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cutting the cable [Dropping Cable TV for Hulu/Netflix/etc.]
fightinfilipino
Angry as Hell#BLMRegistered User regular
Angry as Hell#BLMRegistered User regular
so i've gotten pretty much fed up with cable tv and how expensive it gets for so little. i'm seriously considering building myself an HTPC and going all digital. is there anything i should know before making the jump? any guides on where to find specific shows, if i want to watch them?
most of the articles i've read sound somewhat pessimistic, in the sense that content creators are slowly-but-surely pulling their creations from Hulu/Netflix/Amazon etc. because they can't make as much profit as they might through cable.
most of the articles i've read sound somewhat pessimistic, in the sense that content creators are slowly-but-surely pulling their creations from Hulu/Netflix/Amazon etc. because they can't make as much profit as they might through cable.
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Hulu is nice for the shows you regularly follow and don't want to wait for netflix to add.
You can also get season subs to shows (I did this for Walking Dead last season) that may be 'can't miss' for you on places like Zune(just what I know since it's on the xbox).
Some networks also run replays of their shows on their websites.
Maybe a list of your favorite/can't miss shows would help the people of PA help you with this decision?
Also, sports blackouts suck. Makes me want to move away just so I can buy the sports package and watch my team without paying cable out the ass.
DVD season sets for shows are becoming pretty reasonably priced too, so if there's a pet show that isn't available on Netflix / Hulu / whatever, you can always add an extra $30-40~ bi-monthly or whatever for the DVD set you want.
This is sort-of accurate, and something to look out for: studios (not content creators, just distributors / publishers) initially offered Netflix extremely cheap licensing contacts for their shows, and some of these contracts have expired or are about to expire, and the studios are very likely to ask Netflix for much more money if they want to renew the contracts. So it's likely that Netflix is going to lose a bunch of AAA content.
honestly, i'm not a big TV watcher. i occasionally enjoy stuff on the Discovery Channel/Animal Planet (like Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs, Shark Week). don't really follow any of the big "shows". my girlfriend (who i live with) likes Sons of Anarchy, Game of Thrones, a few reality shows (Top Chef, Project Runway, etc.) a lot of those seem readily available on Netflix/Hulu.
i guess i'd want to catch stuff like Legend of Korra, Tron: Uprising, and some other random cartoons, but that stuff will probably be out on DVD or some other digital format?
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
Personally I don't have a TV and watch everything off online sources, and I don't miss a TV at all. I live on my own so watching something monitor sized isn't really an issue (though it's a decent sized monitor), though even then you could still hook up to a TV with the right stuff.
The stuff i've bolded I know is available on netflix streaming just from a quick browse. Not the current seasons but everything up to. Hulu is a great counter to netflix, especially since you would be using a PC (like someone else said, they inexplicably don't have all the same stuff available on consoles).
Dunno how easy it is to browse their instant Q if you aren't logged in. But that may be a good idea OP. I think you can look through Hulu stuff easy enough that way too.
Another thing to keep in mind is that depending on how the cable is set up in your place, you may still get basic cable even if you're just paying for internet. Down here the last 3 places I've lived as long as the cable lines were turned on for internet service, we got about 30 channels. Your basic stuff like network tv and our 6 PBS stations. But it was nice because if I so desired I could watch primetime network tv live instead of waiting a day. If you're building a HTPC keep this in mind and you can build your own DVR if it's that big a deal to you.
Are you a TV browser, or do you watch exclusively from DVR? I'm a browser of what's on "right now"; and it's not uncommon for me to fall asleep on the couch watching some dreck like storage wars, a pawn shop show, a gunsmithing show, or whatever is on velocity/speed network. However I'm not so attached to cable and if I cut it out I'll just watch less TV and the TV I watch is watching serials through off of NetFlix. We keep NetFlix for their deep library of children's programming.
My wife likes a fair amount of current TV shows. Current Gossip Girl is only available via Amazon Prime (we weren't going to subscribe to that in addition to Hulu Plus and Netflix when we cut the cord). So I resorted to less than legitimate means to download content.
Basically, you're not going to get a satisfactory answer to whether or not there is sufficient content out their to suit your needs if you cut the cord; you'll just have to try it out. I did notice I got more work done and more sleep when there's no cable.
The cordcutters subreddit is a pretty good resource.
For reference, we dropped our cable bill by about $100/mo (from cable+internet to just internet) and we already had subscribed to Hulu+ and Netflix and Amazon Prime. The only increase in cost to us versus what we were doing before is the a la carte Amazon purchases which might make up $10-20/mo, so we ended up dropping our "content bill" by about $80/mo and are very happy with the results.
er, yeah, i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that you might want to edit your post or something
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
― Dr. Seuss, Oh, the Places You'll Go!
