Maybe, but I get a deal too hard to pass up I will ride this Horse into the ground.
Cord cutting on the cheap!
- Thread starter lparsons21
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I'm not sure the concept in cord cutting is necessarily cheap. To me, it's about value.
With traditional cable and satellite services, you had to buy what they wanted to sell, the way that they wanted to sell it. We were paying a lot of money, and had to accept a lot of stuff we didn't want as part of that purchase.
With cord cutting, I'm buying what I want. If I want Picard, I get CBS All Access. When Picard ends, I drop CBS, and move on to something else I want. I can come back to CBS whenever I want, but don't have to pay for it when it has no value to me. Sure, CBS All Access has other stuff I won't watch, but I make the decision to buy it based on my willingness to pay for Picard. I don't feel like I'm wasting my money because I got just what I wanted, Picard. When I'm not getting Picard from them, I drop the service and I'm not paying for stuff I don't want. Oh, I'm getting Picard on my schedule not theirs, at no extra cost.
As for the cost of broadband, it's fair to not include it in the cost of cord cutting because I would have it whether I was stream video or not.
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With traditional cable and satellite services, you had to buy what they wanted to sell, the way that they wanted to sell it. We were paying a lot of money, and had to accept a lot of stuff we didn't want as part of that purchase.
With cord cutting, I'm buying what I want. If I want Picard, I get CBS All Access. When Picard ends, I drop CBS, and move on to something else I want. I can come back to CBS whenever I want, but don't have to pay for it when it has no value to me. Sure, CBS All Access has other stuff I won't watch, but I make the decision to buy it based on my willingness to pay for Picard. I don't feel like I'm wasting my money because I got just what I wanted, Picard. When I'm not getting Picard from them, I drop the service and I'm not paying for stuff I don't want. Oh, I'm getting Picard on my schedule not theirs, at no extra cost.
As for the cost of broadband, it's fair to not include it in the cost of cord cutting because I would have it whether I was stream video or not.
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And if you want to watch just Picard you can do it with just a one month subscription by waiting until the month covers up to the last episode since CBS keeps all the episodes.
Or even better, wait until a couple shows you want are on it complete, sub for month and watch all of them. The only thing to consider is just how important it is to see the episodes when they are new IMO.
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Or even better, wait until a couple shows you want are on it complete, sub for month and watch all of them. The only thing to consider is just how important it is to see the episodes when they are new IMO.
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Picard was an example. It could be replaced with anything... What's new and hot, or maybe you just want to watch (or rewatch) an old favorite like the Sopranos.
It's also about choosing how to watch... Do I want the episode on the day it was released, or would I be happy binging it once all the episodes were out. You can choose between paying for 2 or 3 months of service to get them on the release day, or get a free trial and binge them over a weekend.
But, the bottom line is that I pay for what I want.
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It's also about choosing how to watch... Do I want the episode on the day it was released, or would I be happy binging it once all the episodes were out. You can choose between paying for 2 or 3 months of service to get them on the release day, or get a free trial and binge them over a weekend.
But, the bottom line is that I pay for what I want.
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But it turns out to be an excellent example for the reasons that Lloyd offered: If you like both Discovery and Picard, you can subscribe once a year for a month or so and binge both of them.
If you don't mind waiting until the fall season ends (right about now, apparently), you can subscribe and watch the full season of most CBS prime time shows without having to pay for 5-6 months (unless it takes you that long to get through them).
In contrast, Netflix (and possibly Amazon) drops their entire series at once.
If you have to pay for the entire CBS All Access spread to get one series, that's not really a la carte.
I need sports, so "on the cheap" is a relative concept to me. There is no better cost-effective way for me to get all the ESPNs, my RSNs, Fox/CBS/NBC Sports channels, MLB, NBA, Tennis Channel, etc. along with all my locals including CW (OTA doesn't work for me), and my must-have cable channels than YouTube TV. Here's my breakdown as of this moment:
YouTube TV: $50
Netflix: $11 (discounted gift card price)
Hulu: Free month
Prime: Year-round sub for various benefits
Internet: $60 promo price through June 2021 for 150 Mbps service
Before cutting the cord, I always had my cable company's second highest Internet speed category. So that doesn't factor into my costs for entertainment. I also always had Netflix, sometimes with the disc rental service too. Prime is Prime. And the other streaming services and premium cable channels I bounce around among depending on deals and must-watch shows (like GOT last year). But always one at a time, i.e., I wouldn't sign up for HBO, CBS All Access, or Showtime right now while I'm getting caught up on Hulu and Netflix.
