TV Viewing Options

[special-K]

You must love snow, it gave you 67 hours overtime................... J/K!! Yeah, it's time for me to make changes. I'm stubborn and I've held out. At this point all that is hurting me in the wallet, I think, and I'm not even getting much of what i want.

EDIT: I somehow skipped past your post BR3W CITY. Thanks, this shows me a lot to look into.

[flashed]

I actually would up with 72 hours of overtime but I have had enough ,ready to go home .

[special-K]

I imagine so! 112 hours, right? I didn't know there were that many hours in a week!!

[flashed]

I was on the clock from early Friday til yesterday morning til 10 am ,even when I was sleeping .We are still spreading ice melt and shoveling snow/ice off walkways .

[paul blair]

In a perfect world we would be able to chose and pay for just the channels we want! The MEDIA MOFIA must change and give its paying customers what they want. Seems that it would take a nation wide boycott to get their attention! Maybe TRUMP could do something! I am thinking about antenna setup and keeping internet. Thanks Special K for starting this! A lot of useful options and good place to vent! THANKS-HAPPY TRAILS

[Grumpy old man]

I gave up on cable after paying $140.00 a month for years and went to free tv via ant . and a wifi hotspot . The wifi is fine as long as you don't do anything loading pictures /updates and streaming anything burns right thru the gigs . going back to internet only service .

[flashed]

In just a short few years I bet DirecTv and Dish will start hurting after more people find Netflix ,Hulu and all the others out there .It may be too late for them by then though. I will be jumping from their ship very soon.

[Stocker]

Got a notice from Dish in today's mail. Because I am a valued customer and they appreciate my business, my rates are increasing another $5/month.

[YBNORML]

We have been contemplating dropping our main cable tv as well, just keeping basic cable so that we can get HBO for 3 months of the year. Gotta have my Game of Thrones.

We got netflix to see if we would use it and now we barely watch regular tv, in fact our entire household tv time has dropped.

[fecklessgadfly]

Originally Posted by YBNORML

We have been contemplating dropping our main cable tv as well, just keeping basic cable so that we can get HBO for 3 months of the year. Gotta have my Game of Thrones.

We got netflix to see if we would use it and now we barely watch regular tv, in fact our entire household tv time has dropped.

If you stream over the internet, you can buy stand alone HBO service with no contract. Watch anytime, cancel when you catch up, renew next season.

[special-K]

Tell me about antenna. I live in a poor reception area. I was so glad to get satellite because we only got a few channels between Baltimore and Washington, DC. Cell phones just barely work here. So, would antenna work for me now with digital TV, or still the same? What type of programming would I get, just same local channels as ever?

I haven't dumped DerilecTv yet. Before I do (not that it will do any good) I'm starting a campaign of calling customer service to tell them I think I'm paying way too much for the programming I get and want to know what they will do about that. I'll let them know I dropped my better package to save money and now I'm paying just as much. "Is dropping you the only way to save paying too much money? Pretty ridiculous, don't you think? You'll pay me to find more suckers but give no break to a customer since '04? Pretty messed up don't you agree? Do you think I am the only one that feels this way? How many calls like this do you get a day? Does DirecTv realize we have options? Have you started looking for another job?". I know none of this will matter to them, but I'm going to be their worst hard head for a while. And, since they record calls for training and quality improvement, I figure I'm helping them out and will suggest they listen to my call over and over so they can learn something.

[Stocker]

Originally Posted by special-K

I know none of this will matter to them....

Sadly, that is it in a nutshell. A buddy called Dish with the same complaints we all have, and they did not care one bit. He dumped them and switched to Direct, which he is not too happy with either.
Like you, we are in an area of very poor TV reception. And mediocre cell service. And no decent high speed internet.

[paul blair]

I called Comcast about the high cost and all the channels I don't want and told them I was thinking about canceling if I could not get a better deal! Well I was switched over to a specialist and since I was such a good customer for so many years he would give me a better rate for one year(about 8 dollars a month) and that was the best he could do! When will they get it-must be millions who feel the same. When you buy a GM truck they don't make you buy a few clown cars! National wide boycott might help?

