TV and Phone Plans from the past that we all have to get past!

I have been on a quest for many years to simplify and lower the cost of our very expensive cable TV, entertainment and Internet smartphone services. Given the above hardware configuration with multiple TVs without tuners, I had been in a quandary for years.

I have tried many things, from streaming Netflix on DVD players to Netflix snail mail DVDs and so on. First we purchased a DVD player for the bedroom but it is very old and only streams the Netflix queue. Then we bought one for the bathroom that streams a lot of stuff we had never heard of and were not willing to pay for in addition to Netflix and Cable. Upon further investigation, it is amazing and as good as Roku with firmware and app updates. It now streams thousands of shows with many options from which to choose.  However, I admit that took a bit of work on my part.

I have seen many crazy things over the years, such as my wife buying DVDs at Redbox while we were able to stream and get DVDs from Netflix and so on. The re-evaluation/transition of entertainment technology that has taken place in the last six years has been astronomical and you need to take/make a note of the change and consider your options. The change has happened so fast you need to educate your family on what is available and how to get at it before you continue to spend money on the way things used to be.

For example, my mother uses Direct TV and I have also looked at Dish TV for her and us. Because I have many large trees nearby these satellite services were never an option for my family and changing things for my mother was a bad idea unless the savings is huge, which it was not. However, being the miser (Grinch I am), I hate her giving away money to Verizon when I could get her so much more for less. For example, I would like to get her an unlimited $45 Straight Talk or AT&T Go plan at Walmart with a smartphone instead of her VERY EXPENSIVE Verizon plan using a very old talk only cellphone. She is paying that while maintaining a land line! Her phone bills are near $100 a month and she hardly ever even uses her phones. She is 78 and does not want to change.

I have also contemplated the advantages of universal AT&T DSL versus broadband from my local cable TV providers. Once a year I have had to call on my local cable provider to renegotiate our contract getting such things as free DVR rental for a year, which has been very tiresome. All I have ever wanted was a good universal entertainment/Smartphone/Internet/Household option that did not cost hundreds of dollars a month and simplified our lives. Reducing the cost of renting cable equipment is an annual phone call event that all Americans don’t need in their lives. There are M-Type Cable cards that can free us from expensive cable bills but this is a roll of the dice at best with your local cable provider.

As a result of my cable bill going nuclear expensive (for basic cable and Internet), I have spent years researching how to reduce this bill and still provide the same or more entertainment, news, weather and other coverage options.  I approached this task willing to spend any amount of money (within household reason [no more $1200 plasma TVs]) on hardware with a long term vision of saving a few dollars in the long run. Many of us live month to month and cutting the cable cord to save up the money for new equipment makes a lot of sense if we can do it.

Why do I want to keep my 5 TVs, please let me explain, my household is one of those crazy places where I have TVs are needed everywhere to watch the news, stock market and so on. In years past, three of them did not have digital tuners and things needed to change.

For example, I have a computer lab where I had a very old CRT TV that I like to have on for background noise as silence and the radio does nothing for me.  It is great to be distracted by the occasional TV event or story before you get back to some serious work. I was paying $3.00 a month for this privilege plus the energy cost.

How we came to own 5 TVs, other streaming Internet devices, and how you might relate

Before we move forward in time giving you all my streaming solutions we have to move back in time. OK, I admit my wife and I are unusual in that we our have gotten used to TVs in many places in our house (mostly me). The TVs just kind of multiplied over the years. My first story is when my 20-year old stepdaughter destroyed the downstairs bathroom, for the second time. While my wife and I were gone on vacation, the water pipe burst and rather than turn off the water using the basement valve, she allowed water to pour over the bathroom floor, basement joists, dumping water on everything on the basement floor for days! When we asked her about this, it was a minor leak and nothing to really worry about. Rather than ask a neighbor how to stop the disaster… you get the picture. The bathroom floor never caved in but some joists under the floor finally cracked open. My $10,000 bathroom remodeling project turned into a lot more pain and expense when she moved out. In for a penny in for a pound so I put in a Jacuzzi tub paying contractors to reinforce the floor and replace the floor joists. While on vacations, I have sat in small Jacuzzi tubs without entertainment and things get boring fast. Reading in these tubs is next to impossible. We only had room for a small tub so I had to have TV entertainment. It was years ago when I mounted a very expensive 23 inch SONY LCD TV without a built-in digital tuner in the corner next to the bathroom door. The TV is now worthless for the most part but still has a good picture and has survived a lot a bathroom steam. I will leave it behind when we move.

