Funny. That is how I feel about TWC. Not sure about "Spectrum" yet, especially as Frontier has raised my Internet rates twice in the past year.
Cord cutting time
- Thread starter Dee_Ann
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Funny. That is how I feel about TWC. Not sure about "Spectrum" yet, especially as Frontier has raised my Internet rates twice in the past year.
Absent DVR capability for the OTA side, I'd have to say that it misses the mark in a big way. Versus the central tuner model that a Homerun or Tablo provide, there's some extra wiring involved to get signal to each TV if you're a Cord Never.
You also have to wonder if it works with the Wi-fi direct controlled streamers like the high-end Rokus. Learning remote usually means IR.
I totally agree! However, I constantly see posts from people that seem to find it nearly impossible to press remote buttons and switch inputs!
How messed up is that? Can you imagine the HELL their life would have been if they were older, and actually had to get out of their chairs, go across the room, and turn a dial to change channels. That is, for the 3-4 channels it was possible to receive...
Being a Spectrum customer now (was TWC for years and years) I just took the ancient TWC modem my dad got back about 15 years ago and traded it in for a new Spectrum modem.
I also had to switch the contract (that was in my dad's name) to the new Spectrum contract. I had been paying $60 a month for internet only and the speed was only 1.5Mbps / .2Mbps and a monthly modem rental fee of $10, with taxes and fees and nonsense it was almost $80 a month for yesteryear speeds.
Under the new deal and new modem I now get 70.24Mbps (was only promised 60Mbps) and 5.5Mbps upload. That's a MASSIVE speed increase! Also, the price changed, the monthly is $64 a month with no modem fees vs $70 the old plan was costing me. So I save $6 a month and even with taxes and junk I'm still saving several dollars over the old. But the speed increase is insane! Buffering? What's that? Doesn't happen. EVERYTHING comes down at max quality.
In all the years I've been a TWC customer and now a Spectrum customer I've had almost zero down time. Maybe once a year they take the network down at 3am to do something when they think most people are asleep (I am ALWAYS up at 3am) but it usually only lasts 20minutes or less. And it's never happened in the daytime. It's been extremely reliable. I can not complain, not even a little.
As for AT&T? Do not even get me started on them. I hope AT&T goes bankrupt and all their suits at the top jump off the top of the buildings. I despise them with every fiber of my being, every atom, every proton, every neutron in my body despises them and nothing but utter and complete contempt and burning hatred for them, a hatred that burns hotter than a supernova. So no, AT&T will never get one penny from me. Even if they were the last place on earth to get air from and I had a mountain of gold bars, I would rather suffocate than get air from them.
ANYWAY......
So I'm committed now to Vue and Sling. I will save $35 a month by switching to those two services and dropping Dish. I've already disabled auto-pay on my Dish account, I'm paid up until the 10th. When it can't auto-charge me I'll get a warning on my screen that I have to make a payment or else and at that time I'll go to the Dish account page and end my service. I'm going to leave all my Dish stuff in place, just unplugged, for 3-4 months until I'm 100% certain that I won't be switching back. I'm going to have a big learning curve and adjustment curve because it's so different than what I've become used to.
As for Vue, the picture quality is freaking EXCELLENT ! Much, much better picture quality than Dish with their faux HD-Lite and heavy handed compression.
The difference between the two is remarkable and shocking! If you think Dish HD is good, wait until you see the same thing on Vue.
The picture quality on Sling is OK. It's not excellent, thanks to the 720p 30fps but it's still very acceptable. I would say it's as good as Dish, maybe a tiny bit better than Dish because it's a true 1280x720 vs the HD-Lite of Dish.
Things I don't like. Having to have a separate Roku device in each room. It makes it really, really inconvenient watching live TV as I move about the house. I'm not really happy about this part.
I would like to have ONE Roku feed all the TV's in the house and have remotes in each room that all control that one Roku so I can leave the remotes in the rooms and not have to carry one remote around with me from room to room. I really hate that. I'm essentially doing that now with one of my two Dish tuners. One tuner is only for at my desk and the other tuner feeds four TVs in other rooms and there is a RF remote control that stays in each room. I can pause live TV, go to another room and resume watching. I do this dozens and dozens of times a day. I'm losing this ability when I cut out Dish.
Sling. NO ACCESS to A&E On Demand libraries. A&E is LIVE ONLY, period. I don't care about the DVR (that they do not yet offer Roku users), I want to have access to OLD shows. I want to be able to go back and watch every episode ever of The First 48 whenever it strikes my fancy. And several other shows. With Dish I can log into their On Demand system and watch tons and tons of old shows. Can't do that at all with Sling and I'm not at all happy about that.
Ditto with any of the other channels that A&E owns. No access.
Vue. The DVR or catch up or whatever they call it. Not so great. Many things run past the top of the hour but Vue cuts them off HARD dead on the hour so you miss the very end of everything. That can be 10 seconds or two minutes, but it cuts it off. GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've also seen many times that as a show nears the end, it will just abruptly stop playing when there is a full four minutes left to go. I'll reload that same show and skip ahead to near where it bombed out and BOOM! Same thing again and again.
Another very, very BAD thing Vue did to me, there is a screen that offers up the currently or just aired show, sorted by popularity. Rather than go down the menu and go to the channel page then select the channel / show, I just hit the tile under the popular suggested shows and start watching. Now this is where it gets not only bad, but offensive. I selected to watch one of the evening news shows on MSNBC and I thought everything was fine. But when the program was over it popped into a whole different show on a whole different channel because it was "suggesting" that I "might like" this next offering. What was it? Something on Fox "news", one of their evening "news" programs.
I was not only FURIOUS but extremely offended. I would rather shoot myself in the head than watch anything from that channel. And I can't seem to find any way to blacklist channels or shows on Vue or Sling.
There are many things they have in their lineups that I WILL NOT WATCH and take extreme offense to. At least on Dish I was able to hide those offensive channels from my Guide so I never had to see anything about them.
I'm really angry that I can't blacklist channels and or shows on Vue or Sling. Also sports. EVERYTIME I go to the apps I have to see some sports cr*p on my screen. Not for any amount of money in the universe will I ever, ever watch sports of any kind. I want to blacklist that garbage too so I never have to see it at all.
The streaming services do not have any provision to allow you to customize what you see, not at all. They put it in your face no matter what. GRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!
Speaking of, somehow Roku has been spying on what I watch and they have determined that I have a predilection for news. So every freaking time I open my Roku I'm hit with 1/2 screen ads for garbage I will not ever watch, mostly for Fox "news" shows and an ad for something called "Newsy" Apparently Roku also doesn't allow you to blacklist such things or opt out of their idiotic promotional garbage.
I wish I could figure out a way to block ads at my router from getting to the Roku. I doubt that's possible but if I ever find a way I sure will. There are many things I won't tolerate and ads is number one on that long list.
ANYWAY..............
There's some big shortcomings with Vue and Sling but at a substantial savings. $35 is $35 and I'm using the money I save to pay for my fall detection service and to subscribe to a few extra On Demand services to supplement all the other stuff I am getting. So it's worth it in the end I suppose. Not having access to live OTA broadcasts is a pain because I'm used to watching the local news every night. I get BBC World News on PBS at 5 then it autotunes to NBC evening news at 5:30, then to the local CBS news at 6 then at 6:30 it autotunes to the local ABC news. After that 7pm evening shows on premium usually come on but if nothing really big is on I'll watch the evening programs on MSNBC most of the night.
