Cord-Cutting, Or How to Stream your Way to Success

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joz123

Potato del Grande
6,664
9,460
Just cancelled my HBO subscription. I had been on a 1-year subscription for $5 a month and the new renewal almost doubles it. Noped out. I got the final season of Succession and The Last of Us out of it.
Max sent me a renewal deal for half off 4 months rofl. Hope they lose millions of subs.
 

Haus

<Silver Donator>
12,775
49,787
If it wasn't for my AT&T Fiber plan, I wouldn't have it.
We're about to cancel Uverse and keep the 1g fiber. Only last tether is figuring out how we're going to stream/get Dallas Stars games.

OTOH, Now reliving one of the displeasures from my childhood and/or years that I had Direct TV through a dish on the roof..... Poor reception during heavy storms.
 

Sanrith Descartes

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<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
44,755
121,539
We're about to cancel Uverse and keep the 1g fiber. Only last tether is figuring out how we're going to stream/get Dallas Stars games.

OTOH, Now reliving one of the displeasures from my childhood and/or years that I had Direct TV through a dish on the roof..... Poor reception during heavy storms.
Ground mount the dish on a short pole. Much better than house mounting.
 
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Intrinsic

Person of Whiteness
<Gold Donor>
15,058
13,283
I went ahead and picked up an antenna for the attic this weekend. Roku TV and whatnot was fine but there were a few local things that we wanted access to and I kind of wanted a side project.

GE Outdoor HD Digital TV Antenna, Long Range Smart TV Antenna, Supports 4K 1080P HD Smart TV VHF UHF, J Mount Included for Attic or Outdoor, Weather Resistant, 29884 Amazon.com

My initial plan was to run it out of the attic and down the wall next to where the previous owner had the Dish TV and the Xfinity comes in to be distributed to the 2nd floor, but the more I looked at it that was going to be a huge PITA and way over 50’ to get it to the living room TV.

So I also picked up a Tablo which let me put the OTA on my network and then stream it through my Roku. Took about 30 minutes to mount the antenna, drop the coax down in to my networking closet, and hook up the Tablo. Everything came up immediately.

I’m about 6 miles almost line of sight to the main broadcast ridge in West Little Rock and have no problem picking up like 57 channels. We weren’t really interested in the DVR aspect of the Tablo so not sure if we’ll use that. The actual app and device works just fine though.

I’ve read a lot of the negative reviews which mostly center around app maturity and stability, with most saying there’s a lot of promise. There is also a lot of uncertainty around ATSC 3.0 and encryption, neither of which the Tablo currently supports I believe. But for $89 it seemed like a good test and will get me some locals for the time being.
 
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Sanrith Descartes

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<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
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MAX (the streaming service formerly known as HBO), has 12 month price with ads for $99.99. Not great and not enough for me to turn my subscription back on. But... Amex is running a card deal where you get a $25 credit back if you use the card to pay for MAX at a min spend of $99. This works out to about $6.25 a month. That is low enough for me.

So if you got an Amex you can get HBO for about $6 a month. Amex deal expires in about 2 weeks.
 

Haus

<Silver Donator>
12,775
49,787
OK. OTA dilema for my mom's house. I have antenna runs to the TV's in the house. But one of the TVs is an older HD set. It's great, and the right size (55") for the space, but it's interface absolutely sucks.

My mom is used to the Google TV she has in her room, so looking for a google tv set top box for the one in the living room. That's easy enough, but I was hoping to find one I could also plug the antenna into, to make it as near identical to her TCL Google TV experience in her bedroom. Does anybody know of a google/android TV set top box that also has an antenna jack in it? I was hoping to avoid needing to deploy a HD Homerun box over there since I do have actual antenna runs to all the TV locations (Thanks Grandpa in the 80's who loved to run cables!)
 

Goatface

Avatar of War Slayer
9,910
15,739
OK. OTA dilema for my mom's house. I have antenna runs to the TV's in the house. But one of the TVs is an older HD set. It's great, and the right size (55") for the space, but it's interface absolutely sucks.

My mom is used to the Google TV she has in her room, so looking for a google tv set top box for the one in the living room. That's easy enough, but I was hoping to find one I could also plug the antenna into, to make it as near identical to her TCL Google TV experience in her bedroom. Does anybody know of a google/android TV set top box that also has an antenna jack in it? I was hoping to avoid needing to deploy a HD Homerun box over there since I do have actual antenna runs to all the TV locations (Thanks Grandpa in the 80's who loved to run cables!)
does you antenna support coax to hdmi?
 

moonarchia

The Scientific Shitlord
23,629
43,055
And then have to run HDMI cables to three different rooms in a house that was built in the 50's? ;)
You will have to replace the coax soon enough anyways. I think there are wireless <-> HDMI solutions out there for these types of situations as well.
 

Haus

<Silver Donator>
12,775
49,787
You will have to replace the coax soon enough anyways. I think there are wireless <-> HDMI solutions out there for these types of situations as well.
Why would I replace the coax? Unless something eats away at it?

But yeah, if I wanted to just drop $200 I could throw a HD Homerun box in the house. But that also adds complexity to the Google TV setup (You have to choose the HD Homerun app and navigate that and I'm dealing with a 74 year old mom here...) Which is why I was looking for an easy button.

Although honestly with the cost of it, the easy button is just to get a TCL Google TV for her living room and retire the older HDTV (it's a Magnavox) to my garage or something. (Around $250 for a 43" TCL which would match exactly what she has in her bedroom)
 

moonarchia

The Scientific Shitlord
23,629
43,055
Why would I replace the coax? Unless something eats away at it?

But yeah, if I wanted to just drop $200 I could throw a HD Homerun box in the house. But that also adds complexity to the Google TV setup (You have to choose the HD Homerun app and navigate that and I'm dealing with a 74 year old mom here...) Which is why I was looking for an easy button.

Although honestly with the cost of it, the easy button is just to get a TCL Google TV for her living room and retire the older HDTV (it's a Magnavox) to my garage or something. (Around $250 for a 43" TCL which would match exactly what she has in her bedroom)
Coax does not last forever. Just like any copper with electrical charge going through it 24/7 for decades it is continually degrading. If it was run in the 80s you can expect to need to replace it soon.
 

Sanrith Descartes

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<Aristocrat╭ರ_•́>
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Got my first taste of Starlink. Cruise ship I am on uses it. Obviously being split with lots of other users but I'm getting 10meg consistently and uptime has been 100% so far. Fast enough to stream video on my phone and cast it to the Google TV.
And shit post on FOH.