Amazon FireTV & German TV channels / AT&T, TWC, Spectrum

[darkoshi]

Qiao is switching from AT&T to Spectrum for his TV & internet (& home phone). He was paying about $130/month with AT&T, but the initial 2 year contract period was over and they had told him his bill was going to increase substantially (wow, way for them to shoot themselves in the foot. I don't understand why they would do that when there's still a cheaper alternative in town.)

So now he's supposedly going to be paying about $120/month with Spectrum. He didn't need the home phone part, but without bundling it, his bill would have instead been $150/month. (I don't understand that part either; even though I believe someone else on my list had mentioned something similar with their bill.)

In comparison, I don't subscribe to cable or satellite TV. I only watch over-the-air channels, and internet streaming. (Though I do also watch Q's TV, when I'm over at his house.) My internet bill is $41.95/month. My home phone bill is now nearly $36/month, but I plan to drop that in the near future.

Anyway, Spectrum installed the cable line in Q's house today, and this evening we tried to get everything working again. Q had bought his own router... the wired internet connection on it was working but not wi-fi, even though the wi-fi had worked earlier. I finally figured out that the router had a wi-fi button which had accidentally been switched off.

Next problem was that the Amazon FireTV box was only partially working. We've had similar trouble with it before. The resolution was set wrong, causing the screen to be black. Because the screen is black, you can't get into the settings to change the resolution. You have to press 2 buttons on the remote for 5 seconds and then it supposedly starts switching between resolutions, so you can choose the one that works. But that wasn't working right either, until after 5 or 6 tries and unplugging and replugging and restarting, it finally did.

Then I started looking through the apps on the Amazon FireTV. Had trouble getting them to work right at first; whenever I clicked on any of them, Netflix kept coming up instead. But then finally the other apps started working too. Youtube & Vimeo, in high resolution on the big screen!

Then I found several German TV apps on it. You can watch German TV shows for free! It's mostly news shows, but there were some other non-news shows mixed in too. I'll have to explore it more. Only in one of those apps did I bump into a geographic restriction preventing it from playing some of the selections.

I guess these apps should work on Android too? I'm not sure.
ARD Mediathek
3Sat Mediathek
Deutsche Welle
ZDF Heute
ARD Tagesschau
And others.

I didn't install this one, but I'm curious about it:
YouTV videorecorder Deutsches TV german television

..

In our area, we used to have Time Warner Cable, but it was taken over by Spectrum.
I thought I had heard that Spectrum and AT&T were planning a merger too, which was concerning to me as then there'd only be one internet & TV company to choose from in this area.

Yes, there are two Time Warners, and AT&T isn’t buying the cable company - from October, 2016. This may explain some of my confusion.
AT&T agreed to buy Time Warner Inc. It is not trying to buy Time Warner Cable.
...
If AT&T wanted to buy Time Warner Cable, it would have to talk with its new owner, cable company Charter Communications that now calls itself Spectrum. It completed a $60 billion buyout of the cable company in May.

But then again:
AT&T and Spectrum To Merge??

Comments

*waves*

[marahmarie]

So now he's supposedly going to be paying about $120/month with Spectrum. He didn't need the home phone part, but without bundling it, his bill would have instead been $150/month. (I don't understand that part either; even though I believe someone else on my list had mentioned something similar with their bill.)

Yes, 'twas probably me. Comcast charges less (comparatively) for internet plus cable TV (so we currently pay $125 because OP wants a bunch of channels that don't come in a basic lineup; before that we paid about $90 for basic lineup plus internet. Internet alone, the cheapest plan we've ever been quoted would run $75 a month all by itself, but OP wants TV and I don't think its a bad idea to have it handy in case there's a national emergency or something. So that's how they get ya).

We could use some sign-up special to switch to something like UVerse (I think that's what AT&T does around here) or Embarq (if that's its most current name) but both top out at something like 49mbps download speed, which is uh, just one quarter the speed we have now. So yeah, it'd bite pretty hard.

