Did you cut the cord and go with streaming services? (Houston: 2014, credit card)

[Whyrallnamestaken]

I thought about doing this, but I like the local channels. How do you get local channels or is that possible? I have Amazon prime and a Tivo so I could use their service. But don't I have to pay to watch their content on top of the yearly prime fee?

Right now I am so mad at Comcast/Xfinity. In December, the promo package I was on ended and I called them to see if there were any other packages that were cheaper than what they were now going to charge me and they said know. So I said I wanted to save some money but I was happy with the performance internet speed of 50 mbps and wanted to change the cable to a lower package.

Several days later after Comcast made the changes, I did not get what I asked for. They dropped my internet down to 4 mbps.

So I called again. Well, evidently nobody there will listen to what I am saying. This time we discussed getting the digital starter package with the 50 mbps internet and was told that would be around $120 a month. I checked the channels I received and the internet speed was around 50 - 54 mbps. So far so good.

I received my bill today, and that is not what I am being charged. My bundled services are $150 and not $120. So now I have to call them tomorrow and see if anybody will listen to me. I am getting really mad. I don't know how to get them to listen to me. I am not saving money over what my previous bill was. I looked at the bill I got last year that gave the prices for products and services to be effective October 1, 2014. The service I have should be $119.94.

But I don't see how I can use another service for tv if I can't get the local channels which I watch a lot. Tv and internet service from comcast has been okay for the last 2 years with no complaints. It's just when I have to call customer service about changing to a less expensive package that seems to be the problem.

[AlfredB1979]

They won't listen short of dropping them, which may accomplish nothing on their end, anyway...short of begging you to stay, if they do indeed do that.

Not sure what to tell you. I only have Internet and have the GS-LAC ballgame in another tab. I'm good. I haven't had the need to get local stations (news?) and hear about more people getting shot or a mob scene breaking out at a movie theater again...

As you can tell, customer retention ain't their big strength. So assist them by not being retained.

P.S. You really can't get an Obama antenna to work on the side?

[RVD26]

All you need is a pair of rabbit ear antennas to get the local channels.
Something like THIS would do the job, depending on how far you live from the TV towers in Missouri City.
An attic or roof-top antenna will cost you more.
I have an Amazon Fire TV (both the streamer and the stick) loaded with XBMC/Kodi and that gets me pretty much everything (short of live sports) that I would need.
The only reason I don't cut the cord is I my need for sports in HD and the inconvenience it would cause the family having to use other devices to see the shows they want.

[theking_z]

I only have internet with Comcast. I use an over-the air antenna for my TV which bring me all 3/4 major channels and bunch of other ones- crystal clear HD with DD sound. I watch news often in the evenings.

I can never get my head around people spending hundreds of dollars on cable TVs. I however use/used Netflix, Amazon-Prime and similar sort of streaming services which never costed me more than 15/20 bucks on an average for what I want to watch.

[Weatherguy]

Time Warner is just as bad. I had been getting TV over the air, and could find some reruns of shows on YouTube for free. But I decided I wanted more current and varied programming, and had the cable hooked up. The technician didn't even hook up the cables correctly, so initially I had no HD capability. And internet speed wasn't as advertised (lots of fine print, apparently). I'm going to give them a little more time to get it worked out. One thing I've noticed is that no two staff will tell you same thing, and no two techs will have the same solution.

As for all the streaming options, I find the choices to be confusing. I'm going to monitor this thread (and do more online research) and see if there's something better and cheaper that fits my own needs.

[houston-nomad]

Pretty easy: $20 HD antenna to get about 50 over the air channels. Roku to stream amazon prime, Netflix, hulu or whatever. Done.

[Dopo]

Originally Posted by houston-nomad

Pretty easy: $20 HD antenna to get about 50 over the air channels. Roku to stream amazon prime, Netflix, hulu or whatever. Done.

No need for HD antenna, I have used hangers before to watch local digital HDTV.


Copied from a previous post
//www.city-data.com/forum/houst...st-ota-tv.html

Originally Posted by Dopo

I'm your man (that sounds weird)
I cut cable last year and I'm very happy knowing that the cable companies are not taking my money
I live in North Houston and I get almost all the channels in Houston with a long distance antenna that I bought for about $90 (Direct C2 Clearstream)

If you live in Midtown, you should be able to get a lot of channels with any antenna, you can even use a coat hanger.

