Slashdot Mirror
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?
I'm Canadian, so the Hulu/Netflix/etc thing doesn't quite work out so well.
I did ditch the cable a while ago though.
News has gotten progressively more useless, to the point where it actually annoys me to watch it, and I'm not a big fan of sports... which is where cable seems to win. The occasional time I want to see a game, I'll go to a friends house (which is usually more fun anyway).
I just buy the DVD box sets of shows I like .. and download if they haven't been released yet (I know this is technically stealing .. but I can live with it). I prefer watching stuff this way anyhow.
I can't even remember the last time I heard about something being on TV and thought "damn, if only I had cable".
I will never pay for cable or dish or watch broadcast tv again. Roku streams Netflix, Hulu, even Aljazeera and Democracy Now to my TV. Device only cost $60. You don't need a DVR when you're watching on demand. I also watch tv and movies on my laptop, which enables me to sit outside and drink and smoke. Roku has tons of channels and you can even create your own.
One thing you didn't mention was that you can use a PC as an actual DVR (as in a recorder) by hooking up a tuner for those pesky shows no one seems to want to allow to stream. If you're in a decent service area you'll get all the networks in full hd for free, and be able to record them (and skip ads) for no subscription fee. With a tuner and streaming access you'll only be limited by shows that are both not available to stream and not broadcast over the air.
I'm almost there, however live sports is a hard thing to find an alternative channel for.
I'm now cable-free, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Whether it's right for you comes down to one question: What do you want to watch?
For most broadcast networks, streaming is great. I use Boxee on my Mac, which aggregates a lot of shows from a lot of sources, just not Hulu. Combine that with the Hulu desktop app, and voila. Most of the shows I watch.
But not all. HBO, for instance, is (last time I checked) still aggressively married to the subscription-cable model. You can get their content on their website, if you are an HBO subscriber through the traditional means. I would have no problem paying for HBO, but I don't know of any cable provider that offers JUST HBO. So I have to pay for a package of nonsense like the Food Network and whatever's become of the History Channel. I want to give HBO my money, but they don't want to take it. Showtime is the same way.
I don't know what FX's current attitude towards streaming is, but I'll look into it before Rescue Me starts back up again.
stripShow - Where WordPress meets webcomics
AT&T Uverse is the same way. I'm seriously considering getting a T1 to bypass the Comcast/AT&T bullshit.
We aren't streaming-only, but we're streaming plus iTunes plus disc, and we've been doing less and less disc, to the point where I've fairly frequently sent discs back unwatched simply because I decided I wasn't that interested, and there was something better on iTunes or NetFlix. We might be an exceptional case though--we haven't had cable for about ten years, because it was too tempting to channel surf. With on-demand streaming and iTunes, you watch when you decide to watch, rather than being at the mercy of the schedule, which is a *huge* win. Plus, no commercials.
I have a Roku XDS. It is really nice for movies from Netflix and (Prime member) Amazon which are all covered by buying the box and paying a really cheap $9.99 a month to Netflix.
I am planning on dropping the movie channels from cable, but will keep the "basic" (non-premium) cable connection as well as (of course) the Internet connection. You need 3-5Mb/sec bandwidth pretty continuously in order to get any streaming to work.
Roku does not offer much in the way of playing movies from a local source, however. There is a "channel" called PlayOn which lets you connect up a PC as a web server to the Roku box and some people have this working pretty well, others have had plenty of problems with it - mostly, I believe due to networking configurations.
Now for the bad news. This isn't going to last very long. The current cable infrastructure in the US simply cannot provide 3-5Mb/sec dedicated bandwidth to every home. It wasn't designed to do that and no matter how many promises the cable companies make about 20Mb/sec connections, this is bursting only. The bottleneck isn't the cable to the home, it is the fiber to the neighborhood node where it is converted from from a fiber link to coax. Once the neighborhood node gets saturated, the performance of any streaming service will suffer significantly.
