Let's try to keep things a bit afield of the services of "questionable legality", especially with regard to soliciting specific services. Happy to hear people's experiences with IPTV as a genre though.

I was in the same boat as op with Directv for years. Cut the cord. Installed an outdoor antenna and tied it to my old DTV cables. Works perfectly with about 80 ota channels. Maybe 25 are useful, discounting the religious, foreign language and shopping channels.

Also picked up a Kodi like box for iptv. You can buy the box for $40-50 and configure it yourself or pay more to have it come pre-loaded and configured with a ton of working apps. The box is basically an Android media player with a couple usb ports and Bluetooth.

Plan on buying an ota DVR soon for the time shifting and commercial skipping of network shows. Still researching what to go with.

Just came in here to say that buying a 30 dollar antenna and simply posting it up behind my tv is one of the best purchases ive ever made. Get about 25 top channels crystal clear and its so simple/cheap i cant believe it took me so long.

I was in the same boat thinking it was garbage, wouldnt work, etc. but its blown my expectations away and really is a great buy. Had for about a year now and am pissed thinking back all the years i was cableless with only netflix and amazon to watch, oh what couldve been... lol

Also just downloaded kodi a few days ago anyone have any kodi tips or anything at all for a kodi beginner?

Okay, I'm figuring this out:

Right now, I'm paying DirecTV $138/mo for their Choice Package and NFL Sunday Ticket Max. It's around $89/mo outside of football season. I also pay Netflix $15.99/mo.

I sometimes will subscribe to Starz or Hulu or Showtime if I want to watch a show like Counterpart or Handmaids Tale or Twin Peaks. But I usually just binge them and then cancel the subscription when I'm done. So that will fluctuate my monthly cost during the year.

I also will sometimes rent a movie through DirecTV or Amazon.

DirecTV/Netflix Cost: ~$154/month during football season/~$116/mo out of football season. This will go up, though, if I'm subscribed to something else.

I've really been wanting to cut the cord, though. So if I cancel DirecTV, here's what I can do:

1) I've got AT&T mobile service, and through them I get Watch TV for free, which is an app on my Amazon Firestick. That's got 45ish channels on it like CNN, IFC, MTV, BBCA, AMC, and Comedy Central. I also get HBO GO for free from them.

(I am curious what AT&T will do once I cancel DirecTV - if they'll still give me HBO GO and Watch TV - they should, however, because I did not get those services through DirecTV, I got them through AT&T.)

WATCH TV Cost: FREE

2) I just signed up for SlingTV and got the Blue package with 45 channels like A&E, Nation Geographic, Bloomberg, and others - the only thing the Orange/Blue package has that I might later want are the ESPN channels, which I can then upgrade if I choose to. That package costs $40/mo. I can probably do without ESPN, though.

There is some crossover between Sling and my Watch TV app, but who cares, the latter is free.

This is going to cost me $25/mo (after a first month introductory cost of $15). I also ordered their sports package which has the two NFL Network and Redzone Channels (along with others) at another $5/mo. Once I figure out Sling, I will probably want to add their cloud DVR at $5/mo and maybe their news package at another $5/mo because I'd like to get MSNBC.

SLING TV Cost: $40/mo (with add-ons)

3) I just bought an HD antenna that will get me my local channels - this is important because of live sports programming on the Networks, like The Masters and the Superbowl. Plus, right now DirecTV is blacking out CBS.

Cost: one time purchase price of $23.

So if I go this route, that's a pretty good savings.

***************

The only thing I'm missing is live streaming NFL games. I experimented today with my smart TV and found that I could get a Reddit stream on it just as easily as I can on my computer. So that's great. If I can do that in the regular season, I'm set. However, there has been some talk that maybe Reddit is cracking down on the NFL Stream threads - but so far, I haven't seen it in the preseason.

Two-Plus-Twoer Tim Teufel has been kind enough to help me get set up with Kodi and an IPTV so that I might be able to watch NFL games that way...I'm still trying to figure out Kodi and how to download an IPTV app onto it. I'm old, this **** is new to me lol. I understand an IPTV app can have a small monthly charge, like $3.99/mo, or something. Fine.

So I think I'm ready to do this.

I'm going to wait until the first week of September to call DirecTV. The first thing I'm going to do is see if they will give me Sunday Ticket Max for free, as a long-term, loyal customer. If they do...I'm in a pickle....I might just stick with DirecTV for the season. But if they don't, I will cancel my DirecTV and go with what I outlined above.

This is scary, as I've had DirecTV for 15 years or so. But I'm excited to give it a try.

I did have a couple of questions:

1) For those of you who use streaming apps other than Sling, what are your favorites and how do they compare to Sling? Basically - is there something better than Sling?

2) I wasn't going to bother with a VPN, but I did notice on the Kodi site that they recommended using a VPN with Kodi, or else Amazon might block what I'm trying to so with the Firestick. Has anyone had any issues like that? I downloaded Kodi and Downloader with no problem so far. Even downloaded IPVanish and connected it....but I had nothing that I wanted to stream at the time lol.

Thanks, Guys!