YouTube TV: $50
Netflix: $11 (discounted gift card price)
Hulu: Free month
Prime: Year-round sub for various benefits
Internet: $60 promo price through June 2021 for 150 Mbps service
Before cutting the cord, I always had my cable company's second highest Internet speed category. So that doesn't factor into my costs for entertainment. I also always had Netflix, sometimes with the disc rental service too. Prime is Prime. And the other streaming services and premium cable channels I bounce around among depending on deals and must-watch shows (like GOT last year). But always one at a time, i.e., I wouldn't sign up for HBO, CBS All Access, or Showtime right now while I'm getting caught up on Hulu and Netflix.
You dont have to subscribe to everything at the sametime..if you want HBO you can pick it up when there is a movie or 2 you wanna watch..pick up hulu ...binge watch your favorite shows then drop it...if you really do need all that repetitive sports stuff..all the time it will get pricy
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That was my point.
Everyone's tastes are different, and everything in entertainment gets repetitive in its own way. I personally can't watch more than two or three episodes of any given reality TV show before the gimmick gets old and every episode just seems like lather, rinse, repeat. I also rarely rewatch old movies or TV shows (talk about repetitive). While some people would say all the superhero-themed shows I watch are all the same.
You do you, and I'll do me.
What I am saying is...figure out what you need to watch every month...ESPN a standalone and the RSNS will eventually do the same.....no need to get everything all the time..almost alacart...unlike cable or satellite
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That was my point.
Everyone's tastes are different, and everything in entertainment gets repetitive in its own way. I personally can't watch more than two or three episodes of any given reality TV show before the gimmick gets old and every episode just seems like lather, rinse, repeat. I also rarely rewatch old movies or TV shows (talk about repetitive). While some people would say all the superhero-themed shows I watch are all the same.
You do you, and I'll do me.
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Want the cheapest possible OTA DVR solution? Do what I do and use the free open-source MythTV. I warn you, though, getting it installed and configured is for folks who are tech geeks and/or adventurous and willing to research and tinker. You'll need an HD HomeRun OTA tuner, plus either a Mac or a Linux PC that you will stay always-on-and-awake (at least during the hours when you plan to record and watch TV). Best to connect both devices to your home network via ethernet.
As for watching your MythTV recordings on TV, there's a $10 app available for Apple TV, which is what I use. It only allows playback and deletion of recordings, not set-up (which I do on the Mac itself, or via the Mythling app on my phone). Mythling is a fuller-functioned free front-end app for MythTV for Android phones. I think there may be a TV-adapted version of it that can be side-loaded onto Fire TV and Android TV devices, not sure. I use a completely separate app on my Apple TV (called Channels) for watching live OTA TV directly from the HDHomeRun; that doesn't involve MythTV or my Mac at all).
You can try to rely on the free PSIP guide data embedded in your local stations' signals but it's definitely worth spending $25 per year to get Gracenote guide data from Schedules Direct. The MythTV UI on your computer lets you enter your Schedules Direct user name and password, then directly fetches the updated guide data every day for you.
Not quite with ESPN. You can get ESPN+, which is stand-alone, but does not include things on the national channels like ESPN and ESPN2.
But, most of the leagues have out of market packages that allow you to watch most games. What is difficult is that locals teams may only be available on the RSN and other streaming sources are blacked out in market.
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Plex is probably easier to set up and it may well be cheaper if you buy a lifetime "Plex Pass".
Plex doesn't charge for clients any more.
Plex doesn't support PSIP
Both support the kind of hardware you should use but Plex also supports the NVIDIA Shield and several different NAS boxes.
Meet your TV concierge.
Enjoy all of your entertainment, no matter where it lives, plus 50,000+ free titles from us.
www.plex.tv
MythTV, Open Source DVR
MythTV is a Free Open Source digital video recorder project distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL.
www.mythtv.org
^Exactly. We can speculate all we want about the future of so-called "a la carte" streaming service offerings. But as it currently stands, I can only get my RSNs (in-market MLB games) on certain OTT live TV services, Cox Cable, and DirecTV (not Dish, which no longer cares about one of the 10 largest cities in America).
ESPN has cornered the market on some of the biggest sports leagues and events, and those games are only available from a traditional TV provider or cable replacement (or via the app with login credentials).
Even Tennis Channel, which I put on almost every day for background noise, doesn't include the bigger matches on the linear channel in its $100/year Tennis Channel Plus subscription service.
