Update on Cord Cutting (Cable TV) 2017 - 2020

[robls]

Finally dropped cable tv. Switched to Sling TV Blue and Total TV addon. Record local channels on HD Homerun using clothes hanger as my antenna in attic. lol. Saving $47 a month.

[pb4uski]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack Admittedly it's a very small cable provider, but they're killing off their cable TV service and will coach viewers on how to cut the cord. That coupled with AT&T clearly moving toward streaming. I'm surprised anyone still wants cable or satellite if they have internet access, but we've debated that enough... It's also nice to see a cable/satellite provider admit streaming is much cheaper/better value versus the ones that keep trying to say otherwise (which is pure BS for most households). Spectrum has also subtly admitted same saying their average customer is spending over $180/mo for internet and TV without a DVR! You'd have to go way out of your way to spend $180/mo on internet and streaming, closer to $100/mo. https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/cabl...ting-the-cord/ https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/spec...r-180-a-month/

Also see: https://www.beldinternet.com/

[Cobra9777]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack Odd, we’ve had PS Vue with Roku’s since Feb ‘18 the channel guide has networks vertical and time horizontally across the top. You must have different hardware...

Hmmm, that is odd. We use Fire TV, not Roku. So I guess the guide works differently on different hardware. Here's a short how-to video on YouTube produced by PS Vue to explain the guide. The video was posted July 22, 2019. It clearly shows what we have, which is time running vertically on the left and channels running horizontally across the top. Very unconventional, but as I said, we eventually got used to it. If you Google the topic, you'll find lots of complaining. I also found a discussion on reddit from Nov 2017 that explains the new (more conventional) guide layout on Roku.

On YTTV, the guide can be customized so that channels appear in any order desired and channels can be removed completely if desired. I've also noticed that almost all video is 1080p (PS Vue is 720p). But still no 5.1 surround sound that I can find... although I've read that YTTV is rolling out 5.1 in stages starting with some VOD.

[bloom2708]

I started the 5 day trial of YouTube TV last night on a Fire TV box.

I was pretty impressed. The app is very fast (compared to PS Vue). Controls are very simplistic compared to some of the features available with PS Vue. But, that might not be all that bad.

The channel lineup is very comparable to the Core plan. $5 cheaper. DVR functions seem very good. Finding shows and the picture quality is comparable to Vue.

We get ABC on YouTube TV and that is not on Vue for our market.

3.5 years on Vue and I am considering switching. I guess I have 4 days to figure it out.

We do have 2 Gen1 FireTV boxes that are not compatible with YTTV, but that is pretty minor. I have been worried they are getting long in the tooth anyway.

Anyone else recently try YTTV on Fire TV?

[Rustic23]

YTTV just went live, I believe Monday, on Fire TV. There have been side loaded version, but the actual YTTV app is now live. I have Apple, Roku, Chrome, and Amazon. Also several android tv boxes (cheap ones). I did not see any difference in the way YTTV performed on the Fire as the Roku. The Apple is noticeably faster. I despise the Apple controller and I use an Inteset remote, actually two, one for DW and one for me. That makes Apple the best choice for me. Having said that, I would not buy an Apple at their price, I got mine 'free' with a Direct TV Now subscription.

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bloom2708 Anyone else recently try YTTV on Fire TV?

I finished up a free 3 week trial of YTTV on 9/26 - but on Roku, not Fire TV. I was comparing it to Hulu+Live TV which I had been using for the previous month.

I agree with your assessment of the streaming quality. It worked well for us but I didn't see any significant difference between it and Hulu, so went back to Hulu since it is $5/mo less.

The recent addition to Hulu Live of a "cable-like" program guide (rolled out to Roku and Apple TV with others to come) is a real plus. Without that I would be tempted to pay the extra $5 for YTTV.

[Cobra9777]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bloom2708 ...Anyone else recently try YTTV on Fire TV?

We just started our 5-day free trial of YTTV last night. We have 3 Fire TV boxes (two gen2, one Cube). We've had PS Vue for a couple years. DW reluctantly agreed to use YTTV instead of PS Vue for a few days. She's the main user. I only use it for live sports.

So far, she likes the navigation better and some of the additional channels that we didn't get with PS Vue. She also likes the guide, DVR, and easy search function. But she hasn't used it very much yet. She's fixated on losing the Hallmark channel if we switch. We had Hallmark for part of the year with PS Vue when I would upgrade to Core for baseball season (only way to get regional Fox sports).

