Home TV. What are the options?

[BackOff]

SO a rant and a question...ainkiller:


I have been feeding DISH.com for the last 17 years, They say. Was 1998 if i remember.
I get ZILCH for being a long time customer.
Its now up to $105/month...Half the stuff is garbage i dont even want to see. Price increase now, another $10.
...But the stuff i like is on the MORE money channels...of course.
Not like they didnt work out the profit to buy-in ratio.

I got all snotty at some poor phone worker, just now, after they turned off service for basically what amounts to a $10 'late' fee they charged for a bill i didnt get...but sent the previous months bill amount, to be safe...and spent 20min/2weeks ago telling another Dish worker over the phone. Attempting to lure me back with a $99/month bill.

...i did tell her i was sorry for being a jerk...after a 5min elevator music session...for what its worth.


It feels like the old mentality is a fixed crutch...and a cash cow.

I live out in the boonies...so not the best for HD antenna.
Marginal speed on the old internet, WiFi 14 miles away...

Feels like they have me by the balz.
I really like the old movies, like TCM.
And the latest science and syfy stuff that makes your mind go...WWHHHAAATTTT!!!!???? the heck.

Kinda feels like the internet is going more to the advertisers now too...just a BIG commercial.

Dont mind this old dying dinosaur,probably be better if i just used the TV at the gun range and got some old projects done.

 

[Primetime4370]

We use a Roku and Sling TV. Pay $45 a month for Sling but, you still need internet. Not really sure we are saving very much TBH. We have been doing this probably over a year. Not as hard to cut cable as I thought although, we really don't watch a lot of TV.

 

[JET4]

Over the air antenna. All channels are free.

 

[BettysNephew]

Put an antenna on my roof for OTA TV and supplement with Amazon Prime Video and Netflix. There is always something to watch.

 

[nimby]

We just quit Direct TV. We were paying $130/month.

Now we have Sling TV and an over the air antenna for local channels. We pay $30/month. Couldn't be happier.

 

[Bayou_Pro]

We dumped Directv dish service and now use the Directv Now app. Works great and only cost $39 with local channels. That paired with Netflix and Amazon Prime, there is always something good to watch. The catch with streaming is that you really need good, fast, reliable internet for it to be hassle free. I use the AT&T 1 gig internet and it's just an instant download.

 

[fourwd1]

Moving to Off Topic

 

[RS Dude]

Been using an antenna since 2009 when digital signal became mandatory. Multiply your monthly cable/sat bill by 120 months, and that is how much I saved by not paying for TV.:thumb:

 

[MN4runnerman]

I have Comcast internet only and use an antenna, Netflix, and Amazon Prime for tv. It’s cheaper than when I had Comcast internet and tv but not by a whole lot. Every bit helps though. I’m considering canceling Netflix too. Maybe get Hulu instead.

 

[fourwd1]

Over the air antenna. All channels are free.

Exactly, I've had nothing but OTA TV for 30 yrs. With a big antenna on the roof and my location I get over 75 channels from 3 states since digital TV was introduced.
All free and HD.
Figure pay TV at $100/mo I've saved about $30K over the years.
That's a lot of Toyota parts.

 

[wcjeep]

OP said internet was so so. Set a reminder on your cellphone to call and ask about specials just before your current Dish network contract expires. Then repeat.

A friend is doing this with Direct tv. He's been at it for 5yrs now. He rarely pays full price more than s month.

 

[BackOff]

Thanks for some feed-back gang.

Living out on the fringe of town has good and bad points. Its nice and quite, unless someone is ripping around on dirt-bikes or shooting guns...I can live with it. not a constant noise like a city.

I get 1 bar signal on the phone out here so I never got into the cell phone craze.

I am kind of trapped in the Dish rut.
Surprised that there are actually 30 channels I watch...didn't think there was even that many.

Just 3 networks here OTA antenna, PBS/ABC/NBC maybe 10-15 watchable channels.
I am going to try a real HD antenna instead of the old scanner coax-collinear I was using.
I never can tell what is on with OTA, now I see a cool little APP, Play Store. Samsung tablet I picked up last year.
NoCable is the app, tells you were your local signal comes from and has a TV Guide. Nice!

Checking out the Sling and Roku mentioned I came across PLUTO.TV...wow that's really cool. Live internet TV FREE! I would just have to pay $95/m for internet...double what I pay now.

