Probably cutting the TV cord soon--advice?

Hardware and technical stuff
21

Thanks for the further replies, @Nesrie and @wisefool (that link particularly was very helpful–I hadn’t thought about the Roku TV stick). I’ll look at that OTA antenna option, but only for things I want to watch live, like maybe the Superbowl or an NBA game during the playoffs, by plugging it directly into my TV. Unfortunately my TiVo Premiere’s digital OTA tuner is pretty terrible compared to what’s in most relatively modern TVs.

Re: the Hulu service–I guess I’ll try their free trial through my TiVo (although from what I understand its Hulu player kind of bites) just to see what kinds of commercials it plays and what chunk they represent of the show.

22

I’m not a huge fan of Groupon, but right now I believe they have a 45 day trial going on for Hulu if you’ve never been a Hulu customer before.

original source:

direct source:

https://www.groupon.com/deals/hulu?utm_campaign=1029&utm_medium=afl&utm_source=GPN&tsToken=US_AFF_0_1029_1327_0&sid=d48670ec930d11e68ed0f28546eba6db0INT

I’ve been using Hulu Plus, I guess it’s just Hulu now since they cut the free portion… almost never have problems with it. They’re in a constant state of identity crisis so who knows what the future holds but aside from losing Blacklist which was BS, they’ve been consistent for the broadcast network. Once Lifetime got a channel for Roku and Amazon, I do Project Runway now too.

Now for the sticks… I have a Fire TV stick I purchased on the cheap for my third TV because… why not. The sticks have notable limitations though. They’re weaker, which is easy to see when navigating menus, and their have no inputs or outputs so if you have any sort of sound set-up that might not work for you. They are a pretty good intro to the world of streaming though. It’s a cheap entry if you decide to exit and return to over priced cable, but if you like what streaming offers… you’re going to want a box. pretty much any retailer that carries Roku is in the middle of clearancing out or will clearance out the older models, the Roku 2, 3 and 4s. I tried to get a 4 for $64.45 at Walmart but I think the employees hid them. You might have some luck though. The new models only recently hit the shelves. I recommend Roku to anyone not married to Amazon’s echo system. For those of us who are though, Roku still offers a nice option. I think Roku works better with Plex and keeps their channels more up to date, but boy has my Fire TV been speedy since day one.

23

Playstation Vue is in theory exactly what I want.

For about $30, it’s as if I have a “real” cable provider, so I can use those credentials to log into all the different cable channel apps offered on iOS/Apple TV or via a web browser. Crucially, that’s AMC and FX, because they have almost all my favorite shows these days, and almost none of them are available for streaming during the current season via Hulu/Amazon/Netflix. And I don’t watch sports that often, but it is nice to have the ESPN login as well for the occasional college football game.

However, if you actually try to use the Playstation Vue service itself, get ready for headaches. At one point it streamed just fine from my PS4 and I could also use the PS Vue app on my iPad to stream from around my house too, so I could use it to actually tune in live or use its faux-DVR capabilities to “record” shows and skip commercials when watching later.

Then I replaced my router, and ever since, the Vue believes I’m now outside of my “home network” on both my PS4 and the iPad app. On the PS4, this means I get a warning message every time I launch it that it has detected a change in my network and maybe I’m not using it where I’m supposed to be. It still works once I dismiss that, but it does it every time, there’s no way to tell it this is correct.

On the app, that means functionality is crippled as it goes into “roaming” mode (or something) when it thinks it’s not on your home network, which means almost every channel and show is locked.

Some googling turns up lots of users who have had similar problems just because they don’t have static IPs from the ISP. It sounds like PS Vue is incredibly aggressive and stupid about making sure you’re not sharing it or accessing it remotely, with lots of users saying they’ve actually had the service cancelled by Sony just because their IP address has changed.

I haven’t had that happen yet, but I’m a little paranoid it could, so I honestly use the PS Vue app on my PS4 even less than I normally would, afraid that maybe they’ll eventually decide I’m cheating and cancel the service.

So if you want to pay $30 for a login to all the basic network and cable apps, Playstation Vue is great, but if you ever actually try to use the PS Vue service itself, look out.

24

Can’t believe that everyone missed the most obvious advice. Unplug it before you cut it.

25

Why don’t you just call and ask them to reset your home location?

26

Interesting–one of the TV channels available to stream from Plex is the German evening TV newscast “Die Tagesschau” (literally: the look at the day). Pretty cool since I lived in Germany a total of 1.5 years in my youth, and the “newscaster German” is so distinctly enunciated, it helps me to understand almost all of it. :-)
Also, the news anchor looks a bit like a younger version of Herr Eichhorst from The Strain.