One possible solution is for the local "streaming box" to simply buffer lots and lots of content using whatever bandwidth it can get. Then you can watch from the local buffer, whether it is disk or flash based is immaterial. Roku has only a small RAM buffer today but future devices could include a hard drive. Certainly no Blu-Ray player or TV solution is going to be as flexible. Boxee from what I have heard is having a terrible time getting their act together but once they do this might be the better way to go.
For now, I have a $99 Roku box and it is working. Maybe in a year or two I will need to replace it with something with more buffer space. For $99 I figured it was worth it for a couple of years of service.
I pulled the plug on Comcast over six months ago, and I love it. I bought a Dell Inspiron Zino HD 410 and hooked it up to my big ol' TV. It has HDMI out which actually sends the audio as well, since this computer is designed to be TV connected. It does a great job for streaming Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon VOD. I'm saving $60/mo., and enjoy a better experience. On demand streaming is wonderful, since there's so much out there to watch already. I do have to be patient, waiting for TV shows to hit Hulu or movies to hit Netflix, but it's been worth it to me. The only thing I really miss is the ability to just sit down and let the flashing box entertain me. Now I do have to make a choice. Before, I could sit down and let a Mythbusters marathon entertain me. I can still do that, but I have to think to do it before I can do it. I've also been spending more and more of my time watching podcasts from TWiT and others. I watch very little actual TV these days, only those shows I really want to see.
My Company - Red Cedar Technology
When our TiVo died we were a bit short on cash (think: October, 2009). So we tried streaming and ... it was pretty decent. Then we looked at our $96/month DirecTv bill and thought, "Hmm.....," and canceled that sucker.
Since then 1) we've saved over $1,500, 2) we've totally fallen in love with Neflix Watch Instantly, 3) Hulu is good for the few shows we used to watch regualrly, and 4) we generally watch less TV than we used to (a Good Thing ®). It hasn't bothered us in the slightest. We have two other families who have decided that if a couple of old fogies like us (we're 61 and 65) can do this, so can they.
Sometimes it's just nice to have instant access to channel flipping, sports, and news. I still use Hulu to watch shows that I miss, or sometimes download them. But I can't watch a college football game live without cable unless I want to watch a low-quality stream on the computer. And as much as news channels tend to spout crap on a regular basis, I just like watching CNN while I'm eating breakfast or if a major event is happening. For $40/mo I get 50+ HD channels, so I'll hang on to cable a bit longer.
No kidding. I used to have unlimited bandwidth, but then upgraded for faster download speeds. Buried somewhere in the fine print it said that I now had a monthly cap, but unfortunately the person I talked to on the phone when I upgraded failed to mention that. My next cable/Internet bill was $460 (due to NetFlix and a recent subscription to CrashPlan). I called to complain and got it cut in half, but still....
A T1 link doesn't have the bandwidth required for HD streaming. At 1.5Mb/sec it is about half of the lower boundary.
With a box with a hard drive (Boxee?) you might be able to buffer enough that it wouldn't matter but I don't think anyone is thinking along the lines of handing connections that are too slow for real streaming right now.
I cut the cord about a month ago and got a Roku. Netflix, HuluPlus, and Amazon Prime, plus the channels on Roku have more than met my needs. As for my wants, HuluPlus is near worthless since the shows I'd use it for aren't available for streaming to the TV despite being able to watch them online (eg Fringe) and Amazon Prime is utterly worthless unless you like Dr Who. Netflix is a champ though with them getting streaming for current shows still on the air. Once the networks/studios knock of being stupid and start looking at streaming like pay channels I think we'll see the streaming services start to look more like HBO than not.
"On a scale from 1 to 10, people are stupid"
Don't be ridiculous. The outside hasn't been able to support human life for generations.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I use Apple TV for newer content and PS3/TiVo for Netflix. I'll also use an antenna for OTA HD viewing. Assuming you get reception, the OTA picture is my higher quality than my cable connection ever was. Live sporting events are crystal clear.
Got rid of cable about 2 years ago. Haven't missed it once.
Boxee for the frontend, Giganews for newsgroups, Newzbin to grab the news feeds, and Sickbeard to grab the shows I watch and update Boxee automatically. Works FABULOUSLY, and it's only about $30/mo for the Giganews subscription.
der dee der.
