# I'm all in. Adieu, DirecTV...



## ScottE22 (Sep 19, 2003)

Just hung up with DirecTV. This is the first time I've canceled a service that I've overall been very pleased with.

I'm going "all in" with the cord-cutting now that I have two Premieres, two Rokus, and an AppleTV. Both Tivos are "lifetimed" (a cost that will be recovered by year's end) so our monthly expense will be down from $100 to about $16 with Hulu Plus and Netflix.

I'm truly questioning Hulu, though. Most of the stuff we watch is network TV anyway which which we can get OTA. And the stuff we watch that isn't network is available on Netflix or via season passes from iTunes. You could buy a load of season passes every year and not spend close to what you'd spend on DTV.

The retention offer was to drop us to the "Family Plan" for $30/month with $10 off for six months. Of course, this doesn't address my other concern which is wanting to add TV in a guest room in the basement and my home media room where I've never had a box because I don't watch regular TV down there enough to justify it -- it's primarily for movies. They offered me another HD receiver for free, but that's still yet another $6 charge for each additional TV.

Anyway, I'm excited and nervous now that my safety net of "we can always just reconnect the boxes" is officially gone. I just don't see us as a family watching TV that way anymore. Although, if we change our minds, I'd go back to DirecTV in a heartbeat.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

I've been gone from Directv since 2006 now. I'm using OTA and Netflix. Haven't missed D at all.


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## ScottE22 (Sep 19, 2003)

Do you also use Hulu? I'm not sure I'm seeing the value.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Hulu+ compliments the other streaming services. I personally don't use it anywhere near as much as Netflix, but I do use it for a few hours a month. But I could easily get by without Hulu+. But at only $8 a month, just watching a few shows each month makes it worth it. Although with Netflix, I've got my streaming costs down to 7 cents a title over the last four weeks. I've used it way too much lately.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

ScottE22 said:


> Do you also use Hulu? I'm not sure I'm seeing the value.


I do not use Hulu Plus at all. I can't see paying the monthly fees and watching the commercials.


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

I dropped DirecTV after 12 years and I am getting by just fine without any monthly TV bill. I do rent Vudu and Amazon VoD but spend less than $10/month total on both, almost all rentals are the 99 cent variety. I couldn't even make a case DirecTV was too expensive given the cost to provide the service, only that I didn't want to pay it any longer.

I will consider Hulu Plus at some point and already know I like Amazon Prime, I used it for a month for free and so did my girlfriend. I will likely go with a Netflix free trial if I qualify to check that out as well but so far, I have more to watch recorded or bookmarked than I can make time for.


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## larrs (May 2, 2005)

I left DTV for a completely different reason- we moved to a neighborhood with cable, phone and Internet included in the monthly HOA. I really liked DTV but also love my Tivo, so "c'est la vie".

I would likely be a cord cutter if I was not in the situation I am today. However, I would suggest you add ESPN3 to your mix if your Internet provider is hooked up with them. I could not live without the college football I get from ESPN.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

ScottE22 said:


> Do you also use Hulu? I'm not sure I'm seeing the value.


I have been OTA only for several years (used to be with Dish). I don't even sub to Netflix or rent much. Tried Hulu+ for the free month and didn't see the need for it. I do have a tuner-less HTPC attached to my receiver & stream some stuff like The daily show, Colbert Nation, and a few SyFy shows from the free version of Hulu (only 480P ).

At this moment in time I am pretty happy with not paying directly for any content. But I also have a Logitech revue/Google TV, that I don't think much of but I can get Amazon Prime streaming with it and I would have access to anything that is HD (versus only SD available through the HTPC) and may try a free month of that at the end of this years OTA season. I haven't used Netflix's free trial either so I could really end up with 2 months of no cost stream this summer if I really need more content. Plus of course I have a few Red boxes close by and there always are Amazon rentals available.

Good Luck,


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## Jebberwocky! (Apr 16, 2005)

magnus said:


> I do not use Hulu Plus at all. I can't see paying the monthly fees and watching the commercials.


hulu+ is a life saver for us, add playon and you can stream the shows that aren't allowed in plain Hulu+

Commercials really do not bother me at all, usually a minute or less. Now if they were like the 5-8 minute break we get on network TV that would be another story.


