Getting rid of Dish, Cable. Directv?

[Rob454]

I have ATT service internet, tv and home phone. I think the total bill is 80$ a month. for tv and internet and add 28$ for phone service

[Abesnake]

I just use DTV and pay about $25/month.

OK, what's DTV? I want it.

[SickofSoCal]

No brainwashing for me. Never had it, never will.

Thank you Mom & Dad!

[Rob454]

No brainwashing for me. Never had it, never will.

Thank you Mom & Dad!

LOl i almost never watch any of the reality or hollywood talk or who is who or doing what in Hollywood type of shows. i watch Discovery , military channel DIY, cooking channel, and Foxnews. Most TV is lame as hell IMO but there is stuff that actually teaches you something

[Abesnake]

I would _love_ to get rid of cable (ok, we have Dish, but they are functionally equivalent.) I already have Netflix and have been able to stream their movies through our Wii, but there aren't that many good movies in their streaming library.

My requirements:
- Wife still needs to be able to watch cooking & garden shows, QVC and Fox News
- Kids need cartoons, Discovery, History and Science Channel
- Easy interface
- Final output must be to our old tube TV
- Must hear audio through our stereo
- Must be able to play back our old VCR tapes and SD DVDs
- Must be able to record shows (I'm not sure about this one, but I can see my wife wanting to keep a certain Glenn Beck show or something.)
- And how can I watch Impossible Shots? (Outdoor Ch.)

Components I already have:
- Wireless-G network throughout the house
- Nintendo Wii
- DVR with standard DVD player. This functions as the "hub" for all video streams.
- Tape VCR
- Standard Def TV
- Dish Network satellite receiver (this component would go away.)
- Audio output routed from back of TV

Questions:
- Do I need to buy or build a "Media Center" PC?
- Do I need to buy a Roku box or something similar?
- Is there a current HOWTO guide online for how to do all of this? I've googled it up and down, and everything seems to be at least 1-2 years old. Many of the streaming sites are now defunct.

Hey Shooter, Tell the kids to read a book and get some real sophistication.

[not4un]

Get yourself a Powerline adapter...internet will run through you powerlines in your house.

http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Mbps-Powerline-Starter-White/dp/B001CF4ATY/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1280573655&sr=8-5

[not4un]

I also gave up directv a yr ago and haven't looked back. We do netflix for $9.74 a month and stream directly to our nintendo wii and hulu. I have ATT uverse internet only at 3mb per/sec. for $35.00 a month works just fine.

[twinfin]

I got rid of my TV in 1993 and never looked back. It's the best decision I ever made. Books are so much better and don't come with commercials. TV imagery provokes the emotions while reading stimulates the intellectual mind as well as sharpens your ability to reason and think critically.

Eventually, I married a woman who never owned a TV. We continue to maintain a TV free life, unburdened by the hours of exposure to commercials and provocative visual imagery that forces you to process what you see in the emotional realm rather than the intellectual realm. This is an important point!

By book reading far and wide, you can discover so much more about global warming, national politics, science and history than you could ever get from watching anything on TV. Reading is so much more relaxing for me and I find that it is very easy to spot deceptions and false information that is so common in TV based news reporting with it's 4 second sound bites and flashy imagery.

I strongly encourage you to consider going TV free. Try it for one year. Get that evil black box out of your house and just try one year of not even having a TV on the premises. You will likely find that whatever you find yourself doing instead of watching TV will in the end, be more valuable to you than any TV show you ever remembered watching.

Who will take my challenge?

Twinfin

[vahtryn]

I grew up without television. I've never paid a cable provider for television, just the interwebs for information and my career.

With that said, there are some shows that I do enjoy watching, and I watch through other mediums due to high speed internet.

I pay 45 bucks for a 30 meg cable modem. Why add another 100 bucks on for 900 channels of crap that will take away my ability to read more often and work on personal projects in order to earn money off of them or benefit society?

