I can't stress enough that you should try YouTube TV before making a choice of streaming services. If DVR functionality matters to you, it's the one to get. FYI, I did the free trial on all of them.
I thought about it but with what I pay for just internet (I need high speeds my wife and I both work from home plus wifi/streaming to a lot of devices) so if I were to pay for Youtube TV, I might as well have just stayed with Comcast bundles.
Kodi is the Napster of yesteryear. Great idea, I have it on my firestick but afraid to use it all the time. It's like the man won't be watching me at 1:00am streaming Billy Jack. Alas he will.
We have Spectrum, and I believe the cheapest cable tv bundling you can get even with an introductory offer is $90. YTTV and Philo combined are $60 and you don't have to pay for a bunch of garbage you don't want including equipment fees.
I just heard that 5G will be the fatal blow to cable. I'm not tech savvy enough to know if that's a real possibility. Any thoughts?
5G, when it is finally available, will provide speeds much higher than current physical 'cables' do with less latency. In fact, real 5G will have the potential to be significantly faster than Wi-Fi. This will mean that there is less need for all the physical infrastructure that is now a part of 'cable' companies As a few people in this thread have stated they would cut the cord but are afraid they will miss something. There is a huge number of people out there that are even more adverse to change and are going to stick with 'cable' because it is what they know. They are comfortable with having the 4 or 6 networks and all the 'dirty movie' channels listed so they can watch what they want. It seems the 'cable' companies are planning to continue to soak those folks as long as possible. 5G is more marketing than reality, right now. Mobile companies, like AT&T, are showing '5G Service' on their victims' phones when they have access to towers that have higher speeds - but it is not real 5G. Real 5G requires different radio frequencies. 5G requires many more broadcast antennas to provide the high speeds. Building the new infrastructure for it is as complex, physically and politically, as was the telephone and cable networks already in place. Once it is deployed it will mean that mobile devices will have speeds and response far better than anything short of a LAN - Local Area Network. The expectation is the true 5G will start to be widely available in 2020. It will be interesting to see what its impact will be. My guess is that the 'cable' market will be affected but not in a huge way. The biggest impact will be in allowing network hungry apps to appear and proliferate. The smart home of today will be a faint shadow of what will be possible once high speed and low latency is available. The ability to share huge amounts of data will allow for the smallest devices to be connected to the whole world without going through your home's network. In fact, the concept of your home network will probably disappear. The privacy implications can be rather frightening. Your new refrigerator may be connected to the 'world' and reporting your use without your knowledge just as a trivial example. Bottom line is that the future will be faster and more responsive. Hopefully, it will be better too.
Another win, The Criterion Channel is starting a channel on April 8th. Their movie collection is second to none. I signed up about three months ago in order to get that sweet charter member deal.
I was listening to a program the other day stating that the US is in a 5G infrastructure race (like the Space Race) with China. I guess we have told our allies that if they utilize the Huawei tech, that they won't be able to have intelligence sharing with the US.
I just finished a 2 year contract with Directv where I was paying $50ish/month for the whole 2 years. It includes HBO. They were going to increase my rate to $110. I obviously decided to cancel and go to YouTube TV. When I called they said they had no deals so I went ahead and canceled. Two days later they called me back and offered 1 year at the same $50 rate and also threw in a $300 gift card and NFL Direct ticket for free. So I guess they have me for another year. I did try YouTube TV and thought it was a good option, but it had 1 weird quirk. On ABC prime-time programming only, you could not hear the voices, just the background music. This didn't occur on any other channel or network. I do have an OTA antenna so I could still utilize that, but it is less convenient.
If you foolishly followed my advice to subscribe to CordCutterWeekly in the first entry in this thread then you will have already seen the link to this excellent article: 6 steps to solving your streaming video problems which provides a very complete guide for diagnosing streaming video.
Today's Cord Cutter Weekly has a very good article, The easier cord-cutting is, the less money it saves. The beginning of the article:
This cord cutters' article, Spectrum quietly adds cloud DVR, but it's limited, speculates that Spectrum is taking a proactive approach in allowing people to have more freedom in getting television access using more flexible hardware. An interesting bit from the article discusses the loss of scribers from Spectrum:
My wife used to love that stuff too. I always teased her that I could see her taking notes! Anyway, there is another app that might get you that, and it is 100% free. It is called Pluto TV. It is much like cable TV in that you have a bunch of channels (60 or so) that you can flip through, but you have no control over what to watch on those channels. They have various movie channels running old movies, kind of like what TBS might run, and also have at least one detective ID like channel. My buddies favorite channel is the streaming equivalent of the babes thread. Non stop Hot young women working the camera while soft music plays. lol... don't tell your wife about that channel.
Yeah I'm familiar with Pluto, it wouldn't work. The shows they watch are specific shows. I got rid of DirecTvNow and picked up Spectrum TV at a good price.
For some reason, my You Tube TV subscription allowed me to log into the Spectrum app which gives me some “missing” cable channels.
I don't have the article handy but Spectrum just released a national program for 14.99/month. You have to call and ask for it. It gives you all the crap channels. They advertise it as, for those who are not interested in news or sports. I wish they would do the opposite. Put a package together that is nothing but sports and the local channels. Personally I cut the cord over the summer and adjusted nicely. But jonesing for UF and other college games. I signed up for youtube TV. The plan is to cancel after the season.
YoutubeTV I have all the major networks ESPN, 2, U, news SECN ACCN BTN CBSN NBCSN FS1. FS2 Fox Florida, Fox Sun All the CFB I could want
Here are some articles about cord cutting from @thatguy which I have 'borrowed:' I really like and trust Clark Howard How to Cut the Cord and Never Pay for Cable TV Again - Clark Howard How to cut the cable TV cord in 2020 Cut the cord: How to ditch cable TV for good | Tom's Guide