I like the interface better. It seems simpler, faster, and more intuitive. Picture quality is better, with most (not all) streams at 1080p. Disappointed in the lack of 5.1 surround sound but they say it's coming. Very excited for PBS later this year. Voice commands with Alexa work same as with PS Vue. Customizable guide is nice. No ads embedded in the guide is even nicer. Seems to be TONS of on-demand content and movies. It's $5 less than PS Vue Core, which is the most comparable channel line-up.

One thing I've noticed... with the app being so new to Fire TV, the integration with the Fire TV platform is not as deep as with PS Vue. For example, in the Fire TV settings under Live TV, it does not recognize YTTV as a live TV source. For us, it shows PS Vue and Pluto. So on the main Fire TV screen, there is no row of icons for YTTV as there is for PS Vue. There is also no YTTV content under the "Live" menu selection. And no YTTV content shown in the Fire TV live guide. I assume this will be coming at some point in the future. I also noticed that voice searches using the Fire TV remote do not bring up YTTV content. So there's still a ways to go on integration.

[RunningBum]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobra9777 We just started our 5-day free trial of YTTV last night. We have 3 Fire TV boxes (two gen2, one Cube). We've had PS Vue for a couple years. DW reluctantly agreed to use YTTV instead of PS Vue for a few days. She's the main user. I only use it for live sports.

How are you finding sports to watch? I was visiting family last week and they had Hulu. ESPN was fine, but watching football on the networks was clearly at 30 frames/sec. Choppy. A pass looked like - - - - - instead of a solid line.

[Cobra9777]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RunningBum How are you finding sports to watch? I was visiting family last week and they had Hulu. ESPN was fine, but watching football on the networks was clearly at 30 frames/sec. Choppy. A pass looked like - - - - - instead of a solid line.

I haven't actually watched a football game yet. Just signed up last night. But to answer your question, I tuned to some soccer on TNT and it was 1080P 60 fps. On the pull-down menu at the bottom of each stream, YTTV has a button called "stats for nerds." It provides the resolution, fps, and lots of other technical information about the stream. I also checked a college football game replay on ESPN-U and some track and field on NBCSN, and they were all 1080p 60 fps. I only watched them each for a minute or so but it looked really good. Hopefully the networks will be the same for sports programming.

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by RunningBum How are you finding sports to watch? I was visiting family last week and they had Hulu. ESPN was fine, but watching football on the networks was clearly at 30 frames/sec. Choppy. A pass looked like - - - - - instead of a solid line.

I've recently watched football on both Hulu Live and YTTV and had absolutely no issues. I even toggled back and forth on a network (ABC) game between OTA and Hulu Live and the only difference I could see was was the Hulu stream was a few seconds behind the OTA broadcast. No discernible difference in picture quality or frame speed.

EDIT: Just saw this was posted yesterday...

Quote:

Hulu Live TV offers 60 fps support on all channels, except local CBS affiliates. They recently added support for all Fire TV devices, so you can now stream in 60 fps on all streaming devices.

https://thestreamable.com/live-tv-st...0-fps-channels

You must have been watching a CBS stream to see the - - - - - pass.

[Cobra9777]

Today is Day 5 of our 5-day free trial. We're using the just-released app for Fire TV. It's running on the latest Fire TV Cube hardware. We like the service a lot but there's a critical flaw with the new app... the DVR is apparently recording correctly but it's not displaying any of the recorded shows under library. I spent 30 minutes on the phone with YouTube TV technical support and went through lots of troubleshooting steps. I can do a search and find the recordings, and they show up on a PC browser, but not on the Fire TV device library, where they are supposed to be. I sent them lots of logs and other info so they are actively working the issue. But for now the DVR is pretty useless on Fire TV. So I will cancel before the end of the day. I think we'll do a Hulu free trial next. Hopefully YouTube can fix this because I really like the idea of getting PBS live later this year.

[Midpack]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobra9777 Picture quality is better, with most (not all) streams at 1080p.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobra9777 I haven't actually watched a football game yet. Just signed up last night. But to answer your question, I tuned to some soccer on TNT and it was 1080P 60 fps. On the pull-down menu at the bottom of each stream, YTTV has a button called "stats for nerds." It provides the resolution, fps, and lots of other technical information about the stream. I also checked a college football game replay on ESPN-U and some track and field on NBCSN, and they were all 1080p 60 fps. I only watched them each for a minute or so but it looked really good. Hopefully the networks will be the same for sports programming.

In no way to discredit your other observations re: YTTV and picture quality may indeed be better***, but readers shouldn’t expect to see 1080p@60fps on live broadcasts on YTTV or any other provider.

