Cut the cord!
- Thread starter deruitem
- Start date
WE cut the cord earlier this year and though we lived about 35 miles from the antenna, we managed to find a nice outdoor antenna. For recording we pre-ordered a Tablo and it is great. I highly recommend it. We have the two tuner model and a terabyte USB drive.
I also have had a ROKU for many years and our daughter gifted us an Apple TV which we like just as well. Hulu and Netflix along with youtube have easily replaced what I had on the cable.
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Pagers are most reliable. Much more reliable than a cell phone, on many accounts. Personally I would not call this technology and application weird, nor wild.
I cut the cable a while back and I'm using an antenna plus a Roku to feed hulu & Netflix to the TV. There have been rumblings that Google is going to come in here with faster, cheaper internet service, and I have also heard that local universities are working with a provider for better service. I'm happy to be free of the extra charges.
Next up is eliminating my family phone plan. 50% of the clan should age out pretty soon and be on their own. After that, my wife can keep her smart phone and I'll go back to the cheapest possible phone I can get for emergencies.
Next up is eliminating my family phone plan. 50% of the clan should age out pretty soon and be on their own. After that, my wife can keep her smart phone and I'll go back to the cheapest possible phone I can get for emergencies.
We cut the cord in the spring and have no plans to go back. We use chromecast to stream Netflix, YouTube, anything any movies/tv shows on our PC and anything from our internet browser. We also use a mohu antenna (better hd signal than cable) so I can watch football and other random shows. Our bill went from $171/month to $35....hard to argue with that. The only thing I miss is NHL 
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For those that stream TV shows and movies - how much data do you use per month?
I am not sure, but I imagine that it is a lot. You certainly could not regularly stream off of a limited cellular data plan.
ya think it's over 300gb per month?
Had AT&T u-verse in 2011. After the term was up later that year, i haven't had cable since.
HULU and netflix is all i have now. Sometimes i watch local channels if i can catch them in the weak antenna signal.
HULU and netflix is all i have now. Sometimes i watch local channels if i can catch them in the weak antenna signal.
I am not 100%, but these two articles seem helpful:
http://www.cordcuttersnews.com/comparing-data-usage-for-netflix-hulu-and-amazon/
http://www.gci.com/kb/netflix-movie-and-data-usage
We have a Tablo also. We have our antenna in the attic with a pre-amp. It is connected to the Tablo box with a USB hard drive. The hard drive is connected to a wifi repeater. The Roku is connected to our TV and connects to the Tablo via the Tablo channel.
Streaming video data usage, in general, is about 1GB per hour. That can vary, because there are a TON of factors that go into the exact figure, but it's a reasonably accurate estimation tool.
gezzz so If you don't have unlimited data then you won't be streaming that much
All of my streaming is via wifi at home. You would rip through an insane amount of data trying to stream all of your content regularly.
Indeed. I think most folks don't really understand how much data it is to watch high quality video (or any video actually), over the Internet, and it's going to cause quite a bit of problems before it's solved. The problem is that when you stream, you're creating a point to point connection with whatever service you're streaming from. Everyone streaming has a unique connection - all X million of them. You can see where this is heading...it doesn't scale. The congestion at the high levels can get very bad, very quickly, and that's with a relatively small number of people streaming (compared to the total viewership).
Compare that to regular TV (cable, sat, etc)...you have a couple hundred channels, each at most a 1GB-2GB / hour (SD channels will compress down lower than that), and that's all the bandwidth you need regardless of the number of viewers. That traditional "one to many" model is much more efficient, but obviously not as flexible, and not on demand. There are things occurring that will help - caching providers' content out at the network "edges" that are closer to the customers, avoiding congestion on the big Internet backbones. This will (and has) created quite a bit of fighting between content providers and network companies. You can't really blame the network companies...it's a tough situation when you've got 80% of your peak time bandwidth consumed by a relatively small number of customers streaming - most of them paying a flat fee with no caps. As more and more stream directly over the Internet - it gets worse. Technology can fix this (and it will), but it's quite an overhaul. With the whole country streaming, there have to be major changes to the networks to accommodate. In the short term, I'm not sure consumers are ready to pay the bill. They just don't really get how much they're consuming while streaming, because they think it's no different than regular TV.
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I just checked our account and here are the numbers for the past couple months:
August- 120GB
September- 140GB
October- 82GB
We were gone for about two weeks in October, otherwise it'd be well over 100GB as well. We have been streaming an episode or two of Chuck or The Blacklist pretty much every other night. I stream soccer and football about twice a week. All of our streaming is in HD. I sold the Playstation so there's no gaming usage. We don't download very much either, though we use Spotify here and there. So our usage is pretty much all web browsing and streaming.
Interesting, thank you for that.
I don't watch much TV now, but when I have all the movies and TV shows at my finger tips along with HBOGo....I fear I might watch quite a bit.
Anyone know if AT&T has a data cap with their internet?
And would 24mbps be enough for streaming? or would 45 be significantly better?
Haven't watched that crap in years and have several extra dollars in my pocket to prove it.
Two people using Netflix/gaming separately. We have a 30mb down speed, which is adequate. 24mb should be sufficient for one person.
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I'm not sure what ATT's policies are...but most caps I've seen are 250GB.
24mbps is plenty if you don't have multiple users on at once...my wife and I run 15mbps with no issues. She usually is catching up on Hulu Saturday mornings while I stream soccer. I believe Netflix only requires 5mbps to stream in HD.
