Alternative to Cable Direct TV Now and Cromecast/Amazon Stick/Roku ?

My last cable bill is out of control, going up about 10% per year. Unfortunately, I have to stick with them for internet, but want to dump the TV, its now over 100 bucks for extended basic, no added channels, and when you add in their crappy 5Meg internet, its pushing 160 with taxes and fees.

Does any one have any experience with Direct TV now ? https://directvnow.com/. There is also Sling TV, its cheaper, until you start adding channels.

Next question as my TV is not Smart... What is the best of the cheap (I prefer to spend my extra cash on my car) streaming plug in devices ? Needs to work with the above.

Thanks, Steve

In the past year I've picked up a Chromecast and Amazon stick fairly cheaply on sale and have been able to stream almost anything I've wanted to watch. The wife is almost comfortable enough to drop the TV part of our cable package.

Sling will give you a free Roku of some kind with 3 months of service.

I have a PC connected to my TV, and a roof-top antenna connected to the PC. I have a free DVR program, complete with program guide. I can record TV, program recurring recordings, all the stuff your cable company box can do. That antenna gets me TV stations from about 60 miles away, reliably. That, plus the internet/PC connected to my TV means I miss nothing. I'm only paying for internet. A PC can be had for less than $150, the antenna I have was about $60. I did this 10 years ago. I have saved a TON of money. The downside? I would have to work a little harder to watch shows about little people that have 8 kids and drive a tow truck on the ice road in Alaska. I'm ok with that.

I picked up an Arnu android box $100 installed Exodus add on in KODI and that works fair to good (I think the tor network was overwhelmed over christmas). The Sling app can be installed on the Arnu.

I have not gone there yet because at this time I will have to give up MAVTV. (Not offered by Sling even as a premium) Start adding premium channels to Sling and it attractiveness tarnishes....

I switched to an outdoor antenna for OTA broadcast 6-7 years ago and haven't looked back. I use Amazon Prime and Netflix to get the good stuff. I use our XBox One and 360 to stream, so I don't have experience with the different sticks/boxes.

Time Warner (now Spectrum) gets $45 a month from me for 100mbs internet service and that's it. That keeps 4 smartphones, 1 tablet, 2 PCs, and a laptop well fed with internet.

Kids got me a 55" ROKU TV last year. Kept cable TV until very recently, just last month I turned off cable TV and phone. Rely on cell phones only now. Have Netflix, vudu and a couple free "channels" set up right now. Haven't got around to setting up Sling yet but plan to in a few weeks after a couple business trips. Couldn't justify the $160 cable TV with basic expanded only and only watched a couple hours a week. Many days it doesn't even get turned on. Wife doesn't watch it, she streams her Korean TV on the internet on her computer in the back room. When I turned off the cable TV I had the internet speed bumped up adding only about $15 to the internet bill. Still saving >$150 a month and have faster internet. Did figure out I'm going to have to replace the 5-6 year old router with one that can take advantage of the faster speed, just can't handle everything very well now.

In november time warner finally out priced themselves out for us at 156 a month. We have internet and a digital converter set up for basic channels. Blue ray player streams netflix and hulu/vudu. Saves me 80 a month.

I just started on the directTV Now service as a trial and between that and netflix, I haven't turned on my cable in 2 weeks. They were doing a free apple TV box with the connection so I figured I had nothing to lose. I think next month my cable will go away and I'll connect an antenna to get the local stations and then the directTv now for cable type stations. Honestly, Except for the lack of DVR right now, I couldn't tell the difference watching that vs my cable service.

I went from $150 basic cable plus netflix to $50 cable internet only, netflix, and $20 for sling for my cavaliers/indians games. We already have Amazon prime for the shipping since we buy so much from them, so we got a fire box for the tv.

I await one of the streaming services to offer MASN and MASN2 so that I can stream orioles games, then I'll cut the cord.

Yay government enforced monopolies.

I'd bump your internet connection up to 15 Mbps or there abouts and get a Roku stick or a Premier if you want 4K.

Everyone develops for Roku to some extent so you can watch Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Showtime, HBO, YouTube, etc without much of an issue. The premier also has a USB port so want to digitize your DVD collection and watch it without something like a Plex server it's super convenient.