Re: *waves*

[darkoshi]

> so we currently pay $125 because OP wants a bunch of channels that don't come in a basic lineup;

That's probably the best price one can get nowadays for the higher tiers of channels. Even Q already upgraded (since my original post) to a higher tier which is about $12/month more than the original price, as the other tier didn't have one of his favorite channels.

But if you can find a lower non-bundled rate for the internet, then there are other options for TV, if you're willing to do without some of the cable channels.

Here in Columbia, not counting shopping and religious channels, I receive 25 free over-the-air broadcast channels. That seems amazing to me; it's like how many channels one used to get with cable, back when I was a kid. And it seems like there are more channels available every time I check. All one needs to get them is an indoor HDTV antenna.

Once you have your internet service, you can pay for various streaming TV services, like DirecTV Now, Sling, and Philo - I never heard of that one until yesterday:
https://cordcutting.com/how-to-watch-axs-tv-without-cable/

And then there's also Netflix, Hulu, etc.

As for internet speed, I top out around 25 Mbps, and don't have trouble streaming movies even on the big TV. It may not suffice for a family with multiple people streaming different movies at once, but it's fine for one person.

Re: *waves*

[marahmarie]

Yeah, we're not a family streaming multiple movies, but OP's a fiend about buffering, which was happening until our last cable guy re-cabled us last month (we'd just received a "free" speed boost, but it was testing out under 10mbps, which resulted in that poor dude spending about three hours before figuring out it was the monster cable I'd laid down...was it last summer?

I'd put the smaller couch on part of it, and part of it ran across a walking area, so the signal was dropping because of damage in both areas. We also had an old splitter that needed replacing and he turned off the signal to the upstairs cable outlet since it was weakening signal downstairs).

And now we no longer buffer, after 2+ years of pretty much buffering, so OP's happy. But while he's fiendish about buffering, I'm fiendish about loading dozens to hundreds of tabs at once, then not looking at most of them for hours - in Firefox no less - which is why I'm a bit of a fiend about the laptop being up to it and the download speed not being incredibly laggy, so.

Here in Columbia, not counting shopping and religious channels, I receive 25 free over-the-air broadcast channels. That seems amazing to me; it's like how many channels one used to get with cable, back when I was a kid. And it seems like there are more channels available every time I check. All one needs to get them is an indoor HDTV antenna.

You had a great childhood! Growing up basic cable was channels 2, 4 and 7 (CBS, NBC and ABC). If we were really rolling we had channels 9 and 11, too (New Jersey and NY local affiliates of bigger channels). We had rabbit ears on everything to pull in Connecticut stations and could almost watch HBO for free through all the fuzz. (Which reminds me, I had a radio with an antenna that could pull in stations as far away as Texas. From NY. I should've kept it.)

I didn't have color TV in my room until I was 19 or 20 and no basic cable like what you mention until around the same time. (Then I binge-watched MTV and VH1 for months because my childhood was deprived - Beavis and Butthead, FTW!)

The thing with cutting out TV and getting a cheaper internet package, even if we could keep the same speed, is we're not saving money in the long run, because with all the subscription services needed to round out doing without cable, added to what internet costs, one can wind up paying as much, if not more than what the bundle costs, but on top of that there are recurring bills to manage with multiple providers, the cost of various boxes to pipe certain alternatives through, the maintenance needed on them and so on.

I could link to an article I read not too long ago on that - if I can ever find it again, but the upshot was at best it's a wash, though I see it as more of a headache in other ways (we have a Smart TV now, so yeah, I've been thinking it over).

Re: *waves*

[darkoshi]

> Growing up basic cable was channels 2, 4 and 7 (CBS, NBC and ABC).

Those are all broadcast channels, so unless you lived far from any cities, I'd think you wouldn't have needed cable to get them. I don't specifically remember the # of cable channels we had, but think it was at least between 10 and 20 (not counting broadcast ones).
Channel 9 - was that WGN, the Chicago station? That was one we had on cable. I think some of the others were CNN, Headline news, ESPN, Showtime, MTV, and VH1 (those channels would have been around 1986 and later). Hmm, so maybe it was closer to 10 than 20, or maybe we had other channels I don't remember.

