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

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. :)