I was always a huge fan of DirecTV. For the last 15 years, I've strongly advocated their service to be the gold standard for digital entertainment. The service was good, their support was solid, they were the exclusive provider of the NFL Sunday Ticket, what wasn't there to love?

Over the years, the "cord cutting" trend has picked up great steam, and yet I still resisted. Still paid my $2k a year to the man, and felt smug superiority over the poors streaming their Hulus and whatnot.

But, with this climate of broadcast litigation and carriage disputes, I finally hit my breaking point. 10 minutes before Game 1 of the NBA finals, off went my ABC. Then CBS followed shortly thereafter. The straw the broke the camel's back.

Use an antenna? Are you kidding me, this isn't 1976 where I turn the dial to point some skeletal contraption on my roof toward Canada in order to watch Bachelor in Paradise.

So, my friends, the time has come to embrace the new state-of-the-art, and with all of the myriad streaming options available, the landscape is cluttered and confusing. But, I'm certain there must be a new gold standard, and perhaps this thread can be used to share our experiences in crafting the best digital entertainment packages and set-ups available.

I'll start with my own needs/wants, and hopefully this can illuminate some best practices with what others are doing.

What I like about DirecTV/current traditional service:

1. They have the NFL Sunday Ticket
This is why I will retain service through the end of this season, but I hope beyond hope that after this year it'll be available on one of the other streaming platforms. Probably going to be stuck next year though, as I believe it'll probably be AT&T exclusive through the 2020-2021 season. Arrgh. Probably outside of my control here.

2. DVR Content with No Commercials
No, I will not watch commercials. I must be able to fast forward. Obviously.

3. My DVR Curates Content For Me
This is perhaps what I love best. Subscribe to "season passes" and it automatically records the stuff I want. This is a universal feature and I'm sure is replicated with the streaming providers. BUT, what I truly appreciate is when I pop into my play list and see that it has helpfully recorded the first episode of the new season of Top Chef. While I'm sure that with any of these providers I could go to Bravo and set this to record when the episodes start to air, I can't be bothered to actually know when this stuff is starting and go after it myself.

4. Other Live Sports
Aside from the Sunday Ticket, I do need access to live sporting events on the major broadcast networks, the ESPN family of networks, stuff like Fox Sports/NBC Sports Net, and need the ability to add other regional sports networks as appropriate.

5. Local Channels
The ability to receive my local channels would certainly be a plus.

6. Wide Channel Selection
The more the merrier, ldo.

7. Ability to Interface with Other Streaming Packages
Have subscriptions to Amazon Prime Video, Showtime's streaming package, HBO Now, etc. Probably will be other a la carte stuff that pops up as well, so it'd be a plus to be able to integrate some of that stuff. Not sure if that is a thing.

So where are we at? Looking at some kind of cloud-based DVR type thing that'll interface with some kind of streaming aggregation subscription service. Is there something that exists today that'll tick the boxes?

What are we doing out there, friends?

I've been doing PS/Vue on my PS4 in lieu of paying Cox Communications for the TV service. I get all the usual cable tv channels (USA, FX, Discovery, Disney, Etc) plus a **** tonne of sports, all the ESPNs, Fox Sports, CBS, NBC, BeIN, Golf and others. And a great cloud based DVR. AFAICT, you can access any show on the grid (but lose the ability to FF on some). And there are additional subscriptions available, HBO, Starz, etc.

Cost is about the same as Cox (maybe only 10% less?), but they have better content and a better DVR option.

No NFL Total Access, but they do have RedZone(tm) which is cool when the crappy Cardinals are blacking out access to the other games.

Youtube TV has been my provider of choice. Excellent for sports, very functional DVR. Watch on 3 devices at a time, portable ldo, no cable boxes required. Has local channels. Lots of channels.

Minor nits: No RedZone ldo. Skipping ahead on DVR is annoying and last night I finally experienced something with non-skippable ads. Did not enjoy.

Was great value at $35, fine at $40, now it's at $50/mo and will only go up. Sure, they've added channels, but that's just copying the cable companies and nobody cares about an awful lot of them. Further increases and I'll probably cancel ... in fact I might anyway after football season.

How this ends: You end up with multiple streaming services that keep going up in price. Eventually, people start thinking "Hey, that bundling thing that the cable companies did was a pretty good idea".

Drawback to the PS/Vue service is having to use the clunky PS game remote for a remote control device. Interface is a bit wonky, sometimes difficult to get it to do exactly what you want. I wonder if one of these universal remotes (Logitech maybe?) might be able to connect to the bluetooth interface on the PS4?

I’m not sure where you live, but for me (Midtown larger city) an indoor antenna works perfectly fine.

Everything else we do streaming but we might cut back on that too. Between Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, ESPN+ and Fox Soccer Matchpass there’s already way too much content for me. We already got rid of HBO and Hulu or Amazon Prime might be next.

I have Sling - kind of alternate between their Orange and Blue package ($40) and just one of them outside of football season ($25)

Never tried their DVR.

Last 2 years I just paid for Sunday Ticket as a stand-alone app, but maybe only possible if live in apartment that cant get Direct TV.

I have antenna for local channels.

