Getting rid of cable

BrianGreen

BrianGreen

SSG Brian Green
Joined
Apr 5, 2008
Location
Kings Mountain
Read the other relevant post the other day. We have TWC home phone(useless), cable, and Internet. AT&T Uverse guy came yesterday with his typical speech. More better blah blah same price. I could care less about tv but I have a 4 year old and stay at home mom. The Uverse guy got me thinking again about cutting cable.

I read a ton of recommendations for Roku and that is what I am leaning towards. What about the newer blue ray players with Amazon, Hulu, YouTube, etc? Will they do the same thing?

We have TWC standard Internet. I think 15Mbs. What would be adequate to run a Roku and maybe a computer streaming at the same time?

As far as routers go, use the TWC router or just buy a good one?
 
Oh yeah, is TWC Internet or Uverse internet better? Zip 28086. Supposedly the Uverse is fiber with a node only a couple hundred feet from my house.
 
We like the Netflix for the kids, I went on ebay and bought a Wii for $10 has WiFi and can do all the Netflix blah blah.....
 
All our kids watch is Netflix and Amazon.
15mbs is plenty.

I have an eight port gigabit switch under my tv, but I suspect I'm an outlier in that regard. WiFi should do fine.

I bought my own modem and router. Better than what TWC provided, no monthly fee, and I don't have to go over to the TWC store and wait in line for three hours to return their hardware if it goes bad or if I change providers.
 
I've been pleased w the Uverse. No problems w service here. We had 2 outages 1 from a wreck and one from some boring guys cutting a cable. Each time I called and had a person on the phone in seconds who gave me an accurate time frame for the fix, or called me back w that info.
 
I cut the cord 6 months ago and I don't really miss it. I do have rss feeds that download most of the shows that I like to watch automatically onto my server which play though my PS3. I also have Apple TV for Netflix. The computers in my house are all on wifi, but the streaming devices are all hardwired.

Don't pay TWC for the modem or router, buy one and save money in the long run. 15mbs is plenty like others have said, in Raleigh 15 is being upgraded to 50 for free in the next couple weeks due to pressures from google fiber and AT&T fiber.
 
my neighbor ordered something off amazon and gets basic free. Has internet and uses hulu for 10 or 20 a month. Has been doing this for a few months now. If you are interested i can ask what the device is he bought on amazon.
 
Keep in mind that the Uverse name brand now encompasses everything from traditional DSL up through gig fiber to your house. So "Uverse" reviews could be referring to any of at least three different services.
 
shawn said:
Keep in mind that the Uverse name brand now encompasses everything from traditional DSL up through gig fiber to your house. So "Uverse" reviews could be referring to any of at least three different services.
Click to expand...

This x2. We have Uverse at both stations at work. Station 1's is awesome, Station 2's sucks.

Duane
 
I think in the other thread you're referring to, I mentioned getting ready to cut the cord and had a lot of questions.
Well we finally did it and it's worked out well.
In the end here's what we ended up with:
- Bought a Roku3. Love it, use it to stream Netflix etc.
- Got service w/ SlingTV. $20 a month and you get several cable TV channels. For us this was key b/c it provides TBS, TNT, AMC (for the Walking Dead addicts) and several others. For $5 more you can get like 6 disney channels (this has been great w/ the 4 y/o).
and you can stream it to Roku or any network device, anywhere (so kids can even watch on the road on tablets etc)
- dumped the modem from Comcast and bought our own for $50 or so. Paid for itself in 3 months.

B/c we wanted to be able to watch local TV and have DVR options...
- Picked up one of the old Dell PCs that RocksNMud had. Bought a $40 video card w/ HDMI out etc.
- Got an HDHomeRun "Connect" TV tuner device. It streams over your network so any device can access it (as opposed to a TV tuner that is in the PC). I use Windows Media Center on the PC, it has a GUI that is very much like a DVR fro ma cable provider but w/ a lot more options.
- bought an antenna, amp etc and get like 60 channels over the air.

We have a LAN hub in the entertainment center that everything is wired to, although technically it could all be wireless I think.

So basically we watch over the air tv through the PC and everything else via Roku. I think in 6 months we have used the blue ray player once, we just stream everything. Eventually I'll get a blue-ray player for the PC buts its pretty low priority now.

This has worked well and the wife/kids had no trouble figuring it out.

One note, I got tired of dealing w/ different remotes and bought a Logitech Harmony remote. It's the shizzit, fully programmable and covers any/all devices.
But if you don't care about local TV... roku is really all you need.
 
sgtbriangreen said:
Didn't even think about the Wii. I haven't gotten it out of the closet in 2 years.
Click to expand...

keep in mind video output of WII is limited to analog so it will always suck.
 
Glad to hear the HD home run works for you. Our HTPC has a Hauppauge card in it, but I've been looking at those. Kinda nice that anything on the network can hit it.
 
I've got my own modem and router and have never had cable TV in the house we bought 2 years ago. You want your own router so you can control things, and the modem will only take 1.5 years to pay for itself if you get something like a Motorola Surfboard (assuming $5/month equipment rental for TWC modem, $89 for Surfboard SB6141).

Stay away from any Uverse/DSL service that operates over any copper phone line infrastructure. It's inherently limited to low bandwidth, not matter what they try to tell you.
 
You can save a bunch on the modem by buying a refurb or open box. Open box on Amazon right now for $75. I got mine for less than that.
 
Factory refurbished Motorola cable modems come up on Woot.com quite often for around $50.
 
shawn said:
Glad to hear the HD home run works for you. Our HTPC has a Hauppauge card in it, but I've been looking at those. Kinda nice that anything on the network can hit it.
Click to expand...
One note - there is no native Roku app for it, and all indications are that Siliconedust has no intention of making one.
There are a couple of 3rd-party apps, like HDRFling, but nothing that really works well. Aparently there is some issue w/ transcoding or something.

That is my only complaint. Otherwise it has been pretty slick. Since it has 2 tuners, you can record a channel and watch another simultaneously.

If I were doing it again I'd probably get this instead
https://us.simple.tv/
 
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shawn said:
The 6121 is fine, but will be more susceptible to slow speeds due to network traffic.
Click to expand...

You mean on our side or the broader provider side? Shouldn't our router that is behind it handle that?
 
The 6141 can do eight channels downstream, the 6121 can only do four. That affects the maximum speed, but if there is network congestion, it also increases the likelihood that the modem can find a channel that's not overloaded.

It's somewhat of an academic argument, but it's why the 6141 costs more.
 
shawn said:
The 6141 can do eight channels downstream, the 6121 can only do four. That affects the maximum speed, but if there is network congestion, it also increases the likelihood that the modem can find a channel that's not overloaded.

It's somewhat of an academic argument, but it's why the 6141 costs more.
Click to expand...

This is what I was studying this morning. I explained it to my wife like an interstate. 4 lanes may be fine if there is light traffic, but 8 lanes will have a better chance of moving quicker in equal or heavier traffic.
 
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