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## ScottE22 (Sep 19, 2003)

Jebberwocky! said:


> hulu+ is a life saver for us, *add playon and you can stream the shows that aren't allowed in plain Hulu+*


I'm going to check this out... Thanks!


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## Jebberwocky! (Apr 16, 2005)

ScottE22 said:


> I'm going to check this out... Thanks!


if you buy their lifetime sub (~80) you can get a free Roku, another fine addition to the cut the cord family.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

ScottE22 said:


> I'm going to check this out... Thanks!


Right now if you sign up for a Lifetime PlayON license ($80) you can get a free Roku LT.
I've been using the free PLayON for a couple of years now. I don't use it very much, but I' thinking about getting the lifetime license because of the free Roku. I was thinking about getting a Roku LT to keep at my girlfriends anyway and it's normally $50. So it works out to be a good deal in the long term.


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## ScottE22 (Sep 19, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> Right now if you sign up for a Lifetime PlayON license ($80) you can get a free Roku LT.


Alas. Windows only... It's a shame, too, because that looks like the cable-killer...


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

Jebberwocky! said:


> hulu+ is a life saver for us, add playon and you can stream the shows that aren't allowed in plain Hulu+
> 
> Commercials really do not bother me at all, usually a minute or less. Now if they were like the 5-8 minute break we get on network TV that would be another story.


I rarely watch commercials when using TiVo with OTA but I often do when I watch internet TV because I can't skip it and I don't seem to mind.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Jebberwocky! said:


> if you buy their lifetime sub (~80) you can get a free Roku, another fine addition to the cut the cord family.


Can someone tell me if you get access to anything with PlayOn that you wouldn't already have access to with a HTPC?

Thanks,


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## Jebberwocky! (Apr 16, 2005)

atmuscarella said:


> Can someone tell me if you get access to anything with PlayOn that you wouldn't already have access to with a HTPC?
> 
> Thanks,


I would if I knew what you get with a HTPC. But if I had to guess no.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

Jebberwocky! said:


> I would if I knew what you get with a HTPC. But if I had to guess no.


What I mean is does PlayOn provide access to any content you can not access with a normal computer and web browser.


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## Jebberwocky! (Apr 16, 2005)

atmuscarella said:


> What I mean is does PlayOn provide access to any content you can not access with a normal computer and web browser.


I don't believe so.


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

atmuscarella said:


> What I mean is does PlayOn provide access to any content you can not access with a normal computer and web browser.


no, but it does aggregate content into channels for easy access. third party channels are also available that people make which makes it better http://www.playonscripts.com/

their new roku channel is pretty good and it works well.


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## ScottE22 (Sep 19, 2003)

Aero 1 said:


> no, but it does aggregate content into channels for easy access. third party channels are also available that people make which makes it better http://www.playonscripts.com/
> 
> their new roku channel is pretty good and it works well.


Two questions based on your sig:


How do you watch ESPN 3? Is there a Roku channel I'm missing?
How do you get 6 months of Hulu Plus for free?

We should really have a thread (or threads) to share our cord-cutting setups. I spent a while digging up information and still like to know how I could be doing it better. What can I say? I'm a tinkerer...


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

I'm on my way...should be having the cancel call with DirecTv within a week.

Ordered the PlayOn/Roku deal...ordered a TiVo Premiere. Already have been a PlayOn user with a Google TV and their Android app, but it wasn't on the Lifetime license, which I now have, which is nice.

Even at the cheapest plan for DirecTv, I'm paying over $70/mo. I'll make back the amount I'm paying for all my new stuff in ~8 months, and after that, it's money in the bank.


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## Jebberwocky! (Apr 16, 2005)

My plan took a detour this weekend, I stopped getting channel 2 and channel 7. So I took my like into my own hands and went up on my roof to discover my antenna is starting to fall apart.

I put things back as best I could and everything is back to coming in. But I need a new antenna so I contacted three installers on Angie's list and I think I can get it replaced for $270 or so.

My roof is so steep that I feared for my life trying to come down. So I'm not going back up although I feel pretty comfortable I could put up a new antenna okay it is not worth killing myself to save $100.

Yesterday afternoon I started to get a weak signal and I looked up and a bunch of birds had landed on it. 