With my Plex server recording the local OTA news programs, I can watch them AFTER they finish airing so I'll be 30 minutes behind all evening rather than watching live in real time.
BUT, since Vue DVRs my favorites this takes a little of the bite out of the whole thing. And with Vue DVRing my stuff I can skip ahead through commercials and get caught up to live within a few shows. So that's not too awful.
I guess it's going to be that I go from watching most stuff "live" in real time to time shifted to some degree.
Another annoyance is that ALL these different services can't be integrated into a single "package" that I can easily bounce around channel to channel. Not a big deal but still a bit of an annoyance.
On my PS4, I bought that PS4 media remote. And, I don't like it much. The buttons on it are very, very tiny. I can't see anything unless I put on TWO pairs of reading glasses. The strongest reading glasses you can buy at the store are 3x and that's not enough for me to read the tiny little buttons on the PS4 remote. As I have to do with pretty much anything I need to look at, I have to put another paid of reading glasses over the first pair so I'm looking through two layers of lens to be able to see small things. Even then, the mute button on that remote? WTH where they thinking?? It's very, very small and it's in the worst place possible. It's waaaaay down on the lower left of the remote (also the volume up/down button too) and you can't press the mute with one hand. You have to hold the remote with one hand and press mute with the other. What IDIOT designed that?
I need a BIG, HUGE red button, like that Staples "Easy" button that says STFU instead of "easy" so I can wire it to be a mute button for my TV somehow and place it on my desk in front of the TV then I can just slap it and scream STFU!! at the TV every time I want to mute it. I have to find a way to buy or make one.
Anyway, the PS4 Media remote must have been designed for young people that don't have arthritis and have the eyesight of eagles. Electronics is not very old people friendly.
With my much faster internet service I can do whatever I want online while at the same time watch streaming video and never worry about buffering or choking off the connection and I'll always get the best picture quality.
On the PS4, I think I got rid of the logo. I had changed everything I could find in the machine settings and Vue settings about inactivity shutdowns but it was still doing it. Later on though I powered the machine down for the night and the next day when I tried Vue again, the logo was gone and it wasn't trying to power itself down anymore like before. I guess the changes I made to it didn't apply until it powered down / rebooted. It seems to be OK now.
BUT, the downside to that is, I have to manually power the machine down when I'm done with it. And it generates a LOT of heat. The air coming out of it is dangerously hot and it make the room in here very uncomfortable.
Tomorrow I'm going to take this little laser temperature reader I have and see what the actual temperature is coming out of it. I'm sure it's well over 250 degrees if not much more. OMG, what if it's 451f ??!!!
I'm OK with the Roku interface/Guide. It's not too bad. And I found that on Titan they have an option for Sling and Vue in addition to Dish and local OTA. So that's really helpful. I'll manage.
As for FTA, well, I've given up. When I moved to this house I brought my dishes with me but I couldn't put them up because this house needs new siding and I need to put the dishes on the side of the house, right next to the house. But I can't put them up until after the siding people have stripped the old siding off and replaced it. I've been trying for two years to get someone to come out here and do the work and no one seems to want my money. It's not a small job and it's all on the second story so it's a real pain to get to. I guess that's why no one wants to do it. So my dishes sit on the side of the garage, in pieces with weeds growing through them. I've had pretty much no FTA since I moved here.
My dad left behind a single, small motorized dish that I tried to use for awhile but that crummy A3 tuner was such a horrible piece of junk that I pulled it out, reboxed it and put in on the shelf to spend eternity in the dark.
I still have my MicroHD which works perfectly but after Retro left 97w I really lost interest. What's worse, I had a 500gb disk FULL of stuff I had recorded from Retro and somehow it must have fallen from my desk into a trash can and got thrown away. I lost two years worth of Harvey Toons I was hoarding that I can never get back. That really was a huge punch in the gut for me. After that I just gave up completely. All that's left on there that I cared about was PBS and I can get that OTA and streaming so, why bother? And losing that disk, I can't record on the MicroHD anymore and that really killed it for me. Maybe one of these years if I ever get my siding done I can finally get my BIG dish put up and get back into it again. But for now, that dream is dead. I just can't do it. And my health has really taken a huge hit the past few years and I'm to the point of stair lifts and mobility scooters so going outside and messing around with satellite dishes, that's a thing of the past for me and there's no one I can get to do it for me. Maybe my son but he's 900 miles away and has three kids and a wife so he can't pop over to do labor for me. I have to face reality and accept that I may never again be able to get back into FTA. It was fun and cool when I was able but those days are gone now. Not much I can do anymore except watch TV and wait to die of old age at a young(ish) age.
So, nine more days left on Dish. I figure I'll watch it as much as I can until it runs out since I've prepaid for it up to the 10th. But Sunday we are supposed to get some very, very bad storms, heavy rains for extended times all in the evening which means I'll lose The Walking Dead. So I'm just planning now on watching TWD, ITTBL and Talking Dead all evening on Vue. Weather can't knock that out! All my electronics are on LARGE battery backups and my house has a whole house generator that auto starts on power fail, runs on natural gas and switches in and out when power fails and returns. The battery backups keep my electronics running during the generator startup and switching times so if it happens I have to do nothing at all except sit and watch TV because it will not be interrupted at all. That's one thing I will not miss about Dish, rain fade. Even with grossly oversized dishes I was still having rain fade but only when it was really, really bad.
Not anymore!!
Sorry Dish. You're too expensive. It's all about the money, nothing personal. I've generally been happy with the service but the never ending $5 $5 $5 increases finally got to me.
Buh bye..
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Being a Spectrum customer now (was TWC for years and years) I just took the ancient TWC modem my dad got back about 15 years ago and traded it in for a new Spectrum modem.
I also had to switch the contract (that was in my dad's name) to the new Spectrum contract. I had been paying $60 a month for internet only and the speed was only 1.5Mbps / .2Mbps and a monthly modem rental fee of $10, with taxes and fees and nonsense it was almost $80 a month for yesteryear speeds.
Under the new deal and new modem I now get 70.24Mbps (was only promised 60Mbps) and 5.5Mbps upload. That's a MASSIVE speed increase! Also, the price changed, the monthly is $64 a month with no modem fees vs $70 the old plan was costing me. So I save $6 a month and even with taxes and junk I'm still saving several dollars over the old. But the speed increase is insane! Buffering? What's that? Doesn't happen. EVERYTHING comes down at max quality.
In all the years I've been a TWC customer and now a Spectrum customer I've had almost zero down time. Maybe once a year they take the network down at 3am to do something when they think most people are asleep (I am ALWAYS up at 3am) but it usually only lasts 20minutes or less. And it's never happened in the daytime. It's been extremely reliable. I can not complain, not even a little.
As for AT&T? Do not even get me started on them. I hope AT&T goes bankrupt and all their suits at the top jump off the top of the buildings. I despise them with every fiber of my being, every atom, every proton, every neutron in my body despises them and nothing but utter and complete contempt and burning hatred for them, a hatred that burns hotter than a supernova. So no, AT&T will never get one penny from me. Even if they were the last place on earth to get air from and I had a mountain of gold bars, I would rather suffocate than get air from them.
ANYWAY......