That said if you want screen mirroring it's a little slower than a Chromecast. Otherwise it's slightly more expensive than a Chromecast or Fire but you don't need to pledge allegiance to Google or Amazon.

I cut the cord a number of years ago when video services were still nascent. Streaming video has come a long long way since then.

Oh and either hardwire gigabit or get a good N or AC access point.

DirectTV now is going up to $60/mo real soon. Get in now and you'll get the promo rate until AT&T does what they always berkeleying do.

I recently dumped cable and picked up Sony Playstation Vue for TV ($35/mo) so now I have cable Internet and four TVs with Roku attached. Vue on Roku is great but the interface sucks. Supposedly better on Apple TV. I like Vue a lot and it's saving me about $80/month. Real similar to sling, but able to stream to more TVs at one time in the same house.

captdownshift wrote: I await one of the streaming services to offer MASN and MASN2 so that I can stream orioles games, then I'll cut the cord.

Have you checked SlingTV?

I picked up Sling Tv this past fall so I could watch college football on ESPN. For $20 a month and no contract you get some decent channels for movies and such. I have the slowest internet my cable company offers (I should upgrade) so it occasionally gets poor connection but still acceptable. It works for me since I can dump them come spring when I'd rather be outside then watching tv and restart in the fall

Best thing about sling, was that for the nba finals i went online, added the package that has espn, cancelled it immediately and had what i wanted, prorated, the second i wanted it.

Interested. The DirectTv Now promotion is ending 1/9. I plan to discuss this idea with the CFO, now that there are rumors of Time Warner dumping E! and Bravo.

If you're an avid YouTube watcher, bite the bullet and pay for YouTube Red. The adds on free youtube have become unbearable and casting video to my TV is so much better without them.

What networks does Sling have? Could it replace something like Hulu or a membership to a local PBS?

We like watching Modern Family and Masterpieces, but both are requiring memberships these days in order to watch previous episodes.

My son would like to watch NBA and college basketball. What options do not involve a cable company or sketchy unreliable online streams?

If I can solve that problem without involving comcast - I'm gold.

I've been watching PS controlled tv at my son's house this past week. Confusing as HELL!!

When you cut the cord you lose the logical and easy choice of TV stations and your internet better be stable or your picture will freeze all the time.

It was a chore to find the show we wanted watch and to keep watching for very long times as it kept asking us were we still watching. Once it asked that we had to use the confusing menus to try to tell it we were. Even my son and his wife had issues following the multiple menus you had to go through

Cable's great. It's just stupid expensive once the teaser rates expire. When Charter refused me a better rate, I just dropped cable and replaced 99 percent of what I'd want, including DVR functionality with PS Vue streaming on Roku (never tried it on PS4). The interface is slower and flipping channels doesn't work at all, but my cheapskate requirements are currently met.

I've gone full cordcutter in the past, with an OTA antenna, but settled back into the streaming plan with cable modem.

Thankfully we are getting closer to ala carte channels.

If I had better mobile data signal strength available in my house, I'd be very strongly considering using an unlimited data phone for all house connectivity.

carguy123 wrote: I've been watching PS controlled tv at my son's house this past week. Confusing as HELL!! When you cut the cord you lose the logical and easy choice of TV stations and your internet better be stable or your picture will freeze all the time. It was a chore to find the show we wanted watch and to keep watching for very long times as it kept asking us were we still watching. Once it asked that we had to use the confusing menus to try to tell it we were. Even my son and his wife had issues following the multiple menus you had to go through

That's because Sony sucks at that stuff. Seriously, they've never done it well and the streaming TV aspect was tossed on at the last minute.

Use a proper device like a Roku and add Hulu, YouTube, PBS, Amazon, etc. and you'll find things are easier to find and subscribe to.

Sony let me sign up/pay for vue. Then their locator kept saying i was in Detroit. Im in Cleveland. It then wouldn't let me watch, stating i was out of my local area. Took an hour on the phone to go through all their hoops until they admitted it was a bug in their system and refund my $

Just signed up for Direct TV Now. Initial reactions from the family indicate this might be a non-starter. For example: power on TV, wake up fire stick, navigate to Direct TV now program, wait while it loads, wait while it buffers the channel, wait while you flip between channels...

Too many delays, too much waiting.