All good questions Dom, I'm kind of in the same boat. Being in Socal I've been enjoying watching the Dodgers games as a Directv user (Time Warner is the only provider, no Dish or Directv subscribers can watch them) by using the reddit streams. I've been pulling up the reddit streams on my computer and sending them to my smart TV using the "screen mirroring" option with good success. I'm thinking this will work for the NFL and other live sports if I cut the chord. I've also been having luck finding boxing and MMA streams PPVs and doing the mirroring thing

I gotta try that...I mean, I could always just run an HDMI cord from the computer to the TV, as well....

Anyone thinking about cutting the cord should def call and "cancel" their satellite/cable. Some of the deals they will offer you honestly kind of piss you off because it will make you feel like a sucker for what you were paying.

You actually have to be committed to cancel tho to get the best deals as they will call your bluff sometimes, not offer you any deals and only after you've basically canceled offer you some. I once even had them call me back after I canceled to finally offer me a deal.

Yeah, DirecTV and AT&T are good at that

Definitely in the same boat as the recent above. I’m old and not adept at this recent electronic ****(shakes fist at cloud). Also rural which has made DirectTV my only choice. My internet is Verizon dialup (hate them and their huge bill) so my first move would seem to be HughesNet so I can finally get a wi-fi that doesn’t take two hours to download latest Apple patch. Will HughesNet’s speed suffice for these cord cutting solutions? How about AppleTV...or Amazon Prime for my programming. I’m nervous about this kinda change...but the reaming from DirectTV and Verizon (their data charges) is no longer tolerable.

You are in a tough spot. I had an early HughesNet at my office before DSL and now cable was wired in. They were terrible. It has been many years so it is possible that they have improved. Make sure you get a trial period and are not locked in until you are happy with the service.

Anyone ever use this? I assume it is legit because Stanford, but is there a catch other than them tracking my habits?

https://puffer.stanford.edu/

Stream live TV in your browser. There's no charge. You can watch U.S. TV stations affiliated with the NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, FOX, and Univision networks.


edit: Just went ahead and signed up. It is good quality streams from the major broadcast networks, from I think the SF affiliates. Free and don't have to give name or CC or anything.

Looks like a fine deal but dont expect it to last forever.

I don’t think there’s a catch. They just show channels that you would get free with an antenna anyway and Stanford is obviously legit.

The networks they stream certainly don’t mind that, they like for people to watch their stuff. But at least in theory viewers from out of the SF market are not supposed to be able to watch a 49ers game that’s not on the national/regional broadcasting schedule. So whoever has the rights to that game in your local area might dislike that. But I doubt that’s going to be an issue since it’s a research project that probably doesn’t have huge viewership numbers anyway.

They only know me as txdome and I assume my location and ip. So no big deal. Maybe get to see some free college football I wouldn't otherwise be able to, but lolPac12. The website says they're limiting the number of people in the study, so get in now if you want to see what is airing on NoCal's PBS and Univision and those lame other main networks.

I cut the cord two years ago, I was all gung ho about trying out the streaming services, then I realized after cancelling directv I didn't miss tv at all. never replaced it, better off for it

All I can tell you, Dom, is that I when I cut the cord in favor of Sling et al it took me about 24 hours to stop missing it.

Well I got banned for 3 days and my post deleted from here. Good luck in your cord cutting endavours


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I've thought about this but I already pay the least they offer, basically their worst customer.

question:

Remember the days when your ISP can turn off your service if you've downloaded music or a movie without paying for it? And then you have to delete it?

Can they see if you're streaming something you didn't pay for, say a PPV fight or an NFL game?

Asking for a friend.

I have been warned several times from Cox cable and twice from AT&T/Spectrum internet for downloading files, not sure if they can tell about streaming. Although I've been using a VPN since I've started streaming so they shouldn't be able to tell

Edit: I mistakenly said Directv

Depends on how you streaming of your streaming through a service no. If your in a site yes but they don't go after service because they can't tell what's on other end but as far as site yes. They can just look up IP and see what the page consist of hope this helps


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They can see where you send to / receive data from. If you post here, they can see twoplustwo.com port 80 or 443 for http(s). If you use BitTorrent, they see TCP port 688x. If you use a VPN, the ISP sees that but not what’s behind it. In theory, they can intercept all your traffic but that’s not happening unless you’re affiliated with ISIS or something like that.

The big difference between streaming and torrenting is that the latter means you’re also uploading the content. That’s what triggers those ISP warnings in the US. In other countries, it might get pretty expensive if they catch you torrenting. Couple years ago during our Christmas vacation in Germany, my VPN shut down but didn’t stop the internet connection while I was downloading a US network TV show that wasn’t on German TV yet. Got a nice letter from a law firm that specializes in Internet piracy who charged me almost $1000. Negotiated them down to $300 but still sucked.

With streaming there’s still a disagreement about if caching small parts of the content (basically to buffer it) qualifies as downloading or not. In some countries content providers argue it does and they would like to have the option to go after streamers.

In any case, a VPN is your friend. Not only for stuff that might be questionable but in general to at least somewhat protect your privacy. My birthday is in a couple of weeks and I already have a pretty good understanding what I might get, just based on the adds on my Facebook feed that indicate what my wife is looking at online.

A VPN doesn't do anything to prevent site history or browsing preferences from being tracked by sites.

That’s true but for us it’s part of the equation because our ISP is Google (Fiber).