So I'm committed now to Vue and Sling. I will save $35 a month by switching to those two services and dropping Dish. I've already disabled auto-pay on my Dish account, I'm paid up until the 10th. When it can't auto-charge me I'll get a warning on my screen that I have to make a payment or else and at that time I'll go to the Dish account page and end my service. I'm going to leave all my Dish stuff in place, just unplugged, for 3-4 months until I'm 100% certain that I won't be switching back. I'm going to have a big learning curve and adjustment curve because it's so different than what I've become used to.
As for Vue, the picture quality is freaking EXCELLENT ! Much, much better picture quality than Dish with their faux HD-Lite and heavy handed compression.
The difference between the two is remarkable and shocking! If you think Dish HD is good, wait until you see the same thing on Vue.
The picture quality on Sling is OK. It's not excellent, thanks to the 720p 30fps but it's still very acceptable. I would say it's as good as Dish, maybe a tiny bit better than Dish because it's a true 1280x720 vs the HD-Lite of Dish.
Things I don't like. Having to have a separate Roku device in each room. It makes it really, really inconvenient watching live TV as I move about the house. I'm not really happy about this part.
I would like to have ONE Roku feed all the TV's in the house and have remotes in each room that all control that one Roku so I can leave the remotes in the rooms and not have to carry one remote around with me from room to room. I really hate that. I'm essentially doing that now with one of my two Dish tuners. One tuner is only for at my desk and the other tuner feeds four TVs in other rooms and there is a RF remote control that stays in each room. I can pause live TV, go to another room and resume watching. I do this dozens and dozens of times a day. I'm losing this ability when I cut out Dish.
Sling. NO ACCESS to A&E On Demand libraries. A&E is LIVE ONLY, period. I don't care about the DVR (that they do not yet offer Roku users), I want to have access to OLD shows. I want to be able to go back and watch every episode ever of The First 48 whenever it strikes my fancy. And several other shows. With Dish I can log into their On Demand system and watch tons and tons of old shows. Can't do that at all with Sling and I'm not at all happy about that.
Ditto with any of the other channels that A&E owns. No access.
Vue. The DVR or catch up or whatever they call it. Not so great. Many things run past the top of the hour but Vue cuts them off HARD dead on the hour so you miss the very end of everything. That can be 10 seconds or two minutes, but it cuts it off. GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've also seen many times that as a show nears the end, it will just abruptly stop playing when there is a full four minutes left to go. I'll reload that same show and skip ahead to near where it bombed out and BOOM! Same thing again and again.
Another very, very BAD thing Vue did to me, there is a screen that offers up the currently or just aired show, sorted by popularity. Rather than go down the menu and go to the channel page then select the channel / show, I just hit the tile under the popular suggested shows and start watching. Now this is where it gets not only bad, but offensive. I selected to watch one of the evening news shows on MSNBC and I thought everything was fine. But when the program was over it popped into a whole different show on a whole different channel because it was "suggesting" that I "might like" this next offering. What was it? Something on Fox "news", one of their evening "news" programs.
I was not only FURIOUS but extremely offended. I would rather shoot myself in the head than watch anything from that channel. And I can't seem to find any way to blacklist channels or shows on Vue or Sling.
There are many things they have in their lineups that I WILL NOT WATCH and take extreme offense to. At least on Dish I was able to hide those offensive channels from my Guide so I never had to see anything about them.
I'm really angry that I can't blacklist channels and or shows on Vue or Sling. Also sports. EVERYTIME I go to the apps I have to see some sports cr*p on my screen. Not for any amount of money in the universe will I ever, ever watch sports of any kind. I want to blacklist that garbage too so I never have to see it at all.
The streaming services do not have any provision to allow you to customize what you see, not at all. They put it in your face no matter what. GRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!
Speaking of, somehow Roku has been spying on what I watch and they have determined that I have a predilection for news. So every freaking time I open my Roku I'm hit with 1/2 screen ads for garbage I will not ever watch, mostly for Fox "news" shows and an ad for something called "Newsy" . Apparently Roku also doesn't allow you to blacklist such things or opt out of their idiotic promotional garbage.
I wish I could figure out a way to block ads at my router from getting to the Roku. I doubt that's possible but if I ever find a way I sure will. There are many things I won't tolerate and ads is number one on that long list.
ANYWAY..............
There's some big shortcomings with Vue and Sling but at a substantial savings. $35 is $35 and I'm using the money I save to pay for my fall detection service and to subscribe to a few extra On Demand services to supplement all the other stuff I am getting. So it's worth it in the end I suppose. Not having access to live OTA broadcasts is a pain because I'm used to watching the local news every night. I get BBC World News on PBS at 5 then it autotunes to NBC evening news at 5:30, then to the local CBS news at 6 then at 6:30 it autotunes to the local ABC news. After that 7pm evening shows on premium usually come on but if nothing really big is on I'll watch the evening programs on MSNBC most of the night.
With my Plex server recording the local OTA news programs, I can watch them AFTER they finish airing so I'll be 30 minutes behind all evening rather than watching live in real time.
BUT, since Vue DVRs my favorites this takes a little of the bite out of the whole thing. And with Vue DVRing my stuff I can skip ahead through commercials and get caught up to live within a few shows. So that's not too awful.
I guess it's going to be that I go from watching most stuff "live" in real time to time shifted to some degree.
Another annoyance is that ALL these different services can't be integrated into a single "package" that I can easily bounce around channel to channel. Not a big deal but still a bit of an annoyance.
On my PS4, I bought that PS4 media remote. And, I don't like it much. The buttons on it are very, very tiny. I can't see anything unless I put on TWO pairs of reading glasses. The strongest reading glasses you can buy at the store are 3x and that's not enough for me to read the tiny little buttons on the PS4 remote. As I have to do with pretty much anything I need to look at, I have to put another paid of reading glasses over the first pair so I'm looking through two layers of lens to be able to see small things. Even then, the mute button on that remote? WTH where they thinking?? It's very, very small and it's in the worst place possible. It's waaaaay down on the lower left of the remote (also the volume up/down button too) and you can't press the mute with one hand. You have to hold the remote with one hand and press mute with the other. What IDIOT designed that?
I need a BIG, HUGE red button, like that Staples "Easy" button that says STFU instead of "easy" so I can wire it to be a mute button for my TV somehow and place it on my desk in front of the TV then I can just slap it and scream STFU!! at the TV every time I want to mute it. I have to find a way to buy or make one.
Anyway, the PS4 Media remote must have been designed for young people that don't have arthritis and have the eyesight of eagles. Electronics is not very old people friendly.
With my much faster internet service I can do whatever I want online while at the same time watch streaming video and never worry about buffering or choking off the connection and I'll always get the best picture quality.
On the PS4, I think I got rid of the logo. I had changed everything I could find in the machine settings and Vue settings about inactivity shutdowns but it was still doing it. Later on though I powered the machine down for the night and the next day when I tried Vue again, the logo was gone and it wasn't trying to power itself down anymore like before. I guess the changes I made to it didn't apply until it powered down / rebooted. It seems to be OK now.
BUT, the downside to that is, I have to manually power the machine down when I'm done with it. And it generates a LOT of heat. The air coming out of it is dangerously hot and it make the room in here very uncomfortable.
