Who has cut the cord?

I get all 250+ channels that's on our home DishTV on both the boat and dock for free via the DishTV app. Either use my iPhone or iPad with the connector into the TV of choice, and done.

It uses our family room TV which has the DVR, without interfering with its use - and I can watch anything anywhere with zero additional cost.

Other huge benefit for me is I fly for a living, and whether at some hotel in the US or overseas, I can still watch my home Dish on my iPad. Overseas it only works via Wifi, but that's never been an issue.
 
Fly'n Family said:
Either use my iPhone or iPad with the connector into the TV of choice, and done.
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I know you can watch it on ipad or iphone but a few months ago they stopped your ability to stream to your tv without buying Direct TV Now. How are you getting around that ?
What is this connector you mention ?
 
Fly'n Family said:
I get all 250+ channels that's on our home DishTV on both the boat and dock for free via the DishTV app. Either use my iPhone or iPad with the connector into the TV of choice, and done.

It uses our family room TV which has the DVR, without interfering with its use - and I can watch anything anywhere with zero additional cost.

Other huge benefit for me is I fly for a living, and whether at some hotel in the US or overseas, I can still watch my home Dish on my iPad. Overseas it only works via Wifi, but that's never been an issue.
Click to expand...
I can do that with Direct TV app too. If the Wifi is good enough. But that's not "cutting the cord"
 
ZZ13 said:
Once everyone cuts the cord and all the cable companies move to streaming, wouldn't data plan costs go through the roof, since they'll know you have no other TV viewing options?
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Well I know once i cancel my cable tv services my internet services will jump up about $20-$30.
 
Blueone said:
I know you can watch it on ipad or iphone but a few months ago they stopped your ability to stream to your tv without buying Direct TV Now. How are you getting around that ?
What is this connector you mention ?
Click to expand...
True! While I can watch DirectTV on my iPad, I can no longer use my Apple AV connector to get it from the iPad to a TV.
 
I cut the tv cord, but the cord for the internet is annoying. Would prefer more competition but my only choice for ISP is Spectrum (formerly brighthouse) and CenturyLink. I might try century link, for a few months/year, then Spectrum will come calling with their “come get Internet for 29.95...” and then I’ll try that. Right now, Spectrum is charging over 80$ for internet.
The only thing we miss right now is college football, we don’t have ESPN, so we have to head to local sports bar. Sling is not bad, we have done it a few times. We stream a lot of tv shows, Netflix, hbo, showtime, amazon are the main ones, but overall do not watch that much tv. I prefer the pay as you go option of tv shows with commercials. If I’m watching, I’m paying by listening to the advertising. I don’t know why they cannot offer a free bundle of tv channels with commercials, just like over the air, but via internet. ESPN drives me crazy, you pay monthly for the service (they get an average of 20$ per cable subscriber I think?), yet they show commercials and make money on that as well. I like hbo, showtime, I pay for it, and no commercials. I like TV apps like The CW, they have a stable of shows you can watch for free, but you have to see the commercials.
 
Irie308 said:
Well I know once i cancel my cable tv services my internet services will jump up about $20-$30.
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I cut the TV service from Optimum and went with Playstation Vue (Sony is confusing everyone with the name since it does not require a Playstation console) and right now there is no turning back. The plus for me was the 5 streams included with the service. Right now I stream on Amazon via FireTV Sticks to all my TVs and setup a mini computer to access all the things that I can not access on FireTV.

While it all sounds good there is a caveat - you can not stream on a FireTV stick (or other TV connected device) if anything is connected at your home. So if you forget to disconnect at home you will get blocked from the service on the boat. While this makes no sense to me I am sure it is a licensing deal. With out that I can still stream on my laptop and tablets but not to the TV. I could get a separate account but that undermines the cost savings.

To address all my issues I plan on using two NUCs (Intel Mini Computers) and Air Mouse controllers. The output of this will be HDMI into a modulator that will back feed into the COAX on the boat. Then any TV on the COAX backbone will be able to receive the TV show, movie, etc buy tuning to a channel. The OTA channels will also be available.