I've done this. I use the following services:
Netflix (1 DVD at a time, $10/month)
Hulu (free version)
MLB.tv ($100/year)
PlayOn (I got a lifetime license for $30 by getting in early. Now it's $80 for a lifetime.)
PlayOn allows streaming of new shows (Hulu), old shows and movies (Netflix), MLB games, and individual channel sites (like Comedy Central) to my XBox at a total annual cost of $220, or under $20 a month. The only cable service I could get at that price is the super-restricted version that only gives about a dozen channels, most of which I could get OTA anyway.
I get the added advantages of being able to watch everything on my own schedule, and also watch while travelling -- unless I leave the country, which unfortunately blacks out most services. But that's what the Netflix DVDs are for. I rip them to my harddrive as fast as I can get them, and now have a nice stockpile of movies to watch while overseas.
I use "free" streaming virtually all of the time where I am, but as odd as this may sound, I still pay for my content. Over here in the uk we have no hulu, we have no netflix, none of the streams coming from the other legitimate sites, all we have is iPlayer, which is a bit of a joke as far as most of its content is concerned. But that's never stopped me, plenty of less legitimate sites out there to give us what we should already have.
However, I don't think the content should be free, it should be available, how it is now illegally, for a reasonable fee (or at least ad supported). But no-one wants my money.. Here's the clincher though, in this country, if we watch anything that is being broadcast on a tv channel at the same time we have to pay a license fee to the government. Technically I don't need to pay it, but I do because it directly supports british content being created. Also, I have an internet connection, which we're pretty much forced to bundle with cable tv and a phone line. So, whilst I use the internet solely for my entertainment, I still indirectly pay what I consider reasonable(ish) for what I'm getting. It's kind of a guilt and responsibility thing.
Now, if the companies pulled their heads out of their asses and provided me with the streaming methods that are clearly feasible, preferably for a reasonable price, then they could drop out the middle men, I would drop the rest and they would get all the cash. But they're morons who would rather whine that they don't have my money rather than actually allow me to give them it. Go figure..
Who need's speling and grammar?
Ditched cable when we bought a house. We've had Netflix the whole time, wife does the CNN dance on her laptop. Netflix is mostly DVD, not much streaming. There's nothing on cable worth watching that I'd pay 1 month's price for the entire year.
I did something like this last year. Wasn't really willing to pay $1000 for a "Media PC", so I bought a Dell from circa 2005 at a local resale shop, P4 2ghz or some such, for $50. Then got an ATI Radeon HD 4000-something off NewEgg for $20. The Radeon 4000 is, AFAIK, the lowest-end card that supports 1080p hardware decoding. ("DXVA support" is the Microsoft buzzword that you need on the hardware + software side for this to work.) 2TB hard drive + USB enclosure for $100. Threw in a cheap BD-ROM drive just for fun ($50).
Total cost: $220. Less if I'd had the parts lying around.
On the software side, with MakeMKV + Media Player Classic, the box can rip + play Blu-Rays at full resolution with 0% processor utilization. Synergy to control from my laptop while sitting on the coach.
The final kicker was that the Adobe Flash team finally got off their collective butts and included support for hardware decoding in Flash 10.2. Hulu, YouTube, and Netflix all look fantastic.
I wouldn't dream of ever going back to cable and trying to program a DVR. Too much work.
250GB oUGHT tO bE eNOUGH fOR aNYBODY
> If you've done this, what does your approach include?
I did this last year. Dumped Comcast TV, kept the Data. Cut my Comcast bill in half. I pay for Netflix streaming. I had a Roku and Google TV, but I recently upgraded to a new TV that includes Netflix and Vudu. I also bought a $20 HDTV Receiver to pick up local broadcasts (works very well). I could add a DVR, but anything I would DVR is pretty much available on Hulu (but that's only on my PC because I don't use it enough to justify Hulu+ on the Roku, ymmv).
> If you'd like to, what are the bottlenecks?