Tomorrow I'm going to take this little laser temperature reader I have and see what the actual temperature is coming out of it. I'm sure it's well over 250 degrees if not much more. OMG, what if it's 451f ??!!!
I'm OK with the Roku interface/Guide. It's not too bad. And I found that on Titan they have an option for Sling and Vue in addition to Dish and local OTA. So that's really helpful. I'll manage.
As for FTA, well, I've given up. When I moved to this house I brought my dishes with me but I couldn't put them up because this house needs new siding and I need to put the dishes on the side of the house, right next to the house. But I can't put them up until after the siding people have stripped the old siding off and replaced it. I've been trying for two years to get someone to come out here and do the work and no one seems to want my money. It's not a small job and it's all on the second story so it's a real pain to get to. I guess that's why no one wants to do it. So my dishes sit on the side of the garage, in pieces with weeds growing through them. I've had pretty much no FTA since I moved here.
My dad left behind a single, small motorized dish that I tried to use for awhile but that crummy A3 tuner was such a horrible piece of junk that I pulled it out, reboxed it and put in on the shelf to spend eternity in the dark.
I still have my MicroHD which works perfectly but after Retro left 97w I really lost interest. What's worse, I had a 500gb disk FULL of stuff I had recorded from Retro and somehow it must have fallen from my desk into a trash can and got thrown away. I lost two years worth of Harvey Toons I was hoarding that I can never get back. That really was a huge punch in the gut for me. After that I just gave up completely. All that's left on there that I cared about was PBS and I can get that OTA and streaming so, why bother? And losing that disk, I can't record on the MicroHD anymore and that really killed it for me. Maybe one of these years if I ever get my siding done I can finally get my BIG dish put up and get back into it again. But for now, that dream is dead. I just can't do it. And my health has really taken a huge hit the past few years and I'm to the point of stair lifts and mobility scooters so going outside and messing around with satellite dishes, that's a thing of the past for me and there's no one I can get to do it for me. Maybe my son but he's 900 miles away and has three kids and a wife so he can't pop over to do labor for me. I have to face reality and accept that I may never again be able to get back into FTA. It was fun and cool when I was able but those days are gone now. Not much I can do anymore except watch TV and wait to die of old age at a young(ish) age.
So, nine more days left on Dish. I figure I'll watch it as much as I can until it runs out since I've prepaid for it up to the 10th. But Sunday we are supposed to get some very, very bad storms, heavy rains for extended times all in the evening which means I'll lose The Walking Dead. So I'm just planning now on watching TWD, ITTBL and Talking Dead all evening on Vue. Weather can't knock that out! All my electronics are on LARGE battery backups and my house has a whole house generator that auto starts on power fail, runs on natural gas and switches in and out when power fails and returns. The battery backups keep my electronics running during the generator startup and switching times so if it happens I have to do nothing at all except sit and watch TV because it will not be interrupted at all. That's one thing I will not miss about Dish, rain fade. Even with grossly oversized dishes I was still having rain fade but only when it was really, really bad.
Not anymore!!
Sorry Dish. You're too expensive. It's all about the money, nothing personal. I've generally been happy with the service but the never ending $5 $5 $5 increases finally got to me.
Buh bye..
I always either tune directly to MSNBC from the guide (I have it set as a favorite) or watch one of my recordings of Rachel Maddow or Laurence O'Donnell, so I've never been force-fed a Fox News program—thankfully. But that does annoy me that the Live TV channels listing order is based on popularity and they never LEARN to reshuffle based on what you actually watch. That actually surprised me that after several months, it was still featuring mostly channels I would never watch. How hard is it to program a simple algorithm, or even set them based on the last 10 channels you watched. Blacklisting would be a nice solution.
Yeah, the PS4 media remote does leave a little to be desired. As an older, slightly visual impaired person with arthritic hands, I actually don't have a problem with button sizes or their positioning. I just learned them over time. And the wheel is my go to area for FF/RW and pausing and selecting. My biggest problem is that the remote buttons are not very responsive. Often I have to hit the same button 2-3 times to get it to register -- and this is my 2nd remote (I had the first one switched out by tech support due to another problem).
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Well, your position is at least clear.
As far as I can tell, all cablecos, telcos, etc. are all about equally crappy these days. I used to have TWC, and they were horrible to deal with, from sales to tech support, to billing. I realize Frontier has as bad a reputation as anyone else, but I feel lucky that I haven't had any issues, and the service is way more reliable than TWC which randomly stopped working as well as predictable stopped working whenever it rained too hard. AT&T wouldn't be my first choice for broadband, but if they beat Google to offering me fiber internet service, I would not hesitate to sign up. I have friends paying $50 a month for 300Mb AT&T service. It is kind of hard to argue with that when Spectrum wants $45 for 100Mb service, which is the base service available in my market.
Well, I sure dont trust AT&T after what they did to me, and as such id now willingly pay more to not deal with a company that tricked us into doing something at a quoted price, then reneged on the quoted price because certain things wernt available in my area. I managed to get the quoted price thanks to running a business and documenting everything from what days i called, what time and what operator number i spoke with. Had i not had that info id have been stuck in a 2 year contract paying $55 bucks more a month then i am now for certain services. Then add to the fact they basically without warning abandoned support for my city. If a phone or internet connection goes down good luck getting it repaired where i live. Luckily a new telco came to town last summer and stated laying a new fiber backbone. After the debacle with AT&T this october when our contract is up we too are cutting the cord.
Will be a mix of OTA, FTA (both stationary ku and motorized c-band) and a combination of amazon video, netflix and more then likely playstation vue. The wife really liked the playstation vue when we had our dish go down for a few weeks in December and we tried it out. Currently have most of the replacement stuff set up and working the bugs out and trying out how it will all work before we cut the cord. I understand it will be far less convenient then it currently is, but will save us over half of what we are currently paying, and specifically in the case of amazon video, netflix and most playstation vue channels will match our viewing preference which is on demand. Some of this will be mitigated on the FTA and OTA as well since we are using linkbox 9000i local receivers with 2 tb hard drives so we can DVR most shows on both OTA and FTA though will have far less options as to amount of recordings at the same time, and viewing different content while there is a recording taking place. In conclusion I think there is a trend for traditional cable and DBS services winding down. The models they use for packaging sucks, they bundle in a ton of channels you really never watch and place more desirable channels in the upper tiers forcing you to pay for channels you dont want or watch. They hit you with draconian fees, and nail you with a contract regardless of how long you have had a contract with them. It appears that more and more people are gravitating to more content that is on demand, and to try to remain viable both dish and direct have offered up streaming (yet no app for many of the streaming devices youd normally use in your living room) because they want you to use the satellite dish and receiver in your house to view content. When i had my outage this was more or less the response i got. Nice to have a 65" tv as an ornament and watch all this tv on an Ipad because the dish was goofed up. Oh and the best part because im in a rural area its gonna be 4 weeks before we can get a tech to your location. Once it warmed up and the holidays were over I repaired the problem myself. AT&T peeved me off pretty good, and until certain things happened i was quite happy and content with the service i had received. They dont care about you, they only care that you pay your bill and like to remind you that since your under contract youd be paying a penalty to cancel then try to get you to stay. Took 2 hours to cancel my phone and internet, (the internet didnt even work anymore as there was an issue with the line coming to the house that they were not going to repair yet wanted me to keep paying for) and they keept saying well how bout we give you this $5 dollar credit for 6 months howd that be. Um no thanks I now have internet that is 20x faster (when it worked) and nearly the same price, and the phone is 5 bucks cheaper then i was paying you for and i get to keep my number. No thanks.....