Don't forget getting your southpark fix on southparkstudios.com.
I have actually never subscribed to cable because I refuse to pay for the commercials. Yeah, I know, you see commercials on Hulu+ even though you pay for it, but it is a really small bill and the commercials are relatively short. I remember when they got people to pay for cable "because we have to pay for the programming somehow and there are no commercials." Now they get paid by the subscriber, the channel to carry them AND the commercials. I watch cable whenever I have a hotel room and I have to say it seems programming has gone way, WAY down hill. It seems like at least 50% is merely reruns of what they played 4-6 hours earlier. If I am going to pay through the nose, I can at least get fresh content. Peeww.
Something to note about Amazon Prime is that you can access the movies only if you are logged in as the prime subscriber. So if you have a whole household, others will need your user and pass to watch videos. If you have it on the tv so that it never logs out, that works out better. Otherwise, dispensing your user and pass to everyone in your house is just... a violation of everything security.
First though a bit of background. I built a HTPC with the ability to dvr. Still have cable internet and the basic tv package (local networks). It was the cheapest package to get just internet, because comcast is stupid. Probably paying around $45/month in the seattle area. I do think if you end up with just internet you will probably have the local channels still anyway (and even if you don't, over the air is usually a good possibility).
1) The HTPC is definitely the way to go for me. I could customize a lot of the setup, and I have it working pretty flawlessly with a regular tv remote. Which was huge for the WAF (wife acceptance factor). Also, if you do find that you can't live without cable, you can just resubscribe and continue using the HTPC to easily record/watch tv/watch netflix/watch hulu. Provided you have the right hardware of course.
2) We pretty much exclusively use Netflix, Hulu, and the local channels. It gives you pretty much everything that isn't on a specialty channel (HBO, showtime, ect..). The only super annoying part is that hulu will only have shows on for a limited time. So if I happen to forget when a show comes back on, I might miss a few before they are no longer available.
3) It will never be as easy as cable. You will have problems sometimes. If your modem is having problems, you can't watch anything. Ect... I like it a lot more, but I can't deny that I've had way more issues than I ever had with a set top box and cable.
4) Amazon prime/itunes have lots of stuff you can rent, but pretty much shit for free. Plus amazon is doing this bullshit where you can't stream movies to a computer, only to an amazon approved device (xbox 360 is what i use). Which I hate and means I very rarely rent from amazon.
5) There are some things you just won't be able to get legally. Mainly sports, and anything from HBO/showtime. Although with the HBO/showtime, you may be able to add just that channel with your basic cable package and work something out. Haven't really looked into that.
If you have any questions about building a HTPC I can answer some. I think I'm still pretty up to date on the necessary hardware/software.
Something to consider is if you're well located enough to be in range of over the air broadcasts. If your location is ideal, a simple TV-top antenna can wrangle you the major networks. In less ideal places and/or if you own your own property, you can erect a freestanding house antenna which will give you even better signals.
If you punch your location into here you can see what digital TV signals you're in range of.
i'm definitely going down this route. i'm decently experienced in system building, but i have NO clue as to the software i'll need. i've heard of MythTV, but that looks like a Linux-based thing. if possible, i'd like to install a flavor of Windows 7 on this machine (in part because i have a license available!).
also, damn it's hard to find a smaller-size case! i thought there'd be tons of HTPC cases out there that fit in similar dimensions to, say, a cable box, but i can't find any! i'm restricted to about 9 7/8" H by 16" W by maybe about 20" deep...
steam | Dokkan: 868846562
Those are my two recommendations as far as what software to use. Although boxee won't be updating their PC software anymore in favor of focusing on their boxee box product. So XBMC may be the better bet in the long run. I'm sure there are a ton of other options, those are just the only two I've personally used.
Just a quick note on that, Amazon allows you to share your prime membership with something like 5 people in a household. So they each have their own individual logins so you don't actually have to give them your account info. Of course if you're living with someone it's probably not that big a deal to share your password, but it's nice to have the individual accounts for ordering gifts etc. without giving them away in the order history.
I just want to clarify this. You can totally use your own account to order things with prime. But for videos or borrowing books, it is only the prime subscriber who gets the benefit, unless they've changed it recently. I don't always like sharing my password with someone I live with (which could be teenagers, roommates, your alcoholic uncle bob).
