Do you have a television (cable, dish, etc.) service?

HAHAHAHA the judgemental map for my city is SPOT ON. so painfully true!

I won't go into too many details that I may not know about, as my DH is really the admin of Household Entertainment, but we do pay for Netflix.

No Amazon, No Hulu, No cable, No Apple TV. We have a personal datacentre with roughly 8 TB of music, movies, anime and other media entertainment options. We compliment this with some Chromecast. Doubtful we will "run out of things to watch". ;)
 
Can someone enlighten me on Sling? My parents have Time Warner/Spectrum cable and they'll be snow birding down south next winter. They want to be able to watch our local channels, such as local news and sporting events, and someone told them to get a Sling box and watch it on their laptops. Is that how it works?
 
I switched to Satellite for the first time and it's great for what I'm paying with just HBO and basic cable.

Prior to that I was on Optimum for 4 years, then Fios for 2 years. I've been trying to keep my cable, internet and use to be phone under $150. I just gave up having a home phone when I got Satellite.
 


We have Hulu (cancelling July) and Netflix.

Hubby and I have never had cable. My parents have it and when we go over to their house, there is seemingly never anything on TV (even their 300+ channels!)...
 
I have Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, parents still have cable but also have Amazon Prime.
 


My DH and I were discussing this issue over the weekend - our bundle which includes the house phone, internet and DirectTV is $350 a month and I am sick of it. We are starting to explore options - his issue is sports and mine is local/national news

Yes, I was very hesitant as I was quite worried about sports. My parents pay in the $200 range for phone, TV, and internet and they don't know what to do. They *really* want to cut the cord, but my parents are also worried about sports. They don't want to have to "deal" with the streaming and antenna setup that I have (I have to use antenna for local channels during basketball and football season). They don't want to have to do anything other than press a button to watch any particular channel. I totally get that too. It's worth the 20 seconds of inconvenience to me, but my parents want to just turn to 12 and be done with it.

I will say that I can watch local and national news just fine with Sling and other free news apps on our Amazon Fire TV. I never have to break out the antenna to watch local news, but Sling's website does say local channel availability varies by location.
 
How is Vue? Seriously thinking of trying that's out.
We consider it an alternative to DirecTv, not a substitute. What I mean is that we can watch the same stuff on either system, but without the fancy features (and large monthly bill). Some have said it feels like we are in an extended beta test, and I agree. It's not as smooth, but it does the job. For us, it is worth it to save nearly $100/mo. DH hasn't missed any sports that he wanted to watch, and we get 2 local channels as well. (The other local channels are available via antenna.)

I think they do a free trial period so you can check it out, and there is no contract, so if we ever want to go with something else, we aren't locked in. We pay around $37/mo and that includes a cloud DVR. If you have any specific questions, just let me know.
 
Can someone enlighten me on Sling? My parents have Time Warner/Spectrum cable and they'll be snow birding down south next winter. They want to be able to watch our local channels, such as local news and sporting events, and someone told them to get a Sling box and watch it on their laptops. Is that how it works?

It's a box that plugs into your home cable/satellite box. Once connected, you can watch and control the home TV from a remote location (PC/iPad/etc.).
 
We dropped our DirecTv a few years ago the day we left for vacation. 2 weeks after we got home, our youngest son said there was something wrong with the tv. We just didn't watch enough to make it worth it. We have an antenna to watch the networks, we have SlingTV during football season only for sports (Ohio State football and I think DS watches some soccer on it), and we have Netflix and Amazon Prime. We just got back from the beach, where we had full cable package, and I kept hearing "all these channels and nothing on that I want to watch".

We have internet through Suddenlink (cable company), and because of that we have to have a landline phone; we pay $5/month for that through Suddenlink.
 
I have DIRECTV and AT&T unlimited plus cell phone service. By combining the account we get a $25 discount on DIRECTV, get free HBO and $10 discount for combined billing. And because of the combination streaming of any DIRECTV programming while on AT&T wireless doesn't count against the usage (if you go over 22GB on a line during the month they can reduce your speed for the rest of the month).
 
I have DirecTV and love it. I tried streaming and it just doesn't work for me. I need my DVR and sports!
 
It's a box that plugs into your home cable/satellite box. Once connected, you can watch and control the home TV from a remote location (PC/iPad/etc.).

Thanks. So if they leave their home cable box on all the time, they'd be able to watch it from their laptop or iPad while in Florida during the winter?
 
It's a box that plugs into your home cable/satellite box. Once connected, you can watch and control the home TV from a remote location (PC/iPad/etc.).
I had a lot of problems with the my Slingbox until I got myself a 50Mbps download package. I still connection problems today with 100Mbps, but less often.

Then again, it may not be my home connection.... but the busy free wifi in hotel rooms in the evenings.
 
We had cable, dish etc until about 6 years ago when our bill was around $175 a month. We cut the cord and got a Tivo and an antenna. Also have Amazon Prime and Netflix. We've been pretty happy with this arrangement but I've been wanting to watch HGTV home shows, and Food network, Travel, and MSNBC. So I signed up for Hulu.

It's HORRIBLE. Starts buffering about an hour in, and we have 50mb internet and an ethernet cable to our TV. Hulu suggests we reboot the App when this happens. Every time? No thanks.

So reading here to get an idea about what to try next. I don't think we have Verizon Fios in our area (NM) or they would have sent us ads, no? Guess we could try Sling TV, but some of you are having buffering problems too?

Considering going back to Comcast. Basic subscription adds $45 to our internet bill but that's only for a year.
 
I had a lot of problems with the my Slingbox until I got myself a 50Mbps download package. I still connection problems today with 100Mbps, but less often.

Then again, it may not be my home connection.... but the busy free wifi in hotel rooms in the evenings.

You might be throttled by your ISP as a way to get you to go back to cable. Sometimes you have to get a VPN for it to work.
 
Has anyone tried direct tv NOW yet?

We have hadd direct tv with lifetime TiVo forever! At $140 a month it is just getting to be too much compared to the amount we watch

Our teens never watch regular tv only
Netflix and YouTube

Just cancelled the landline and upgraded the internet speed through Verizon. Bill went from $130 to $100.

Direct tv now starts at $35 a month.

Thoughts?
 

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