Had i stayed with Dish Network (like i really really really wanted to do to begin with but the wife got sucked into the your gonna save money speach AT&T gave her) and the internet hadnt shot craps this probably would have never came to a head. Currently Directv is the only service we currently carry with AT&T and i cant wait for the contract to be over so i can happily cancel it. If i lived in a larger city this also probably wouldnt have been an issue (though im sure there would have been other issues related to living in a big city). AT&T is not a large telcom that answers to its share holders, not the customer. Eff em i say. But if they do well for you thats great. I had a pretty nasty run with em for the last year and a half so im ready to be done.
Will be a mix of OTA, FTA (both stationary ku and motorized c-band) and a combination of amazon video, netflix and more then likely playstation vue. The wife really liked the playstation vue when we had our dish go down for a few weeks in December and we tried it out. Currently have most of the replacement stuff set up and working the bugs out and trying out how it will all work before we cut the cord. I understand it will be far less convenient then it currently is, but will save us over half of what we are currently paying, and specifically in the case of amazon video, netflix and most playstation vue channels will match our viewing preference which is on demand. Some of this will be mitigated on the FTA and OTA as well since we are using linkbox 9000i local receivers with 2 tb hard drives so we can DVR most shows on both OTA and FTA though will have far less options as to amount of recordings at the same time, and viewing different content while there is a recording taking place. In conclusion I think there is a trend for traditional cable and DBS services winding down. The models they use for packaging sucks, they bundle in a ton of channels you really never watch and place more desirable channels in the upper tiers forcing you to pay for channels you dont want or watch. They hit you with draconian fees, and nail you with a contract regardless of how long you have had a contract with them. It appears that more and more people are gravitating to more content that is on demand, and to try to remain viable both dish and direct have offered up streaming (yet no app for many of the streaming devices youd normally use in your living room) because they want you to use the satellite dish and receiver in your house to view content. When i had my outage this was more or less the response i got. Nice to have a 65" tv as an ornament and watch all this tv on an Ipad because the dish was goofed up. Oh and the best part because im in a rural area its gonna be 4 weeks before we can get a tech to your location. Once it warmed up and the holidays were over I repaired the problem myself. AT&T peeved me off pretty good, and until certain things happened i was quite happy and content with the service i had received. They dont care about you, they only care that you pay your bill and like to remind you that since your under contract youd be paying a penalty to cancel then try to get you to stay. Took 2 hours to cancel my phone and internet, (the internet didnt even work anymore as there was an issue with the line coming to the house that they were not going to repair yet wanted me to keep paying for) and they keept saying well how bout we give you this $5 dollar credit for 6 months howd that be. Um no thanks I now have internet that is 20x faster (when it worked) and nearly the same price, and the phone is 5 bucks cheaper then i was paying you for and i get to keep my number. No thanks.....
Had i stayed with Dish Network (like i really really really wanted to do to begin with but the wife got sucked into the your gonna save money speach AT&T gave her) and the internet hadnt shot craps this probably would have never came to a head. Currently Directv is the only service we currently carry with AT&T and i cant wait for the contract to be over so i can happily cancel it. If i lived in a larger city this also probably wouldnt have been an issue (though im sure there would have been other issues related to living in a big city). AT&T is not a large telcom that answers to its share holders, not the customer. Eff em i say. But if they do well for you thats great. I had a pretty nasty run with em for the last year and a half so im ready to be done.
I've heard good and bad about Spectrum. So far my speed went from 15Mbps to 23 MBPS and still at $59
Dee, I know what you mean it sucks getting older lol. I've got my dishes still setup but haven't messed with them in probably two years until the other day. The motor on my KU dish has died again. That's probably the 5th SG2100 motor. The Cband dish, the 8 footer, was still pretty much lined up and just needed a little grease. Wasn't nearly as much to watch as a few years ago. RTN I think is on 83W which in the summer I doubt I could get due to the trees. I've got two Micro Hd's here. One I think was my brothers looks new in the box still. The whole streaming thing for me is too easy. No fussing outside in the cold at 58 years old! Not sure what to do with the dishes except maybe take them down this summerBeing a Spectrum customer now (was TWC for years and years) I just took the ancient TWC modem my dad got back about 15 years ago and traded it in for a new Spectrum modem.
I also had to switch the contract (that was in my dad's name) to the new Spectrum contract. I had been paying $60 a month for internet only and the speed was only 1.5Mbps / .2Mbps and a monthly modem rental fee of $10, with taxes and fees and nonsense it was almost $80 a month for yesteryear speeds.
Under the new deal and new modem I now get 70.24Mbps (was only promised 60Mbps) and 5.5Mbps upload. That's a MASSIVE speed increase! Also, the price changed, the monthly is $64 a month with no modem fees vs $70 the old plan was costing me. So I save $6 a month and even with taxes and junk I'm still saving several dollars over the old. But the speed increase is insane! Buffering? What's that? Doesn't happen. EVERYTHING comes down at max quality.
In all the years I've been a TWC customer and now a Spectrum customer I've had almost zero down time. Maybe once a year they take the network down at 3am to do something when they think most people are asleep (I am ALWAYS up at 3am) but it usually only lasts 20minutes or less. And it's never happened in the daytime. It's been extremely reliable. I can not complain, not even a little.
As for AT&T? Do not even get me started on them. I hope AT&T goes bankrupt and all their suits at the top jump off the top of the buildings. I despise them with every fiber of my being, every atom, every proton, every neutron in my body despises them and nothing but utter and complete contempt and burning hatred for them, a hatred that burns hotter than a supernova. So no, AT&T will never get one penny from me. Even if they were the last place on earth to get air from and I had a mountain of gold bars, I would rather suffocate than get air from them.
ANYWAY......
So I'm committed now to Vue and Sling. I will save $35 a month by switching to those two services and dropping Dish. I've already disabled auto-pay on my Dish account, I'm paid up until the 10th. When it can't auto-charge me I'll get a warning on my screen that I have to make a payment or else and at that time I'll go to the Dish account page and end my service. I'm going to leave all my Dish stuff in place, just unplugged, for 3-4 months until I'm 100% certain that I won't be switching back. I'm going to have a big learning curve and adjustment curve because it's so different than what I've become used to.
As for Vue, the picture quality is freaking EXCELLENT ! Much, much better picture quality than Dish with their faux HD-Lite and heavy handed compression.
The difference between the two is remarkable and shocking! If you think Dish HD is good, wait until you see the same thing on Vue.
The picture quality on Sling is OK. It's not excellent, thanks to the 720p 30fps but it's still very acceptable. I would say it's as good as Dish, maybe a tiny bit better than Dish because it's a true 1280x720 vs the HD-Lite of Dish.
Things I don't like. Having to have a separate Roku device in each room. It makes it really, really inconvenient watching live TV as I move about the house. I'm not really happy about this part.
I would like to have ONE Roku feed all the TV's in the house and have remotes in each room that all control that one Roku so I can leave the remotes in the rooms and not have to carry one remote around with me from room to room. I really hate that. I'm essentially doing that now with one of my two Dish tuners. One tuner is only for at my desk and the other tuner feeds four TVs in other rooms and there is a RF remote control that stays in each room. I can pause live TV, go to another room and resume watching. I do this dozens and dozens of times a day. I'm losing this ability when I cut out Dish.
