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Cut cable for PlayStation Vue, very pleased

Warablo

Member
The issue I have getting rid of Comcast is the Internet. Where I live it's the only fast option and it's cheaper to get the Internet /TV cable bundle. The US needs more competition in this market

I am in the same situation. I think all other options have terrible internet. I don't know how much or if you can just get cable from Comcast.
 

Cidd

Member
I'm thinking of doing the same thing. fuck comcast charging $30 extra for unlimited internet.

Google save us please.
 
Just looked into this and may be signing up. I'm paying around $170/month now. Could end up saving around $40 a month. Giving it a trial run this week.
 

autoduelist

Member
We cut directv about 2 months ago.

We didn't get vue (yet) because it's not in our area, but it'll be under consideration when it comes. Right now we're going with Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu... and maybe CBS's plan since we can't get those shows through the other options. We'll pick up HBO Now for Game of Thrones, and we plan on buying specific shows if necessary (ie, we bought Better Call Saul).

Even with all those various options, it's an absolutely massive savings over having Directv (we took $130 off our bill) even with those other plans and buying shows.
 
D

Deleted member 752119

Unconfirmed Member
Oh, it also helps that I don't give a single flying fuck about sports and ESPN.

Yep, sports is the killer for cord cutters. I'm a big sports fan, and don't know that I'll ever be able to do it for a decent price (if I can every even get all the channels I need without cable/satellite).

Essentially I need:

All the ESPNs of course--college and pro sports.

Fox Sports 1/2 and the regional Fox Sports channel--FS1 has a lot of Big 12 football games (I'm a WVU fan). Occasionally they hit the regional channel as well, and that has a lot of local pro sports (especially Brave's games here in the Atlanta area).

NBCSN for Premier League.

TNT/TBS for NBA, NBA Playoffs and some of the MLB playoffs.

Networks for the nationally/regionally covered games (over the air reception can be spotty and adds an antenna to the home theater mess.

Right now those are either not available to stream, or only stream with a supported cable/satellite account logged in.

Not that I could cut the cord anyway with Comcast's shitty 300GB cap in my area (and no real alternative as the only other option at my address is AT&T DSL. Google fiber is coming to the Atlanta area though, and hopefully I'll be able to move somewhere that gets it. It's not planned in the shitty area of Dekalb County were we currently rent a house. I miss living in midtown. :(
 

Jeels

Member
I'd get it if they would launch in Houston. They confirmed it would a long time ago but it still hasn't happened. :( Wish they would give a date.
 

ShutterMunster

Junior Member
I've been using it for 3 months now and it's okay. The performance is ATROCIOUS on the PS3 though (which is what I use for living room viewing). It is basically useless outside of the home and there are conspicuous channel omissions when viewing on a tablet or fire tv inside the home. They announced the Disney/ESPN deal in November and still nada. As with most things Sony they are painfully slow to iterate and improve. I'll very probably switch to Apple's service when that becomes available *fingers crossed for this fall*.
 

sonto340

Member
I would fucking love to give them my money but apparently I want local channels(I don't) but I live in bum fuck Egypt, so fuck me I guess.

Just seperate the local channels and go country wide. Offer local channels in markets you have them, and don't in ones you don't. I can live with an antenna if I need to see something on local stations.
 

Shadybiz

Member
The issue I have getting rid of Comcast is the Internet. Where I live it's the only fast option and it's cheaper to get the Internet /TV cable bundle. The US needs more competition in this market

Yup, I could cut the cable entirely, but it doesn't make sense the way the pricing is structured. I am now on the "limited basic" plan, which is just the broadcast channels. That with Internet is about $85/month...would be more without the several channels we get.
 

sneaky77

Member
This is a city-by-city thing in the US. It's a shame. Almost criminal how cable companies won't allow this to expand fast. If you don't live in the biggest cities in America, you don't matter.
All you have to do is just use a zip code of a city that offers it, at least that's what I did to try it
 
I started using PlayStation Vue a few months ago and honestly I'm thinking of going back to DirecTV. PlayStation Vue is cheaper, but it's just not as good.

