Problem is that the way many companies price things, you don't save that much by cutting the TV. I have TWC and it's only like $20 cheaper/month if I cut TV and keep high speed internet. What we really need is a lot more competition, but the last mile problem is monopolized. I expect sooner or later somebody (Google, others) will find a way to solve that, as there is way too much money to be made by disrupting that last mile. It might end up being wireless last mile with other frequencies, mesh networks, etc. Or low orbit satellites.
Interesting, I'm cutting the cord, but I'm not counting my internet into the equation.
I have a business internet connection at home, I need it for work, so I'd have it regardless of any other need.
I have a business connection from Cox Cable for $69/mo....it is an old one that is grandfathered in. But nothing is bundled with it.
But I use AT&T Uverse, U200 package for TV and with it in 2x rooms, it was about $113/mo.
I've set up an OTA antenna that pulls in all my local channels. I hooked that into a Tivo Roamio OTA box for DVR, and I also have a couple of Tivo Minis for the office and bedroom TVs...and that streams the live and DVR'ed stuff to all rooms I need.
For what I call my "cable channels" that I would miss, like news (CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc) and other entertainment like TCM, FX, TBS...all the ESPN's...I subscribed to Playstation VUE streaming, which runs on the Amazon FireTV (new version with better hardware) and have a box for that on each TV. The Playstation VUE system has a DVR like functionality built into it too, for show you "like" it records and keeps for at least 28 days. I liked this feature plus the better channel selection than SlingTV gave.
I got the 70+ channels package from VUE and is about $35/mo.
I was already streaming Netflix and have Amazon Prime.
So, I dropped my bill from $113 to $35 a month. I'm quite happy.
I've been trying to watch all the DVR content off my Uverse box and have almost done that. Likely after this weekend, I tell Uverse to take their equipment back and just enjoy what I have which I love so far.
I fiigure in about 8 or so months roughly, I'll break even on my equipment.
I agree with the other poster, if you really love someone, you are willing to die for them. In fact it is selfish, as you cannot imagine life without them and you do not wish to live without them.
That is a strange definition of love my friend.
I've loved many. I've been in love many times.
But when it boils down to it..to brass tacks as they say.
The ONLY person I cannot live without...is me.
I'll do all I can for those I love and my family, but die for them...is NOT one of those things.
My life is the most precious things I own. It is truly the only thing I own when it comes to it.
And if it is between you and me...I'd do everything I possibly could to make sure it was not me that died.
You can't think of anyone you would sacrifice your life for? That's kind of sad.
Why is that sad?
I'm sorry, I just have a high prize on my life. Again, as far as I know, I only get ONE shot at life, that's it.
I cannot fathom what situation would ever present itself where would consider my life to be worth less than any single other human on the face of the earth.
I'm a caring, giving person, but only to the point mainly where MY life is on the balance.
I don't see that as being sad, I just have my values. If someone ELSE wants to sacrifice their lives for a cause or someone else, well, that's their choice and more power to them.
You won't get the 'preferred rate' then. It will be the same deal as refusing to use a Loyalty Card at Kroeger. That juicy steak is now priced $12 instead of $8.75.
Well, for those places that actually STILL do this loyalty card thing, I can readily give them false information, and pay cash when I need the discount....and be invisible to them.
This actually can be kinda fun to screw a little with their demographics. In the past, they've thought I was a 97 year old Swedish woman name Juanita, and I have to guess for that demographic I buy a lot of booze, beer, wine and other fun things at the grocery store they'd not expect....
Er, not unless your parents and friends' parents were very well off, or all of them were in the military and bought their equipment duty-free in Asia you didn't.
No, we weren't wealthy...lower middle class.
No one said you bought the WHOLE system at once, no we could not afford that.
I started off with a present from Santa in about 4th grade...a department store little stereo of a turntable and two small speakers..which maybe were 1'x1'x1'.
Not the best sound in the world, but where I started.
I saved my money, and bought a decent Marantz receiver......when I was sick, my Dad found a closeout deal on some decent for the day larger speakers and got them for me, I think they were Fisher speakers. I later saved and got a decent pioneer turntable. Later, I added a nice Sharp cassette deck (one of the first ones that could auto detect spaces and you could song skip on it.
Later years, I saved and bought a used Nakamichi cassette.