Sling. NO ACCESS to A&E On Demand libraries. A&E is LIVE ONLY, period. I don't care about the DVR (that they do not yet offer Roku users), I want to have access to OLD shows. I want to be able to go back and watch every episode ever of The First 48 whenever it strikes my fancy. And several other shows. With Dish I can log into their On Demand system and watch tons and tons of old shows. Can't do that at all with Sling and I'm not at all happy about that.
Ditto with any of the other channels that A&E owns. No access.
Vue. The DVR or catch up or whatever they call it. Not so great. Many things run past the top of the hour but Vue cuts them off HARD dead on the hour so you miss the very end of everything. That can be 10 seconds or two minutes, but it cuts it off. GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've also seen many times that as a show nears the end, it will just abruptly stop playing when there is a full four minutes left to go. I'll reload that same show and skip ahead to near where it bombed out and BOOM! Same thing again and again.
Another very, very BAD thing Vue did to me, there is a screen that offers up the currently or just aired show, sorted by popularity. Rather than go down the menu and go to the channel page then select the channel / show, I just hit the tile under the popular suggested shows and start watching. Now this is where it gets not only bad, but offensive. I selected to watch one of the evening news shows on MSNBC and I thought everything was fine. But when the program was over it popped into a whole different show on a whole different channel because it was "suggesting" that I "might like" this next offering. What was it? Something on Fox "news", one of their evening "news" programs.
I was not only FURIOUS but extremely offended. I would rather shoot myself in the head than watch anything from that channel. And I can't seem to find any way to blacklist channels or shows on Vue or Sling.
There are many things they have in their lineups that I WILL NOT WATCH and take extreme offense to. At least on Dish I was able to hide those offensive channels from my Guide so I never had to see anything about them.
I'm really angry that I can't blacklist channels and or shows on Vue or Sling. Also sports. EVERYTIME I go to the apps I have to see some sports cr*p on my screen. Not for any amount of money in the universe will I ever, ever watch sports of any kind. I want to blacklist that garbage too so I never have to see it at all.
The streaming services do not have any provision to allow you to customize what you see, not at all. They put it in your face no matter what. GRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!
Speaking of, somehow Roku has been spying on what I watch and they have determined that I have a predilection for news. So every freaking time I open my Roku I'm hit with 1/2 screen ads for garbage I will not ever watch, mostly for Fox "news" shows and an ad for something called "Newsy" . Apparently Roku also doesn't allow you to blacklist such things or opt out of their idiotic promotional garbage.
I wish I could figure out a way to block ads at my router from getting to the Roku. I doubt that's possible but if I ever find a way I sure will. There are many things I won't tolerate and ads is number one on that long list.
ANYWAY..............
There's some big shortcomings with Vue and Sling but at a substantial savings. $35 is $35 and I'm using the money I save to pay for my fall detection service and to subscribe to a few extra On Demand services to supplement all the other stuff I am getting. So it's worth it in the end I suppose. Not having access to live OTA broadcasts is a pain because I'm used to watching the local news every night. I get BBC World News on PBS at 5 then it autotunes to NBC evening news at 5:30, then to the local CBS news at 6 then at 6:30 it autotunes to the local ABC news. After that 7pm evening shows on premium usually come on but if nothing really big is on I'll watch the evening programs on MSNBC most of the night.
With my Plex server recording the local OTA news programs, I can watch them AFTER they finish airing so I'll be 30 minutes behind all evening rather than watching live in real time.
BUT, since Vue DVRs my favorites this takes a little of the bite out of the whole thing. And with Vue DVRing my stuff I can skip ahead through commercials and get caught up to live within a few shows. So that's not too awful.
I guess it's going to be that I go from watching most stuff "live" in real time to time shifted to some degree.
Another annoyance is that ALL these different services can't be integrated into a single "package" that I can easily bounce around channel to channel. Not a big deal but still a bit of an annoyance.
On my PS4, I bought that PS4 media remote. And, I don't like it much. The buttons on it are very, very tiny. I can't see anything unless I put on TWO pairs of reading glasses. The strongest reading glasses you can buy at the store are 3x and that's not enough for me to read the tiny little buttons on the PS4 remote. As I have to do with pretty much anything I need to look at, I have to put another paid of reading glasses over the first pair so I'm looking through two layers of lens to be able to see small things. Even then, the mute button on that remote? WTH where they thinking?? It's very, very small and it's in the worst place possible. It's waaaaay down on the lower left of the remote (also the volume up/down button too) and you can't press the mute with one hand. You have to hold the remote with one hand and press mute with the other. What IDIOT designed that?
I need a BIG, HUGE red button, like that Staples "Easy" button that says STFU instead of "easy" so I can wire it to be a mute button for my TV somehow and place it on my desk in front of the TV then I can just slap it and scream STFU!! at the TV every time I want to mute it. I have to find a way to buy or make one.
Anyway, the PS4 Media remote must have been designed for young people that don't have arthritis and have the eyesight of eagles. Electronics is not very old people friendly.
With my much faster internet service I can do whatever I want online while at the same time watch streaming video and never worry about buffering or choking off the connection and I'll always get the best picture quality.
On the PS4, I think I got rid of the logo. I had changed everything I could find in the machine settings and Vue settings about inactivity shutdowns but it was still doing it. Later on though I powered the machine down for the night and the next day when I tried Vue again, the logo was gone and it wasn't trying to power itself down anymore like before. I guess the changes I made to it didn't apply until it powered down / rebooted. It seems to be OK now.
BUT, the downside to that is, I have to manually power the machine down when I'm done with it. And it generates a LOT of heat. The air coming out of it is dangerously hot and it make the room in here very uncomfortable.
Tomorrow I'm going to take this little laser temperature reader I have and see what the actual temperature is coming out of it. I'm sure it's well over 250 degrees if not much more. OMG, what if it's 451f ??!!!
I'm OK with the Roku interface/Guide. It's not too bad. And I found that on Titan they have an option for Sling and Vue in addition to Dish and local OTA. So that's really helpful. I'll manage.
As for FTA, well, I've given up. When I moved to this house I brought my dishes with me but I couldn't put them up because this house needs new siding and I need to put the dishes on the side of the house, right next to the house. But I can't put them up until after the siding people have stripped the old siding off and replaced it. I've been trying for two years to get someone to come out here and do the work and no one seems to want my money. It's not a small job and it's all on the second story so it's a real pain to get to. I guess that's why no one wants to do it. So my dishes sit on the side of the garage, in pieces with weeds growing through them. I've had pretty much no FTA since I moved here.
My dad left behind a single, small motorized dish that I tried to use for awhile but that crummy A3 tuner was such a horrible piece of junk that I pulled it out, reboxed it and put in on the shelf to spend eternity in the dark.
