Recently my wife and I had a year long struggle with our cable provider. We had moved last March to a new house and went the traditional route for communications. We had a couple of options and chose one that could provide us a home phone, internet and TV in one price. The cost was pretty high, but we had had the three services separately in our previous location so we just went with it.
The struggle was that the service was less than reliable. On top of that, our bill was about $225 and we were locked into a 2 year contract. We were constantly resetting things and finally we got fed up and called and cancelled the service. We were a bit shocked to see that they didn't complain nor charge us for the early termination. We had a good record of all of the calls.
So now what? We knew we had several options available to us, but didn't really know how to get from nothing to at least something quickly.
Step 1: We needed to assess what we really needed and used. The home phone was barely used so it was a no brainer to let that go. We have unlimited talk on our cell phones, so there's no extra cost in just dumping that part. We needed TV and internet. Also figure out what channels you watch and why. For some channels, "when?" is also a consideration. Why pay for MLB when it isn't the baseball season?
Step 2: Next, we had to have internet, so we called the competitive supplier in our area and they promised us good uptime. In this case, we didn't have much of an option. I briefly considered a Verizon MiFi, but the bandwidth is just too low/slow. We ended up with the local telephone company supplying us with internet. The home internet rage started with the local phone company so we just considered that they may have better behavior than a cable company supplying internet service.
Step 3: TV! The first thing we did was repurpose the cable infrastructure of our home and installed a nice high gain omni-directional Digital TV antenna on the roof. They are a lot smaller these days. I went to http://tvfool.com and was able to understand the direction of all of the TV stations from my home. Most were all SE of our house, so a good directional antenna would have also worked. We ended up with a plethora of network TV stations and some others that were quite nice. We still need to turn off the channels that we won't watch or of a different language, but needless to say, this filled the void nearly immediately for TV. Some suggestions here for DTV. Buy a good antenna! Use a "distribution amplifier" instead of a simple splitter from the antenna to your multiple drops. Most of these are 0db gain meaning that it splits the signal from the antenna and then amplifies the signal back up to what came into the distribution amp. A splitter just divides the signal and you get less signal to your TVs. Also make sure that your distribution amplifier covers a range of 50 - 1000MHz. Channel 2 is at 54MHz and can be the hardest to catch and redistribute.
Step 4: More TV! Okay, so we had grown accustomed to a DVR and many cable channels like ESPN and the Food Network. Those are not broadcast over DTV, so we needed another solution.
Step 4a: Figure out what your TV can do. In our living room we had a SmartTV and in two bedrooms and an office "dumb TVs." The living room TV is a Samsung product and they have a variety of capabilities built in to get TV channels and services through the internet already. It has Hulu and NetFlix as well as Amazon TV. We were already Amazon Prime users, so that was an easy decision. We started a free trial on Hulu and NetFlix to see what was on there. Soon we couldn't remember what was where and still had the issue of the dumb TVs.
Step 4b: A webTV channel aggregator. Huh? Well, I don't know if they call it this, but I came up with this name for devices that take services like Hulu, NetFlix, Amazon, Sling, etc and put them in one box (sometimes a stick). We did some online research and went to Best Buy and talked to a nerd. The options were AppleTV and Roku for us. There was the Fire Stick, but we didn't hear much good about it. In the end we went with Roku because we are not "Apple people." The next choice was which Roku to buy. We didn't have a 4K TV, so that eliminated the Roku4. For the three dumb TVs we went with the Roku Stick and for the living room we went with the Roku3. The Roku3 allows us to voice search through the remote and it has a handy set of ear plugs that plug into the remote for "personal viewing."
The advantage of the Roku is that all the services previously mentioned can reside on it and all can be searched for a show simultaneously. Just holding the search button and saying "MASH" and you find where MASH is on all of your subscribed services. Some of the services will charge and others are free, so it is good to compare what you have.
Step 5: See what services your internet provider offers or has a deal with. We have a provider that has a deal with ESPN, so we can watch ESPN for free, but we needed an app or device to show it. More on this later.
Step 6: Which services to buy? We have talked about the different services, but the only reason to pay for any of them is if they have channels you want to watch. In my house, we like CBS, ESPN, MLB, NBC (hey, the olympics are on!), NBCSN (for our IndyCar races), Food, etc. No one service has them all, so choose wisely. Take advantage of free trials and note what they have and don't have. We buy some services through Sling TV because they have the NBC networks and ESPN. We can get other services through Hulu and NetFlix that we often watch. CBS has their own structure and for $5.99/mth you can have good access. I guess it is worth it to get Survivor, Dancing with the Stars, and our favorite cop shows.
Step 7: Decide if you need a computer connected to your TV. As I said earlier, our internet provider has some deals in place that allow us to watch ESPN through a computer for free. Sling has it, but they charge $5/month. We needed to decide. In the end, we went with the Sling for $5 so we could watch it on the other TVs in the house through the Roku sticks - we like sports! We are still getting a computer configured for our TV (older laptop that I'm repairing) to gain access to other services that are free through our internet provider. The laptop simply needs to have an HDMI port and you are set.
So, what is the tally for our new paradigm? We were paying $223/mth for all three services and were unhappy. We now pay $74 for the best internet we can buy (taxes included). Sling is $25, Hulu is $12 with no commercials (worth every penny!) and NetFlix is $8. We don't include Amazon because we have Prime for free shipping. So, $74 + $25 + $12 + $8 = $119. That's a savings of $104/mth and we still get everything we want.
Future decisions: Do we need a DVR? There are DTV DVRs on the market for about $200 and I am considering it. However, most of the shows we watch are available on demand, so we are still contemplating this decision.
I hope this is helpful! Ping me if you have more suggestions.
Lance
