Cord Cutting in Tulsa

[Conan71]

Nice!

Thanks for all the help everyone!

[carltonplace]

Both Vue and Sling TV have sports packages as add on and you would still be at a price point below Cable.

[dbacksfan 2.0]

I'm addicted to sports as well, motorsports in particular, and unfortunately I doubt Fox Sports and NBCSN will move to either of those anytime soon.

[erfalf]

So, I have been a "cord cutter" for a few years now. Only thing I miss is the sports, which I still get a decent amount of. Free MLB game every day. Superbowl was on the CBS app. NCAA tourny on line. Fox Sports App, etc.

This is embarrassing to admit, but I have been a AT&T DSL user for years. An internet plan with the local cable company for the same cost is literally about 15x faster. BUT, it has limits on bandwith, whereas AT&T in its infinite wisdom was never able to find a way to implement this with DSL. So I have never worried about hitting the cap even when binge watching some of my favorites on Netflix. The speed of the AT&T service, while relatively slow to begin with has been extremely spoty and some times completely gone over the last month or two. It finally came to a head and my wife got so frustrated she called CableOne (no Cox in Bartlesville). My question is, have any of you cord cutters had any issues with hitting your bandwidth caps? CableOne's policy is to let it slide basically for a couple of months until they make you sign up for a higher plan.

[cannon_fodder]

My cox tier purports to include 350 Gig of data. If you go over it, they can send you a letter saying you went over. If you go over it again, they can send you a letter saying you went over it. If your use is extreme and excessive and repeated and you refuse to up your data package... they can suspend your service. I've never heard of that happening. Grizzle has posted Cox bills showing epic data usage.

I have Netflix and Amazon Prime and have a teenager with a YouTube habit. Many a night I have fallen asleep streaming a Ken Burns documentary and gone through ~4 hours on the civil war. Only to re-watch it the next night, and so on. Most months I use about 100 gigs. That equates to about 150 hours of video (if all I did was video).

For the vast majority of people, this isn't a real issue.

[carltonplace]

DSL - Digital Subscriber Link in most cases just uses the old 2-wire twisted copper pairs coming out of the serving wire center off of the main frame through a DSLAM (the same copper as analog voice). It's still the dominant internet technology but its bandwidth limits are much lower than what coaxial can carry.

[erfalf]

So day one on cable internet and my wife asks me the moment I get home from work (hours after internet installed) if I had messed with the TV (all of them) because the picture on all of them is so much sharper. I had no idea how much data loss was occurring with slow DSL speeds. Hense the reason for the concern over data usage. The faster it's coming in, the faster I can consume it. For comparison, I was downloading the Microsoft Office a day or two ago. I started it and left it going for a long time. Timed out. Did it last night in a matter of moments.

[charky]

Both Vue and Sling TV have sports packages as add on and you would still be at a price point below Cable.

Saw that Sling TV has new multi-stream package (still in Beta though). $20...can stream through 3 devices and includes Fox...Fox Sports Southwest and FS1. But...you lose ESPN and ESPN2.

[Conan71]

The Fire box came in yesterday.  That was beyond stupid easy to set up.  Just need to get the two wire to coax converter for the aerial in my attic and I can tell DirecTV (aka AT&T) to suck it.

[patric]

The Fire box came in yesterday.  That was beyond stupid easy to set up.  Just need to get the two wire to coax converter for the aerial in my attic and I can tell DirecTV (aka AT&T) to suck it.

"Balun", "matching transformer." Less than a buck online, but you can go to a brick-and mortar and they move the decimal point over.

[dioscorides]

So, this got me to finally do it ...

https://directvnow.com/

The "Go Big" package for $35/month (actually $40, since I added HBO), with a free AppleTV (for prepaying for 3 months), was too good to pass up.  I had Uverse and it was costing me $135/month.  Yes, I lose my local channels and DVR, but for $95/month in savings, I can deal with it.

Edit:
I had Showtime, with Uverse, and will probably add it as a standalone on my AppleTV, for $11 per month.  So, I will be saving $84/month, instead of $95.

[Red Arrow]

Yes, I lose my local channels and DVR, but for $95/month in savings, I can deal with it.

Get an antenna and a switch for local channels.

[dioscorides]

Get an antenna and a switch for local channels.

That is the plan.  I ordered an antenna off Amazon, yesterday.

Edit:  Currently, my plan is this, for local channels:  Antenna -> HDHomeRun box -> Router -> AppleTV (Channels App)

[Conan71]

So, this got me to finally do it ...

https://directvnow.com/

The "Go Big" package for $35/month (actually $40, since I added HBO), with a free AppleTV (for prepaying for 3 months), was too good to pass up.  I had Uverse and it was costing me $135/month.  Yes, I lose my local channels and DVR, but for $95/month in savings, I can deal with it.

Edit:
I had Showtime, with Uverse, and will probably add it as a standalone on my AppleTV, for $11 per month.  So, I will be saving $84/month, instead of $95.

It says limited time pricing.  What is the fine print saying on the "normal" price.  If DTV would have done something like that before, there's a good chance I would not have cancelled them.  

While we are saving a good bit of money since we already had an Amazon Prime membership, we are only paying for a subscription to sling, there are limitations to streaming over the internet.  It does hang every now and then when we are streaming and I've still never connected to my old aerial in the attic so we can get Channel 8, 11 and a few other of the digital over the air channels.  We get 2 and 6, 6.2, & 6.3 just fine.  We aren't exactly TV junkies so not a big deal with the minor inconveniences.

That said,

We recently purchased a B & B in NE New Mexico and CenturyLink only offers about 7 MBPS (unfortunately, this is the fastest provider if not the only one in the immediate area...yes, satellite is slower than this!) in the area, so streaming would be out.  The place currently has a satellite set up for Dish.  What are the pros and cons of Dish vs. Direct?  We've had DirecTV and were happy with the service, just not the ever changing/escalating rates.  I'm also not real happy they were absorbed by AT&T.  Too bad Dolfanbob went on up ahead, I could really use his insight about now.

[dioscorides]

It says limited time pricing.  What is the fine print saying on the "normal" price.

The "Go Big" package is normally $60.  I am not sure how long the $35 intro pricing is available, and I don't know that AT&T has clarified, but I have seen that if you sign up for the introductory $35 pricing, you get that price until you cancel your plan.  That doesn't sound like something that AT&T would actually do, but who knows?  I still have my unlimited data plan for my iPhone that they keep grandfathering me in on.

Here is a reddit link to a discussion about the $35 price:
https://www.reddit.com/r/DirecTVNow/comments/5fwhcv/the_35_pricing_for_the_go_big_promotion_is_a/