Question about streaming

[mroper]

I am looking at getting a Tablo so I can record OTA TV. I found I mainly watch network channels, Prime and Max . They are putting EZee fiber in our neighborhood right now I will switch to that I think

 

[popper]

Frontier and Roku box here. Freevee TV lets you select what you want (in their lineup) and resume playing as desired. Son has all the boxes and signs up/drops depending on what he wants to watch. Services don't like that but so far not much they can do about the churning.

 

[Rafe]

Already had Amazon Prime and a Fire TV Cube on the main TV and a Fire Stick on a smaller one upstairs. A little over a year ago finally decided to cut the cord and ditch Xfinity cable, their clunky decoder box, and their ~$160 per month bill. Went with Sling, which has an Amazon Fire app, Hulu for additional access (also a Fire TV app), and a $30 HD over-the-air antenna. Sling gives us Fox and ABC for local network channels, but not NBC, CBS, or PBS; we use the OTA antenna for those...just a matter of selecting which HDMI input on the TV is active.

Any Sling package comes with a 50-hour DVR. I think it's $10 more per month if you want 200 hours of recording time. A handy thing there is the recording is on Sling's cloud...for example, I DVRed Wimbledon matches while Beryl had our power knocked out. You can also add various services a la carte within Sling, like expanded sports channels, MGM+, etc. Those can be monthly, so you can turn them on or off as you want.

You can actually hook the OTA antenna up to an Fire TV Cube or have it come through Sling and manage the channel access that way, but we decided it was easiest just to use different HDMI ports. Another thing that's often overlooked is that you can plug in a USB external hard drive to the Fire TV Cube (and I think a Stick; the Cube is much faster and I've never tried it with the Stick). I have a lot of digital content--mostly things like The Great Courses--so that makes it easy to select and watch them...although you can just plug the drive into a TV's available USB port.

Prime Video itself has a lot of content, though sometimes I find it easier to search for stuff while hitting Prime Video on the web, and then flag titles I'm interested in by putting them in my watchlist. Makes 'em easy to get to on the TV that way. Prime also has frequent new releases for rental or purchase, if you want to spend a little for something new for "movie night."

Not really an issue for us, but most of the streaming options allow you to set different profiles. So if you have a kid in the house--or, say, a MIL who only watches things like the Hallmark Channel--you can, A) restrict content, and, B) content recommendations don't bleed over between profiles (e.g., you don't see all those Hallmark Channel-driven recommendations).

Oh, and odds are that, if your TV is newer than around 8 or 10 years and you have solid WiFi coverage, you can do a "screen cast" from a PC to the television to watch things like YouTube or Vimeo videos, or anything else you can play on the PC. Just sayin'.

All in all, it cut our cable bill in half and actually gives us a lot more available content than Xfinity did. Still a massive amount of stuff that's completely uninteresting, but Sling lets you populate a customized "TV guide" which displays only channels that you have "liked." Means I don't have to constantly scroll over things like MSNBC or the QVC home shopping network.

 

[ZX9RCAM]

Great info.

Now, if I could just accept change....

 

[alternative]

I am looking at getting a Tablo so I can record OTA TV. I found I mainly watch network channels, Prime and Max . They are putting EZee fiber in our neighborhood right now I will switch to that I think

Be careful as they apparently are not ATSC3.0 yet and you may have to buy new equipment when your local stations change.

What You Need to Know About ATSC 3.0 – Part 5 - Tablo TV

Learn about the current state of the ATSC 3.0 rollout, some common misconceptions about the new standard, as well as an update on the Tablo team’s involvement in bringing ATSC 3.0-compatible products to market.

www.tablotv.com

 

[mroper]

Be careful as they apparently are not ATSC3.0 yet and you may have to buy new equipment when your local stations change.

What You Need to Know About ATSC 3.0 – Part 5 - Tablo TV

Learn about the current state of the ATSC 3.0 rollout, some common misconceptions about the new standard, as well as an update on the Tablo team’s involvement in bringing ATSC 3.0-compatible products to market.

www.tablotv.com

Thanks for the info