TV options when living in the sticks

[Drano]

I cut the cord a few years back. Last year I bought a nice big 4k TV. Imagine my surprise to find there ain't a whole lot of 4k content out there! It's usually sports but not much of that either. Selected games yeah but kind of a bummer. But the high def YT vids are stunning.

If you have decent internet streaming is the way. Depending on what services you get it's usually much cheaper than cable and you can swap out subs monthly if you want to watch something on another one. Can't do that with cable! What pushed me over the edge was just adding up the rental fees Comcast was charging me for all their gear! Every set top box (had a few) was like 7 bucks a month, modem was 15. I just bought a bunch of Rokus and left that crap in the rear view.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

[Animl-AW]

I cut the cord a few years back. Last year I bought a nice big 4k TV. Imagine my surprise to find there ain't a whole lot of 4k content out there! It's usually sports but not much of that either. Selected games yeah but kind of a bummer. But the high def YT vids are stunning.

If you have decent internet streaming is the way. Depending on what services you get it's usually much cheaper than cable and you can swap out subs monthly if you want to watch something on another one. Can't do that with cable! What pushed me over the edge was just adding up the rental fees Comcast was charging me for all their gear! Every set top box (had a few) was like 7 bucks a month, modem was 15. I just bought a bunch of Rokus and left that crap in the rear view.

Sent from my SM-G991U using Tapatalk

I had Comcast, got up to $280 per mo. Now I pay $100 for intardnet and $40 for Sling.  Around here AT&T has optic fiber intardnet, that’s my next change.

Cable TV has a higher compression rate than streaming. Which is why stream 4k is much better.

At least you have the option of 4k when you find it.
 Which doesn’t cost that much more. I have 4k TVs too.

[nopoop]

Cut the cord a month ago. Sling, prime and netflix loaded. Sling has fox and CNN for my political fix. Netflix has a bunch of docs that are good. Prime has a bunch of "rent" lately so it might get the boot. Im screwed for football tho...

[Eagler]

What's Sling?

Have used Sling boxes back in the day but that can't be it

Eagler

[nopoop]

https://www.sling.com/programming/sports

[Tumor]

Sling has fox and CNN for my political fix.

This is why we can't have nice things.

[icepac]

I’m not sure the definition of “cutting the cord” is being correctly used here.

[AKIron]

I’m not sure the definition of “cutting the cord” is being correctly used here.

I agree. Paid streaming is not cutting the cord. Amazon Prime is worth the price for the free shipping alone so we'll continue with that, only. If you have a Samsung Smart TV there are a lot of free "channels" to be streamed without Prime or another service.

[Eagler]

I’m not sure the definition of “cutting the cord” is being correctly used here.

I can tell you basic cable tv is still a deal compared to the alternatives...

It's cheaper than yt tv and a needed data service for that to work with more channels and easier interface

Only going yt tv as we can then use it at in-laws as well..

Eagler

[AKIron]

Daughter has had a Samsung Frame for a few years now. We liked hers so got one a year ago and like it a lot. You can subscribe to an art service but there is no shortage of free artwork to be had. It is a smart tv too of course. Here's ours. No need for power or any other connection on the wall. The Frame uses one clear cable to connect to the hidden box. That cable provides power, video, and audio.

[AKIron]

This is the only wire and you'd have a hard time seeing it if you didn't know where it is. Of course a mount must be attached to the wall.

[AKIron]

Like any relatively new TV, turn off the damn soap opera mode. It's usually called some form of motion smoothing.

[Shuffler]

I agree. Paid streaming is not cutting the cord. Amazon Prime is worth the price for the free shipping alone so we'll continue with that, only. If you have a Samsung Smart TV there are a lot of free "channels" to be streamed without Prime or another service.

I'll never own another Samsung TV. It used to be all I owned. Had 4 of them. One had a issue with a specific chip and Samsung was standing behind it except on my model. I bought the chip and replaced ot myself. Fixed another issue they had with red LED over heating. When those tvs were replaced, they were not samsung.

[icepac]

Most all of internet providers are already replacing set top boxes with streaming devices.   
Biggest problem is not having local storage and instead streaming what you saved from the cloud.   

Rewind, FF, and pause are not supported in a fashion that users will enjoy.

The change coming is that you have to pay for TV service to stream from your provider or they will start imposing data caps for people using huge amounts of data.   

Though I prefer the 2019 (latest) Sling or Roku, I caved and got the spectrum enabled streambox because the remote has numbers and you can type the cable channel numbers as well as Voice control.   With ethernet conection, I've noticed none of the complaints associated with the reviews.

I flew my entire aces high career using a cell phone as a hot spot getting latency numbers never better than 160ms (iphone5 with LTE disabled) or 350ms (blackberry).    Aces High worked well with that latency and nobody ever complained I was warping.

[AKIron]

I'll never own another Samsung TV. It used to be all I owned. Had 4 of them. One had a issue with a specific chip and Samsung was standing behind it except on my model. I bought the chip and replaced ot myself. Fixed another issue they had with red LED over heating. When those tvs were replaced, they were not samsung.

I've owned several over the last 20 years. Other than a curved screen I accidentally broke never had a problem with any of them.