Help this n00b with Streaming TV

[WartHog]

Done with Dish/Satellite TV after 17+ years of watching them steadily jack-up my rate. Know absolutely nothing about Streaming TV so I figured I'd ask here what you enlightened ones think would be the best setup/service in my particular situation.

Info

I live in a older Mobilehome Community where there is no Fiber, only old school AT&T maintained Telephone wiring. My ISP is Sonic.net and I'm on their Fusion DSL/Phone service. Distance from the Central Office Distribution Hub is just over 1 mile. Running a test at www.sonic.com/speedtest, I'm getting 12mbps down, 1mbps up. Sonic Rep told me there might be some Buffering issues if using two TV's at once?

We have three TV's - none of which are Smart. Living room is a LG 42LN5400-UA - Bro's room is a cheap Walmart unit - mine is a 14y.o. Panasonic which I'm thinking of replacing with this LG unit at Costco. Would the other two need to be replaced with Smart TV's also or is there a device/adapter that would allow Streaming?

Also, we're not Gamer's if that helps with advising me.

[SkyHawk]

I like the Amazon Fire stick. All you need is HDMI input on the TV. Keep an eye for a sale around $25

https://www.amazon.com/Fire-TV-Stick-with-All-New-Alexa-Voice-Remote/dp/B0791TX5P5/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=Fire+stick&qid=1551838196&s=gateway&sr=8-3

If you are not an Amazon Prime member, it still works fine for many other services like Hulu, Netflix, etc. Youtube isn’t a first class experience on it though, Google pulled the app so you can only watch it through one of the browsers like Firefox.

https://www.geekwire.com/2018/sorry-google-tried-amazons-youtube-workaround-fire-tv-worked-great/

If you are not and never plan to be a Prime member, then look at Roku express, around $30.

[sholling]

If you're in an area with a strong over the air signal then I'd suggest starting with local broadcast TV. 12Mb just isn't enough bandwidth to stream to 3 TVs unless you're sticking with standard definition video on at least two of them and never doing 4k on any of them. Broadcast TV may help take up some of that slack for you on sets 2 & 3.

For streaming I use an NVIDIA ShieldTV box to stream Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Youtube. I hate the Amazon FireTV's interface and just refuse to use their hardware anymore. As I said I still subscribe to Amazon Prime and if you choose to pay extra each month you can subscribe to premium cable channels through Amazon - I haven't tried it so I don't recall which channels are available. If you don't need the power of the Shield, don't care about youtube, and don't need access to Amazon's premium subscriptions then I like Roku boxes. They're cheap and have far more free content than FireTV or ShieldTVs - some of it good, some rinky dink. I don't do pirated TV so I can't say which is best for that.

[WartHog]

Thanks guys - I don't have Amazon Prime and don't think I really want it. Was looking at YouTube TV and am liking what I see for programming variety vs price + the Cloud DVR with unlimited storage. I don't think we'll ever be running more than two TV's at once - would 12mbps be enough for two simultaneously? Like that the Roku sticks work with a lot of streaming services and would work with our existing TV's.

[the86d]

I was running 2 HD streams, and I maxed at about 3.4-3.5Mbps downstream.
(I cannot speak to 4k...)

One stream was youtube on the LG Smart TV, and the other was A Roku streaming DirecTV Now watching a live TV channel.

DirecTV Now is about $40/month, so I am paying $50/month including an extra screen (+$5m so 3 total), and +$5 for HBO.

[skeeter149]

I run 3 roku sticks. Using hulu streaming at 5.99$ and netflix. Tried philo for 15 bucks but it was clunky. I found ps bye was good. Thing to watch for is how many TVs can stream at a time. Like hulu plus live tv is 45$ but only 2 streams at a time, if 3rd tries doing anything it won't allow. To add a 3rd was 13 bucks min. Ps is 45$ but gives 3 and if you add address so you don't share you get 2 more. Sling customer service sucked! Never them

[sholling]

Thanks guys - I don't have Amazon Prime and don't think I really want it. Was looking at YouTube TV and am liking what I see for programming variety vs price + the Cloud DVR with unlimited storage. I don't think we'll ever be running more than two TV's at once - would 12mbps be enough for two simultaneously? Like that the Roku sticks work with a lot of streaming services and would work with our existing TV's.

If you are going with Youtube TV on Roku sticks then make sure they finally have enough processing power to support Youtube. As of two years ago most Roku products lacked the necessary processing power. I like Rokus a lot but I watch too much Youtube and opted for more powerful device.

[bigbearbear]

This is Netflix's bandwidth recommendation:

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/306

0.5 Megabits per second - Required broadband connection speed

1.5 Megabits per second - Recommended broadband connection speed

3.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for SD quality

5.0 Megabits per second - Recommended for HD quality

25 Megabits per second - Recommended for Ultra HD quality

[bigbearbear]

BTW do you know if you get good cell signal from Verizon in your location? If you do, you can also consider signing up for Verizon's mobile data plan. It is pretty fast if you use their newer mobile wifi devices.

Unlimited data plan at around $65 per month if I recall correctly.

[Robotron2k84]

Netflix's bandwidth requirements are about 40% higher than they actually need to be, unless you max the quality settings.

Reason: latency. If you don't debug your connection to minimize latency or are on a particularly bad provider, then the stream will need to stop and buffer to catch up. To make this seamless in high-latency environments, you need to practically double the bandwidth. On my Comcast setup, I have average ping times of 32 ms to most services, and 16 ms inside of Comcast's network.