Later years...I found a deal on some old Klipsch Cornwall speakers from the 70's...cabinets had some wear but they sounded great, got those for $700.
Along the way the marantz blew up and I got a good deal on some display units of Carver pre-amp and amp....years later the Cornwall speakers got stolen...and I haggled with insurance to get Klipschorns that were display from an shop and got the pair for only $1600. That's a fraction of the price they usually are.
And from there..I found a good little tube amp from a company named Declare online....back when I got my pair (run them bridged for front channels) they were about $499/each. Now mind you at this point, I make a good living.
But I didn't start that way when I was young. I bought, built and traded through the years and through the different technologies with CD, BluRay, etc.
I do decent now, with some disposable income, but I"m now wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. While my hearing isn't what it used to be, I can still tell the difference in sound quality....AND more importantly, a system that doesn't give me "ear fatigue" and allows me to listen pleasurably for hours.
Sure I have iPods and decent shure earphones for the gym and I listen to mp3's for there and the car, since in those environments you aren't gonna hear a discernible difference, but for home and real enjoyment.....you can't beat a good system, and there is no replacement for air displacement.
The masses today have no idea what you're talking about and no connection to your experience. It's just golly gee swell that you had that slice of life, but it is completely irrelevant in 2016.
Err..there are still plenty of higher end audio shops out there, I've been to them.
Hell, even the chain Best Buy has in some stores a high end area called the "Magnolia Room"....I was at one a couple weeks ago, they had the McIntosh MC275 tube amp.
Its out of my range right now...but looking for one of the older 60's Mc's....that can be had for a fraction of the new price.
But audio shops are not a thing of the past, I see them in many towns/cities I visit. Maybe not as prolific as in the past, but they're still out there.
So no, I do not put value into decent sounding music. To me music is like a hammer, a tool to either share time with friends or family (that is what I value);
Hmm...I think this new way of thinking about music is a loud statement on the quality of music content being put out today.
Musicianship has gone out the door, and I think it is exemplified by music not seeming important to youth as yourself, no emotional or binding common anthem for your generation. I think popular music died sometime just at the start of the 90's for a plethora of reasons.
Your post is kinda starting to confirm that for me.
I wonder if we grups sometimes lose sight of what it's like to be a kid with no money.
I didn't grow up in poverty, but was lower middle class.
My parents didn't buy me luxuries for the most part. As I mentioned, I worked before I was 16yrs mowing yards and babysitting to earn extra money. When I was 16yrs, I started washing dishes in a restaurant and worked my way up to head bus boy through HS.
I worked hard, made money and saved to buy each audio piece (and other things I wanted). I didn't buy it all and once, and basically I did this through my life so far, saving, finding a deal and upgrading pieces here and there.
I used to have to save for a good bit before I could buy that AC/DC record (when it was new on vinyl)....
Do kids not work summer jobs and part time through high school anymore? Does mommy and daddy now buy EVERYTHING for the snowflakes?
Well, when I was 16-24yrs, I was into and enjoyed high fidelity stereo....my friends all did as well.
Hell, when I was about 12yrs, I went into a high end audio shop at the time, and heard my first pair of Klipschorns hooked to a McIntosh tube amp...and was hooked.
I've been building my system ever since then...started with little crappy stereo from Santa for xmas one year...and over the years with $ from lawn mowing, and baby sitting, I bought and traded through life.
I'm close to that now. I have the Khorns, hell, I have a whole Klipsch surround system, with Cornwalls as my surround speakers. I don't have the McIntosh amp (yet), but do have a pair of nice single ended tube amps for the front channels.
But I wasn't the stand out of my day...all of my friends for the most part worked for and bought good stereos for home. We did have mobile, using the old walkman with cassette tapes...
So, wondering when the masses stopped caring at all about how the music sounded?
I have to imagine the quality of this music is pretty dismal?
First..on YouTube, so you don't know the source and quality and then ripped to lossy mp3 format, and I'm guessing it isn't likely to be very high quality mp3.
This is almost analogous to trying to record songs off FM radio onto cassettes...except without having to dodge the DJ talking over the music.
Does no one put value into decent sounding music (just talking about the fidelity of the recording here, not getting into the quality of actual musicianship in the modern day).
