Having someone who at least presumably is anti-psychiatry take over that job is…a choice.
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Fair enough, but that would have been a more meaningful sentiment had it been expressed sometime in the last several years, as opposed to the day large groups of people started to care in a way that could have a big financial impact.
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I’m feeling pretty pissed at comcast aorn. Is there an obvious streaming alternative for someone who wants local network affiliates, ESPN, NFL Red Zone, and, like, maybe HGTV and Food Network for MrsWookie? Is 1 Gbps on fiber enough for 4k streaming, or do I need more than that?
Have you looked at youtube tv?
+1 to YT TV (they have everything you mentioned and NFL Sunday Ticket/Red Zone as an add-on) and 1 Gbps is more than enough. I’d note that most content is not in 4k, and 4k itself is like a $8-$10/mo add-on for the occasional event that does support it (like they made a big deal of a lot of Olympics coverage being in 4k, but it’s not the norm, and I don’t pay the extra fee for it).
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Yeah, that might be the one. Looks like Sling doesn’t carry the local affiliates in my zip code.
But here’s potentially a material obstacle. For cable TV, I turn on my TV, and it starts playing the channel I was last on with just that one button. I can flip up and down channels instantly, or I can enter a channel number and switch to it immediately.
But if I’m streaming, I have to go into my Roku, which has a loading screen. And then I choose a streaming service, which has a loading screen. And then I have to navigate to and select a program, and then more loading, and then I start it, and then I may or may not get an ad, and then it finally starts. Is YouTube TV, like, fast and easy to change channels? Or are we going through multiple loading screens?
Although it’s not like there’s a ton of 4k cable content.
I mean, I don’t find this a dealbreaker. It’s not like cable TV looks fantastic in the first place, and the picture is still good. It’s just not a huge upgrade in picture quality if that’s what you were looking for.
You’re loading up the app on your smart TV like you would any other app, and from there it’s most beneficial if you know what you want to watch. Like here’s the home screen you land on:
idk about the Fleetwood Mac thing but otherwise I watch a lot of sports, so the suggestions make sense. During NBA season if there was a Warriors game I hadn’t watched it would for sure be here since that’s what I’m turning the TV on for 90% of the time. If there’s specific shows you watch, you add them to your “library” which is like your DVR (with unlimited storage, no more hard drive management):
Most of my navigation is done through these two screens; there is the “live” tab which is more like a channel guide you’re used to
but I don’t use it much, and I feel like in 2024 most of our TV consumption isn’t really done in a “what’s on right now?” kind of way but rather looking for a specific show.
Yeah, this is actually a good chunk of our TV consumption, whether it’s browsing college football games or just putting something on in the background in the evening that neither of us find offensive but also isn’t something that is THE SHOW WE ARE TURNING ON TO WATCH when our main focus is on our phones/computers/some task.
Still kinda leaning this way, though. Quantum Fiber + YouTube TV is cheaper than what Comcast can offer, and then I also get to give them the middle finger, which will feel great.
Got YouTube tv specifically for Sunday Ticket, and I’m much happier than anything I ever put up with for cable.
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I was hoping to like this, but it just made me sad. Chester was a giant, those are impossible shoes to fill.
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Think of your cable box as an app, you were opening the cable app when you turned on the TV. With streaming you have to load the app that has the channels you want. Streaming boxes have crappy CPUs in them and tend to be slow, if your TV has apps it may be faster than your Roku if it is newer. You can try a newer streaming box which may also be faster. I’ve been using the Apple TV box and it is much faster to get into Youtube say, than when we would use the cable box to load YouTube.
With the Apple TV when I turn on the TV and the box at the same time the screen comes up in the Apple TV interface, then I pick an app and pick a show. The app will sometimes have a loading screen but if I was watching it last it usually won’t and will sometimes come up in the same show I was watching when I turned everything off. Sometimes it doesn’t and you have to load a bunch of stuff though, overall I’m used to it and get annoyed at how awful other apps menus are when I’m in them.
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I like youtube TV, but the one thing that is difficult is channel surfing. There are no channel numbers, so you can’t easily jump to another channel. Maybe there is an easy way to do it and I just haven’t figured it out yet. However, when you get to the live menu, it already knows what you’d probably select and those selections are at the top. So, it kind of saves you the trouble.
There are also some ways to customize (I think), so that you can just have a list of preferred channels to cycle through (I haven’t set that up).
In any case, you are correct that it is worse than cable for channel changing. It’s better for everything else.
I actually found this during my 20 minute demo last night. Using the YTTV interface on my TV (not the Roku), I scrolled all the way to the top, above the default view, and there was an option that then displayed a list of channels and a table of what was on right now and upcoming in each time slot, much akin to the display you can get with cable. Local network affiliates were right there at the top, so I caught about 17 minutes of the local news, which looked indistinguishable from cable.
I’m probably doing this. It’s gonna feel good telling Comcast to go fuck themselves. Earliest fiber install appointments aren’t until the middle of next week, unfortunately.
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all I can say is do NOT under any circumstances get hulu live TV. it sucks, their app sucks and is buggy as hell, and they jack up the rate 2-3x/year
We had YouTube TV for several years and ended up canceling it this year because the price kept increasing and between other streaming services we had most of what we needed.
My current streaming combo is this:
Max: includes food network, HGTV, CNN on top of their regular content
Disney+/Hulu/ESPN+: I get these for free with our Verizon plan
ESPN/2/3: I get all channels in the ESPN app using my in laws login
Netflix
Antenna for local channels: the only drawback is the lack of ability to record.
In almost a year without cable I may have felt like I was missing stuff only a couple of times. No ragrets.
I’m going on 4 years of no cable and the only thing I really miss is live sports. Watching NFL recaps isn’t bad and getting through a game in 15 minutes instead of a couple of hours is nice, but it isn’t the same as watching a game.
“Get me away from those freaky fuckers!” scream kids
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Clown would have been in the hospital for his own needs had one walked into my daughters room.