I still have my MicroHD which works perfectly but after Retro left 97w I really lost interest. What's worse, I had a 500gb disk FULL of stuff I had recorded from Retro and somehow it must have fallen from my desk into a trash can and got thrown away. I lost two years worth of Harvey Toons I was hoarding that I can never get back. That really was a huge punch in the gut for me. After that I just gave up completely. All that's left on there that I cared about was PBS and I can get that OTA and streaming so, why bother? And losing that disk, I can't record on the MicroHD anymore and that really killed it for me. Maybe one of these years if I ever get my siding done I can finally get my BIG dish put up and get back into it again. But for now, that dream is dead. I just can't do it. And my health has really taken a huge hit the past few years and I'm to the point of stair lifts and mobility scooters so going outside and messing around with satellite dishes, that's a thing of the past for me and there's no one I can get to do it for me. Maybe my son but he's 900 miles away and has three kids and a wife so he can't pop over to do labor for me. I have to face reality and accept that I may never again be able to get back into FTA. It was fun and cool when I was able but those days are gone now. Not much I can do anymore except watch TV and wait to die of old age at a young(ish) age.
So, nine more days left on Dish. I figure I'll watch it as much as I can until it runs out since I've prepaid for it up to the 10th. But Sunday we are supposed to get some very, very bad storms, heavy rains for extended times all in the evening which means I'll lose The Walking Dead. So I'm just planning now on watching TWD, ITTBL and Talking Dead all evening on Vue. Weather can't knock that out! All my electronics are on LARGE battery backups and my house has a whole house generator that auto starts on power fail, runs on natural gas and switches in and out when power fails and returns. The battery backups keep my electronics running during the generator startup and switching times so if it happens I have to do nothing at all except sit and watch TV because it will not be interrupted at all. That's one thing I will not miss about Dish, rain fade. Even with grossly oversized dishes I was still having rain fade but only when it was really, really bad.
Not anymore!!
Sorry Dish. You're too expensive. It's all about the money, nothing personal. I've generally been happy with the service but the never ending $5 $5 $5 increases finally got to me.
Buh bye..
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Well cr*p !!! My PS4 is still automatically powering down right in the middle of watching TV. I've been sitting here watching TWD for about an hour, maybe less, I don't know don't know for sure.
But I haven't touched the remote control at all and all of a sudden the screen went black and the system powered down. I wasn't looking directly at the screen at the moment but I suspect it had popped up that warning graphic that says it's shutting down in 15 seconds.
I've disabled EVERYTHING that has anything to do with timers, automatic sleep, power saving, etc.. As far as I can tell I have it set to stay powered up until I force it to power down.
BUT, when watching Vue on it, that's not an option. There is a setting under the Vue app that says "Demo Mode" and the option there is "Disable inactivity timer".
When I check that box a freaking LOGO shows up in the upper right corner of the screen that does not go away, period.
If I deselect that, the logo goes away but then the system powers down suddenly with almost no warning. That means I have to fiddle with the remote control frequently to prevent this unacceptable behavior !!
What really chaps my backside is that this totally ruins my recordings. Yes, I have a little gadget stuck inline that splits the HDMI video off to a Hauppage capture device and lets me record ~anything~ I want to my Mac.
If I'm trying to record a 90 minute show the PS4 ~is going to power down~ or at the least, pop up a graphic onscreen that warns me it's about to power down.
I can't understand WTH Sony was thinking when they designed this thing to power down all the time or display a freaking logo all the time. It's one or the other and nothing else.
It APPEARS to me that the Vue app is permanently in "Demo Mode" rather than actual real "HEY! I PAY MONEY FOR THIS!!" mode and in this permanent demo mode you can either disable or enable the inactivity timer.
Out of total frustration I've deleted the Vue app from the PS4 and am downloading a fresh copy and reinstalling it right now. I don't know if this will fix it but I'm not really confident.
I wonder if it might be doing this to me because I am so far, still in my one week free trial? They are set to charge me the first month tomorrow on the 3rd. Maybe this "Demo Mode" will go away after they actually begin billing me?
I don't know but this is extremely annoying.
Also, I figured out why the Roku bombs out when playing back DVR'd or "catch up" shows. At the very end of the recording, on the PS4, a menu overlay slides out from the right side of the screen with a countdown timer telling you it's going to auto-play the next show it has DVR'd for you or the next show it thinks you want to watch. There is no way to disable this timer menu. At the very second that the menu slides out when watching on the PS4, that's the instant that the Roku blows up and gives an error message. They are sending a command in the video stream to make the menu appear ON A PS4 but the Roku can not understand or process that command and it causes the Roku to crash.
There's nothing you can do about this until Sony strips this command from the video stream that goes to Rokus OR they update the Roku Vue app to ignore this command.
There's some real and true annoyances about the service and I'm hoping they go away once my "free trial" week ends and I go to being an actual paying customer.
We shall see. I hope so because I already have blood pressure issues, I don't need additional aggregations in my life.
But I haven't touched the remote control at all and all of a sudden the screen went black and the system powered down. I wasn't looking directly at the screen at the moment but I suspect it had popped up that warning graphic that says it's shutting down in 15 seconds.
I've disabled EVERYTHING that has anything to do with timers, automatic sleep, power saving, etc.. As far as I can tell I have it set to stay powered up until I force it to power down.
BUT, when watching Vue on it, that's not an option. There is a setting under the Vue app that says "Demo Mode" and the option there is "Disable inactivity timer".
When I check that box a freaking LOGO shows up in the upper right corner of the screen that does not go away, period.
If I deselect that, the logo goes away but then the system powers down suddenly with almost no warning. That means I have to fiddle with the remote control frequently to prevent this unacceptable behavior !!
What really chaps my backside is that this totally ruins my recordings. Yes, I have a little gadget stuck inline that splits the HDMI video off to a Hauppage capture device and lets me record ~anything~ I want to my Mac.
If I'm trying to record a 90 minute show the PS4 ~is going to power down~ or at the least, pop up a graphic onscreen that warns me it's about to power down.
I can't understand WTH Sony was thinking when they designed this thing to power down all the time or display a freaking logo all the time. It's one or the other and nothing else.
It APPEARS to me that the Vue app is permanently in "Demo Mode" rather than actual real "HEY! I PAY MONEY FOR THIS!!" mode and in this permanent demo mode you can either disable or enable the inactivity timer.
Out of total frustration I've deleted the Vue app from the PS4 and am downloading a fresh copy and reinstalling it right now. I don't know if this will fix it but I'm not really confident.
I wonder if it might be doing this to me because I am so far, still in my one week free trial? They are set to charge me the first month tomorrow on the 3rd. Maybe this "Demo Mode" will go away after they actually begin billing me?
I don't know but this is extremely annoying.
Also, I figured out why the Roku bombs out when playing back DVR'd or "catch up" shows. At the very end of the recording, on the PS4, a menu overlay slides out from the right side of the screen with a countdown timer telling you it's going to auto-play the next show it has DVR'd for you or the next show it thinks you want to watch. There is no way to disable this timer menu. At the very second that the menu slides out when watching on the PS4, that's the instant that the Roku blows up and gives an error message. They are sending a command in the video stream to make the menu appear ON A PS4 but the Roku can not understand or process that command and it causes the Roku to crash.
There's nothing you can do about this until Sony strips this command from the video stream that goes to Rokus OR they update the Roku Vue app to ignore this command.
There's some real and true annoyances about the service and I'm hoping they go away once my "free trial" week ends and I go to being an actual paying customer.
We shall see. I hope so because I already have blood pressure issues, I don't need additional aggregations in my life.
Attachments
You're welcome !!