Am I the only one who read "Asian" as a politically correct version of "Indian" in this story?
Ok..that clears up some of my confusion.
When I hear Asian, I think of Oriental type folks (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc)....and I was wondering why they were having problems with them, as that they are often some of the more brilliant folks I've worked with.....
But yes, with the Indians (dot)....I find they they indeed are of the model where they are generally ok following rote procedures, etc, but they do not seem to have much imagination on solving new problems or coming up with innovative ways to do things at the job.
And I know my ears are getting older, but man, I just can NOT understand some of them when they try to speak English. Not only is the accent so thick, but so often them speak so softly that they are almost mumbling, especially on teleconferences.
I see you are now blinking red/black, that means you are on Last Day citizen...when you officially turn 21yrs, please turn yourself in for "Sleep"...otherwise, the Sandmen will come for you, and you don't want to face The Gun shooting a homer at you....very unpleasant.
Air travel should be something that you do when you're crossing an ocean, because trains over water (and subduction zones) are physically impractical, and ships are too slow to be practical.
You have fun with that....
If my drive time is more than 3-4 hours, I fly.
I'd rather fly a few hours and get somewhere and have drinks brought to me, rather than drive long highway miles for the most part.
I can afford it....why not do it?
With all the cities and such, I doubt high speed rail work work that well in the US, it would constantly have to be slowing down for cities and intermediate stops. Flying is much quicker than that.....
I tried that with an HDHomeRun. I wanted to get some DVR software running on my computer, but couldn't get it to work right.
I did that years back with HDHomerun and MythTv.
I just now switched to OTA again..this time, I priced out the hardware needed and found that the Tivo Roamio OTA unit was only about $399...and it was cheaper to do that for a 4 tuner unit than to buy the HDHomerun units (2 of them) and the computer to run it on.
Look into the Tivo OTA unit...lifetime service for $399.
I got the Tivo minis to stream from main unit to tvs in bedrooms and office..each only about $125 or so.
It works great although setup is a bit clunky for the tivo minis takes a long time for registration on them to take online and have it pushed to main unit.
You have to reboot the main one after it gets the update (up to 24 hours later)....but once it all hooks up, works flawless and great tivo guides and ease of use.
Well, I'll be the first to risk Flamebait mods by saying it: this summary reads as though it was written by someone whose first language was Hindi or something similar.
Nah..Slashdot just finally outsourced their editors...or maybe just imported H-1B workers to do the work.
Seems about the same quality I've seen from most of those type of workers so far in real life.....
Yep, I"m just about to tell ATT Uverse to cut me off an keep their high $$ service.
I had the U200 package and it was about $113/mo.
I've set up an OTA antenna, and grab all my local channels, and have that set up with a Tivo OTA box (new version with lifetime service included) which was about $399.
I priced out building my own DVR box using HDHomerun tuners and for a 4 tuner system like the Tivo, it would have been about the same or a bit more, plus I'd have to do it.
I got 2 of the Tivo mini units for my other bedrooms, and office, so I have OTA dvr and streaming to all tvs.
For what I call the "cable channels" that I would miss...I have some amazon fireTV units at each tv, and on them I have Playstation VUE, their mid priced $35/mo package that streams 70+ channels, including all the ESPN ones, the SEC channel (the only sports I watch are college football really), I get all the cable news channels (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business, etc...). I also get TCM, TBS, FX, FXX...and much more.
I havne't done the HBO type channels in so long...after a week you've seen everything you need for a month...not worth it to me.
I have Netflix and Amazon Prime.
With me..my internet is a business connection and I need it for my livelihood, so I do not count it towards any cost savings or cost for my TV needs.
I had netflix and amazon before too.
SO, i'm basically dropping from $113 a month, to $35/month.
The system is sound and works...and besides having 3 remotes at each TV, I don't really notice anything the Cable gave me that I don't have now.
I'm only noticing I won't have AXS or the Velocity channel anymore....but I didn't watch them all that often.
I figured roughly on the hardware I'll break even in about 7 or so months....
It is NOT against the law to manufacture your own guns. There is even a market out there that helps you do this for conventional rifles and pistols, where they sell you the lower (the only part of a gun officially recognized as a gun by the US Feds) that is 80% complete.