If you really want to watch popular shows as soon as they come out, Hulu+ is pretty much mandatory, as no other streaming service provides that kind of content. That being said, there are still some holes in the Hulu+ library, and they still do time delays on some of the content there (in some cases it's as long as a week, and I've heard of rare occasions where they wait for the full season of something to finish before allowing it on Hulu+). There are a lot of shows that I've heard about but never got around to watching, so in that regard I'm happy without Hulu+ because I can just plow through the backlog of good stuff that I've been meaning to watch but never got around to (recent examples: Dr. Who and 30 Rock; up next: Breaking Bad and Mad Men).
I have two minor quibbles:
1) Your intuition about an HTPC is a good one. I only use the Roku, and find it annoying that I can't access stuff that's readily available online. Content like Comedy Central, TED, and Youtube are either only available online or much easier to access via a standard web browser. Add in a Blu-Ray player to the HTPC set-up and you're pretty much good to go.
2) There are times when not having live, "passive" television around can actually not be a good thing. There's no such thing as channel surfing - you pretty much have to have some idea of what you want to watch when you sit down, otherwise you're spending the entire time browsing catalogs to find something to watch. Sometimes it's nice to just have the local news or random TV stuff "on" in the background.
The two major quibbles have already been mentioned by others:
1) No HBO. If you enjoy watching HBO shows, there is absolutely no way to get them without a cable/dish package. The only workaround for this is if you know someone who has HBO and is willing to let you use their provider and HBO account info to log in to HBO GO.
2) No sports. If you enjoy watching sports, you need a way to get access to the broadcast/premium stations that show games. Even if you pay for a live streaming service directly from the league (e.g., MLB.TV), if you live near your team(s) of choice then you will have to wait for the games to be over before you can actually watch them, as they implement blackout policies. The cost and difficulty of getting around the blackouts are prohibitive and generally not worth the bother (e.g., purchasing bandwidth on a proxy service).
A partial solution to both #2's in my lists are buying an antenna and using that to get free broadcast TV. In the case of an HD antenna, that can cost anywhere from $30-$150 depending upon your needs. I haven't tried it yet, but am looking into it now... Alternatively, if you have cable internet you can try splitting the line and plugging it in directly to your TV, but I personally have never been able to get that to work.
If you're going down the xbmc route, despite messing around with a raspberry pi, (which should be able to do what you want) for the sake of your relationship, it'll be far easier to spend an extra fifty get a boxee box.
You will, in time, get xbmc working on anything you can think of, when things inevitably go wrong it'll be far easer with boxee than a self built Linux box.
Saying that, it is pretty cool to have an entire computer that plugs into the USB outlet on my tv which boots up when I turn the tv on.
Satans..... hints.....
I'm watching The West Wing on my PC right now, so... huh?
If you're a student I believe you can still get Prime for half price. I just auto-renewed a couple weeks ago and it was only $39.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
Look for cases that are for mini-itx form factor motherboards. You can find some pretty small cases, but the small ones often have limited power supplies (usually in the 60-200W range). Also,cast your search across all case types. The one I was interested in was from a company called "Habey" and at newegg you'd have to look into "server chassis"to find it.
Huh, good to know. I got the one year free, but I thought that was the end of the student benefits.
My bad. I meant HD movies. Maybe it's a local thing but I definitely, confirmed, can not watch HD movies that I rented from amazon on my pc. Only on my xbox 360. This link, about halfway down has a note, that confirms you can't stream HD movies to a computer. As for how much free content they have, I didn't say it was nothing. There is some good content, but in my experience it is no where near as much as hulu/netflix.
As for software I use windows media center as my main interface. Everything works through WMC. The only downside is that it sounds like microsoft may be killing WMC since it's a pay for add on for windows 8.
I did do a few modifications to WMC with media center studio. Which allows me to customize things like the background and menu items without going into the dll's. I have a netflix/hulu plugin that allows me to switch to their proprietary interface for accessing those, but I get to that by clicking on an icon in WMC. I also use event ghost to make my harmony remote work exactly how I want it to. Finally I use media browser as a WMC plugin to access my local media (digital copies of movies/tv shows). You can set up WMC so that you can get to all that stuff through the regular interface, but I found that for large collections the media browser interface was nicer to look at.
I haven't really played around with XBMC or any of the other full on media centers. For XBMC I've heard you can run it as your entire OS. Like all you need to instal is XBMC. Or you can run it as a program within other OS (not sure which ones it's compatible with). I have used playon, and I didn't find it that great. In principle I think it's supposed to be a way to collect a bunch of internet streams at different websites into one searchable interface, that you can access from a bunch of networked devices. It seems like hulu works better and has more content to me.
