[66sprint6]

I remember when I was a kid and we moved to a new location, you had the cable guy come over and set things up and he didn't leave until it was right. Now, i have an expensive Internat/TV/Home Phone bill, with a less than satisfactory experience. The provider supplies all of the hardware. The installation necessitated the use of range extenders upstairs and down. The tech/installer guy definitely wasn't 100%. The system is anything but seamless, which seems to be no big deal for my new gen iphone or my macbook air. But my wife and kids can't stand it, so that in turn drives me up the wall.
I know that there is a different way now to get television programing. You procure a basic internet connection and a home device and then apps. It seems that this technology is present but still emerging and there are drawbacks. Still, I think the best thing for the home network is setting up your own powerful home network, done right like back in the old days when you did with your mind blowing Marantz stereo receiver and speakers.
I guess after that you have to choose and manage these apps carefully. The opt out billing could really add up. I might need a new TV as well, seeing that I can't get anything but Netflix.

[fyrffytr1]

You lost me at "I remember"! I can barely operate this computer. I know how to get on the internet and how to bring up solitaire. Other than that I am pretty much out of it!

[Chris65LeMans]

I bought Google mesh WiFi for my house a few years ago and it’s fantastic.

As for “when we moved, the cable guy came out...” you’re either much younger than me, or your parents were loaded. (And probably much younger because the loaded folks had a satellite dish in the back yard.)

[dataway]

If you are talking about streaming .... internet connection to smart TV ... it's been around probably 10 years now. Fairly robust technology.

Typical setup ... broadband internet ... any kind will do, cable and fiber probably best, but Sat dish would work too. Cable modem usually supplied by internet provider, I prefer to buy my own, use your own wi-fi router, Smart TVs and portable devices access the router via wi-fi .... or if in reach via Ethernet cable.

I don't have one piece of equipment that is owned or rented from the internet provider. Their cable just plugs into my home network which consists of a Cable Modem and Wireless/wired router. Pretty big house so my wife's office at the far end of the house has a dedicated Ethernet connection to the router.

We use only streaming ... Netflix, Hulu, Prime and the various apps that come on a Smart TV or portable device. TV also has an old school antenna that gets about 50 digital channels (we are on a mountain in the middle of nowhere). Pretty much flawless operation, power outages can be a problem, sometimes requiring a reboot of the router and modem if they are those whacky up/down/up down outages.

All our TV/internet related costs are about $100 a month ... 69.99 for the broadband connection and another $20 in various subscription costs for streaming.

[ZnbOlds455]

I've been considering cutting the cord for a while. We finally have good Internet in our little country neighborhood. My problem has always been local stations, though. I don't get good reception on the OTA digital channels. I also have very poor cellular reception. As a result, I keep the land line (even though most calls there are now nuisance) and cable TV.

I tried Hulu Live for a month. It was adequate, but the navigation is horrible. I'll probably make the switch to that permanent, though. I've added Amazon Firesticks throughout the house since I have older flat screen TVs. When you combine Internet access costs to Hulu and other projected subscriptions (Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc...), I'm still saving a whole lot of money. I'm sure there will be aggravations along the way, but I'll make up for those with extra dough to spend on the GTO.

As for hardware, the Google stuff looks really easy to setup. I went with a Ubiquiti Networks Unifi system. It's not much more expensive than Google's, but it is a little more complicated for the initial setup. That complication makes it very flexible and easy to expand later. I have WiFi in the house and extended all the way down to my shop another 200ft away from the house.

[Gator67]

We're in the process of transitioning from Direct TV to streaming...we've been experimenting with Hulu, Netflix, Fubo, ESPN+, etc., using them more and more, and realized there's no need for the satellite. Ultimately, the transition should cut our bill by 50% or more. It will be nice to jettison all those boxes and our two dishes (we have a large home with a dozen or so TVs--many of which aren't used frequently). As long as you have stable internet, reasonable speed, and a sufficient data limit, it works great. We use about a terabyte each month here, but my wife and I work from home, and we have two teenagers (one games a lot). We don't have high speed cable/fiber internet where we live, so we get it from a microwave dish (really stable 40 Mbps).

[John V.]

I'm in the Ga mountains. No cable service. Cell service not great or non-existent depending on your provider.

We dumped cable while still in Fla. Subscribed to Playstation Vue. I was VERY happy with it. Was half the price of cable and gave me all the stuff I had with cable plus many others. Included all Jacksonville locals. Navigation was slightly more complicated than cable was but you get used to it. When we moved, PV would switch between Atlanta & Chattanooga locals depending on the IP address, we couldn't choose. Atlanta would have all locals but Chattanooga didn't include NBC affiliate which was an issue.

But PV went kaput several months ago. I searched around and went with YouTube TV. It was cheaper and pretty much matched PV except it doesn't include NFL Network. Remains to be seen what I'll do when the season finally starts. YT allowed me to choose between Chattanooga and Atlanta for my local area so we chose Atlanta and get all the locals.

No need for an antenna. You can check your own area to see if the locals are included for whatever subscription streaming service you might choose.