For starters the DVR is just pure shit on PlayStation Vue. It's near impossible to fast forward with any type of precision which means you're going to be watching commercials. You can't even time shift by starting a show 10 minutes later to bypass commercials either. The catch up on demand stuff is kind of neat, but there you can't fast forward at all. The DVR also is strict on time slots which means if a show runs over or you're recording a live event, there's no way to extend the recording time. This is by far the worse DVR experience I've tried in the last two decades. The only thing that's good about it is the unlimited storage for the last thirty days. This sucks if you don't get to a show within the last few weeks, but if you have kids and you add all the kid shows, you pretty much have a huge current library of on demand shows for them. The same goes for anything in syndication where shows are played frequently. So that's the only good thing about the DVR.

Then there's the aspect that all NBC/Universal/Comcast related channels and some other channels are not viewable on the iPad or anything considered a mobile device. That means NBC, Comcast Sportsnet, SyFy, USA, CNBC, Bravo, E!, Esquire Network, Golf Channel, MSNBC, Oxygen and a few others are restricted and can't be viewed on some devices.

Another thing that came out of nowhere was when the Golden Globes aired it just wasn't allowed to be viewed on PlayStation Vue. No warning or anything ahead of time, it just was restricted no matter what device you used. This made me lose confidence in knowing what I could count on the service to be able to watch. I had no idea if the Super Bowl was going to work or not which was annoying when trying to plan to invite people over to watch.

Finally, the only good app I've used is directly on the PS4. The Fire TV Stick app is extremely sluggish and hard to use. The Fire TV version is limited to 30hz which means it's terrible for sports.

I was enticed by ABC and Disney networks coming to the service, but since the announcement there hasn't been a peep about when it's coming. I'm not even sure why announce it if it's not coming any time soon. It certainly wasn't in time for the Oscars last night.

I want to like the service, and there are aspects that are pretty good, but overall the service is just inferior to DirecTV.
 

Tenrius

Member
Do you guys really watch TV that much?

It would feel weird to pay $100+ for it since I don't have any form of TV (my actual TV set is used for my consoles and occasionally the PC, plus digital/blu-ray movies and shows) at home and haven't really watched live TV for several years.
 

LifEndz

Member
I was in the beta for it and was very pleased with the channels and picture quality. Was so nice having Nat Geo, Nat Geo Wild and Discovery on my tv again. The price though...50 plus the 60 I pay for Internet still comes out to about what Time Warner charges. If they can get the price down about 25 dollars or so, or allow me to pay for individual channels, I'd be all over it.

I know people hate non -gaming announcements at E3 but if either of the above were announced this year it'd be a megaton for me.
 
I have Hulu no ads and Amazon prime, plus my folks' Netflix we all share.

Hulu in particular has every season of South Park.

I won't ever need another background show.

It ends and I just start it again.

PSV is too expensive imho.
 

Jabba

Banned
I've gotta have my racing fixes. F1 Nbcsn ughh, Wec Fox Sports 1-2 and a few other channels for different series.
 

Elandyll

Banned
Do you guys really watch TV that much?

It would feel weird to pay $100+ for it since I don't have any form of TV (my actual TV set is used for my consoles and occasionally the PC, plus digital/blu-ray movies and shows) at home and haven't really watched live TV for several years.
Different strokes really.

I follow at least 10 shows across the year (TWD, GoT, The Last Ship, The 100, AoS, The Strain, ...), not counting the life savers with the kids early on Sat/ Sun Morning like Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars Rebels or Pen Zero, among others.
Even having Netflix and Prime (which we do) would not cover our viewing habits frankly.

Now some have said that the upper tier of Vue is pretty much like having cable.

That's not true I think, as you have to consider the cost of the equipment, and the options as well.
We are on the $65 Directv plan and our monthly bill is $130+

With Vue and a PS3/ PS4/ Fire stick which all can do much more than just a DVR it sounds like we would pay about half.

Now, this being said, Vue is not for us in its current incarnation. 30 max days on DVR kills it for us (I keep entire seasons on ours before binging when I have time).
 