For the streaming service I am using my T-Mobile hotspot on my phone with unlimited 4G LTE data. When there is no WIFI or Mobile Data we can fall back to any of the uploaded movies on the computers.

While this is not completely installed on my boat yet it is up an running in my office and I have used the Vue services on FireTVs last year on board.

-Kevin
 
spikedaddy99 said:
For streaming services, what kind of sports coverages do you get? It's about the only reason I keep Direct TV. M
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Our Sling TV has a $5. option for a variety of sports channels. Not a sports buff other than golf (which is what we got it for) but there are a slew of football, basketball, Hockey channels. Im sure in the summer that changes up to baseball.
 
Todd320 said:
I cut the tv cord, but the cord for the internet is annoying. Would prefer more competition but my only choice for ISP is Spectrum (formerly brighthouse) and CenturyLink. I might try century link, for a few months/year, then Spectrum will come calling with their “come get Internet for 29.95...” and then I’ll try that. Right now, Spectrum is charging over 80$ for internet.
The only thing we miss right now is college football, we don’t have ESPN, so we have to head to local sports bar. Sling is not bad, we have done it a few times. We stream a lot of tv shows, Netflix, hbo, showtime, amazon are the main ones, but overall do not watch that much tv. I prefer the pay as you go option of tv shows with commercials. If I’m watching, I’m paying by listening to the advertising. I don’t know why they cannot offer a free bundle of tv channels with commercials, just like over the air, but via internet. ESPN drives me crazy, you pay monthly for the service (they get an average of 20$ per cable subscriber I think?), yet they show commercials and make money on that as well. I like hbo, showtime, I pay for it, and no commercials. I like TV apps like The CW, they have a stable of shows you can watch for free, but you have to see the commercials.
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Holy crap - we pay $56. for internet from spectrum and that includes the modem which I keep saying I'm going to buy instead of 'renting' it from them.
 
Captn TJ said:
Holy crap - we pay $56. for internet from spectrum and that includes the modem which I keep saying I'm going to buy instead of 'renting' it from them.
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Holy crap!!!...I was told last week mine is going to $70 w/modem and nothing else... its just a racket. My neighborhood has one provider.... it’s like government run health care.... it will just keep going up without competition
 
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spikedaddy99 said:
I can do that with Direct TV app too. If the Wifi is good enough. But that's not "cutting the cord"
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I don't need WiFi, unless I'm out of the country, it works great off cell service. Was just throwing that out there as it's a zero cost option both on the dock and on the water - obviously providing one has satellite service at home and the free app.
 
So you guys have given me a renewed interest in cutting the cord from Direct TV ....but our WiFi is really bad through out the house. We have 2,000sqft per floor, 3 floors. The router is on the middle floor in the furthest corner in an office that I can’t move. So coverage Is not that great above or below in the areas opposite that corner.

If we were to cut we would have to fix that problem. A little bit of research suggests this would be a good fix for $299. Does anyone have experience with this google product or could recommend something else?

https://www.costco.com/Google-Wifi-4-Pack---Whole-Home-Mesh-Wifi-System.product.100406436.html
 
Blueone said:
So you guys have given me a renewed interest in cutting the cord from Direct TV ....but our WiFi is really bad through out the house. We have 2,000sqft per floor, 3 floors. The router is on the middle floor in the furthest corner in an office that I can’t move. So coverage Is not that great above or below in the areas opposite that corner.

If we were to cut we would have to fix that problem. A little bit of research suggests this would be a good fix for $299. Does anyone have experience with this google product or could recommend something else?

https://www.costco.com/Google-Wifi-4-Pack---Whole-Home-Mesh-Wifi-System.product.100406436.html
Click to expand...

I installed a Ubiquiti access point. Its a commercial grade unit and we use them at the office too.
https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac-pro/

They are wired and powered via POE and unless you have a machine running java that you can use as a controller you may want to looks at their cloud key product. Its definitely not your typical home AP and still requires a router but it was the best in the throughput.

Tested some other access points and these consistently provided the best wifi throughput. I have also heard some good things about their AmpliFi line too.