They will also sell you a jig, that you can used with a drill press to finish the last 20% of the lower, and then, you have a perfectly legal, lower with NO serial number, no record of sale and you can buy all the parts you want to make it into a working gun.
This is 100% legal...you just cannot resell it.
Why would selling code to "print" a gun be any different than this?
I would think this precedent would be a valuable argument on this situation too.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting, I'm cutting the cord, but I'm not counting my internet into the equation.
I have a business internet connection at home, I need it for work, so I'd have it regardless of any other need.
I have a business connection from Cox Cable for $69/mo....it is an old one that is grandfathered in. But nothing is bundled with it.
But I use AT&T Uverse, U200 package for TV and with it in 2x rooms, it was about $113/mo.
I've set up an OTA antenna that pulls in all my local channels. I hooked that into a Tivo Roamio OTA box for DVR, and I also have a couple of Tivo Minis for the office and bedroom TVs...and that streams the live and DVR'ed stuff to all rooms I need.
For what I call my "cable channels" that I would miss, like news (CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc) and other entertainment like TCM, FX, TBS...all the ESPN's...I subscribed to Playstation VUE streaming, which runs on the Amazon FireTV (new version with better hardware) and have a box for that on each TV. The Playstation VUE system has a DVR like functionality built into it too, for show you "like" it records and keeps for at least 28 days. I liked this feature plus the better channel selection than SlingTV gave.
I got the 70+ channels package from VUE and is about $35/mo.
I was already streaming Netflix and have Amazon Prime.
So, I dropped my bill from $113 to $35 a month. I'm quite happy.
I've been trying to watch all the DVR content off my Uverse box and have almost done that. Likely after this weekend, I tell Uverse to take their equipment back and just enjoy what I have which I love so far.
I fiigure in about 8 or so months roughly, I'll break even on my equipment.
Slashdot is about as social as autism....
I certainly wouldn't join it at work even.
I would not like FB in a box...
I would not like FB with a fox.......
That is a strange definition of love my friend.
I've loved many. I've been in love many times.
But when it boils down to it..to brass tacks as they say.
The ONLY person I cannot live without...is me.
I'll do all I can for those I love and my family, but die for them...is NOT one of those things.
My life is the most precious things I own. It is truly the only thing I own when it comes to it.
And if it is between you and me...I'd do everything I possibly could to make sure it was not me that died.
I'd assume nothing less from anyone one else.
Why is that sad?
I'm sorry, I just have a high prize on my life. Again, as far as I know, I only get ONE shot at life, that's it.
I cannot fathom what situation would ever present itself where would consider my life to be worth less than any single other human on the face of the earth.
I'm a caring, giving person, but only to the point mainly where MY life is on the balance.
I don't see that as being sad, I just have my values. If someone ELSE wants to sacrifice their lives for a cause or someone else, well, that's their choice and more power to them.
Who or what would YOU trade your very life for?
Well, for those places that actually STILL do this loyalty card thing, I can readily give them false information, and pay cash when I need the discount....and be invisible to them.
This actually can be kinda fun to screw a little with their demographics. In the past, they've thought I was a 97 year old Swedish woman name Juanita, and I have to guess for that demographic I buy a lot of booze, beer, wine and other fun things at the grocery store they'd not expect....
I like it so far....
I can't think of anything or anyone that would be worth sacrificing my life for....
I'd just as soon watch the Mars progress on TV and enjoy beer, Air Conditioning and less threat of death....you guys have fun with that up there!!
That's why I prefer Fight Club!!
err....ooops....sorry, shouldn't have mentioned that....
I sure as shit am NOT going to wear one to have them monitor my every move, and habit!!!
No, we weren't wealthy...lower middle class.
No one said you bought the WHOLE system at once, no we could not afford that.
I started off with a present from Santa in about 4th grade...a department store little stereo of a turntable and two small speakers..which maybe were 1'x1'x1'.
Not the best sound in the world, but where I started.
I saved my money, and bought a decent Marantz receiver......when I was sick, my Dad found a closeout deal on some decent for the day larger speakers and got them for me, I think they were Fisher speakers. I later saved and got a decent pioneer turntable. Later, I added a nice Sharp cassette deck (one of the first ones that could auto detect spaces and you could song skip on it.
Later years, I saved and bought a used Nakamichi cassette.
