Posted on 07/31/2013 12:17:59 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Thinking of C-SPAN from their Archives.
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By Carol Kopp
Here’s what all the noise was about on Monday morning.
At Netflix headquarters, people were cheering. At the big cable companies , they were shaking in their boots. At Amazon , one executive might have been trying to explain what went wrong.
At Google , they were just quietly smiling.
It was all about a thumb-size, $35 gadget called Google Chromecast that came out last week with little fanfare, almost as an afterthought to the announcement of a new version of its Nexus 7 tablet.
It’s sold out already, with more stock due in three or four weeks.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
We “cut the cord” several weeks ago and don’t particularly miss it.
We’re able to pick up quite a few channels with a cheap over-the-air antenna and the picture quality is great even if the programming is bad. But cable is similar—hundreds of channels of garbage except you get to pay for it.
For subscription services, we’re trying Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu, but we’ll be dropping Hulu soon as we haven’t used it much. And even without subscription services, between the PC and various smart TV apps, there’s a ton of content available.
The transition’s been really easy and we don’t miss cable except for a few minor things that we’ll soon come to forget. If you’re considering it, go for it. Can always re-subscribe to cable if it doesn’t suit you.
this should free up a lot of spectrum...
If they had gone “ala cart” years ago, instead of having congress get involve and ruling it out, they would have survived this new age. I don’t want MTV. I don’t want MSNBC but I’m FORCED to have it as part of a package.
If true free market reigned, many of these stations would be long out of business.
The cable companies now wonder why they are becoming obsolete after forcing us to buy bundles of crap.
I only want maybe 8 channels. The rest is garbage.
Let me pay for my 8 channels. It’s not a matter of economics, it’s a matter of I don’t want the rest of those channels broadcast into my home because I have children.
I remember the petitions in movie house lobbies to stop pay TV.
I've got PlayOn running on an office computer, so I can pull it in through the PlayOn private channel on the Roku... just wondering what other options there were.
I guess this new product explains why YouTube/Google has persisted in shutting out Roku users.
Yeah real hard to do. Its called an HDMI cable and you hook your computer up as a monitor. Wally World has em for about 12 bucks.
Oh yeah, and don’t tell me I can “block channels”. BS, just resetting the cable box brings them back, as does every reset by the cable company every few days.
The commercials about “blocking the channels” is a bunch of malarkey! It is funded by congress btw as a PSA of all things (which we can’t afford to promote cable companies). It’s a joke. If you are a parent, you know what I mean.
If you are paying for cable you are paying those channels money, even if you do block them.
If streaming content is a viable option for you, take a hard look at cancelling cable. You might miss a few things at first but you’ll adapt and find other options.
Also, I think as more and more people cut the cord, networks will be looking to get their content onto subscription services faster. Right now it’s still a fairly new phenomenon but the networks will have to adapt or their content will wind up virtually invisible.
Hopefully leftwing Google will let us subscribe to any conservative channel if someone bothers to create one
Hey Charles
No, there is not an official youtube channel on Roku, but there is Twonky channel and with that you can stream youtube vids from your iPhone and a couple other smart phones. Twonky has a Roku app and an iPhone app. I mostly use PLEX thru my Roku as I can stream everything from my computer or the net to my TV. I go to youtube and put all the good stuff I want to see on my TV into PLEX Queue. There are several good tutorials on had to use both PLEX and Twonky
We dropped Cable and never missed a beat. Our must haves (shows we couldn't do without)are the Walking Dead, Justified and Game of Thrones all can be had for instant viewing via either a pay per episode/season arrangement or there are FREE options if you are an adventurous spirit. (We pay for ours because it is a fraction of our previous cable bill.)
We have Netflix for movies and such and use Hulu's Free version plus there are several other legal FREE online sources. Then there are the Network Websites even PBS has full episodes available.
The only thing that we haven't found so far is LIVE NFL Games via the internet. the NFL is doing a package for Internet users this year that allows you to watch NFL games on demand but only after they have played live.
We are considering this because its really cheap (All games for like 39 bucks) but a free standard antenna will get you the NFL games broadcast in your area.
We love our internet viewing options and do not miss Cable/DirecTV/Dish at all.
I couple years ago I watched Sunday night football live online, NBC was offering that deal. It even allowed you to choose from different camera angles.
You can do that too, but that can be kind of annoying depending on what you want to do. Sound bleed was always what irritated me, you generally have one sound output so if you’re playing a game while your pumping stuff to your TV both sets of sound are coming out both places. DLNA sharing avoids that problem since the TV only gets what you’re sharing. Plus of course you need the PC and TV within cable distance of each other, which anything going over the network avoids.
Actually its quite simple.
You hook the cable up and you are done. If you want to get real complicated you can buy a 2nd cable "type Optical" and hook it to your surround sound system. I have a wireless keyboard and mouse and we got a dedicated Windows box with a BlueRay disc drive and then loaded the box with several 2 and 3 TB hard drives. We buy used BlueRay and regular DVDs and rip them to Hard drive (Same with music) and thus we have a dedicated computer entertainment system that also streams all the youtube and free media. The whole thing cost me less than 3 months of our previous cable bill and most everything we watch via the internet is free or waaay cheaper than paying for internet.
You’re doing a dedicated media PC, which also avoids the problems I outlined. The issues come in when it’s a multi-use PC, when you want to stream content to the TV AND do something else. Big PITA, which is why I stopped, if I want to stream from the web via the PC I DLNA share, if it’s something I have on the PC I USB sneaker net, much easier. No sound bleed, no having to turn multi-monitor back on, get rid of the extra cables.
Like I said, none of it’s really new, it’s just an easier way to do things.
Game of Thrones for us requires us to have HBO. Even if we buy from Amazon or Hulu. It requires us to put in a code, to prove we have HBO from our cable company.
We also watch the Big Ten because of our wrestling son. I can’t find it streamed anywhere.
We have Roku and Netflix, but it’s still a PIA.
Also, we use our cable company for internet. I’m not sure of a solution to cancelling cable and getting the bandwidth we get.
Ala Cart is the way it should be. Demand nothing less.
Let the crap channels die out, they should NOT be subsidized.
Just MHO.
I use a software application called PLEX to stream Internet content via my PC through the ROKU box to my TV.
I read about this morning and checked - and it was already sold out everywhere.
It’s not hard to do - you hook up your TV as a monitor - but it’s much easier if it’s wireless so you can just sit there and summon it up. In addition, this has content that you may or may not have on your device.
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