EDIT: As for cases, silverstone has some nice thinner ones. Someone else somewhere on these forums recommended this guide for a bunch of build specific info. It has some other cases, but I still like the thin silverstone ones the best.
I did a bunch of research on what antenna the internets recommend, and it pretty much came down to "it depends". It is really case by case, and depends massively on your local surroundings. For some people the $20 radioshack ones work great. I will say that the clearstream 2 and the Leaf get recommended a lot. You can use sites like tvfool.com, to see what channels you should be able to get over the air.
If you do go the antenna route, or the local channels over cable route, you still need a tuner for your pc. Apparently only 3 companies really make them. Ceton (infinitv), silicondust (hdhomerun), and hauppauge. For local channels you don't have to get a fancy cable card tuner, but if you eventually switch back to getting expanded cable you do. I use the hdhomerun dual. Seems to work great. No real problems.
Sorry for the repeated posting, but I just had to say that @alecthar will probably murder you in your sleep if you use a PSU that comes with a case.
To be entirely fair, you kinda have to use the included one in the Habey cases, but you can use any compatible power brick that you like, provided it outputs 12V.
There are a number of Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX cases that offer a fairly small form factor. The Silverstone ML03B (Micro-ATX) is a bit wider than what you want, but it's nice otherwise. Generally you want to look at cases that use the low-profile form factor for expansion cards, as that limits the height of the case to something more reasonable. I like the In-Win BP655 for Mini-ITX cases, because it's one of the only ones that offers a full 5.25'' bay (if you need it), an expansion slot (low profile) and the ability to use a PSU that doesn't require a power brick (and thus can power a system with a video card, if you like). The case needs some modification to run a video card (venting needs to be added in the side to ensure the card doesn't choke and die) but otherwise it's a nice size and it looks okay. It's not super staid, but it'll fit in next to a 360 or Wii. Oh, and don't use the PSU that comes with it, buy a nice Seasonic unit, they make a few TFX PSUs.
Other random crap:
Hardware is really dependent on what the purpose of the PC is. For a box that just does media stuff (streaming, playing stuff from your NAS, etc.) I'd recommend a $60 Intel Pentium G620/G630 (G630 is slightly faster). Really low power procs, like AMD's E-350 and Intel's Atom line, are generally insufficient for more demanding video or streaming tasks. The Pentium hits a nice balance of cheapness and competence. Pair it with an inexpensive motherboard (H67 or H77 chipsets) and go.
For games I'd suggest the absolute lowest-end card you can get away with at whatever resolution your TV is. This may sound weird, but higher end cards mean higher end size, power consumption, heat, and noise, so it's in your interest to go with something that's small and stays cool without too much fan noise. For the really budget conscious, the AMD APUs are pretty nice, given that they have essentially the best integrated GPUs seen so far , with actually pretty okay performance for games at 720p.
Software really depends, @Jebus314 mentioned XBMC, which can be run on top of a stripped down Linux install if you just want to boot directly into XBMC (useful if you have no desire to use Netflix, because you can't on Linux, and have a big collection of locally stored media). Just like any media center software, XBMC takes some work to set up so that your crap is organized and looks pretty, and it's not really a good option if you'd like to include Live TV (via TV tuner). If you're looking at it as part of a system running Windows or OS X, it also runs on those platforms, as well as on a regular Linux install. I use and really like it, but WMC is also an option, as well as Plex and MediaPortal (which has way more support for use with Live TV than XBMC currently does).
My current setup uses Steam as my primary interface. With Big Picture mode running, I can run my TV-ready games, and I have XBMC and Firefox (for Hulu, Netflix, etc.) included as "Non-Steam Game(s)" for easy startup.
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When I used to have cable TV (isn't really an option for me, given that right now I can only buy cable in a language I'm not 100% fluent in), I was also a channel-surfer. If you use XBMC and have a lot of locally stored media like I do, you can get a plugin called "PseudoTV" for it that takes your library of TV show episodes and movies and shoves them into fake "TV channels" so they play end to end, and you can switch between them, bring up a channel guide, etc. So you can set up 10 channels with some channels that include shows that are on a certain network (channels 1-3 use shows from your library that are from NBC, CBS, and Fox respectively) or include shows by genre (4-6 are comedy, animation, and documentary shows respectively) and also does it for movies (7-10 are comedy movies, action movies, dramas and children's movies respectively). It's all super customizable, so you can rename channels, have channels that only include episodes from specific playlists you've made, etc. etc.
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