[Wherryj]

Our Dish bill just went up from $85 to $110. Talking to a buddy about that and he mentione that he's dumping his DirecTV, and not getting Dish or Cable. His thinking is that it cheaper to just get a Netfix account, and that pretty much every worthwhile series is available over the net.

No I understand that whatever plan I get must fit my particular viewing patter. Which is that I can go years w/o watching any sports, I seldom watch news, and we usually don't "surf", we have a few shows that we target TIVO, and hardly ever plop ourselves in front of the TV and just watch the least objectionable show.

We do like Breaking Bad - HBO programming, movies, a few cable reality shows, an an occasional network show. Probaly 10 or so hours per week.

A problem is that we have a large screen with HDMI, but so far I don't even have internet access in my living room (which is where our only tv is located).

He has Apple TV, a home server, Apple WiFi etc.

I'm thinking of building a server/pc with hefty HT support.

What are you doing for TV access - can you live w/o cable or sat?

Don't dump dish and go to Comcast to save money. Comcast is perhaps the fastest option, but it is also mostly likely the costliest.

I was recently trying to dump Comcast to save money. I set up a Uverse order (if you are looking to save, consider Uverse-or if you're REALLY lucky and have access to Verizon Fios).

Unfortunately I've had SERIOUS issues with AT&T's lack of customer service. It took well over an hour on the phone to set it up on Tuesday. I gave contact info numbers for my home and the office. Apparantly someone named "Wayne" called on Thursday during the afternoon (when at least SOME people work?) and just left a message, "this is Wayne from AT&T calling about your order, call me back."

He repeated the call to my office, also failing to leave a message. I never HAD their number, so called back on the AT&T number that I called and no one could help. I get home THE SAME DAY to a message, "we couldn't reach you. We needed to reschedule your installation (it was still 14 days away) so we cancelled your order. You'll have to call back to re-order," Calls to several customer service reps at AT&T not only led to the understanding that "we can't do anything", but they "We won't do anything".

I would stay away from AT&T. If this is how they treat a customer in the "honeymoon phase", imagine what you get when you are on a contract.

I'd say go Direct TV. We never had issues with their service-aside from having had a HD receiver go bad while we already had a contract. DTV won't help an established customer (anyone remember the days of an HD receiver costing $999?), so I had to drop the service and go to Comcast to avoid a $1000 equipment replacement.

[Wherryj]

I grew up without television. I've never paid a cable provider for television, just the interwebs for information and my career.

With that said, there are some shows that I do enjoy watching, and I watch through other mediums due to high speed internet.

I pay 45 bucks for a 30 meg cable modem. Why add another 100 bucks on for 900 channels of crap that will take away my ability to read more often and work on personal projects in order to earn money off of them or benefit society?

Wow, you get 30 MB cable for $45? Comcast would charge about $5000 a month for that service...

[advocatusdiaboli]

We are an Apple house: me, wife, 2 daughters. I hooked their Wii up to the Apple WiFi and we stream Netflix. I suppose I could use Hulu too, but I won't pay for it. We've had ATT/Yahoo internet for the last 4 years and it works reliably--maybe down 3 hours a year on average.

We haven't had commercial television access for 13 years now--every since we unplugged it when our oldest daughter was 6 month old. Don't miss it at all. Especially annoying, time wasting commercials. I get all the news I can stand on-line.

We all read more, get outdoors more, spend more time talking, play with the dogs more--in short we live our own lives more instead of watching those of others, real or imaginary. try it--it's your life, stop watching some else's and live your own.

[qaz5109]

ATT treats their employees like trash and that directly effects the customer the techs dont want to fix your service inspite of att other then that my uverse only freezes all day and all night even after multiple dispatches,i wish fta would come back but after the new nagra came out that has been down the tube maybe ill get the timewarner and use a surf board to get 30mb and free tv or keep uverse internet and go with direct

[Ding126]

Can you use a digital set of rabbit ears and get very basic TV for free?