Here's a few useful links:
AntennaPoint.com - Antenna Locator
AntennaWeb - Home
AntennasDirect C2 HDTV Antenna Reviews

For TV Guide I use the webpage titantv
On my phone I use the apps i.tv and titantv

[astrohip]

Originally Posted by Whyrallnamestaken

I thought about doing this, but I like the local channels. How do you get local channels or is that possible? I have Amazon prime and a Tivo so I could use their service. But don't I have to pay to watch their content on top of the yearly prime fee?

Answering your questions:

* Because Houston is so flat, almost the entire greater Houston metro area can get excellent antenna reception.

* Amazon Prime gives you access to thousands of streaming shows. There is no additional fee to Amazon, beyond your yearly Prime fee. However, their selection is nothing close to Netflix. Just be aware.

* You can still use a TiVo with any of these options. Be aware different TiVos have different abilities, some can handle antennas, others can't. And some of the oldest TiVos aren't able to stream Amazon, although the newer ones can. If you reply with your model, I can tell you what you can & can't do (I've had them all, and still use TiVo today).

[HookTheBrotherUp]

We had DirecTV for over 13 years, we had their Premier package with everything for about seven of those years. We noticed we did not need all those Movie channels, so we cut our programming. Interestingly, we did not do it because we needed to save money, we did it just because we were paying for something we did not use.

Not long after that, we noticed that little things we had for free suddenly were not free anymore. Our "protection plan" fees went up, etc. Kind of like the airlines, we saw the nickel and dime thing going on. So we cut down from four receivers to two, and got rid of the warranty.

What do you know... we now had to pay for the HD channels, something we were getting for free in the past. We knocked our package down to the one just above the basic because we watched 5-7 channels at the most, seriously.

Well, our package fee goes up, and so does the warranty. We now had to pay for DVR service, where we had it for free in the past. What we learned is that the higher the package you get, the more free things you get. It started as an effort to omit things we did not use, but it turned out to a challenge to get our bill below $100 per month, it never happened.

So late last year, I decided to cut the service. Since we already had internet Cable, we thought we'd try Cable TV for only about $39. more. Comcast really sucked on my 65 inch 4K TV; DirecTV had a better signal.

I was always a hobbyist with satellite TV, even having an old 10ft satellite dish and receiver. I purchased a Free-To-Air (FTA) receiver in November. It means what it says, free channels over the air on satellite. This system uses the small dishes just like DirecTV and DISH. Programming was not good, but a lot of live feeds, PBS, etc. Lots of foreign channels.

I thought about resurrecting my big dish again, you can get HBO, SHOWTIME, etc., and most of the cable channels for $450 per year! Most people don't like the big dish, and won't spend the money for the initial setup. Plus they are just ugly.

I cancelled Comcast Cable TV before the 30 day commitment period. I was content with no TV, but we missed some programming that we all liked. And DirecTV read my mind, and called us back trying to get us back.

I told them exactly why we left, and what do you know, they had a "deal"! Yes, they gave us the exact same programming, new receivers, DVR, etc., for $69.00 per month, all inclusive of taxes. For two years!! I complained to them that they should have done that anyway, especially since we were with them for so long.

In the end, cancelling service, and getting back our old programming for about half the cost for two years worked for us. We are back on.

I did also install something called XBMC on my PC, and we are able to watch all sorts of streaming TV, including the Spanish networks from Spain that my wife was used to. We can also watch a lot of things that I don't believe should be there, but I'm not being a police here, I'm just saying I see that there are channels that are subscription only, but you can watch with XBMC. I still have it installed just for the novelty of it. And I also enjoy playing with my FTA receiver, which also has XBMC installed on it, so I get satellite and streaming TV. If you want to check it out, go to Youtube and enter 'Amiko A3'. Also Youtube 'XBMC'.

Sorry for the long post!

[DanielWayne]

Comcast has always worked with me, but I grew tired of playing the little game where they raise your bill and you have to haggle a new price. So I cut cable tv and kept only internet.

I got a $10 antennae from WalMart for local channels, and I buy Netflix cards since they don't require your credit card to sign in. If you have a 'smart' tv then you likely have 'apps' available for a bunch of other channels. Even youtube has a lot of old movies for free.

Supposedly Dish is about to release a $20 package that will have a handful of prime channels like ESPN and Disney. I would be inclined to do that since I only watch a handful of cable channels, anyway. And I just read that other providers will follow Dish's idea. Don't forget HBO will offer a monthly stand-alone service, too.