Streaming tv

[NorthernRedneck]

I know it's the way the world is going but I hate it. There. I said it. I have absolutely zero patience to open up a service "name any...Amazon TV, crave tv, etc"

When I watch TV, I want to turn on the television, open up a guide (not one that just suggests TV shows for you based on your viewing experience) and pick a show. Not a half hour sitcom as I don't care for those. Most of the time I have it on the history Channel. I don't have the time or patience to sit there for 20 minutes trying to get remember a show name and spending 10 minutes trying to type the name in a search only to find its not available. Now, if I want to watch a show, I have to search to find out which service streams it then install an app pay for a service, find it and only when my blood pressure is through the roof, discover that the show I want to watch is not available. I just don't have the patience for that crap.🤬

 

[Melensdad]

FWIW, I have one Amazon Fire TV and it defaults back to Amazon services, something that I find frustrating Roku devices let you set them to focus on your choices in your menu.

All services I know of default to some sort of menu that require you to pick a channel that then provides a menu.

Many allow you to select a FAVORITE list

 

[NorthernRedneck]

My problem is my memory. If I don't see it right in front of me when I turn on the TV, I forget about it. All of these streaming services are based on the premise that you are able to remember what you want to watch and remember how to search for it. I have a difficult time switching to new things since my accident as my immediate short term memory is terrible after hitting my head on the pavement 7 years ago. It's the main reason why I'm not working. So it's very frustrating to have to rely on memory to be able to watch something I enjoy.

 

[bczoom]

Does your device have "Add to watchlist"?
By search or recommendations, I pick what I want then add it to my watchlist. All of my streaming services have a direct link per-se to take you right to your watchlist.

 

[Doc]

I stream everything now, it took a little getting used to but I much prefer streaming to cable now.
Hulu has a dvd option so you can record your favorite shows and go right to them whenever you want. They also have live TV so you can set it to history channel and be done with it.
Other service I have like Netflix and Paramount ask if I want to continue watching and it has all the shows I have watched on their service so it's easy to be reminded of shows or series that I was watching and might have forgotten.
Streaming is sure different than the cable service we all were used to but since I am now used to streaming I feel I have more shows than ever to watch. And when the internet goes out, which it did once last month, I have an over the air antenna that picks up a surprising number of channels. This setup works well for me.

 

[FrancSevin]

I'm with Brian on this. I hate what one has to remember just to bring up regular TV or Cable and then find a show.
My grandson was here for Christmas and he used all the toys to play games and watch Netflex. He left last night. I still cannot get it back to regular cable.

I sometimes long for the past days when my grandma's remote was an 8 year old named "Francis."
"Francis, please get up and change the TV to channel four."
And,
the most challenging Technolgy for most of us was twisting the rabbit ears for a better signal.

 

[pixie]

I just watch one series until it's over. I have Roku and Britbox. Haven't looked at Roku in a year. I pick the series based on interest and how many shows produced.

Britbox will stay on the series I'm watching , the episode, the time, after I turn it off until the next day. When it goes to it's homepage, it shows what I've watched and other mystery series cause that's what I like.

I really couldn't deal with having to pick something new every hour or so. I basically hate streaming but I hate ads and cable/satelite bills more.

I don't watch very intensely; I'm usually doing something else like reading the internet so I don't mind watching a series I liked again because I missed a lot the first time !

 

[Doc]

Streaming lets you watch the series shows in order with ease. Every streaming channel I've watched a series on remembers where you are if you stopped in the middle of a show or whatever show is next in the series. Just click it and watch. It will play the whole series through if you really want to veg out and watch.
Much like you pixie I'm multitasking with TV on. Lately we are watching Boston Legal on Hulu. I caught a few of the episodes when it was on in 2008 or so. It is hilarious at times. Entertaining. Nice to watch the series shows in order.

 

[m1west]

Streaming lets you watch the series shows in order with ease. Every streaming channel I've watched a series on remembers where you are if you stopped in the middle of a show or whatever show is next in the series. Just click it and watch. It will play the whole series through if you really want to veg out and watch.
Much like you pixie I'm multitasking with TV on. Lately we are watching Boston Legal on Hulu. I caught a few of the episodes when it was on in 2008 or so. It is hilarious at times. Entertaining. Nice to watch the series shows in order.

Yep, Prime,Hulu etc.that I watch all have continue watching at the top when you open the app.

 

[bczoom]

@Doc - I was thinking of getting Paramount. Is Yellowstone Season 5 on there? If not, I don't want Paramount.

Caught on the news today - Amazon's streaming service will start putting commercials in their shows starting in late January. To get out of it, you have to pay an extra $4/month.