Yeah, I seriously considered Plex DVR, given that I've used their free apps for ages. I got an invite for a free one-month Plex Pass. So glad I tried that out before buying a $120 lifetime Plex Pass. It just didn't work very well for me. I couldn't watch shows until they had finished recording and even then, there was a lot of delay going on when I'd FF or rewind. Plex seemed to insist on transcoding everything, even though I had all the settings set to allow Direct Play. It was just an intolerably bad experience for me. YMMV, of course, and probably will depending on the exact combination of equipment you're using.
MythTV is much more straightforward. It doesn't transcode anything (at least the way I have it set up). Just sends the original MPEG-2 .ts file to the Apple TV 4K, which can decode and de-interlace it (if necessary). Only real bug with the MythTV app on Apple TV is that if the video is interlaced (1080i or 480i), then the thumbnail video preview in the timeline is useless when you rewind or FF.
By going with MythTV and the optional $25 annual guide data fee, plus one-time $10 fee for the MythTV app on Apple TV, it'll take me a few years to surpass the $125 I would've spent on a lifetime Plex Pass. Before then, it's quite possible I will have moved on to something else (perhaps involving ATSC 3.0)...
The magic of solutions like Myth and Plex is that they'll likely be some of the first DVRs to support tuning NEXTGEN TV since all you need is some manner of tuner (be it network or USB based). Obviously, support for all of the other features that come along with NEXTGEN will take development but if all you need is to record shows, I reason that should be a short putt.
In my case, the OTA DVR is a freebie. That’s ‘cause I own a Tivo Bolt cable/OTA with lifetime service. Yeah, it isn’t integrated into a good streaming setup but it does work well. That said, with my current and any really reasonable antenna setup, the best I can do is 3 or of the big 4 broadcast networks and their sub-channels.
For the streaming side, sports are an issue if you want to keep costs down. In that case you really do have to use one of the more expensive cable/sat replacement streamers like YTTV, Fubo or Hulu Live. At this point in time I haven’t seen a really decent sports streamer.
For streaming shows, there are plenty of choices depending on what you want. If you just have to be current on most shows, then either a cable/sat replacement service might have all you want, or a combo of streaming services. If all you want is some shows and movies to watch and don’t care about ads, well there are a fair number of free ad-supported streaming services out there.
For me, I like to keep current with new shows, don’t care much about sports at all, nor live events. I am a bit ad adverse, but can live with them sometimes. And right now my cable/internet bundle is pretty fairly priced but will change soon.
Currently cable/internet is $158 for 200/100/2TB and all the channels I would watch, add in my current streamers of CBS & Hulu no ads, Amazon, Disney+ and AppleTV+ for a cost of about $45. So all in, $203.
If I drop cable TV, my internet is $99 for that same internet service, the current streamers @$45, and add Peacock no ads ($10), HBO Max ($15), total cost $168, as savings of about $35/month or $420/year and have access to all the current channel’s shows I actually would watch.
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For the streaming side, sports are an issue if you want to keep costs down. In that case you really do have to use one of the more expensive cable/sat replacement streamers like YTTV, Fubo or Hulu Live. At this point in time I haven’t seen a really decent sports streamer.
For streaming shows, there are plenty of choices depending on what you want. If you just have to be current on most shows, then either a cable/sat replacement service might have all you want, or a combo of streaming services. If all you want is some shows and movies to watch and don’t care about ads, well there are a fair number of free ad-supported streaming services out there.
For me, I like to keep current with new shows, don’t care much about sports at all, nor live events. I am a bit ad adverse, but can live with them sometimes. And right now my cable/internet bundle is pretty fairly priced but will change soon.
Currently cable/internet is $158 for 200/100/2TB and all the channels I would watch, add in my current streamers of CBS & Hulu no ads, Amazon, Disney+ and AppleTV+ for a cost of about $45. So all in, $203.
If I drop cable TV, my internet is $99 for that same internet service, the current streamers @$45, and add Peacock no ads ($10), HBO Max ($15), total cost $168, as savings of about $35/month or $420/year and have access to all the current channel’s shows I actually would watch.
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While true, I don't think it's a long term issue. It's likely a legacy rights issue that can get resolved as local streaming rights are offered/become available.
Live streaming also offers niche sports a chance for broader exposure. It's kind of telling that ESPN broadcast the American Cornhole League. You can also watch curling and rugby on NBCSN.
Even those who don't like sports watch things like competitive cooking on Food Network, or the Masked Singer.
