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Cable Alternatives (Hulu? Netflix? Playon? Amazon?)
Peen
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Registered User regular
My wife and I are thinking about cutting the cable cord but we're not sure what the best way to do it is. I've seen the selection that's offered by the different services, what I'm curious about is the experiences people have had with them. I'm most interested in getting the Playon premium version, it seems like it has the most stuff, but I'd feel better about it if I heard from someone that used it that it's boss. I'd be streaming it through my PS3, for reference's sake.
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We keep netflix and hulu going on the xbox in the living room, and boxee in the bedroom.
To be honest, I haven't missed having cable much at all.
You may have to wait a little bit for some shows to pop up on one of the two services, but the amount of money you save is totally worth it.
Our cable company wanted like 50-60 dollars a month for cable, and we are paying about 15-20 and getting all the stuff we need.
That's all me and Kirbith use.
And like Dr. Frenchenstein said an HD antenna is a good thing to have for basic channels.
Mine was $30 at best buy.
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I abandoned DirecTV for an xBox with Netflix, Hulu+, connected to my Win7 Media Center PC and bitTorrent. Soon I'll build a media box and install xmbc.
Cable / satellite can kiss my butt!
I cut the cable cord about six months ago and I haven't regretted it once. I use my xbox 360 for netflix, the HD antenna, and tversity on my pc to play audio and video files through the 360. Then I've got a small htpc that plays any web content like hulu or the streaming sites from ABC, Fox, HBO, Showtime, etc.
I was paying $130 a month for cable internet and digital cable, another $10 for xbox live, and $10 for netflix, and now I just pay $30 for cable internet, and $10 for xbox live and netflix each so I save $100 a month.
You won't miss cable, and any tv show you watch is either on hulu or hulu plus, or the shows network site streaming.
Also when you drop cable you find a plethora of great television series on netflix from the UK and america that you probably never watched the first go-around, that are much better than anything currently on tv.
Go for it. It's a good idea
edit: I just saw you mentioned playon. You don't need that. Use tversity (free version) it'll stream any perfectly legally aquired video content to the xbox 360 or ps3 without problems. There's some issues running .mkv HD content on the 360, but it's fine on the ps3
Playon will let you stream Hulu, TBS, ESPN 3 (depending on your cable network) and a whole bunch of other things to your Xbox of PS3, though. No Hulu Plus subscription necessary. And, it will stream your media library stuff.
ahh... see the 360 already does espn3 on it's own so I figured the ps3 did as well.
Seems like the choice is clear.
but they're listening to every word I say
Warning though, Playon requires a lot of bandwidth, and in my experience, doesn't always play very nicely with a wireless connection. Now, if you have both your PC and your media player (PS3 or 360) wired, then it probably won't be an issue.
The content is often mutually exclusive. Example: I can watch current episodes of some shows on Hulu+, but no back catalog. I can watch the old eps on Netflix, but their content stops 2 years ago. Thus, a mix of the two is great.
I've got the regular version of playon already, I'd just be upgrading to the premium one (maybe) to get the rest of the "channels" and access to the scripts people have made to get access to more things. I've got my PS3 wired and my PC wireless and yeah, it has trouble with movies sometimes but not bad. I like the hulu access because they've got new stuff where netflix doesn't. I think we're going to do it, I'm just sick of Comcast.
We have the most basic netflix account that we route instant streaming through our Tivo and also a device called "Roku" for our upstairs television. I don't know tons about the Roku because the hubs set it up, but I do know that it JUST WORKS and we never have to mess with anything. Easy to set up as well, I can't recommend it enough.
Personally, we tried Hulu and hated it. I know that it gives the most recent shows and has better quality BUT you get a serious amount of ads, EVEN if you are paying for the service. These ads are hella annoying too, and if you are watching in a computer, sometimes the ads will open a browser in the background for the website of the company (I think Allstate did this a bunch) so that when you are done watching, you have like 15 tabs open. Freezing, random changes in the aspect ratio, and cutting off the last 30 seconds of a show were also consistent problems with Hulu.
I might put up some more later when Mr. Killgrimage gets home and I can ask him about how we hooked up the basic cable to the internet.
Hulu does have annoying ads, even if you subscribe to Hulu Plus. However, their player allows you to set the streaming rate fairly easily, which is a major concern if you don't have high bandwidth or you have a spotty internet connection (which may very well be the case for you). They have far less ads than the players on the major networks, however. CBS's player, for example, will post 3 commercials in a row, from 30s to 1 min. If you are used to watching regular television, Hulu will seem like an improvement.
On a tangent, does anyone know how to manually set the streaming rate of the Netflix player?
The ads opening new browser windows doesn't happen on ps3s and, I would assume, xbox360s. As for computers, I run firefox with popups disabled and adblock plus and I've never had hulu open a new window on me before. Also, the commercials are but a fraction of what you'd deal with on regular tv.
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Yeah, don't build one.
Get a Dell Zino HD for around $600 and call it a day.
Then again, as I was watching Masterchef the other night, I was thinking to myself A) "God, this is an atrocious, terrible, awful show" and
That parenthetical was internal monologue, so...
It works excellent (although I had to run a network cable to each box - they were not happy with WiFi) but my wife and I are used to consuming tv on a delayed schedule (we were Tivo users before) and we don't watch news or sports which must be seen live. Our cable bill dropped from ~$150 for many channels, cable cards, Tivo, etc to $33 for interweb only, so we're quite satisfied.
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Comcast, Charter, and Time Warner don't require you to have cable to have their awesome high speed internet, and it's about $35 a month on average for ~6-12 megs depending on where you live.
Then there's DSL too...
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I honestly miss cable maybe once every few weeks and that is for an hour or so and then I stop caring.
Most of the things I miss out on are things I watch with friends, anyways (sports, events, etc), so in that case I just find someone who has cable and go there!
I guess for comparisons sake, Ill say that setup, TOTAL (services, internet, xbox live) is $61 a month.
And $40 of that is in internet.
TWC in addition to their internet would cost me another $60 alone.
Even without the option of Hulu and iPlayer, I'd just use netflix and skip cable. That said I'm always traveling on weekends and generally wherever I'm at has cable or sat regardless.