Ask Slashdot: Are You Streaming-Only For Home Entertainment?

hinesbrad writes "I'm getting really tired of paying ridiculous fees to my cable company just to have a DVR and high speed internet access. A neighbor of mine bought a cheapo Dell computer with an HDMI output. Apparently he streams all of his news live from respective websites, and also watches many of the shows on NBC and Comedy central using this method. He's effectively turned his PC into a DVR and gotten rid of his cable subscription fee. I wonder, how many people have completely gotten rid of their cable/satellite subscription and have now instead moved to a Hulu/Netflix/Content producer website streaming solution instead?" If you've done this, what does your approach include? If you'd like to, what are the bottlenecks?

Comments

Al Jazeera English / Dish Family

[bill_mcgonigle]

News has gotten progressively more useless, to the point where it actually annoys me to watch it

Al Jazeera English is what we used to call 'news', before CNN/Fox/HLN/MSNBC went to the all-scandal-and-entertainment format.

I get it for part of the day on LinkTV, which is 9410 on Dish Network.

I buy their $20/mo DishFamily package, which has lots of "basic-cable" channels, and several kids' channels. It's not advertised but you can order it.

The bandwidth of satellite can't be beat - no transfer caps to worry about or drop-outs unless there's a monsoon going on. I got a Dish 301 receiver for $40 on eBay and the dish itself from FreeCycle. I bought my own high-quality RG6 cable for a long-distance run.

I still stream stuff from Netflix (Hulu), YouTube (Hulu), and CWTV (Flash on Firefox on the MythTV box) but for TV news, NASATV, kids shows, etc. it's from the satellite.