Guess there are getting to be more options, I had not looked into this for a few years.

While I am at it that Dish DVR, nice to be able to record and watch when you feel like. That gets shut off with service...I have years worth of shows/series recorded. sigh.

Dish said they would hook me up as a new member to get a discount...just seems so backward to me. The longer you are with a company the more you pay?
I would like a little leeway on one late bill that's not really late because you got your money and I called and told you/Dish to tell you.

 

[Bumbo]

I stopped paying for cable TV services ages ago… I have internet service and Netflix. Other than that, other the air for local is fine. That said, I really don’t watch that much TV. Whatever entertainment I do get, is generally good enough.

As for poor cell service... there are cell boosters, repeaters, and IP connected nodes available. One of my friends lives in a rural area and installed one in his GX just to increase reliability and says it works great.

 

[MadPainter]

We had been using Comcast "triple play"for internet, phone and TV. We ditched the phone and TV and kept the high speed internet. We now use our cell phones for our home comms.

Added Netflix and Amazon Prime (actually the video part is included for now with Prime membership). That did not give us any sports channels so we also added Youtube TV. Like others mentioned I don't think there's much in the way of saved money. BUT I really hated the way Comcast would sneak in price increases every 6 months or so.

I have more providers to manage now, but it feels like I'm more in control and that there's less wasted channels to pay for.

 

[TK-422]

First I will say where I live OTA is not an option "Canyon Country" is named that for a reason.

I use Spectrum for internet only 60 Mbps.

I had Dish since it started but they don't care about retaining customers. I dealt with their crappy first run DVRs that had to be rebooted daily and would do nothing to help current customers with upgrading equipment.

In 2001 I switched to DirecTv and have been happy since. I have my equipment including the dish swapped out twice free of charge. I currently have a server with 3 4K boxes and everything works great with vary vary rarely any outages.

I record everything and watch it later so I can skip all commercials.

I might pay a little more but it's worth it for the convenience for me anyway.

 

[Hunter61]

I dumped direct TV after it got to $140 per month. Put an antennae on the roof and also use Amazon prime video.

 

[RichinRidgewood]

Internet only: Switching back to Fios fiber optic (1G this time) in 2 weeks after Optimum raised their prices for 200M. No contract unlike before.

We have an Apple TV and use the Sling and Amazon Prime apps. I use the MotoGP app to watch Grand Prix Motorcycle races. All month to month. We tried the Showtime app for awhile but now have it on Sling. There are a lot of apps that are free and have some decent stuff on them.

When we quit Fios we had TV Phone Internet. I did a lot of reading on “Cutting the Cable”. It was a good feeling and saved us $.

 

[cb1111]

While it is nice that everyone is bragging about what they are using, it looks like I'm one of the few that has actually read the OP's post.

It appears that he is in a location with bad internet and no cable TV (or else he'd have better internet). He also has poor cell phone reception (but has he checked other providers?)

In general, there are three options for TV:

Antenna
Cable
Satellite

To check what is available on antenna, the OP should go to one of the signal finder sites like this one. Most are sponsored by an antenna retailer, so he should probably check multiple sites. On the site I linked to, he should try it with and without checking the "30ft antenna mast" box to see what a properly installed antenna can get.

That will give him a baseline of what he can get with a single (probably $300 or so) investment.

There are similar sites that will tell him what his internet options are. If he can decent internet, then that opens up a multitude of options like others have said. Without decent internet, none of those options are viable.

Satellite TV has two basic consumer options in the US - Dish and DirectTV. I had DTV for about 20 years and liked it, but the prices kept creeping up and I jumped ship to FIOS as soon as it became available.

Many (most?) of us live in areas where we have a multitude of internet options and a halfway decent antenna will pull in 30+ stations. In my area, a $9 flat antenna that I can literally toss behind the TV gets 50+ channels and the TV upstairs gets over 60.

So, step 1 - check antenna options
Step 2 - check internet options
Step 3 - check the other satellite provider
Step 4 - check cell phone providers

 

[RichinRidgewood]

While it is nice that everyone is bragging about what they are using, .....

facepalm


.

 

[Silver Supra]

I use to have DirecTV but dumped it. Tried DTV's streaming service but wasn't impressed. Then tried sling and same result.

We have been using Fubo for about a year now and really like it. That along with Amazon Prime and Netflix and we're set.

The only think I miss is the sports packages that DirecTV had but I can live without it.