[special-K]

I think the boycott has begun, one customer at a time. And will only increase progressively as time moves on. That's where I am with the dish. They came up with a great way to bring TV to my house that never got much reception. But they couldn't be happy, as with the way huge business, with only running a profitable business, they push for more and more till people stand up and say enough is enough. Direct and Dish think they are up against each other and both are up against cable, when they all need to be concerned with these new alternatives. I'm not even big on TV, so why am I spending $75 a month for it?

[Spartan]

I don't watch tv except for westworld. It's a remake of the 70's movie.
I stream it through wifi to my laptop which in turn is wired to my tv. I pay for Internet which is rediculous. Century Link like most ISP companies is crap but its the only game in town.

I seldom call customer service. If customer service was a suicide help line the town would be a ghost town.

iPhone is all I use. I go get a cup of coffee at a local place that has super fast wifi. I get weather, hit a few sites and try to know what's going on in the world.

I say this. The iPhone is easy to use. I can call,text,or surf the Internet almost anywhere any time however my plan is text only because I visit my friends if I want to chat and I use free wifi while enjoying a cup o joe.

The iPhone (or smart phone of your choice) is a one stop shopping solution in today's world.

I remember my parents saying television will rot your brain. Judging by the content I glimpse its an accurate statement. It's not just the tv though its all the tech. All this stuff is being beamed through almost every centimeter of the planet via microwaves. Microwaves cook stuff. Consider yourself just a little safer in that no cell reception area.

Disclaimer: I am a bit of a hypocrite because on Every other sunday for three hours I go visit my parents and I park myself in from of their billion channel tv too big for the house and I vegetate.

[special-K]

Hah! Yeah, I can watch TV all day at someone else's house. Hah hah

Mobile phone and the cable internet stay. I drop DirecTv and upgrade the internet. I may, for the next two years, go with a package deal on TV, phone, and their fastest internet. First I need to look into if going back to my antenna is an option.

[Grumpy old man]

I cut the cord on cable a few years ago ,went into the local walmart and bought a wifi hotspot and their best air ant about $80.00 if I remember right , I get about 20 something channels that's all we need mostly news for us . I'm going back to internet only so I can stream discovery channel shows and have high speed , Should be all I need ? I've been told I can hook my laptop to my tv ? anybody doing this ?

[JON67]

before you upgrade your internet for streaming, make sure you can stream the content you want from Discovery channel online. In my experience you can't stream from the online versions of the cable channels such as discovery without a cable subscription. I don't have any actual experience with Discovery though, so it may be different.

[LockDoc]

Originally Posted by Grumpy old man

I cut the cord on cable a few years ago ,went into the local walmart and bought a wifi hotspot and their best air ant about $80.00 if I remember right , I get about 20 something channels that's all we need mostly news for us . I'm going back to internet only so I can stream discovery channel shows and have high speed , Should be all I need ? I've been told I can hook my laptop to my tv ? anybody doing this ?

-
As I mentioned earlier my son gave me his old HD TV so I thought I would try hooking my laptop to it. I had a longer monitor cable so I connected it to the 15 pin port on the back of the TV that says "RGB IN (PC)" and the 15 pin monitor port on the laptop. I then pressed the "Menu" button on the TV remote and selected the "Options" menu in that. One of the selections in "Options" was "Input Label" so I selected that and one of the selections in that was "RGB-PC". I exited the menu and fired the laptop up. Luckily my laptop was already set to use both the laptop screen and the external monitor so it came right up on the TV. If yours doesn't show up on the TV screen you will have to hold down the FN key on your laptop keyboard and press the F5 key. The F5 key will have 3 selections, one is the laptop screen, two is the external monitor (TV) and three is both the laptop screen and the external monitor (TV).... While holding down the FN key, each time you press the F5 key it will change to the next monitor selection.

I hope you can follow these instructions OK. The menu selections on your TV remote may be a little different but it should be close to this.

Any problems or questions post them up.

LockDoc

[72 tigger]

Just cancelled my DirectTV also- rates are crazy

[shp4man]

If you can only watch YouTube stuff on your phone or computer, Google makes a little device that can play internet stuff on your TV. A Chromecast. You need a wifi router, a TV with a USB port and a relatively fast internet service. Watch Jay Leno's garage on it and old TV shows form the '60's all the time with it.
Unfortunately, the wife loves her shows, so I'm stuck paying ATT for cable. Signed up for the $115 a month package-



https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/ch...chromecast.com