A friend of mine visited from Wis just before PV died. He wanted to cut his cable bill. I shared my PV experience and told him I was switching to YT. He went home and signed up with YT before I did. He is happy with it.

For both of us, getting the Motor Trend channel was a biggie.

Navigation is worse than PV but tolerable. And once I discovered some of the helpful navigation features, it's gotten better. Still not as easy as the cable remote but not horrible either. My first Firestick remote didn't include Power or volume control so you still needed to use the TV remote, But now they do so no need for 2 remotes. We get to record shows with a DVR feature for later viewing too, something I never had with cable.

We also have Amazon Prime which gives us movies and mucho other stuff.

We have 5 TVs in the house and a Firestick (you have to buy them for about $30 each) plugged into a USB port on each. One of my TVs is actually a projector with a screen. Older set-up that came with the house. We rarely use it but was kinda cool to watch the Super Bowl on a huge screen. We were surprised that it too is very Hi Def.

For internet, our only choice was the local phone company. So we have DSL with a claimed "up to 50 Mb" to a rented wireless router. I don't get anywhere close to that speed in the house wirelessly but still a sufficient signal to operate multiple TVs, 2 laptops, a desktop, a thermostat, a Kindle, and the cell phones without a hitch. Only problem is when the old microwave is running, the streaming can freeze. Took awhile to figure that out, watching the news during meal prep, we realized it only froze while the micro was running. The router is upstairs at the far end but serves all rooms and the basement where the projector is. We started with a wireless network extender cause it was here when the phone tech installed the router. He thought perhaps it was needed to serve the basement. But when we were trying to figure out the freeze problem, I unplugged the extender and determined I simply don't need it. Good signal all thru the house.

As dataway mentions, if you can connect by ethernet cable direct to the router, all the better. All of my devices just connect wirelessly.

For cell service we have Verizon. No service at the house so Verizon gave me their special network extender which I easily set up myself. It connects by ethernet cable to the router and as it was described to me by the Verizon tech, it essentially creates a cell tower in my home. We have a great signal in and around the house, but limited distance outside. Only works with Verizon so unless visitors have Verizon, they can't get cell service here except using WiFi calling (not the same thing as I get with the Verizon device).

I'm told T-Mobile has same type of capability but another neighbor has US Cellular, they don't offer such a thing. He has a spotty signal in the house so keeps a landline.

I pay $60/mo for internet. We don't have a landline. DSL includes a phone no. and I think there is a way for me to use a landline phone on the DSL line but since the cell service works great, no real reason for me to do that.

YT was $50/mo but recently jacked it to $65/mo. Still a bargain compared to what I paid for cable in Fla. My neighbor uses DirectTV and I think pays about the same as me for that.

The ala carte route like dataway is doing might cost less if you can get what you want to watch without using a service package.

Only issue for me, if the internet goes down, I lose everything. My neighbor would still have his landline and TV. Happened once, somebody cut a fiber optic line down the mountain somewhere and we lost internet for several hours. That was a freak deal, so not a big concern. If I had to make a call, gotta drive outside the neighborhood a mile or 2 to get a good signal.

Have experienced similar reboot issues as dataway on some power outages. For me, it is the Firestick that gets "stuck" when the power is "flickering". Just unplug it and plug it back in. Knock on wood, my single unit modem/router always reboots automatically as does the Verizon network extender when the power returns.

If your TV has a USB port, you shouldn't need a new TV. The Firestick is cheap and reliable. And if you already have Amazon Prime, you can get a lot of content with no other subscription. My wife originally got the Firestick when we still had cable so the grandkids could watch Amazon cartoons.

We do a lot of shopping thru Amazon so we've always had Prime.

The streaming services pretty much all offer a free trial so you can try them out before dumping cable if you want.

My cheapskate son has a Firestick and some other device we gave him for Christmas. I think the "other" device gets him local channels, not real sure. He doesn't have cable, satellite or a streaming subscription. But whenever his alma mater's football game was not on a local channel, he would repeatedly sign up for the free trial of a streaming service and watch the game.

One time he forgot to cancel and had to pay for a month. I figured that served him right.

A caveat, PV raised prices at least twice in the 2 years I had them, YT has already raised the price once by a whopping 30% since I signed on less than a year ago. My sense is that the streaming services are struggling to make money in a crowded market. Content providers are in the middle. If cable and dish customers move to streaming, the content providers will jack prices to the streaming services who will pass it along to their customers.

Just yesterday I saw an article that said AT&T is considering selling DirectTV as they are bleeding customers. The expectation is that they will sell it for a couple billion less than they bought it for not too long ago.

I'm not convinced you can escape the high cost of access to content by cutting the cord or dumping the dish long term.

But for now, it has saved me money. I'd highly recommend picking up a Firestick and giving the streaming services a whirl with their free trial offers.