While the PS/Vue does have some of the college sports networks (Big10, for example) as a west coast/best coast resident, and an ASU grad, I would like to have access to the Pac12 Network (at no additional cost to me, of course)

Luckily, ASU baseball streams most/all of their games, which I watch on the web browser on the PS/4 (big screen, stereo/surround sound) when I'm not actually present at the game. Go Devils!

Hulu live is okay. Not that cheap and you're on about a 3 minute delay so if you're watching sports keep your phone off if you don't like getting texted spoilers lol.

Month to month contract is sweet as hell though, cancel that **** the minute football season is over.

We have Netflix, Hulu, and a few key logins. ~$70/month. No cable for 5 years now, don't miss it at all.

Great replies so far. Here's a potentially dumb question:

Right now, I have all of my A/V gear in a closet (DirecTV DVR, receiver connected to surround speakers, a PC for streaming) running via a long HDMI cable down to the basement and up into my wall-mounted television in the living room.

Do ya'll stream on a PC and go HDMI to your television? Some other device connected to both your internet and television?

I have a new TV that has Chromecast built in and either use the built in YTV app or control the Chromecast from the YTV app on my phone.

Older dumb TV I have a chromebox outputting to the TV via HDMI

Bedroom TVs have chromecasts hooked up, controlled either through phone app or chromebook/laptop.

Almost all higher quality TVs sold over the last 5 years are “smart”. That means they have build in WIFI and/or a LAN port to connect to your router and most have built-in apps for things like Netflix, Amazon and Hulu. Some also have Chromecast built-in that supports the google play store.

If you want to use an app that your TV doesn’t natively support, you can use one of its USB ports to plug in an Apple TV or Roku or FireTV Stick or Chromecast to use 3rd party apps. We use an Apple TV for most stuff but also have a modded FireTV and Roku that came for free with a 3 month Sling subscription.

lol at your antenna rant. You buy a nice antenna for like $40 put it on the roof, and you get crystal clear HD channels absolutely free.

As far as sunday ticket goes, just get a VPN and then you can access it online for half the price (you have to be out of the country to access it and get it at that price, which is why you need the VPN).

Are they geoblocking during actual usage now? That would kinda suck because for that to work on your TV you need to have the option to run a VPN on it (or use KODI) or have a router that supports VPN usage. But the latter option means that nobody in your household can watch US Netflix while you watch a game. In the past you just needed the VPN to sign up for the service and could use it from the US with a US IP.

For the rare occasion where ESPN+ streams an in-market game that would be on blackout with my local IP, I stream it to the TV from my MacBook through AppleTV but that kinda sucks compared to having it run on the TV app.

This. I just roll with Sling Blue + Sports upgrade. RedZone at $35/month and decent smattering of other channels. (No ESPN, but I don't miss it all that much -- we also have Netflix + Amazon Prime and it's more than enough.

Streaming services probably still come to something like $70-75/mo. for us. But that owes itself in large part to our opting for HBO + SHO out of Amazon Prime--for now.

Obvs. streaming is fracturing right now, and we'll all have choices to make once Disney+ / Comcast / AT&T (HBO) / Apple come on line. Previous commenter was right. We could find ourselves back to paying $100/mo or more, except across nine apps / platforms instead of to one cable company. Annoying AF.

Oh yeah. We hide ours behind the TV itself and the quality is still usually better than anything we stream.

I looked into streaming tv. In order for it to work I would have to buy higher speed internet, plus pay for the streaming services, plus pay for Dish because PAC12 network isn't on streaming. All that cost resulted in not much savings, not worth the hassle for me.

You need the VPN to login and launch it, after that you can shut if off

Honestly, this is probably the worst time to be cutting the cord. If your satellite/cable bill is bloated from yearly creep and other garbage, then yeah you should modify. But otherwise, the golden era of "cord cutting" is over.

My dad, brother, and I split the major streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, Live Sports). Unless you can do something like us to spread the cost, the price difference is a rapidly narrowing gap. The way we do it likely won't even last much longer, as streaming services are getting wise to this method (i.e. Hulu allows only two simultaneous streams now).

Yeah digital TV is different than analog which was the old way. The picture is much more clear now. Basically it either comes in crystal clear or not at all. The picture you get from an antenna is supposedly better than the picture from cable or satellite.

Is the non-DirecTV RedZone that you guys are getting “non-live”, like the NFL Network’s RedZone? Because that sucks.

I’m addicted to Sunday Ticket, and I have HBOGo through My AT&T mobile account for free, and I subscribe to Netflix, Criterion Channel, and have Amazon Prime, so I also use a FireStick.

My DirecTVi s $88/mo normally and $125~ during football season.

I’m fine...but I did notice CBS disappeared yesterday...

I use a IPTV app on Kodi for FireTV. I pay $11 a month and get a hundred or so channels, including every live sporting event in every major American sport and tons of other random **** from around the world and every UFC and boxing PPV

So is it a VPN? Wtf is Kodi? Is it just an app I can download on Amazon?

It's the same redzone channel as direct TV, you can also watch the games after the fact with everything edited out that isnt the plays so an entire game is like 20 minutes or something, you can also watch all the cameras like the coaches use to break down film