Thoughts on cutting the cable and all this new technology

[chrisinhouston]

My wife and I are thinking about cutting our cable connection for TV, we currently get out HS internet and cable via the coax line but we find we seldom watch anything from the cable side of the TV. We travel a lot normally and even when we are in town about the only time we turn on any cable TV is if the grand kids are visiting and want to watch something like cartoons. Mostly we watch DVDs we own or rent, we usually watch a movie while eating dinner or afterwards, we have a TV in our bedroom that has not been switched on in over a year, one in a guest room. I have one in my office and that's it. I used to like the Food Network but that was when they actually had chefs and not housewives or stupid elimination shows. I loved the Japanese Iron Chef but hate the USA one. Plus they seem to mostly show endless reruns.

We need to go talk to our cable company folks and see if there is any savings, there often isn't much as they sometimes give you a better deal with a bundle of things. We pay around $85 per month, our cable is a smaller one and the only player in our area so we can't shop around and they did a good job of upgrading the HS internet. We seldom have any problems, the speeds are fast and they will even go up in the attic and fix wiring issues at no extra charge.

Yesterday I got a new BR DVD player as our old LG one died. Its a new Sony and I was surprised to see how many streaming features it has, lots of movies, TV type shows, pod casts, music, etc. I really like it but I discovered that it is incompatible with my older home theater sound system as the newer machines use HDMI and some kind of Coaxial audio link. Well, we had known this was an issue for awhile, the big LG flat screen also will not run sound to the system so we were planning on upgrading. It mainly worked with watching movies or listening to music. I have an HD tuner and SiriusXM for most of my music. At the time I bought my tuner back in 1997 it was state of the art, Nakimichi and it cost me a small fortune.

Last night I ordered a new tuner/theater sound system. I settled on a model by Onkyo and after reading some complaints about service and the one year warranty got an additional 2 year extended warranty. Amazon had it all for $385 with free shipping and I added the funky new coaxial audio cable.

Now comes the dilemma about streaming and bandwidth. Our cable company is planning to implement a teared policy by years end. Something like 250GB and then a tier for 350GB. I have no idea how much that equates to if you stream some movies, upload and download email and attachments, etc. I don't want it to end up like those old roaming charges that used to happen on your sell phone if you went to another town or state.

Oh, and I got a Google Chromecast just for fun. It was only $35 and I got a 3 month free Netflix code to use to get movies. It duplicates some of the other things I have but who cares, it is kind of a cool little device.

Too much technology maybe.

[glatt]

Go to http://www.antennaweb.org/ and see what channels you can get over the air. If you aren't doing this already, you may be surprised at what's out there for free. With our roof antenna we get about 30 channels, I'd guess.

Then you can stream, using the cheapest data plan, to supplement the over the air stuff.

[Lamplighter]

Agreed...

First, like talk-radio, many cable channels were taken over by the mega-churches.
Now, it appears that "directed" advertising is taking over what is left.
And, the 3 basic TV channels: ABC, NBC and CBS are now playing around
with 30-min info-commericals on weekends and in the so-called "prime time".

This says to me that less and less resources are being spent on free, original programming and news coverage.
The day of better quality TV is over.

..and like Apple, Google, and MS we are being "stove-piped"
into HBO, Showtime, and other $-collecting channels like "Pay-On-Demand"

The talking heads are about all that is left of TV that is not on the internet.

[chrisinhouston]

Originally Posted by glatt

Go to http://www.antennaweb.org/ and see what channels you can get over the air. If you aren't doing this already, you may be surprised at what's out there for free. With our roof antenna we get about 30 channels, I'd guess.

Then you can stream, using the cheapest data plan, to supplement the over the air stuff.

I checked it and it is as I recall from the precable days, nothing over the air. We are a good 30 miles out from the city of Houston and we have lots of tall trees. I have an antenna for my HD radio that I think can also be used for TV.

That being said, I actually have not watched any local TV other then the occasional local PBS channel, I hate commercials and haven't followed weekly shows since Hill Street Blues ended.

[chrisinhouston]

Funny but when we spent last fall in Australia we actually enjoyed their TV more and they had a lot less channels! The programing was more diverse and not so specialized to certain content like here with food, sports, news, et. You might be on a channel and there is a news show and then the next show up is a fishing show, then an hour of a travel show.

What I hate is how I have to get all these cable channels I would never watch. If I had to choose cable channels there might be 5 or 6.

[glatt]

which 5 or 6? that might steer the discussion.

[Undertoad]

The only thing keeping me plugged in are Eagles games. Cain't get reception here cos I'm in a small valley.

[chrisinhouston]

On a separate note, I am also considering transferring my DVD/BR movie collection to some hard drives if I can figure out how I would then access them watch when I want to. My wife and I have about 400 or so, some store bought and a ton that I burned from rentals using DVD-Shrink or DVD Fab. They take up a lot of space and ofcourse are prone to scratches or other damage making them unusable. It would be nice if I could have a computer with a bunch of big hard drives and just get to them from the network cable.

I guess it is a good thing I work at home so I have time to do stuff like this.

[Gravdigr]

Popdigr has to have cable/satellite to watch his hunting/outdoor shows.

I, personally, wouldn't pay 50 cents for all the television ever broadcast.

[chrisinhouston]

Well my new Onkyo receiver arrived and I spent a few hours transferring the Nakamichi unit out and the new one in. The challenge was figuring out where to plug in my RCA type plugs for some of the older gear that does not use HDMI cables. This would be my Kenwood Sirius tuner, the HD radio tuner and my 5 disc CD player. Since HDMI is the plug/cable of the moment the unit has 8 HDMI inputs (7 in the back and one in front) as well as 2 outputs which is where my LG 55 inch TV plug in. The new Sony BR-DVD and my cable box plug into the labeled HDMI ports, the CD player RCA plugs went into the CD/TV inputs. I chose to plug my Sirius radio into the STB/DVR input and the HD radio into the Game input as I am not interested in adding any kind of gaming system.

I currently have a 5.1 speaker set up, so for now I am not using the Surround speaker inputs but may later if I add 2 more speakers. Also this unit can take 2 sub woofers so I may add another one later.

The set up went quickly and when I powered up the unit and turned on the TV it gave me a setup option where I tested everything to make sure all components work. The system comes with an microphone for setting speakers to the right setting based on your room configuration, I skipped that for now but will fine tune everything this weekend. So far I really like the sound quality. I mostly listen to classical music and sometimes jazz and a mix of rock and vocalists. Everything sounds great. We also have watched 2 DVDs and the quality is superb. And the movie we watched last night was a ripped DVD and it did not hang up like they did in my old LG DVD player.

[chrisinhouston]

Forgot to add that I am considering adding a pair of in the wall speakers in my kitchen where we spend a lot of time as the receiver does have zone 2 speaker outputs.

[glatt]

That Onkyo is a handsome looking unit.

[chrisinhouston]

Yes, overall I agree and am glad they went back to black as most of my other components are also black. There was a period about 6 years ago where components went to chrome or brushed metal and I didn't like that, it just looks cheap to me.

The only bad thing I can say about the front is that the size of the type for the labels next to the corresponding switches is pretty small and my old eyes are not what they used to be in low light situations.

We have an Logictec Harmony One remote where you program all your remotes into it and then just use that one remote for mostly everything. We plan to reprogram it over the weekend.

[Gravdigr]

I'm tripping on the BD-player.

It's, trippy.

[chrisinhouston]

Well, I just sold my 15+ year old Nakamichi receiver to a guy via Craig's List for $100. Not a bad return on something I paid $350 or so for so long ago.