Wireless makes for a lot of latency and retries if there is competing traffic both on your network and against neighboring cells. And wireless is half-duplex per frequency, so try to spread things out; try to isolate traffic by frequency as much as possible.

My own monitoring of Netflix, which is by far the most inefficient at bandwidth consumption (least compression) yields 6 Mbps for SD, per stream, 10 Mbps for HD, and 18 Mbps for UHD/4K. All of the other services come in below this, and I have all of them maxed out for streaming quality. This is to a 4K AppleTV that runs in 12-bit per px color mode, even on HD settings; which is another reason that Netflix uses more bandwidth than most as they support HDR and wide-gamut on HD streams, and not just 4K ones, if the content supports it.

One thing you can check out and do a cost / benefit on is that Sonic used to have a bonded 2x copper ADSL offering to double speed tiers. Not sure if they still do.

Edit: Just checked Sonic's availability page and the bonded offering is 30 Mbps at $50/mo, and I'm nearly a mile from the CO.

[WartHog]

If you are going with Youtube TV on Roku sticks then make sure they finally have enough processing power to support Youtube. As of two years ago most Roku products lacked the necessary processing power. I like Rokus a lot but I watch too much Youtube and opted for more powerful device.

Would the Roku Ultra be the best choice then? It can also be connected to a Router via Ethernet which might help in my relatively low download speed situation, correct? https://www.roku.com/products/roku-ultra

Edit - Another possibility would be to just purchase a new Roku TV from Costco - https://www.costco.com/.product.9554230.html

[sonofeugene]

You'll never be faster than your internet service. And from what I understand, a wireless connection between the modem and another device is usually faster than a wired connection. At least that's how I remember it.

[vino68]

Netflix's bandwidth requirements are about 40% higher than they actually need to be, unless you max the quality settings.

Reason: latency. If you don't debug your connection to minimize latency or are on a particularly bad provider, then the stream will need to stop and buffer to catch up. To make this seamless in high-latency environments, you need to practically double the bandwidth. On my Comcast setup, I have average ping times of 32 ms to most services, and 16 ms inside of Comcast's network.

Wireless makes for a lot of latency and retries if there is competing traffic both on your network and against neighboring cells. And wireless is half-duplex per frequency, so try to spread things out; try to isolate traffic by frequency as much as possible.

My own monitoring of Netflix, which is by far the most inefficient at bandwidth consumption (least compression) yields 6 Mbps for SD, per stream, 10 Mbps for HD, and 18 Mbps for UHD/4K. All of the other services come in below this, and I have all of them maxed out for streaming quality. This is to a 4K AppleTV that runs in 12-bit per px color mode, even on HD settings; which is another reason that Netflix uses more bandwidth than most as they support HDR and wide-gamut on HD streams, and not just 4K ones, if the content supports it.

One thing you can check out and do a cost / benefit on is that Sonic used to have a bonded 2x copper ADSL offering to double speed tiers. Not sure if they still do.

Edit: Just checked Sonic's availability page and the bonded offering is 30 Mbps at $50/mo, and I'm nearly a mile from the CO.

I agree with most of this. And HD is not always 1080 (i or p) You can get 720 and a device will still say you are viewing HD. Sonic used to have great gigabit speed for little cost.

[vino68]

You'll never be faster than your internet service. And from what I understand, a wireless connection between the modem and another device is usually faster than a wired connection. At least that's how I remember it.

Um, no. 802.11(a/b/n/n/ac) is still slower than copper or fiber gigabit Ethernet. But that will not matter as most streams will not get you there. And a carrier circuit, for a residential area will most likely not get true gigabit speeds. At least in my testing. DOCSIS usually requires SD-WAN for symmetrical speeds. Using wireless is convenient but not the best possible transport topology.

I recommend you get a Roku, I love mine and current content providers and future ones will most likely have a channel available on that platform. I would not recommend a Roku TV or rely on the TV for the streaming service. The streaming ecosystem and standards are changing rapidly, if you buy a TV with the apps built in, you could find yourself in planned obsolescence quickly. While using a device like a Roku or FireStick, you will need to upgrade the device at some point but not have the capital expense of a whole new TV. Unless you require 15k res or who knows what the new standard will be. I know that TVs get firmware updates but those seem to stop being published after a couple of years. Content providers like Netflix, Amazon and most likely the new Disney and others will also keep updating their apps and service.
I do not recommend the Chrome device or Fire Stick. I had issues with both but have gone through 3 Roku devices without issues. Only thing is some channels, the smaller ones, do not keep up with development and as a result are dropped.

[sholling]

Would the Roku Ultra be the best choice then? It can also be connected to a Router via Ethernet which might help in my relatively low download speed situation, correct? https://www.roku.com/products/roku-ultra

Edit - Another possibility would be to just purchase a new Roku TV from Costco - https://www.costco.com/.product.9554230.html

I'd start with a single Roku box (not stick, not TV - probably the $85 "Ultra" for wired ethernet and a better remote) and see how you like it. I liked mine a lot except that my older Roku III did not do Youtube and I watch a lot of Youtube. I expect that newer models have gotten better at Youtube but have not tested it. Youtube aside I like the fact that it has the most apps, that the apps (Netflix etc) are updated on Rokus before anything else, and I like the interface. TCL makes some nice TVs but without the bandwidth for 4k I wouldn't buy a new 4k TV unless you really need a new TV, and if I did buy one it would be the "6" series for superior contrast.