Later years...I found a deal on some old Klipsch Cornwall speakers from the 70's...cabinets had some wear but they sounded great, got those for $700.
Along the way the marantz blew up and I got a good deal on some display units of Carver pre-amp and amp....years later the Cornwall speakers got stolen...and I haggled with insurance to get Klipschorns that were display from an shop and got the pair for only $1600. That's a fraction of the price they usually are.
And from there..I found a good little tube amp from a company named Declare online....back when I got my pair (run them bridged for front channels) they were about $499/each. Now mind you at this point, I make a good living.
But I didn't start that way when I was young. I bought, built and traded through the years and through the different technologies with CD, BluRay, etc.
I do decent now, with some disposable income, but I"m now wealthy by any stretch of the imagination. While my hearing isn't what it used to be, I can still tell the difference in sound quality....AND more importantly, a system that doesn't give me "ear fatigue" and allows me to listen pleasurably for hours.
Sure I have iPods and decent shure earphones for the gym and I listen to mp3's for there and the car, since in those environments you aren't gonna hear a discernible difference, but for home and real enjoyment.....you can't beat a good system, and there is no replacement for air displacement.
Err..there are still plenty of higher end audio shops out there, I've been to them.
Hell, even the chain Best Buy has in some stores a high end area called the "Magnolia Room"....I was at one a couple weeks ago, they had the McIntosh MC275 tube amp.
Its out of my range right now...but looking for one of the older 60's Mc's....that can be had for a fraction of the new price.
But audio shops are not a thing of the past, I see them in many towns/cities I visit. Maybe not as prolific as in the past, but they're still out there.
Hmm...I think this new way of thinking about music is a loud statement on the quality of music content being put out today.
Musicianship has gone out the door, and I think it is exemplified by music not seeming important to youth as yourself, no emotional or binding common anthem for your generation. I think popular music died sometime just at the start of the 90's for a plethora of reasons.
Your post is kinda starting to confirm that for me.
I find that sad.
I didn't grow up in poverty, but was lower middle class.
My parents didn't buy me luxuries for the most part. As I mentioned, I worked before I was 16yrs mowing yards and babysitting to earn extra money. When I was 16yrs, I started washing dishes in a restaurant and worked my way up to head bus boy through HS.
I worked hard, made money and saved to buy each audio piece (and other things I wanted). I didn't buy it all and once, and basically I did this through my life so far, saving, finding a deal and upgrading pieces here and there.
I used to have to save for a good bit before I could buy that AC/DC record (when it was new on vinyl)....
Do kids not work summer jobs and part time through high school anymore? Does mommy and daddy now buy EVERYTHING for the snowflakes?
Well, when I was 16-24yrs, I was into and enjoyed high fidelity stereo....my friends all did as well.
Hell, when I was about 12yrs, I went into a high end audio shop at the time, and heard my first pair of Klipschorns hooked to a McIntosh tube amp...and was hooked.
I've been building my system ever since then...started with little crappy stereo from Santa for xmas one year...and over the years with $ from lawn mowing, and baby sitting, I bought and traded through life.
I'm close to that now. I have the Khorns, hell, I have a whole Klipsch surround system, with Cornwalls as my surround speakers. I don't have the McIntosh amp (yet), but do have a pair of nice single ended tube amps for the front channels.
But I wasn't the stand out of my day...all of my friends for the most part worked for and bought good stereos for home. We did have mobile, using the old walkman with cassette tapes...
So, wondering when the masses stopped caring at all about how the music sounded?
First..on YouTube, so you don't know the source and quality and then ripped to lossy mp3 format, and I'm guessing it isn't likely to be very high quality mp3.
This is almost analogous to trying to record songs off FM radio onto cassettes...except without having to dodge the DJ talking over the music.
Does no one put value into decent sounding music (just talking about the fidelity of the recording here, not getting into the quality of actual musicianship in the modern day).
Ok..that clears up some of my confusion.
When I hear Asian, I think of Oriental type folks (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc)....and I was wondering why they were having problems with them, as that they are often some of the more brilliant folks I've worked with.....
But yes, with the Indians (dot)....I find they they indeed are of the model where they are generally ok following rote procedures, etc, but they do not seem to have much imagination on solving new problems or coming up with innovative ways to do things at the job.
