Getting rid of cable...

I got my mom a Roku box for Christmas two years ago, and when I hooked it up to her old TV in the basement, she said she didn't think that she'd watch it all that much. In two months, she'd used it so much she drained the batteries in the remote, about 6 months later she bought a new TV so she could watch it in HD!

That time you fell and hit your head on the sidewalk? That's where I come from. I'm all a figment.

Also, stupid question, but how you y'all get the internet going on a Blu-Ray? When I go to settings, it's on the right network, but I can't connect to Internet Video or anything, and there wasn't much in the way of instructions with the player.

Second question, since I don't want to re-read this thread: Has anyone had success with DTV anntenas? The one I bought for indoors only picked up the UHF channels, which is consierably better than when I tried it with the converter box when the transition took place some years ago, but a third of them are in Spanish, since the Mexico border is ten minutes away from base.

Is your Blu Ray player connected to the internet?

The player says it is when I run the diagnosis (it's over the wireless connection). I'm on duty, so Ill have to upload pics tomorrow.

a Digital TV Antenna is just a TV antenna. TV broadcast is still VHF and UHF although the signal is now encoded digitally. I tried a cheap flat antenna and only got one channel (25 miles from broadcast antenna) for details see post 233....

Every blu-ray player is different. Besides connecting to your local network and the internet, there may be other things to do like install additional flash memory. The Samsung player I have is very non-intuitive.

This is one of those things where you're going to have to google the make and model of the player and hope that someone's posted better instructions on the web than came with the player. There's just no standard way of doing it.

Plug your address into this site, and it'll tell you which direction to point your antenna so you get the most channels. It'll even tell you what channels you can and cannot get in a given direction. So it might be that if you point your antenna in a different direction, you'll get more of the channels you do want.

Well, things are about to get very interesting, indeed. Neilson to start tracking Netflix and Amazon.

Given how much web traffic is dominated by Netflix, this is going to have a big impact on "regular" TV (i.e. cable and broadcast).

cable and OTA networks are probably afraid, very afraid...

I ventured to watch Blacklist recorded OTA. The amount of spam they subject viewers to is amazing. It's bad enough to have frequent long commercial breaks, but the adverts that creep in while the show is going are really annoying. I don't know why people put up with it, unless very few are actually watching. I wonder if Neilson and the networks have been deceiving themselves.

I love it when I'm watching a scene on TV where something is about to happen, and an ad for another show just pops right up and covers 1/3 of the bottom of the screen, and I get to miss out on something because someone wants me to fucking watch some goddamn cooking show AND I CAN'T SEE WHO THE KILLER WAS RAHGAHGAHRGHAGRHGRHAGRHGARAH!

I want to find the asshole who first thought this was a good idea and beat them to death with a crowbar.

Yeah, I won't mourn when traditional TV dies in the next thirty years or so. The long commercial breaks, the ridiculous ads. Hulu does ads, but with paid membership, the longest break I've had is 75 seconds. For 8 bucks a months, I can't complain.

Aereo files for chapter 11.

More at the link, but the company's dead, and the chapter 11 is to allow it to try and move to being a cloud based storage service of some kind. Score one for the dinosaurs.

The only thing I'm worried about is net neutrality. The cable companies know what's going on. They also control many an internet connection. Or is it no accident, that Comcast refuses to sell stand alone internet. That's why I'm on U-Verse.

I have stand alone internet using Comcast. No basic cable TV. No phone service. Just delicious lovely broadband. My own cable modem (I refuse to pay them $8/month for a $80 modem). Comcast was very helpful setting up, configuring, and testing the modem (remotely) I bought on Amazon.

We pay $50 month plus some taxes and fees for 20Mbps service. ATT only offers 6Mbps which is borderline if you have two devices (Rokus, PCs, Smart Kenmores) streaming HD content.

Comcast does call periodically trying to sell us gazillion Gbps service along with every channel in the universe for only $19.99 a month for 6 months. I look forward to these calls; they're so crestfallen when I refuse every form of offer they make.

What worries you about net-neutrality?