Tealmann

Member
They don't support android so I have no way of even using it.
Seriously, who makes a Chromecast compatible app and then makes it iOS exclusive? This is the same company that sells android phones too.
 

demigod

Member
PS Vue costs way too much imo. I would get Sling TV but I heard the quality on it sucks, can anyone confirm? Also shitty thing is, there's no sling tv app on the ps4 and neither does my Sony TV, lol.
 

ckohler

Member
If you mean the delay in changing channels, it's almost exactly the same. I would say about 1 second?

What's the stream delay versus real time? Sling.tv is about 60 seconds behind what appears on cable, for example.

PS Vue costs way too much imo. I would get Sling TV but I heard the quality on it sucks, can anyone confirm? Also shitty thing is, there's no sling tv app on the ps4 and neither does my Sony TV, lol.

Sling TV's video quality is fine. The audio seems slightly out of sync with the video, though. My Sony Bravia has a Sling TV app (it's the X850C series with Android TV built in.)
 

commish

Jason Kidd murdered my dog in cold blood!
What's the stream delay versus real time? Sling.tv is about 60 seconds behind what appears on cable, for example.



Sling TV's video quality is fine. The audio seems slightly out of sync with the video, though. My Sony Bravia has a Sling TV app (it's the X850C series with Android TV built in.)

No idea. I assumed it was live but I don't know, actually.
 

Rivitur

Banned
Nah, 50$ and you still aren't getting all the channels you want? Sounds like a ripoff to me but I'm a just poor guy who watches livestream of cable channels online so :/
 

kgb_abc

Neo Member
My family and I cut the cord about 6 months ago for Sling and Netflix. I am the type that had cable ever since I could remember so I had some doubts. All we really watched was ESPN, AMC and Disney for the kids. Sling has all of those channels plus a bunch of kids stuff on Netflix. At first we tried an Amazon fire stick, and the Sling app was terrible on there. We switched to a Roku 3 and the difference has been night and day. According to many people who complain about Sling, it always seems to be someone who has either a "stick" or built in app on their TV. If you're thinking of going the Sling route I can't recommend enough to actually buy a box type streaming player. It hasn't dropped signal once since we switched from the fire stick to the Roku...
 
Me too. Also, what is the delay like versus standard cable?

The delay is about a minute. This applies for all Internet TV services I have ever used (Sling, beIN Sports, TNT, ESPN). I'm not sure why this is--I can only assume that's the deal these companies struck to allow Internet streaming. It would be odd if it was a technical issue, especially in 2016.

PS Vue costs way too much imo. I would get Sling TV but I heard the quality on it sucks, can anyone confirm? Also shitty thing is, there's no sling tv app on the ps4 and neither does my Sony TV, lol.

I just cut the cord in January and signed up for the Sling 30-day trial on Xbone, hoping that it would fulfill my needs since 90% of what I watch is on ESPN or TNT. Sadly, the quality is atrocious. I have 50 Mbps down, so it's not a speed issue. What happens is if you are watching at a non-peak time or an unpopular event, it is good quality, but if you are watching something popular like a Warriors game on Friday night, the stream downgrades to 480p (or worse), or just straight-up won't run. Massive disappointment and I decided not to pay for it.

I looked into PSVue before Sling, but at $50/month for the cheapest package (and no ESPN), it wasn't saving me enough money to deal with the loss. Even when they add ESPN it still won't be worth it. I would, however, pay $50/month for all sports channels.
 

Chinbo37

Member
Do you guys really watch TV that much?

It would feel weird to pay $100+ for it since I don't have any form of TV (my actual TV set is used for my consoles and occasionally the PC, plus digital/blu-ray movies and shows) at home and haven't really watched live TV for several years.


Same here. I pay 30 a month for DSL. the speed isn't great but I can still play Borderlands 2 with my friend so its acceptable.

I use a free streaming site to watch live sports when there is the rare time I want to watch some live sports. The rest of the TV shows I watch I "find" online.
 

azertydu91

Hard to Kill
Wow I had no idea that the cable and internet was so expensive in the us.