-Kevin
 
KevinC said:
I installed a Ubiquiti access point. Its a commercial grade unit and we use them at the office too.
https://www.ubnt.com/unifi/unifi-ap-ac-pro/

They are wired and powered via POE and unless you have a machine running java that you can use as a controller you may want to looks at their cloud key product. Its definitely not your typical home AP and still requires a router but it was the best in the throughput.

Tested some other access points and these consistently provided the best wifi throughput. I have also heard some good things about their AmpliFi line too.

-Kevin
Click to expand...
I actually use these at work.... but the problem is they are wired to the router... I cant do that thru the house
 
Irie308 said:
Since our new to us boat came without a Sat TV system I've been finding it very hard to justify installing one. On our old boat i found a KVH unit on craigslist for about $1200 and installed myself 4-5 years ago. I then paid about $30 per month for standard definition programming with a 2 year contract with direct tv. Now with the price of an HD unit and the uncertainty with whats going on with the support for standard definition units in 2019 I've been taking a hard look at the multiple streaming services out there. I've always been shocked by how many boaters i come across who have the units installed and never activated them. I've also thought about every time I've opened up my cable bill to see we are paying close to $300 for a home cable services that we pretty much only watch local news and maybe a few shows on hbo when they are in season.

With the price and abundance of smart tv's nowadays it seems irrational to pay so much for cable or satellite services. We've always justified cable by saying that the kids want to watch their shows but I watched my 7 year old pick up the remote to the cable box this week and used the voice command to open up Youtube. Not cartoon network or the Disney channel.

With this being said I've been taking a hard look at these streaming services and what they offer doesn't look bad at all for $25 - $40 per month and its month to month with support for up to 6 simultaneously streamed devices in some cases.

Have most people cut the cord at home and on the boat. Would love to hear some feed back on some streaming services and devices such as Roku, Sling TV, Youtube TV, Playstation Vue, Hulu, Netflix etc.
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Many boat on the dock; consequently, have the WIFI or cable feed from the marina for their A/V services. Many others camp on their cell signal for the A/V feed. And then there are others that cruise in proximity to other WIFI sources that can be tapped for the services. Then, of course, there is the antenna based local HD feeds. Much of our boating takes us out of ground based signal range and either have no service or rely on satellite based (DirectTV / Dish) service. And if cost is not an obstacle then there is satellite IT feeds which can give the best of internet and A/V. I have the AT&T DirectTV satellite system, Sirius, Cell, and HD broadcast capabilities on the boat which the DTV is an extension of my home DirectTV service at an additional $7 / month. The DTV serves us well as much of our boating experience is outside of ground based range. The down side to the DTV is it's the same 600 channels of which 550+ are crap that we put up with at home. But, that's what you get in the middle of nowhere. With all that said, AT&T announced that they launched the last DirectTV satellite; meaning they will eventually retire the system primarily due to customers moving to a-la-carte services like Netflix, Amazon, and the upcoming Disney systems. In the next six or seven years there are new internet satellite constellations being deployed which will render Dish and DTV "you get what we feed you" philosophies a thing of the past.
 
I moved to directv now about a year ago at home, which I can also use at the boat. It just takes wifi. Also the new smart tvs have many channels to watch if they are connected to wifi, and that’s free. Directv now via internet is around 40 bucks a month, vs hundreds with cable
 
Hey good topic.

Who uses a Sling Box?

Where I normally overnight (near state parks) and the marina has good wifi so I'm thinking this might be a great alternative to watch my cable in real time while away from the house.
 
spikedaddy99 said:
Another question: What type of internet service (how fast) do you need? We are in the country. Cell service isn't 100% great for using data, and internet service may be tapped at a gig (if that)
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We have the most basic cable service which I believe is 1 G. Plenty for streaming - but not sure about gaming since we don't use it for that.
 
Little Ducky said:
Hey good topic.

Who uses a Sling Box?

Where I normally overnight (near state parks) and the marina has good wifi so I'm thinking this might be a great alternative to watch my cable in real time while away from the house.
Click to expand...
We have Sling and love it.
 
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