Anyone try the Amazon Fire stick thingy? Forgot the official name, but it's their Google Chrome knockoff. I already have a Prime account, so I may buy this for Christmas for myself to go with the new tv I bought.

All the reviews I've seen of it have been lukewarm, at best. The various tech blogs I read think that it needs time to mature, as do the tech podcasts that I listen to. None of them are even that thrilled with the Fire TV box. They don't hate it, but they don't see it as being any better than the various other offerings out there by Google, Apple, or Roku. Roku, I know, has the Amazon Prime app on it, and IIRC, the Chromecast stick does as well. I'd personally opt for either of those over the Fire TV stick, based on the reviews (ignoring my personal experience with the Roku).

I don't know how many channels you can get with a Chromecast right now (they're slowly adding channels, and you can always stream from your phone or PC to the Chromecast), but I've got almost 600 channels on my Roku that I've personally selected out of over a 1000 that are available, and more are being added every week. Roku's got a $50 streaming stick, if you don't want to buy one of their hockey puck sized units. Consumer Reports has a piece on which streaming box is best, who is going to have sales on them for Black Friday.

I have one of the Roku sticks coming, we'll see how it goes. Our newer Roku is giving it up.

TigerDirect has the Chromecast on sale for $25. It also comes with two free months of HuluPlus.

For $5 more (and no free HuluPlus), you can get a Roku LT.

Just in time for xmas (except maybe in the midwest: xmas comes earlier there) the following article praises the Amazon Fire stick over the Chromecast or Roku "sticks." In "box" format the Roku 3 nudges out the other contenders. Worth a read (and this website looks interesting too for other topics).

TV Streaming Gadgets: ReadWrite's 2014 Gift Guide
Beyond Chromecast.

And a year later, I have an answer for this. It turns out that there's a "known bug" in the Apple TVs which some times causes this problem. The solution, apparently, is to do a super secret reset by using the remote. I'm not sure of the exact procedure, as the person talking about it didn't know it, but there is one, and you can get it from Apple's customer service.

We have a closed system in our little town for cable so that's all set afa "tv" goes, but I use my PS3 for everything else. HULU, YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, Crackle etc.

Amazon Prime is worth it, I think.

Amazon Prime is now streaming 4K content. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014...ing-to-list-of-prime-benefits-starting-today/

April looks to be the date.

More at the link.

Well, this sounded interesting until I saw the price.

Sounds awesome, right? Its roughly the size of a Roku box, comes with two remotes (one's a simple 6 button remote, the other's a fancy mini-keyboard remote), supports both wifi and ethernet, has 3 USB ports, and a MicroSD slot. Its on sale. For $500!

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For that price, you could buy a top of the line Roku, Apple TV, Fire TV, or Chromecast, subscriptions to Netflix, HuluPlus, Amazon Prime, HBOGo (when it no longer requires a cable package) and still have money to burn. Heck, you could buy all 4 of the set top boxes for less than the price of the Brilliant TV. Or, you could buy a PS4 (or XBox One) and one of the set top boxes and still come out ahead. Oh, and if you're feeling froggy, you blow $10 and add an OTA antenna to any of the systems.

This is why I don't feel even slightly bad pirating or streaming. Fuck'em.

It's theft. That makes you feel good? John "likes" this?

Pay for content on Amazon or another channel. Commercial free. Why should others subsidize your theft?

Roku to launch 4K capable devices later this year.

ESPN joins HBO in moving to streaming http://gizmodo.com/you-can-now-stream-espn-on-the-web-for-20-a-month-1677531245

It seems like all of this year's CES previews are showing Web tvs where each company is trying to have their own online service like Roku built into their tvs. I can understand why manufacturers all want to get into the subscription content business as it is a steady income earner but realisticly I don't see 40 different services surviving in the market place. They are going to need to consolidate it down to just half a dozen or so services which have enough content and the right software packages for consumers.

Each manufacturer wants to be like Apple though so I am sure we will see more and more even though 90% of them are doomed to be the next Tandy brand of computer.