And here is the one I want to buy,
When you press it it says various bad words and phrases, most of them would annoy me to hear over and over.
I'm going to buy one of these (It's about 6 inches around I think) then gut it out. I have a wee tiny remote for the TV at my desk,
I can open the remote and solder wires to the pads on the circuit board where the mute button is then run the wires to the switch in
this big button then put the guts to the remote control inside this thing so it's a single, self contained STFU mute button.
Then I just place it in front of the TV on my desk and I just reach out and slap it when needed, slap it again to unmute.
I just have to do this. This is a high priority on my TO DO list.
Yeah, I have not aged gracefully at all, not even a little. I can't even stand to wash dishes anymore. Getting around, doing anything at all is very difficult anymore. Climbing the stairs is killing me. I'm waiting to have one of those old people Acorn stair lifts installed and also a mobility scooter carrier installed on my car and my dad's van, at least then I can get around. Needless to say, I'm going to hack both the stair machine and the scooter to give me like 137mph speeds because I hate ~moving~ at old people speeds. I want to get places in this lifetime and do things in this lifetime. I don't want to be moving around at ONE mile per hour. I'm not that fragile, yet..
My dishes, I can't put them up, not until the freaking siding people come and fix the house and they don't seem to want to work on the second story for some reason. Idiots. ONE place quoted me $10,000 but they aren't licensed to install the type of siding I want. They said they would do it but without warranty. So, NOPE. But the legit people, don't seem to want to take $10,000 from me. Idiots. My house is leaking and I need it fixed. Anyway, until that's done, no satellite dishes are going up here. But if that day ever does come, I don't know how I will get my BIG dishes put up, I certainly am not able to do the work and there is no other person I would trust to do the work. I suppose my best bet is to talk my son into bringing his wife and kids to stay for a week and I can get him to do the work, he's a BIG STRONG guy that is more than capable AND he will take directions from me without back talking me. It helps when you're an Alpha B**** like me.
I've been without FTA for so long that I don't even have a clue anymore what's on. I do miss Retro TV a lot. They ran Harvey Toons which is what I grew up on. I miss those cartoons a lot. I wish I could buy them all on DVD or Bluray.
At this point in my life I don't know if I'll ever be able to get back into FTA. Moving to a yard that's 1/3 the size of my old yard really, really makes it hard to put up big dishes. This yard is just too tiny.
And yeah, streaming is really super-duper easy. I don't get ALL that I want but there's way more stuff than I can possibly watch. It's just a huge pain to find things because everything is an app and you can't search for content outside of their app. So you have to load HULU and search in there, quit HULU and load up Netflix and search in there, then Vue, then Amazon, then bla-bla-bla etc etc...
There is ZERO unity or interconnectivity between the many services and their apps. Streaming isn't particularly friendly towards the impatient, like me. But, I'm trying.
I need to learn to control my anger, I don't want to have to call 911 and tell them I'm having a heart attack because my PS4 or Roku has p*ssed me off..
Actually not too dissimilar to what TWC did to me. Not the availability part so much, but the honoring the promised pricing part. I signed up for Spectrum today 100Mb service for $44.95 per month with a $9.95 installation charge. They say this is not a promotional price. I guess we will see in a year, if a better option has not materialized.
Let's leave the political parts out of the posting please. We have the pit for that, and it is not allowed in the main forums.
Thanks.
Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
Thanks.
Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk
PLEASE tell me there is a way to block channels or programs in Vue??!!!!
Vue keeps insisting that I should watch F** "news" and it once again began playing it all on it's own again last night without me touching a thing!
I can not tolerate this. I do not even want to see that channel in the guide and I never want it to be "suggested" to me again!
WHY IS THIS THING DOING THIS TO ME SO MUCH !!
Is F** paying Sony to cram their channel/shows in my face??
Also sports. I want that to go away from my sight. That's another thing I have no use in the universe for.
Certainly there must be some way to hide things you do not want to see!
I know there are *probably* parental controls to block offensive content from children such as R rated shows, as well there should be.
But what about blocking OTHER content that people take offense to.
And NO, I am not getting "political" here, I am starting that Vue continues to cram content into my face that I object to and I am seeking a way to block that behavior by the Vue network.
Vue keeps insisting that I should watch F** "news" and it once again began playing it all on it's own again last night without me touching a thing!
I can not tolerate this. I do not even want to see that channel in the guide and I never want it to be "suggested" to me again!
WHY IS THIS THING DOING THIS TO ME SO MUCH !!
Is F** paying Sony to cram their channel/shows in my face??
Also sports. I want that to go away from my sight. That's another thing I have no use in the universe for.
Certainly there must be some way to hide things you do not want to see!
I know there are *probably* parental controls to block offensive content from children such as R rated shows, as well there should be.
But what about blocking OTHER content that people take offense to.
And NO, I am not getting "political" here, I am starting that Vue continues to cram content into my face that I object to and I am seeking a way to block that behavior by the Vue network.
Use the remote and change channels
I'm sure there is a tutorial on the internet on how this is done
Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys
I'm sure there is a tutorial on the internet on how this is done
Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys
https://www.playstation.com/en-us/network/vue/faq/
Does PlayStation™Vue have Parental Controls?
PlayStation™Vue does not currently offer parental controls, however there are a few ways to filter and manage content being viewed. To filter programming for certain genres and/or ratings, use “Explore” on your home screen toolbar. Program details also provide ratings; press the square button to bring up program details. Program details also provide ratings; press the square button to bring up program details.
Perhaps ask on the Playstation Vue forum too, where there are more users
http://community.us.playstation.com/t5/PlayStation-Vue-Support/bd-p/45381
I created a list of favorite channels and access them using the guide button, and then the green button on the PS4 media remote to access My Shows directly, thereby bypassing the need to ever touch the triangle menu button and its useless Live TV list and other content category lists. So I've essentially reduced the navigational components of the PS Vue service to what I had on a standard cable DVR: channel guide grid and list of recorded shows.
The only time I've seen Vue want to autoplay something is at the end of a recorded show, and then it's always another show in that series or on that network. If I tune directly to a channel, it just keeps airing the same channel until I change it.
The only time I've seen Vue want to autoplay something is at the end of a recorded show, and then it's always another show in that series or on that network. If I tune directly to a channel, it just keeps airing the same channel until I change it.
It just occurred to me that if someone just launched the PS Vue TV service and only has one recorded episode of a given show, I suppose after that the recording is over, it would kick you out to live TV by "autoplaying" the first item in the Live TV program list. Though you'd think it would kick you out to the last live TV channel you were watching. I guess I never really paid that much attention. When a recorded show is through playing, during the credits, I usually hold down the triangle button to pull up the the last channel I watched.
AH !!!!!!!!!!! Maybe that's what it's doing !! I haven't caught on to exactly what is trigging this stuff. There seems to be some stupid "feature" that's like, "what's trending" or "what others are watching" or "What's popular now" or something like that. And that seems to always churn it's way to the very top of the menu no matter what. I really do not care at all about trending or popular or what other people are watching. I'm not in the herd, I don't want to go with the flow or the way the wind blows. I know exactly what I want to watch and don't want things suggested to me or worse, auto-played. This is extremely obnoxious, annoying and intrusive behavior. It's like a stranger comes into my home and changes the channel on my TV without my permission. That's just wrong. I can't believe there isn't some way to manage what is shown on your own TV.
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