As to "slow" internet, I've had DSL, Uverse, Cable, and now back to a DSL. In an interim move to a short term rental house I expected Cable to be a big improvement over the Uverse I left behind in Fla. The cable guy claimed it would blow Uverse away. But my old computers ran the same as best I could tell. I was decidedly unimpressed by the cable internet. Then when I moved to our current house and DSL was our only choice, I was concerned that it would be bad. But once again, no issues. TV streaming worked the same on all of them. Absolutely no detectable difference. And our old computers still are slow but not slower. Any issues I've had are related to the computers and OS, not the internet. It was the same thing with my previous computers back in 2011. They had trouble accessing certain websites and ran slowly. Same internet with new computers with all same software and data files transferred fixed that. Now my computers are old again and struggling with certain websites. Pretty certain new computers would cure that.

[unruhjonny]

I dumped cable over a decade ago.

For a number of years I dabbled with the over the air tv and a Tivo (which could be dicey since officially Tivo was in Canada for a very brief window of time);
The digital changeover basically made the Tivo I had obsolete without cable;
So I bought a newer Tivo that has a built in digital receiver, so that I could once again resume over the air tv with my Tivo;
But the digital signal SUKS... anything corrupts the signal, and unlike the analog signal which would keep playing but sometimes be a bit fuzzy, it entirely garbles the signal from the most mundane things (eg: clouds, overhead aircraft)...
So after doing that I while I dumped my Tivo membership, and started using Netflix.

We initially bought a used Playstation 3 for Netflix access, but after a while we got one of these:


The Amazon Firestick also had Netflix access - it was slated to drop Netflix, but it seems that this never happened.
We then decided to get a prime membership to access their programming;
(I buy enough that the free shipping alone makes it seem a bargain; just one shipment can have the same cost as a month of Prime - you just need to be more choosy on what or from whom you buy);
Then a while ago we signed up (actually accidentally) for what's called 'StackTV'.

Since I decided a while ago, that internet was something I wanted to keep, all we have to do is keep tabs on not using too much bandwidth (Netflix has a setting for this);
The combined cost of Netflix, Amazon Prime, and StackTV is less than I was paying for the basic (non-HD) cable tv ten years ago.
Since adjusting Netflix download speeds, we have never even come close to our bandwidth limits - which are actually lower than the currently offered internet package minimums from our provider...

[66sprint6]

This is great stuff. Thanks so much, guys. I think I'm ready to give the cable company the boot. Then, I'm paring down my cell phone bill too They've been sockin' it to me for a long time. There's so much competition now. It's hard to believe that there was only a singlular phone company here (Bell) right up until the mid 90's.

[ignaro]

For cell service, I switched to Mint Mobile. Amazing customer service (way better than AT&T) and since you pre-pay, it's only $12/mo. I did a 3-month pre-pay first for a ltitle more and didnt notice a difference at all. I had been paying ATT $80/mo. Crazy!! In theory, you get lower-priority over T-Mobile customers meaning it might be different in some dense cities, i guess?-- but I work in the middle of Los Angeles. No complaints here.

Definitely drop your cable provider. Get Fiber internet if it's available and not too expensive. It's not available for me, so I have *only* cable internet through Time Warner. They charge me $5/mo for the simplest cable modem.

I then got two R7000 routers and a 100ft ethernet cable. I ran the ethernet under my house, daisy-chained the routers so they work as a mesh network, and now I have great wifi over my whole house and wired access to the office in the back and the TV in the front. The Netgear R7000 used to be their best router a long time ago. Now that and similar ones are really cheap on eBay but aren't total pieces of **** like the budget routers are.

Google Mesh is supposed to be great, too. I never had much luck with "repeaters", which is probably what OP has.

[66sprint6]

Originally Posted by Chris65LeMans

I bought Google mesh WiFi for my house a few years ago and it’s fantastic.

As for “when we moved, the cable guy came out...” you’re either much younger than me, or your parents were loaded. (And probably much younger because the loaded folks had a satellite dish in the back yard.)

I thought that I was aging myself, not being being younger! But thanks for that. The thing is, in Canada you always had to have Cable. Especially back then. Or you weren't getting the American channels. You'd be stuck watching some flacid Canadian drame, or a game show where the Grand Prize was a years supply of laundry soap and 75.00.

[Half-Inch Stud]

If the Billing method even smells like the Old AT&T or Comcast format, i say no, and never again.

All anybody here needs is a Internet service at their home.
We rent movies ($1-$2 each) from the Video store.
We play various vinyl record albums, themed for various rooms.
We run the radio because we have two very good stations (... imagine thaat)

[KenB]

Depending on your home’s construction, have you ever considered pulling wire and having Ethernet connections to fixed devices (TV, gaming consoles, desktops, receivers, etc.)? Cat 6 cable, unmanaged hub connected to router, not complicated.
I’ve done in twice in 15 years, otherwise too many devices on wi-fi, though it sounds like your challenge is dead-spots.
Not difficult, and you can run parallel to your wi-fi.

[SRR]

I finally replaced my Netgear router with a high end gaming router. It has no problem with 2 cell phones, 3 desk tops computers, 2 laptops and a smart TV. The computer in the garage is 50 feet away and can play high def. vids with no problem. I don't game. I use cox cable for internet only, no land line and have directtv. I used to have cox for TV but got sick of only having two tuners and between the tiling and freezing I gave up. With my work hours most the shows I watch are on while I'm at work so I record them and watch later. Directtv has 4 tuners.