The chief "bottleneck" is that there are too many options (Apple TV, Google TV, Roku, TV's with Apps, etc). You will probably not get the right combo of apps+device+TV on your first pass, thus it will take a few purchases/cancellations/equipment-swaps to get a solution that you like. For instance, I started with the Google TV (which is a decent product), but left if behind (gave it to a friend) when I realized that I only used it for Netflix and my new TV had built-in Netflix.
I used to love Discovery and the History channel. Then it became all Deadliest Catch/Ice Road Truckers/Axe Men with a side of batshit conspiracy. It's been many years since I subscribed to cable TV.
Reporte them to your local commerce commission. Bundling is illegal, even for legal monopolies.
But what do you use for Internet? Unless you are one of the lucky FIOS ones (lucky bastards) most places DSL sucks compared to cable, and I don't know about everywhere else but I know Cox will NOT sell you net without at LEAST basic included. I ended up just picking up a cheapo USB TV tuner just so I could watch the occasional documentary (I haven't watched TV since Firefly left the air) and to not feel so ripped about having to pay for basic cable that I otherwise would never ever use.
So while I like the idea of getting rid of cable, when the choices are get stuck with basic along with 2Mbit Internet, or take $100 DSL with a MAX speed of 756k and being informed they had NO intention of ever spending a dime and upgrading the lines (Thanks AT&T, you damned leeches) then "cutting the cable" quickly becomes "shooting yourself in the foot" as far as speed is concerned.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Only if you're watching it AS it is being broadcast do you need a TV license. If you're watching it After it's been broadcast, i.e. a video on iPlayer you do not need a TV license.
between vag, beer, and the toilet, all my household entertainment needs are taken care of.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Yeah, well my family had an ALL streaming home entertainment since I was born in 1982. I even used it all the way up through when I went to college. Shocking, I know. You'd even think we were in the future. Now with HDTV each of the main 5 channels I grew up with now has 2-3 "side stations". I would have killed for that amount of PBS growing up.
-
Actually, right now I use: XBMC + SickBeard + SABnzbd. With a 'pay as you go' setup from Astraweb. 180GB lasts me 4-5 months of regular programming and all summer. (An costs as much as 2.5 months of 'all you can eat'.).
My apartment sits across the street from a Laundromat that advertises 'free internet' (I didn't see any mention of customers only), DD-WRT in client mode feeds my OpenWRT router.
For the nth time: If it becomes OK to infringe copyright in both GPL programs and closed-source programs, then the Free Software Foundation has already won. No copyright means it becomes OK to make and share thoroughly commented disassemblies of proprietary programs.
Technically you DO need a TV license if you watching content in the UK - even if it's on a computer
Not true.
From another page on the linked site:
You don't need a licence if you don't use any of these devices to watch or record television programmes as they're being shown on TV - for example, if you use your TV only to watch DVDs or play video games, or you only watch programmes on your computer after they have been shown on TV.
And another, specifically metioning streaming.
If you don’t watch or record television programmes, or you only stream TV programmes online after they’ve been broadcast – through on-demand services like YouTube, BBC iPlayer and 4oD – you don’t need to be covered by a TV Licence.
I don't see why anyone needs cable.
Three reasons:
I agree completely. I have both Netflix and a big old school DVR setup (3 replaytv's, 2 local servers running DVarchive to archive shows permanently and a cable hookup.) We just started in on Netflix a few months back and I have to say, I really like where that is going. Having the technology in my home to store things locally and share them around the house with ethernet in real time is cool, but my machines are aging and there is no modern equivalent. I'd much rather have a larger library full of pristine digital copies stored offsite and streamed whenever I want them. My daughter who is 6 grew up able to watch her favorite shows whenever she wanted. The replays I have are the old school ones before the media companies sued the automatic commercial skip out of them, but its not perfect and I much prefer the way Netflix just has none.
That said, cable companies and media producers understand that their model is at risk of being undermined and the price for Netflix to come up to being on-par with cable in terms of show availability is going to be steep. They won't be able to do it at $10 a month, thats for sure.
