Sorry, it is a done deal. Equipment is already gone and I cannot take responsibility for how a thread gets hijacked. Also, I never once mention I was going to use OTA exclusively, which is the direction this went.
Pulled the Plug
- Thread starter KazooGuy
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The wife and I watch some old shows and some newer ones on Netflix. "Mission: Impossible" had 50 minutes of content, including themes and credits, in a 60 minute block, leaving 10 minutes for promos and ads per hour. "Bones" has 43 minutes of content, leaving 17 for ads.
As for ads, if you watch any of the big three network news programs at 6:30, you will see commercials for every pharmaceutical on the market. On weekends, it is almost exclusively drugs during network news shows. We can surmise that anyone watching network news on the weekend is 60+ years old based on the advertising alone.
I am, like OP, heavily considering pulling the plug. I am getting married and am looking to reduce expenses in September. Almost all the TV I watch already is either network programming or reruns of shows I can get for free at the library on DVD.
To address the advertizing annoyance, I plan to get a Tivo Premiere DVR. That will let me keep DVR functionality on OTA programming. It will also allow me to download purchased episodes of Doctor Who and Mad Men, the biggest shows I will miss, aside from the The Daily Show.
I don't plan on streaming much, though I may still look at a Roku. I have a 2Mbps connection. Trying to get something that would allow HD streaming would be costly (I mean, what's the point of cutting my Dish bill if I have to quadruple my internet bill?), and even when I had such a connection, I found the latency (i.e. how long I had to wait for services to respond, and buffering) unbearable compared to a traditional DVR. I might see if I can stream the Daily Show, and see just what I can get out of my paltry connection for free.
I'll also miss live tennis. But aside from poor quality illegal streams and a very expensive specialty streaming package (that does not even cover the major tournaments) I guess I'll be out of luck.
To address the advertizing annoyance, I plan to get a Tivo Premiere DVR. That will let me keep DVR functionality on OTA programming. It will also allow me to download purchased episodes of Doctor Who and Mad Men, the biggest shows I will miss, aside from the The Daily Show.
I don't plan on streaming much, though I may still look at a Roku. I have a 2Mbps connection. Trying to get something that would allow HD streaming would be costly (I mean, what's the point of cutting my Dish bill if I have to quadruple my internet bill?), and even when I had such a connection, I found the latency (i.e. how long I had to wait for services to respond, and buffering) unbearable compared to a traditional DVR. I might see if I can stream the Daily Show, and see just what I can get out of my paltry connection for free.
I'll also miss live tennis. But aside from poor quality illegal streams and a very expensive specialty streaming package (that does not even cover the major tournaments) I guess I'll be out of luck.
Congratulations HDRoberts! One wonders what your wife will expect/want out of TV... My wife drives me crazy with a stupid Dr Phil show on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Gag.
You also might want to check out these newer OTA DVR's...once you buy them, there are no additional monthly or "lifetime" guide fees to pay:
http://www.channelmaster.com/Products_s/329.htm#DVR+
The problem with these units is that most of them use guide sources that aren't all the robust.
I'm not sure the TiVo guide data is worth $15/month for OTA.This is definitely a case of 'you get what you pay for'.
It's more like: if you pay little, you get what you pay for, if you want a little more, you pay a lot more.
We're on Dish pause 'til November, meanwhile experimenting with alternatives. In no particular order, Redbox, Roku, Pandora, Netflix, Hulu plus, MLB.TV, and OTA. (The latter being negligible around this neck of the woods, only three decent signals). So far, so good. Not a perfect world we're migrating to, but an improvement nonetheless.
We're on the welcome pack mainly so we can get HBO.
If HBO would ever get off their arse & offer HboGo as a stand alone service that would probably be all the nudge we would need to pull the dish plug.
If HBO would ever get off their arse & offer HboGo as a stand alone service that would probably be all the nudge we would need to pull the dish plug.
It's not, that's why you pay for the lifetime subscription. And of course paying $200 - $300 for a used unit is very cost effective for a guide that blows away all of the other ota dvr guides.
$200 for how many months of usefulness and with what limitations? If they support VOD and/or content download that's a different story.