So, adding a new antenna will extend my breakeven to 7 months. Connie keeps asking when this switch is going to save us some money LOL


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

ScottE22 said:


> Two questions based on your sig:
> 
> 
> How do you watch ESPN 3? Is there a Roku channel I'm missing?
> ...


i have espn 3 because i have verizon fios internet, they are one of the ISP that provide espn 3 without a TV sub. i got 6 free months of hulu+ when i got a tivo premiere in january. http://www3.tivo.com/promo/huluplusoffer/code/index.html

if you have an apple tv and iDevice, the watchespn works great on the tv. just launch the app, play espn3 content and airplay it to the apple tv, works and looks great. you can also use an xbox360 or playon will deliver espn3 to the roku.

as for my setup, its in my sig but i also do a few things that some people here get bent out of shape because of their high morality. anyway, my friend gave me his Tv Anywhere log in to get HBOGO, TNT, CNN, TBS and others , and with the watchespn app (or on their website), i get espn, espn 2, espn 3, espn u and espn buzzer beater. i also have a slingbox at my fathers house and i use a boxee box as the sling receiver to watch his stuff. also use roku, aforementioned boxee boxes, apple tv's, playon, and the occasional torrent. things are automated in the back end to serve video to the tivos for the wife on the occasional torrent, playon delivers her house hunters to the rokus, and a 10 TB drobo serves tv shows and movies to the boxee's.

basically, for the WAF, i standardized on tivo and boxee boxes. two things that work great and are easy to use for the wife.


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## ScottE22 (Sep 19, 2003)

Aero 1 said:


> basically, for the WAF, i standardized on tivo and boxee boxes. two things that work great and are easy to use for the wife.


This is funny - I started on this road thinking I'd build a Mac Mini HTPC, but couldn't quite get past this little hurdle no matter how hard I tried to work it out in my head and on paper.

Once I learned about the TiVo Premiere series, it was a no-brainer in terms of effort and cost.

Sounds like without cable or DTV I won't be able to get streaming ESPN. I suspect it's only a matter of time before HBOGO, ESPN, and the like realize the potential of selling a la carte to cord-cutters without requiring a subscription.

BTW - The Hulu Plus thing worked even for existing subscribers which was a nice surprise. It did not, however, work on a second TiVo. It said it redeemed, but the next "billing date" still says September 2012. Oh well.


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

I am interested in the PlayOn lifetime license, just tried to read the agreement and got bored. How difficult is it to switch the PlayOn service to a new computer in a few years? Both of my computers, not sure which I will use, are over 4 years old now I expect will have to be replaced within two or three years.


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

Chris Gerhard said:


> I am interested in the PlayOn lifetime license, just tried to read the agreement and got bored. How difficult is it to switch the PlayOn service to a new computer in a few years? Both of my computers, not sure which I will use, are over 4 years old now I expect will have to be replaced within two or three years.


its easy and automatic. all you do is enter your licensed name and email and it will deactivate the old one onto the new pc. in the past year, ive installed it on 3 pc's.


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

Aero 1 said:


> its easy and automatic. all you do is enter your licensed name and email and it will deactivate the old one onto the new pc. in the past year, ive installed it on 3 pc's.


Thanks that is exactly how I wanted it to work but couldn't read that clearly stated in the license agreement before I got bored.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Good to know. I just purchased the lifetime PlayON license with the free Roku LT. Now I can keep a Roku at my GFs house.


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

Crap, what is the PlayLater DVR application and do I want that and would the Roku LT be included in the $100 bundle including PlayLater if I purchased it? At first thought I don't know why I would want to write the files to my hard drive before accessing them but maybe I do.


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## Aero 1 (Aug 8, 2007)

Chris Gerhard said:


> Crap, what is the PlayLater DVR application and do I want that and would the Roku LT be included in the $100 bundle including PlayLater if I purchased it? At first thought I don't know why I would want to write the files to my hard drive before accessing them but maybe I do.


playlater will download that hulu show(or netflix or any of the supported sites) instead of streaming it like playon. thats good if you know that the show will be pulled from hulu and you dont have time to watch during the window.

i know that you can watch playlater downloads via roku with playon installed on the same machine, but i dont know if you can without playon.


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

I started to order the PlayOn/PlayLater Lifetime License for $100 and nothing was mentioned on the order page about the free Roku LT so I started to order the PlayOn Lifetime License for $80 and still nothing about the Roku. Is the deal still live and where does it show up at the PlayOn site?