Still, if I could pay Netflix what I pay the cable company today (about $70 a month) and get all the same shows streamable any time from any of my TVs or computers with no commercials, it would be a no-brainer. I'd toss all my replays and all my archived shows and convert over in a second.
Ultimately, I think standard cable television is doomed. Nobody wants their content delivered that way. The cable companies will fight with everything in their power, but at the end of the day, you're going to be paying them for internet and internet only eventually. That's why the caps are showing up everywhere. They're deathly afraid of this, but like a good internet, it will eventually simply route around any attempts at censorship.
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
But what do you use for Internet? Unless you are one of the lucky FIOS ones (lucky bastards) most places DSL sucks compared to cable, and I don't know about everywhere else but I know Cox will NOT sell you net without at LEAST basic included. I ended up just picking up a cheapo USB TV tuner just so I could watch the occasional documentary (I haven't watched TV since Firefly left the air) and to not feel so ripped about having to pay for basic cable that I otherwise would never ever use.
I have COX here in Arkansas and I have and only pay for cable internet. They even came out and placed a trap on my line to prevent tv signal. and I only pay $49 + tax for this speed. "http://www.speedtest.net/result/1263294364.png" I do believe if you were told you HAVE to include basic cable it was a flat lie. I was a technician for COX for 9 yrs and even when they rolled out cable internet in AR and KS they couldnt force you to get tv service (although most people didnt know this at the time).
M O O N... That spells Slashdot.
Nothing that is streaming comes close to the audio or visual fidelity to run on the $$$ equipment I buy.
I can download stuff off USENET that is pretty high quality...but then again...not immediate and I do enjoy watching live TV networks, some sporting events...etc.
I guess the hulu and streaming only crowd will be ok if they don't have nice equipment, or not that much of a tv hound....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I boycotted cable after my apartment burned down last year. After about 6 months of nothing but youtube and crappy low quality internet streams, I finally caved and got DirecTV. I still hate paying for the service, but it is really nice having the option of not having to 'digg through the crates' in order to find something to watch, when I feel like being spoonfed by the programming networks.
The fact that I had bought a 1080p LED samsung TV, and was subjecting it to nothing but netflix via netbook or xbox, sure was visible once I plugged-in my DTV box and got actual HD video. HUGE difference, I don't care what any stream-only advocate says. The bandwidth and programming simply isn't there just yet.
This is the decade of death for the big broadcast networks and providers though, I can safely say (as I said in 1998 about the record industry).
My point is that media distribution models can co-exist and offer a much better "I'm in control" experience for the user, rather than being subjected to one or the other, or being constantly spoonfed, if you can afford it.
the only permanence in existence, is the impermanence of existence.
Not true.
I get a business Cox internet connection to my house...only $70/mo...no caps, I can run servers, static IP and fantastic service on the few times I've had problems or outttages.
I get anywhere from 12-15 down and from 5-9 up speedwise.
And...so I hear...hehehe...you can split off that cable and get full analog channels on tv plus all the HD ones hat aren't encrypted for not 1 cent extra.
Of course...I just hear you can do that.
You don't have to show them a license or anything...just order it and they'll put it in your home and it works great.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
So I have completely gotten rid of cable/satellite by going the Pirate way (arrr...). I've got a subscription to Usenet, coupled with sabnzbd, Sick Beard, Couch Potato and Media Browser on Windows Media Center. It takes a while to setup and get working, but it's really the best solution I've found. A nice bonus is that there are no commercials...
Last October my budget was crashing hard and I had to make some decisions on what to cut to get over the hump. I looked at the $110/month bill and figured, if I spend that same amount of money, I can get me a Roku box, then tell the cable company to cut out the cable TV portion to save over half that. Add just a few bucks to that for the Netflix and Hulu subscriptions, and I was well under the original. Worked great, but the little decoder I got for local broadcast TV didn't work well. So, now that we're over the budget hump and can afford it again, we're getting the cable back in. I just spotted an offer to keep the bill at a lower rate than before, and they'll toss in a DVR. The Roku did work well, though, and if the cable company starts jacking the rates again, they'll lose my business forever.