Unless something has changed recently, no live broadcast network provides content in native 1080p or 60 fps. Most broadcast networks are still providing 720p and some are 1080i. What you’re watching is upscaled, but that doesn’t enhance resolution or frame rate. Where would the extra pixels and frames come from if not in the original?

There are on demand sources like BluRay, Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and others providing native 1080p or even 4K at up to 60 fps, but no broadcast network that I know of.

*** OTOH, a users bandwidth limitations may often downscale resolution and/or frame rate, it happens much more than most people realize, so when you get 720p at 25-30fps it does look better - and viewers may assume they’re seeing 1080p.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1080p

Quote:

In the United States, 1080p over-the-air are currently being broadcast experimentally using ATSC 3.0 on NBC Affiliate WRAL-TV in North Carolina, with select stations in the US announcing that there will be new ATSC 3.0 technology that will be transmitted with 1080p Broadcast television, such as Fox Affiliate WJW-TV in Cleveland.[12][13] All other broadcast television stations do not broadcast at 1080p as ATSC 3.0 is currently in experimentation and in test trials while all major broadcast networks use either 720p60 or 1080i60 encoded with MPEG-2. While converting to ATSC 3.0 is voluntary, there is no word when any of the major networks will consider airing at 1080p in the foreseeable future.

[bloom2708]

That is strange. We have a Cube and 3 boxes gen2/3 for fire tv.

The DVR is working great for all users. Our 5 day trial is up. I am switching from Vue. YTTV is missing a few features but I like the service and it is faster.

[zinger1457]

For those of you currently full time streaming what's your average monthly Internet data usage?

[MichaelB]

Quote:

Originally Posted by zinger1457 For those of you currently full time streaming what's your average monthly Internet data usage?

Good question, so I checked. Comcast reports 250-280 GB usage per month over the past 3 months. In a typical day we stream 4-5 hours of SirisuXM and 2-3 hours of TV, most of which is not HD.

[Midpack]

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Originally Posted by zinger1457 For those of you currently full time streaming what's your average monthly Internet data usage?

With Comcast/XFinity we averaged 600GB/mo +/- 100. With AT&T so far we’ve been 500GB +/- 100, we may be using less but I think our TV stream gets downscaled more often with AT&T than it did with Comcast. We watch (HD)TV and iPad surf quite a bit. We had/have a 1TB cap, but that’s never been an issue. If 4K ever becomes the norm it may, but that’s decades away IMO.

[Cobra9777]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bloom2708 That is strange. We have a Cube and 3 boxes gen2/3 for fire tv. The DVR is working great for all users. Our 5 day trial is up. I am switching from Vue. YTTV is missing a few features but I like the service and it is faster.

That is strange. Glad it's working for you. We have gen2 boxes on two other TVs but haven't installed the app yet. We've been test driving on our main TV and the Cube. The YTTV tech support rep told me that he's had other calls on the same issue. In any case, for us right now, no functional DVR is a show-stopper.

[Cobra9777]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Midpack In no way to discredit your other observations re: YTTV and picture quality may indeed be better***, but readers shouldn’t expect to see 1080p@60fps on live broadcasts on YTTV or any other provider. Unless something has changed recently, no live broadcast network provides content in native 1080p or 60 fps. Most broadcast networks are still providing 720p and some are 1080i. What you’re watching is upscaled, but that doesn’t enhance resolution or frame rate. Where would the extra pixels and frames come from if not in the original? There are on demand sources like BluRay, Netflix, Amazon, YouTube and others providing native 1080p or even 4K at up to 60 fps, but no broadcast network that I know of...

I just posted what the hardware is reporting about the technical details of the stream. For the 4 major broadcast networks on YTTV, two (Fox, ABC) are streaming at 720p/60fps and the other two are 1080p/60fps. Most of the cable channels I checked are 1080p/60fps. I can't speak to the original source resolution or whether it's been upscaled, but I suspect you are correct. In any case, DW's first comment was that she thought the picture quality was better than PS Vue. Actually that was her second comment. Her first comment was, "Where's the Hallmark channel?" ...much to my dismay, that may actually be the deal breaker.

[Cobra9777]

The Streamable posted an article yesterday reporting that the first group of PBS member stations will go live on YouTube TV Nov 4, 2019.

[REWahoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobra9777 Her first comment was, "Where's the Hallmark channel?" ...much to my dismay, that may actually be the deal breaker.

I have to keep a subscription to Philo for this very reason.