In the years we lived in Germany (off and on until the 8th grade), we only got a single English-language station, AFN - the Armed Forces Network, which had a mix of shows pulled from multiple American channels as well as local news. And getting any German stations required a special TV set, as German TV is broadcast in a different format than American TV. So I didn't get to watch German TV most of the time either except when visiting relatives.

Re: *waves*

[marahmarie]

No, channel 9 was WWOR (New Jersey) and 11 was WPIX (NYC). I can't believe I remember this - except I do, because I'd stay up "late" with my mom every night - or until the Tonight Shows with Johnny Carson was over, if she'd let me - and she didn't like to wait for the 11 o'clock news on 2, 4 or 7, so she'd often hit either channels 9 or 11 since their late evening news broadcasts started at 10pm.

I read about you being on base as a child in Germany and instantly thought, too bad I can't introduce you to my neighbor (who's very authentic hair style I discussed once upon a time). She grew up on a German base, too; she speaks fluent German and English; you might have something in common, though she's at least 20 years younger than either of us, I think.

So my TV wouldn't work over in Germany, huh? I guess their televisions handle signal differently? I know the plugs are not the same...

Re: *waves*

[darkoshi]

Well, it used to be that way with the TVs. Since then, American broadcasts and TV's switched to digital format, and it sounds like German TVs have too. So maybe they are compatible now.

Re: *waves*

[marahmarie]

Cool if they are!

And just curious...talked to OP tonight about using our Smart TV to save money and he sounds interested in an HD antenna and giving up regular cable (more so than I thought he'd be, so I'm glad you and I had this convo) so I was wondering, where does one get the HD antenna? Where did you get yours? Do they vary a lot in price/capability? Where does one put them?

He's already not putting it on the roof because it's too much climbing, so we've discussed putting it on the back patio or on the mid-roof outside the bedroom window (maybe 15 feet off the ground) as possible alternatives...but I don't know if that's high enough (the patio's less than 6 feet off the ground).

Re: *waves*

[darkoshi]

All of ours sit inside right next to the TVs, not outside or anything like that.

If you want to check what broadcast channels are available in your area, try tv.com - in the options, select "Broadcast TV / Over the Air". For my area, besides the channels I get, it also lists several further-away channels... maybe if I used an outside antenna, we would be able to get them too. I hadn't thought about that before.

Even if you don't give up cable, you can still try out an antenna to see how well it works. Qiao has both connected at the same time; to switch between them you use the "source" button on the TV remote. But I suppose it depends on how the existing cable is connected to your TV - if it uses the same port as the antenna would, then you might need one of those little units that let you connect 2 cable inputs and switch between them.

There are a lot of different kinds of indoor HDTV antennas; I'm not sure which works best. Even the old rabbit ear ones work, but not as good.
Qiao has one that looks like this - it's just a thin flat rectangle, but also needs to be connected to a power outlet:
https://www.amazon.com/1byone-Amplified-Antenna-Amplifier-Booster/dp/B00RFLXE0A
Mine is this kind, doesn't use external power:
https://www.amazon.com/Terk-HDTVAZ-Amplified-Indoor-Antenna/dp/B0007MXZB2

I feel that mine is easier to position than his as it sits upright and can be turned in a circle. With Qiao's, we first had it tacked to the wall but the tacks kept coming loose and I felt it wasn't getting the best signal that way, so I moved it and now it is hanging by his bookshelf with the cables draped over some books.

Re: *waves*

[marahmarie]

That's a lot of good information - thanks for passing it along. If you don't mind I'll copy/paste it all into an email to OP so he can look it over for himself (since he's more the TV watching person than I am; mostly I just watch all the prices!).

Re: *waves*

[darkoshi]

I don't mind.

Re: *waves*

[marahmarie]

That's great, thank you. :)