My two year old loves Backyardagains as well. I pretty cool show. On topic: Yep, got rid of cable, use Netflix and Playon Media Player. Got a Roku in the bedroom and a PS3 for the living room. It was funny, when we took our cable boxes back the woman who took them took a look at my son and said "How are you going to live without cable?" My wife just thought "you all really don't have a clue yet, do you..." I'm not a sports fan so the loss of sports doesn't matter to me. I like documentaries, dinosaurs and scary movies, my wife likes drama. We've got all that covered.
I can confirm that Netflix on the PS3 looks far better than my HD cable did.
When I want to see something with the best possible quality, I rent or buy the bluray disc.
Maybe cayenne8 has really great cable and they don't overcompress the streams in order to cram more channels in.
Here before all but 8486 of you.
Of course, I'm 'stealing' TV from Usenet, but that's a moral decision I can easily live with.
And I think that's the point... it's hard to feel bad for big media when we all feel like they are raking us over the coals and have been for as long as we can remember. The only think I'm ever going to be willing to pay for again is an all-I-can-watch buffet of 720p or better streaming content. And it had better be cheap, since it needs to compete with free...
This same issue happens with information. About 10 years ago, I bought some programming magazine every month. I liked it because it "pushed" all sorts of information to me, including new languages, new APIs or libraries I did not know about (sometimes, you even got a tutorial in assembler).
Nowadays with the Internet, I usually have to *look for* (pull) this same info. And as you say, usually you look for stuff that you already know exists. Fortunately, getting the RSS feed for StackOverflow and Programmers.StackExchange allows me to see some interesting things I did not know before.
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Then get a Roku.
No monthly fees for Roku, just for the premium streaming channels like Netfix or Amazon.
Our house? No cable, just Roku and local broadcast stations.
I can confirm that Netflix on the PS3 looks far better than my HD cable did.
When I want to see something with the best possible quality, I rent or buy the bluray disc.
Maybe cayenne8 has really great cable and they don't overcompress the streams in order to cram more channels in.
Wow, if your netflix looks better than your digital cable you must have had a real shit cable connection! I have both, and I can tell you my digital cable (espeecially HD now) blows away the netflix picture quality.
Did this about two years ago. After experimenting with different things on my laptop I finally went with a MacMini. Just works and my wife can operate it without much trouble. Did a BlueTooth keyboard and mouse for couch operation. EyeTV with the USB digital tuner and a cheap $30 antenna in the attic for off-air. Tried live streaming of sports as that was a requirement from my better half and found the NFL offerings were weak at best at any price. Only option was hundreds of $ to DirectTV which seems to have a lock on streaming NFL inside the US. Off air worked quite well and with a great picture. So with the eyeTV software we have DVR which picks up all the kids shows, building a nice library or Dinosaur Train and Thomas the Train. We paid the couple $ a year for the TVGuide EPG data downloaded daily. We don't watch a lot of movies and those we do we tend to have on DVD. I threw an external Firewire drive on there for plenty of room and ripped our library to it over time. Probably upgrade to a Drobo when the current drive fills up. Not irreplaceable data but I also don't want to re-build that library again. The one bit that I especially liked was the optical outputs, available on most (all?) Macs in their headphone jack. I was able to run that right into my home theatre system to get the 5.1 decode both from DVD and broadcast. Also, as a real computer and not some simplified TV box, I've got full app usefulness. So I'm bringing up the kids right with MacMAME and classic arcade games along with a few other titles. We also can web surf or whatever else is needed as it just connects to my wireless network. We've also populated iTunes with most of our music library so it makes a nice jukebox with the visualizer running. The box is otherwise silent and unobtrusive. Still have the old sony trinitron so doing a VGA to NTSC SVideo downconvert for now. Found a nice little USB powered device to do that for $30. I'm allowed to go to an HD projector with screen once I finish the bathroom remodel :) I hauled the setup to another venue for a projected high-def superbowl party (clamped the antenna to a railing outside) and it worked really well.