I live in france And most of the time you pay around 15 or 20€ for Tv,internet and phone.

Even better thanks to an deal agressive campaign , for Tv, internet, phone and mobile I pay 2€ \month for a year.

I got an average connection around 13Mb\s.
But damn internet and TV are way too exepensive in the us.
 

commish

Jason Kidd murdered my dog in cold blood!
Wow I had no idea that the cable and internet was so expensive in the us.

I live in france And most of the time you pay around 15 or 20€ for Tv,internet and phone.

Even better thanks to an deal agressive campaign , for Tv, internet, phone and mobile I pay 2€ \month for a year.

I got an average connection around 13Mb\s.
But damn internet and TV are way too exepensive in the us.

It's a racket. That's why I can't wait until streaming channels becomes the standard and drives down prices for everyone.
 
Judging by some posts on the subreddit, it looks like ABC/ESPN is coming very, very soon.

I just made the switch. I'm saving like $30 bucks a month. Totally worth it.
 
My wife has been on me to find a way to drop our Comcast service and watch everything we watch online, so Vue has been on my radar. Whenever they add the Disney networks may be when I jump. Or keep waiting on Apple's service.

From what I've read, the resolution of Vue's stream maxes out at 720p to answer someone's question.
 
For now rather have $20/month slingtv for ESPN, only channel missing for me is Bravo, prepay 3 months they give you a firetv stick or Roku 2 btw
 
You're still paying for internet from the cable company though, no?

If I cut out cable, I'd still be paying for my landline and internet. Getting the three lowers the cost of each so if my bill was $180 for all three, that's 60 each. If I cut cable, the other two go up to say 75 each or 150 together... so adding that $50 doesn't look so hot.

So what I need is a cheap internet service.
 
You're still paying for internet from the cable company though, no?

If I cut out cable, I'd still be paying for my landline and internet. Getting the three lowers the cost of each so if my bill was $180 for all three, that's 60 each. If I cut cable, the other two go up to say 75 each or 150 together... so adding that $50 doesn't look so hot.

So what I need is a cheap internet service.

Why are you paying so much for a landline? Even better question, why do you still need a landline?
 
Why are you paying so much for a landline? Even better question, why do you still need a landline?
Those were hypothetical prices. I've had it for years, it was part of a package, and I've gone through different services and numbers and sometimes no service at all with cellphones, so giving one consistent/constant number as a go-to emergency contact makes more sense.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
And here I am thinking 50 Euro's a month for TV/Phone and 120Mbit internet is expensive. Hot damn

Yeah, cable/internet prices in the States are absurd. There needs to be a reform on it, especially with the telecom monopolies they have strong-arming the competition, and being in the pockets of the politicians.

Hate to say it, but Verizon failed (was supposed to be a promise land, but they even caved to regional restrictions), so Google needs to step up and force change. It just is not coming fast enough.
 

commish

Jason Kidd murdered my dog in cold blood!
Yeah, cable/internet prices in the States are absurd. There needs to be a reform on it, especially with the telecom monopolies they have strong-arming the competition, and being in the pockets of the politicians.

Hate to say it, but Verizon failed (was supposed to be a promise land, but they even caved to regional restrictions), so Google needs to step up and force change. It just is not coming fast enough.

It's the bullshit extra fees that really add up. I can't wait until TWC, Comcast, Verizon, etc are dead as we know them (in the cable TV world).
 

_h8bit

Banned
PS Vue is pretty great and i love the Favorites interface the most. That said i still wish it was like $10-15 cheaper.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
It's the bullshit extra fees that really add up. I can't wait until TWC, Comcast, Verizon, etc are dead as we know them (in the cable TV world).

Gotta pay the lawmakers somehow. Give back to the state and federal assistance.

And I agree.
 

AmuroChan

Member
It's good. I don't watch a ton of TV so I don't subscribe to the packages. I went with the a la carte model and I'm pretty pleased with it so far. I pay more per channel but I pay less overall because I don't need all the channels in the packages.
 
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