 

[Melensdad]

@Doc - I was thinking of getting Paramount. Is Yellowstone Season 5 on there? If not, I don't want Paramount.

Yellowstone is on Peacock, not Paramount

 

[bczoom]

This thread made me look at my cable bill.
Didn't know it buy I was paying $125/month for TV service. I just cancelled that. All we have now is streaming.
I should have waited a week as I wanted to catch some college bowl games.

 

[NorthernRedneck]

This thread made me look at my cable bill.
Didn't know it buy I was paying $125/month for TV service. I just cancelled that. All we have now is streaming.
I should have waited a week as I wanted to catch some college bowl games.

We spent some time yesterday exploring the different options for streaming services available in Canada that carry the programming we want. And I was happy to discover that there is a live TV option with a menu similar to our current satellite TV service that we are currently paying close to 140 per month for. With Amazon prime TV and the add on of stack TV for regular programming and we already have Disney plus, we'd be into it under 40 a month. So I think our satellite will be disconnected next week 🤔

 

[bczoom]

We're going around the house right now, installing Roku sticks on our TV's that aren't smart.
Roku, Amazon and maybe a couple others offer lots of channels.
I see a couple digital antenna's being installed so we can "try" to get local channels. I don't have high hopes since we live deep in a valley.

Next step for our family is to sit down and really assess what premium services we really want. At present, we have:
Amazon
HBO
Netflix
Disney+
Hulu
ESPN+
and maybe a couple more.

My vote right off the bat is to dump Netflix. It seems their primary offerings nowadays is either foreign or anime. Neither interest me.

 

[Doc]

Like Bob said, Yellowstone is on Peacock. Surprised me since on broadcast TV it is on CBS and Paramount is CBS. Weird. But Peacock does have Yellowstone season 5.

I watch Hogans Heros on Prime and it has commercials. But I've noticed when streaming the commercials are not as long and many tell you how many commericals there will be and how long until the show starts back up.

FreeVee says they have 400 channels all free.

BC Hulu has ESPN and Big 10 Network and more sports channels. So I figure you will not miss any bowl games.

I have been pleasantly surprised with streaming. And during black Friday many of the services offered big discounts to sign up. I added MAX aka HBO and MGM at that time.
For the low price MAX has commercials in shows that on HBO would have been commercial free. Commercials are so short I do not mind them and will not pay more to get rid of them.
And ..best of all with all the streaming services I have I'm still paying less than I did for cable.

edit to add:
Another tidbit which made the switch to streaming painless. Roku Ultra. With Ultra I can use one remote for turning on and off TV and for volume. Very handy. Plus it has voice controls. Hold the mic and tell it what to search for etc. Nice. Black Friday had Roku Ultra for 34 bucks at Walmart. I upgraded to Ultra on all my TV's. After Christmas sales might have similar prices. Ultra is normally near 80 dollars.

 

[bczoom]

I said we have HBO. You're right, it's called MAX now. We don't have commercials. Depends on plan?

I bought the Roku but not the Ultra. It can do TV commands like power on/off and volume.

Amazon.com

 

[m1west]

We're going around the house right now, installing Roku sticks on our TV's that aren't smart.
Roku, Amazon and maybe a couple others offer lots of channels.
I see a couple digital antenna's being installed so we can "try" to get local channels. I don't have high hopes since we live deep in a valley.

Next step for our family is to sit down and really assess what premium services we really want. At present, we have:
Amazon
HBO
Netflix
Disney+
Hulu
ESPN+
and maybe a couple more.

My vote right off the bat is to dump Netflix. It seems their primary offerings nowadays is either foreign or anime. Neither interest me.

I got rid od of Netflix, hobo and Disney, too much gay shit. Never had espn

 

[Doc]

I said we have HBO. You're right, it's called MAX now. We don't have commercials. Depends on plan?

I bought the Roku but not the Ultra. It can do TV commands like power on/off and volume.

Amazon.com

Yes, depends on the plan. I bought it for 3 dollars a month, regular 8 a month I think. 15 a month gets you no commercials on MAX.

I have other Roku devices and they did not have volume or tv on off capability. I thought only Ultra had that. Sorry for the misinformation.

 

[Melensdad]

We have Hulu, Disney+, BentKey (LGBTQ+ free children's shows... what Disney was before it went WOKE), Apple, Prime, Netflix and Paramount.

I occasionally cancel Disney, but mainly it's there because Kobe likes the movie CARS. We should probably re-cancel it again.

We use ROKU on our TV sets, even the sets with built in Smart TV functions because it makes life easy, all the sets have the same menu, log into a service on 1 set and you are logged into that service on all sets, etc etc.