20 years ago, my brother died in a car accident and left me his 35-inch CRT TV. That became our living room TV for many years and I think it weighed about 300+ pounds. When I got cancer, the fellas at work pitched in and bought me a 48-inch Visio 720p LCD TV. We replaced the CRT with that and yes that 300+ pound CRT was properly recycled.

Then there were the romantic evenings on cold nights in the bedroom. We live in the North so getting out of our warm bed and bedroom to cuddle in the freezing cold living room to watch TV got old fast. We saved up and found a sale at Costco, $1,500 for a 42” LCD TV. When we marched in, they had a massive 50-inch plasma for $250 less but it weighed 150 pounds. I’m a woodworker so I knew I could get it mounted on the wall. This sucker had a digital tuner and was 720p, which was all the rage at that time and 1080p TV was selling for over $2,000.

Then my wife wanted a treadmill and TV in the basement. Many years ago we purchased a CRT flat screen DVD/VCR for the basement to watch while treadmilling with, once again, no digital tuner in the TV. She had to have the VCR even though LCD TVs were out and much better.

About 10 years ago my mom wanted new digital LCD TVs for her and dad (cable was getting rid of analog broadcast) so she donated her analog 27 inch CRT TV to me. I put that sucker up in our office, but once again no digital tuner. However, I became hooked on having the TV as background noise which I worked on the computer and paperwork. I found that my brain would need a rest from time to time and I would watch shows repeatedly and look up at the good parts of the show. Transformers a dozen times were perfect while I worked.

Then on February 17, 2009, my analog world ended. Cable companies were about to make a fortune on renting digital-to-analog converter boxes for my TVs. This tied us into a digital cable DVR for $13 a month, a digital box at $6.00 a month, and three digital tuners at $3.00 a month each, which equals $28 a month in cable fees. I investigated other options but everything I investigated at the time was a dead end. I even purchased an antenna for the office TV but it was a digital antenna and my CRT TV was analog. Plus all the TV stations were either transitioning or already broadcasting in digital TV formats. When the cable bill hit $125+ a month I knew things had to change! The simple answer was to give up a TV everywhere in my house, but I was a TV Addict used to viewing it anywhere. I chose to pay the cable bill expecting to come up with a solution any day but life throws curves you can never expect. After surviving cancer twice and sitting in my recliner day after day, I enjoyed my cable TV!  The fellas at work buying me the 720p Visio TV had done well and I never worried about the expense of the other four TVs… until now.

Cutting the Cable Cord, Confessions of a TV Addict with 5 TVs!

 Getting rid of the Cable or Satellite TV bill to have more Entertainment Options for Less!

This series of ThatCyberSecurityGuy blog entries took years of experimentation, limited technology purchases over years of study, near death experiences, and a lot of dedication as life moved on during the recent years of our entertainment world’s revolution. As smartphones and other devices leave the PC and laptop world behind (somewhat), so has the streaming TV content world left satellite and cable TV behind! Years ago, for the most part, power hungry Plasma TVs quickly came and went. Less power hungry Liquid-Crystal-Display (LCD TV) were rapidly replaced with more energy-efficient and high-quality picture LED TVs. Writing and researching my book “The Internet is Infected!” for five years did not allow me the luxury to investigate TV entertainment technology to cut the cable cord before now. The truth is this cheap technology was not available back then and I was too busy launching my business, attending classes along with a multitude of other things. However, a major priority in the evenings, I would always set aside a few moments of fun time to just surf the web and read about the inconsequential entertainment options in hopes of cutting our monthly expenses and cable cord was a major priority! I’m happy to say, that moment has come at last!  You can negotiate your download speed with an ISP.

Advantages:

1. Significant savings, our bill for cable + Internet was $129 a month.
2. Comcast Xfinity Internet Blast offered Internet download speed up to 150 Mbps for $60 a month.
3. AT&T U-verse HSIA 75 was $35 a month for a 1-year term with a download speed of up to 75 Mbps.
4. Wowway.com had $25 a month for a 30 Mbps download speed.