27

What, and talk to a human for customer support?

Actually I did decide after typing up that complaint that I should get around to doing that, just didn’t have a chance yet today. I think some people on reddit said customer support didn’t always help, but I should at least try.

Still, this shouldn’t be an issue in the first place, so I’d be very cautious in recommending Vue to anyone else.

28

I can’t see as an existing member but I hear if you go to www.hulu.com/welcome they will offer you $5.99 a month for a year instead of the $7.99.

29

I’m thinking of cutting the cord in about 6 to 7 months and want to get my house ready when the time comes. The one question I have is: does MoCA work even if you don’t have cable tv? I have coaxial cables running throughout the house and would like to use them for networking instead of powerline adaptors.

Edit: Forgot to mention that I will be using a ota antenna for local channels.

30

Odd, I’ve replaced my main router since I started using Vue. No Issues. I’ve got openvpn setup on my router so even when I’m out of the country, state, or just my zip I can just openvpn into my home network on my ipad and vue is none the wiser.

31

So to anyone who has the Hulu subscription (with commercials), how onerous are they, in other words how frequent and how long–do they make a “half hour” show just as long as on TV (so about 9 minutes of ads–forget that noise) or just lengthen it by 2 minutes or something? Tempted by the commercial-free plan, which admittedly still has before and after commercials for a handful of shows (none of which I care about–but ads that don’t interrupt a show are a lot less of a PITA in my opinion anyway), and costs twice as much as the current new customer offer.

No matter what I do BTW, I can’t get the CBS channel on Plex to work for me, at least not in Firefox.

32

I have commercials. It’s been what almost 9 years since I have watched TV with commercials so my memory might be off, but the hour shows are never a full hour with commercials, although some shows are specifically “limited” commercials. The half hour shows are pretty close to 30 minutes maybe a little under. I’ll have to time myself next time I watch but I feel like I can never do anything when the commercials are going… like they’re not long enough.

As for CBS. I had trouble running Elementary today on my Amazon Fire TV, second attempted worked. I rarely have trouble on Chrome though.

There are two reasons I have not gone commercial free. 1. I don’t feel the commercials are that bad right now, and it gives me a pause I usually want anyway. 2. everything I’ve read says several of my hit shows are not commercial free with the commercial free package anyway.

33

Papageno, are you using an adblocker by any chance?

34

We jumped on the no-commercial plan as soon as it was offered, so I can’t speak to how the commercial density has changed since then. But they were definitely onerous enough to make us happy to pay $4/month to make them go away. When Hulu first started, it seemed like there was one 15 or 30-second spot at every commercial break in a show. Since that replaced a 3-minute block of commercials on regular TV, it was a fine improvement. But they steadily crept up over the years, until it was around 90 seconds per commercial break on average (so 4.5 minutes of ads on a typical 21-minute show).

The remaining commercials haven’t been a problem for us because, as you noted, they only apply to a few shows, and they are only at the beginning when we’re settling in, getting drinks, etc. (and at the end when we’ve already turned it off), rather than interrupting the show itself.

35

I generally do use AdBlock+ but have specifically whitelisted everything plex.tv related as well as the CBS website, and started to stream last week’s 2 Broke Girls episode fine there. But whenever I try to stream the same episode in the Plex Media Server player through Firefox, no joy.

One person on the Plex forums said something about enabling transcoding, but since I don’t see a way of turning transcoding off I think it’s on, right? I haven’t really changed anything.

Thanks for the answers on Hulu. I’m still leaning to “no commercials” because I’m spoiled by having a TiVo of one sort or another since October 2002. One other question, though: are most TV show episodes on maybe at most one day after they premiere on broadcast/cable?

36

The transcoder data is under Settings>Server

Pasted image802×696 46.6 KB

I wish I was better at this. It’s been years since I started using this server. I remember having some region issues early on, but that’s a different message. Sometimes for CBS, I just exit Plex and restart the computer and the server. CBS has always been the most difficult for me but I watched Elementary today, so I know it’s up.

I am also using version: Version 1.1.4.2757

37

Dude. uBlock origin.

38

I haven’t used Hulu in ages because I loathe and despise video ads, but when I did they were appearing at pretty much every point where the aired version would break for commercials, and it would be the same ad every single time, which drove me spare. Hopefully their portfolio of advertisers has expanded by now.

39

Oprah liked bread for about two weeks during every show multiple times a day… but it has gotten better. I think i saw a loca ad not too long ago, not my local mind you but some low quality ad from some company I’ve never heard of.

40

Interesting. You say you restart the whole PC as well as the Plex Media Server? I use that same version of the Windows PMS, BTW, which I think is the latest. IIRC those are the default transcoding settings, too.