Sox when they are on ESPN, Celts on TNT or Seahawks when they are on, but life doesn’t revolve around that as much as it used to. Playoffs are always available and I have SXM to listen.
Appreciate the feedback.
Wtf is a cable
-millenials
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Might also consider if you have the “latest & greatest” modem/router to actually take advantage of the higher bandwidth.
Do some research on DOCSYS (I think the current “stable” version is 3.1; but 4.0 is near to being produced for general consumption) and if you can use your own equipment with the ISP options.
You might also consider just how old your smart TV is. IIRC, anything less than 5 years old is likely to be okay; but this would be another area to research as well.
I have considered this for a while, and am thinking more about it again given the current beef between Bally and Comcast. My main goals were to select a provider that had most of the channels I like to watch rather than getting the absolute best price.
Sling had some killer pricing but too many missing channels. Youtube and Hulu were compelling, but one big missing piece last time I looked were the Bally regional sports. That’s important to me. Fubo and DirecTV streaming both have Bally regionals. Fubo is cheaper but has some beef with Warner Media so you don’t get those channels (TBS, TNT, Discovery, CNN,…)
I was leaning DirecTV streaming even though it was a little more expensive than the others. I need to update my research
While Bally is currently missing from Comcast, they are still enforcing the local blackouts on MLB.tv so that is not an option for me.
I had cable TV from ages 15-18 when my parents finally got it and before I moved out.
Never had it otherwise.
We have Netflix, Dropout.TV and Crunchyroll (nerd shit), and often do HBO and Disney+, but we sometimes cancel the last two. We also use basic YouTube. Internet is $70/mo, I want to say including internet I play around $95-120/month depending how many active services.
If I wanted sports I could pay a shitton or pirate it. That’s really the only thing I’m lacking, other than watching primetime TV the moment it’s out, which I don’t need to do.
Eventually I plan to build a small computer as a media server as well as to play YouTube with adblockers rather than use the PS5.
Ditto. Haven’t used “cable” in ~20 years.
We use T-Mobile 5g for internet, which is a flat $50 a month and pretty good where we are.
We stream with a amazon 4k stick. I don’t even know if we actually watch 4k though lol.
We pay for Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+, and possibly some random subscriptions that my wife signed up for and then forgot about. We don’t pay for youtube. We rent/buy movies and TV series when we want them.
But we also just aren’t big TV people. Too busy playing video games or whatever. Every once in a while I watch streaming chess, though I don’t know why.
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Bally is supposed to be going to Prime. I’m missing way too many LA Kings games. Prime, though, has an annoying habit of making a subscriber pay extra for the things they want to watch.
I’m on the YouTubeTV train.
Pros:
- I like that its “your library” (TiVo in a cloud) simply saves everything related to your library choice. You don’t have to search for your team on several different stations. Kings were on three different channels this year, and I never worried if it were being “recorded.”
- Also, someone/AI at YouTube knows when a game ends, so no guessing as to how many overtimes there might be days before the game occurs.
- The “library” seems to have no maximum capacity. I’ll probably get to that eventually.
Cons:
- There is no FF’ing mode. Only 15 seconds ahead (that amount could probably be changed, who knows) or 15 seconds back. So you cannot slo-mo the slo-mo as my TiVo could do. So, it took me a few attempts to freeze-frame Sandra Oh the other night.
- No Bally’s Regional channels. No Dodgers (Spectrum only), either, but, meh to Base Ball.
- It completely forgets what channel you have been on whenever the TV is turned off or when you go to some other service.
- You cannot watch two diverse things live simultaneously. I say “diverse” because it will offer a split screen for two or more NFL Football games being played simultaneously (you pick the audio). But that means can’t watch Planet Earth while you pause the NFL Football game.
- You can watch a libraried game in progress a few hours behind. BUT, it is a lot harder to find these. It will be under “scheduled” and not “recently recorded.”
- The “library” has no way of “deleting” anything. So, the list of things in the library just keeps growing and growing.
But, this is all better than the two “cable” choices I have which stopped being “cable” services, and thus couldn’t use my TiVo, and they wanted to charge me even more for their “DVR” which, based on past experiences, suck hard vs TiVo.
It’s more than baseball. Bally has rights to a bunch of MLB, NBA, and NHL teams.
I do know that. LA Kings are on Bally’s. The meh" was toward Dodgers being only on Spectrum and that it is not enough of a draw to pay for shitty Spectrum services.
We just have Hulu and Disney + for the kids
Internet speed is only 300mb/s
Cost is roughly $80 for everything listed above
Now that we have 2 kids we barely have time to watch anything except for Disney movies with the stinkers
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We dropped cable a few years ago for YTTV. Could probably drop that too given how little we actually watch on it. Mostly watching Amazon/NetFlix/Max/Disney+/Apple etc. We did find that we needed to up our cable internet to unlimited data since everything is now coming in as data. That was an unexpected cost for us. The few shows we watch that we could watch live are on Paramount app/Hulu/Peacock etc.
my friends who have YTTV or something similar like it enough.
you also can get a good digital antenna to make sure you are getting whatever local channels and others sent over the air. i bought one during covid for an outdoor watch party and was really surprised with the number of things that it picked up.
The area that I live does not have unblocked access to the emitting antennae. These things called “hills” are in the way.
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Gotham!?
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Hikaru usually? Ideally on Tuesday, for blitz. I find real chess too slow and bullet way too fast. Of course, half the time he is just playing fortnite or something. The internet is weird. I do like Gotham for recaps.
Hikaru is my favorite really competitive player (according to my dad I was even at the same chess tournament as him once when we were both kids), but you cant beat Levys personality for chess videos. And he sacrifices… THE ROOK
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