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## larrs (May 2, 2005)

ScottE22 said:


> ...Sounds like without cable or DTV I won't be able to get streaming ESPN. I suspect it's only a matter of time before HBOGO, ESPN, and the like realize the potential of selling a la carte to cord-cutters without requiring a subscription.
> 
> ...


You can still get ESPN3 if you get Internet service from the cable company (at least most of them- you don't need video service to qualify). If you have DSL likely not.


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## ScottE22 (Sep 19, 2003)

larrs said:


> You can still get ESPN3 if you get Internet service from the cable company (at least most of them- you don't need video service to qualify). If you have DSL likely not.


 Duh. Thanks! I have Comcast high-speed internet so I'll check it out.


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## larrs (May 2, 2005)

ScottE22 said:


> Duh. Thanks! I have Comcast high-speed internet so I'll check it out.


All I had to do was open a browser and go to espn3.com (now called watchespn.com, I think) and it automatically knew from the ip address that it was from my cableco and gave me access.

As someone else said, I would recommend it on the XboX360. For some reason, the pic quality is better on my setup than through my htpc on my screen.


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## hefe (Dec 5, 2000)

Chris Gerhard said:


> I started to order the PlayOn/PlayLater Lifetime License for $100 and nothing was mentioned on the order page about the free Roku LT so I started to order the PlayOn Lifetime License for $80 and still nothing about the Roku. Is the deal still live and where does it show up at the PlayOn site?


I don't see it anymore...they must have run out.


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## rayik (Feb 4, 2006)

Good luck OP. We were DTV subscribers and cut the cord about 14 months ago. We are past the breakeven point and now save $68 each month.

Entire family is still happy with the decision. OTA, Roku and Xbox 360 (for ESPN3) and we can watch just about everything we watched with DTV and see even more that they did not offer.

For us, Netflix and Hulu + have been well worth it. Only you can decide if it's worth $16 / month for you.

For the rare current episodes you can not get either OTA or online, you can always buy a either the episode(s) or a "season pass" from Amazon. We did that recently with Gold Rush Sesason 2. Twenty episodes at $1.89 spread out over four months was much less cost that subscribing to DTV or cable for those 4 months

Good luck.


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## Chris Gerhard (Apr 27, 2002)

The PlayOn free Roku LT deal is dead, I missed it.


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## ScottE22 (Sep 19, 2003)

ScottE22 said:


> We should really have a thread (or threads) to share our cord-cutting setups. I spent a while digging up information and still like to know how I could be doing it better. What can I say? I'm a tinkerer...


Quoting myself, but here we go.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Jebberwocky! said:


> My plan took a detour this weekend, I stopped getting channel 2 and channel 7. So I took my like into my own hands and went up on my roof to discover my antenna is starting to fall apart.
> 
> I put things back as best I could and everything is back to coming in. But I need a new antenna so I contacted three installers on Angie's list and I think I can get it replaced for $270 or so.
> 
> ...


I just put mine in the attic. It works pretty well there.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Jebberwocky! said:


> hulu+ is a life saver for us, add playon and you can stream the shows that aren't allowed in plain Hulu+
> 
> Commercials really do not bother me at all, usually a minute or less. Now if they were like the 5-8 minute break we get on network TV that would be another story.


I have PlayOn but I wish they had a native Mac version. PlayOn is really not that great on my Mac Mini with Parallels.


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## ScottE22 (Sep 19, 2003)

magnus said:


> I just put mine in the attic. It works pretty well there.


That's where ours is as well.


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## ScottE22 (Sep 19, 2003)

magnus said:


> I have PlayOn but I wish they had a native Mac version. PlayOn is really not that great on my Mac Mini with Parallels.


That's good to know. I was actually going to mess with it but with Parallels, a Windows license, and then the PlayOn service are a big investment to just "play around."


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

ScottE22 said:


> That's good to know. I was actually going to mess with it but with Parallels, a Windows license, and then the PlayOn service are a big investment to just "play around."


I've even bumped the memory to 8GB and set 4GB to the virtual. It's not really fast enough for my taste.


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## ScottE22 (Sep 19, 2003)

A moment of silence for my DirecTV boxes that were, without ceremony, hauled away from the house today.

Parting is such sweet sorrow.


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