ALL EXCEPT 1 TV that is an Amazon FireTV. I regret the FireTV purchase. TV is fine, but everything is defaulted to Amazon every time you exit an app, some apps don't stream as well in the FireTV format, and the menu is different. So it is basically just a pain to use. Like Brian in his original post, I don't want to have to remember or relearn things all the time, so I may try to hook up a Roku box to the FireTV and see if I can get around the defaults on the FireTV so that everything is simple on every TV.

 

[Doc]

I see a couple digital antenna's being installed so we can "try" to get local channels. I don't have high hopes since we live deep in a valley.

I was pleasantly surprised with the 19 dollar digital antenna I bought on amazon. I live in the sticks and have never had decent over the air channels. The little digital antenna brings in all 4 major networks plus PBS and a couple others. Clear as a bell. Hope you are as lucky.

 

[NorthernRedneck]

So we did a thing today. We picked up a 55" smart tv for our bedroom. We decided on Amazon prime video, stack TV, discovery+, and Disney + and will be canceling our satellite TV. We were limited to it until very recently when we upgraded to starlink from our slow internet. I'm liking that I can search for programs on my phone and ad them to my own personal watch list. I guess it's the way of the future so I may as well embrace it.

 

[bczoom]

OK, I installed Peacock on the TV but haven't subscribed yet. They have 2 plans, one is $6, the other is $12. The latter said it's "mainly" commercial free. I'm really only wanting to watch Yellowstone. Will the cheap plan play that show commercial free?

Now that my cable TV plan is gone, I need a new source for news. Any recommendations?

 

[Melensdad]

Now that my cable TV plan is gone, I need a new source for news. Any recommendations?

I have 2 major news source apps that I use.

HAYSTACK news is generally rural or semi-rural based. You plug in a zip code and it gives you a mix of news from several sources (which you can customize) that feature local news from multiple broadcast channels, national news from multiple sources, tech, politics, entertainment, etc (again, you customize your feed). https://www.haystack.tv/

WGN's app plays Chicago's local news, they mix in some personalities, and cover only major national news. It is my default or background TV. I actually watch it in the early morning. But after that it just tends to play in the background. As I am in the Chicagoland area, it works for me. Can't recommend it for anyone who is more than 100 miles from Chicago.

 

[NorthernRedneck]

K...so I have begrudgingly embraced streaming TV and for the most part am happy with it however, the big elephant in the room. F#&#<*g wifi connection🤬😡🤬. We have starlink with a strong signal throughout the house. But, second time this week I'm sitting here staring at a blank screen on a TV that won't connect to the internet. Every other God d@mn device is the house is working fine. But for the second time this week, I'm sitting dropping f bombs trying to reconnect the internet to the TV. 🤬 And it's not the same TV getting disconnected.

 

[Doc]

turn off tv, reboot router wait till router is up turn on tv. should fix it.

 

[Melensdad]

FWIW, I have noticed different brands of TV and types of streaming services tend to work better than others.

We have an Pioneer FIRE TV in our family room, it does NOT work well with some of the "Apps" and it defaults back to Amazon Prime choices every time you do anything.

I also have FIRE TV in the fencing club, not sure the brand, we only use it for playing things like club photos on the screen so its not a big problem that it defaults to Amazon, we simply loaded up pictures onto a free Amazon cloud account, and it plays a slideshow.

We have a few various other brands, but mostly Samsung TV sets. Most/all have some sort of built in "smart" TV functionality. We run all of those through ROKU boxes and use the free ROKU streaming services because the interface is simply easier, usually faster (but some of that is hardware dependent). The ROKU seems to work with most every channel app we have ever tried.

 

[NorthernRedneck]

turn off tv, reboot router wait till router is up turn on tv. should fix it.

That's fine if my wife wasn't working from home and on an online meeting. 🤣 I don't want to know what would happen if I reset the router and cut her out of the meeting.

 

[Melensdad]

That's fine if my wife wasn't working from home and on an online meeting. 🤣 I don't want to know what would happen if I reset the router and cut her out of the meeting.

Uh, I dunno, must have been a glitch . . . ​

 

[rback33]

We went to streaming only years ago. We have mostly used Rokus, but bought a Firestick several years back. I finally bought a smart TV for Christmas and intentionally went after a Fire TV because I like the features of the Firestick better. I absolutely love it and wish I had done it sooner. I have this one hardwired to the router with Cat 6 because they are right next to each other. I have an antenna connected and I LOVE how it pops up a channel guide for that. It was certainly an adjustment going from DISH and DVR's to streaming but we are glad we did. Also, on this one you can change where it defaults to when you turn it on.

 

[bczoom]

Welcome back @rback33
Haven't seen you in a couple years.