Disadvantages:

1. Sling streaming service for $20 will give you access to ESPN and other channels that the other streaming services do not provide.
2. Hulu streaming service for $12.00 a month, Hulu only streams in 720p.
3. Netflix streaming service is $9.00 a month but it does not offer downloads.  Content can be dated.
4. Amazon Prime is $99.00 a year or $8.25 a month but that does include free 2-day shipping on orders purchased.
5. Streaming will go in and out if/when your ISP has problems. You will find your devices losing reception more frequently than cable TV. To ensure that you can stream to your smart or Roku TVs you may need to pay your ISP for a maintenance plan. When the squirrels chew on the cable leading to your house you don’t want to face a $200 bill to have a service technician to replace that cable.
6. Streaming requires a bit of configuration, work and initial set up of all your Internet devices. This leads to security concerns as the inclination is that once everything is set up to leave the status quo. The reality is that you should be changing your passwords at least once a year, but even I admit that I have not done that. Roku wanted a credit card and personal information for me to pay my Hulu bill, for example. If a hacker gets in there I’m in trouble. Same goes for Netflix and Amazon.
7. Streaming devices require maintenance. The firmware and apps have regular updates.  This can be annoying when you are settling in for the evening and just want immediate gratification. If you don’t have built in Roku or smart TV streaming you will have the added expense of purchasing these devices separately, which can be unsightly and require an extra cabling expense. However, cable TV devices, often require the same cabling.
8. Without Internet devices such as computers, Smartphones, and Tablets you may miss such things as the latest sporting events, infotainment news from CNN, CNBC, FOX, and HLN. However, if you have a browser and Internet access there are usually other options for this type of viewing.  For example, CBS made the Super Bowl available to a broad range of streaming devices without login.  So yes, even after cutting the cable cord I could stream the Super Bowl to my Roku TV having the annual party or I could have traveled to my local American Legion hall or a sports bar to get rowdy with the folks.

I chose Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix as our streaming bundle. Here are my reasons why:

1. Netflix is the biggest streaming service in the United States. It has an amazing movie collection and catalog of TV titles, sometimes months old and a great selection of old films. It also has original content such as “House of Cards”.
2. Amazon Video on Demand has over 75,000 of your favorite movies and hit TV shows.  Amazon, like Netflix, has a good offering of old and new hits for movies but unlike Netfilx, it has for a price, more current U.S. TV shows including premium cable shows from HBO and Showtime for a price. It also has original content such as “Transparent, Alpha House, and Mozart in the Jungle” among others, which have not been as popular as “House of Cards”.
3. Hulu Plus has a better selection of current TV shows than Amazon Prime and Netfilx, and carries some TV channel series that the other two do not. Hulu is the best way to watch shows from NBC, FOX and Comedy Central.  You gain access to full seasons of shows instead of the last four of five episodes that cable “On Demand” offers.
4. Giving up cable means losing ESPN and our favorite U.S. infotainment news channels but much of their content can be found online or at your local gym. If you are hankering for the latest news, the BBC at https://www.BBC.com for example has a lot of news you can stream for free if you want to read about the real things taking place in our world (other than Donald Trump and the endless coverage of the U.S. presidential election).  Aljazeera America at http://america.aljazeera.com has a ton of relevant news that you can stream and read about world events.  It was the best news channel I witnessed for real news while serving in Kuwait during the Iraq war and the only one we watched for real news.  Then there is also http://www.npr.org where you can listen and watch a commentary and news on variety of topics anytime you want.

Unlike cable, the free and paid services above can be streamed to many devices such as your tablets, smartphones, TVs, etc. Also, unlike cable, except for “On Demand” these online options can be paused, played in the background, made full screen, fast forwarded and rewound quickly to anywhere in the broadcast and much more. Having streaming YouTube to watch “Professor Messer” to study for my class work in my Jacuzzi tub to study is quite the boon.

Apple's response to my commentary on privacy in support of their FBI stance!

I wrote Apple about my support of their position that backdoor algorithms to encryption technology are a bad idea and I expected nothing in return. I have also sent out many resumes and filled out many applications in the years since I fought Lymphoma cancer caused by radiation exposure during the Iraq war that received no response. Apple actually went so far as to send me back this letter.

________________________________________________________

March 27, 2016

Thanks for contacting us. We welcome your feedback on Privacy and Security.  Apple strives to provide a positive experience to our customers. You can submit feedback here:

http://www.apple.feedback

Please be assured that Apple values the time and consideration that you invested in your email.  Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts with us..

Sincerely,

Apple Customer Care

________________________________________________________

No wonder Apple is one of the leading U.S. companies. Kudos to Apple!