And I know my ears are getting older, but man, I just can NOT understand some of them when they try to speak English. Not only is the accent so thick, but so often them speak so softly that they are almost mumbling, especially on teleconferences.
Yep, that steak you're eating is one of the largest carbon footprint problems in the world.
But, it is SOOO tasty!!!
I see you are now blinking red/black, that means you are on Last Day citizen...when you officially turn 21yrs, please turn yourself in for "Sleep"...otherwise, the Sandmen will come for you, and you don't want to face The Gun shooting a homer at you....very unpleasant.
You have fun with that....
If my drive time is more than 3-4 hours, I fly.
I'd rather fly a few hours and get somewhere and have drinks brought to me, rather than drive long highway miles for the most part.
I can afford it....why not do it?
With all the cities and such, I doubt high speed rail work work that well in the US, it would constantly have to be slowing down for cities and intermediate stops. Flying is much quicker than that.....
At the very least, this pretty much IS a govt entity censoring a private entity on what they can publish as free speech.
I would have to imagine this law would be thrown out on first appeal...
The Tivo?
No, I do not believe so...but why would I want to?
LOL..there's nothing on tv really that I find worth long term storage or archiving.
That being said, there is a way to get video off the Tivo....not sure the format.
I did that years back with HDHomerun and MythTv.
I just now switched to OTA again..this time, I priced out the hardware needed and found that the Tivo Roamio OTA unit was only about $399...and it was cheaper to do that for a 4 tuner unit than to buy the HDHomerun units (2 of them) and the computer to run it on.
Look into the Tivo OTA unit...lifetime service for $399.
I got the Tivo minis to stream from main unit to tvs in bedrooms and office..each only about $125 or so.
It works great although setup is a bit clunky for the tivo minis takes a long time for registration on them to take online and have it pushed to main unit.
You have to reboot the main one after it gets the update (up to 24 hours later)....but once it all hooks up, works flawless and great tivo guides and ease of use.
Nah..Slashdot just finally outsourced their editors...or maybe just imported H-1B workers to do the work.
Seems about the same quality I've seen from most of those type of workers so far in real life.....
Yep, I"m just about to tell ATT Uverse to cut me off an keep their high $$ service.
I had the U200 package and it was about $113/mo.
I've set up an OTA antenna, and grab all my local channels, and have that set up with a Tivo OTA box (new version with lifetime service included) which was about $399.
I priced out building my own DVR box using HDHomerun tuners and for a 4 tuner system like the Tivo, it would have been about the same or a bit more, plus I'd have to do it.
I got 2 of the Tivo mini units for my other bedrooms, and office, so I have OTA dvr and streaming to all tvs.
For what I call the "cable channels" that I would miss...I have some amazon fireTV units at each tv, and on them I have Playstation VUE, their mid priced $35/mo package that streams 70+ channels, including all the ESPN ones, the SEC channel (the only sports I watch are college football really), I get all the cable news channels (CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business, etc...). I also get TCM, TBS, FX, FXX...and much more.
I havne't done the HBO type channels in so long...after a week you've seen everything you need for a month...not worth it to me.
I have Netflix and Amazon Prime.
With me..my internet is a business connection and I need it for my livelihood, so I do not count it towards any cost savings or cost for my TV needs.
I had netflix and amazon before too.
SO, i'm basically dropping from $113 a month, to $35/month.
The system is sound and works...and besides having 3 remotes at each TV, I don't really notice anything the Cable gave me that I don't have now.
I'm only noticing I won't have AXS or the Velocity channel anymore....but I didn't watch them all that often.
I figured roughly on the hardware I'll break even in about 7 or so months....
I'm curious how this comes into play at all.
It is NOT against the law to manufacture your own guns. There is even a market out there that helps you do this for conventional rifles and pistols, where they sell you the lower (the only part of a gun officially recognized as a gun by the US Feds) that is 80% complete.
They will also sell you a jig, that you can used with a drill press to finish the last 20% of the lower, and then, you have a perfectly legal, lower with NO serial number, no record of sale and you can buy all the parts you want to make it into a working gun.
This is 100% legal...you just cannot resell it.
Why would selling code to "print" a gun be any different than this?
I would think this precedent would be a valuable argument on this situation too.