Beer
I dumped DirecTV. Looking at Roku 3.
Upgrade your Internet and stream. Hulu, netflix, amazon.
We recently signed up for Playstation Vue (playstationvue.com). They have an app for Amazon Fire TV/Stick, iPhone/iPad, Chromecast, and Playstation 3/4.
It’s $29.99 for 55 channels.
Everyone has missed the obvious FReeper answer. BLOAT.
We have Roku and a digital antenna for local stuff. Honestly, even that isn’t worth it. I hardly watch any TV now. I just get stuff online.
Two words: Smith and Wesson.
Managed to cancel Dish?
What is your secret?
I have tried to get them to tell me how to return their equipment for months. In the meantime, they keep billing me.
And I keep not paying.
The last phone call wa 45 minutes, got transferred 3 times and finally disconnected.
I just hope enough fed up people have filed a class action suit so I can join it.
I have my internet through my cable, how do you get internet?
DrJeff, I suspect that the reason you have been an on and off cord cutter is that you have not carefully considered what you value in your premium provider and how much of that you can replicate without their help.
- Analyze your needs and options
- Consider broadcast
- Think about set top boxes
- Try streaming
- Make your television better than cable
Record your viewing habits. Put a pencil and paper in all the places where you watch television and note time, channel, live/vs ondemand, whether you paused or rewound or fast forwarded, and how important the experience was. Maybe watching the Game of Thrones live was very important to you so you could talk about it at work. Maybe falling asleep in front of the Mary Tyler Moore show as less important.
If you notes are full of sporting events, you are probably not going to enjoy life after Dish.
Check out TVFool.com and TitanTV.com to see if you are able to receive broadcast television programming that interests you. Broadcast is free and does not use up your data cap. Be sure to look up each station in Wikipedia to see what sub-channels they carry.
If you find yourself rewinding or fast forwarding or time shifting or miss your program guide, look into a set top or whole house DVR. I did not realized how much more my family used a DVR for before we left Comcast. Now we have a DVR on every television.
If you need unedited, premium, commercial free programming, streaming services may help. Hulu, Amazon Instant, VuDu, Netflix provide great on demand options while Sling TV and Vue offer linear or traditional alternatives. Just remember that you must have reliable, uncapped, unthrottled high speed internet to enjoy streaming services and that costs money on top of the cost of the service itself.
Though you have already started your journey, I would humbly suggest you visit https://freetvforme.wordpress.com where I have documented my adventure.
Have fun!
PS Spend your savings on a good antenna (or two) and a great set top DVR (or four). You won’t miss Dish at all!
I dropped Dish years ago and went with Hulu and Netflix, I am also receiving local broadcast via antenna for the few times I want to watch. I have rarely missed Dish and saved considerable cash.
I get all the TV and radio I need from YouTube.
The least-used channel of communication on my smartphone is the phone line. I could easily get along using Skype for all the phone calls. With Wi-Fi at home and free Wi-Fi everywhere else, I wouldn’t miss the “phone” function at all.
I have Netflix and ClassicFlix. ClassicFlix has thousands of movies Netflix doesn’t.
I get Alex Jones, Savage, Stefan Molyneux, and Trump rallies on YouTube. I no longer listen to Levin, Rush, Steve Deace, Ben Shapiro, Andrew Klavan, and anyone connected with National Review.
Finally got around to hooking up the old attic antenna to the new hidef TV a few weeks ago - forty miles from Philly, picking up sixty or so (depending on the weather) off the air hidef channels - including many included in the Comcast cable package we’ve been subscribing to such as Antenna, Decades, This, We, Me, Comet etc etc - that cord’s going to be cut very soon.....