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Electronics Pondering

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JB said:
Maybe I am crazy, but when you start adding up these services, plus the cost of antenna, etc the cost differences (while there) are not as glaring as they need to be in my opinion.
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We have Netflix, Prime, and an antenna anyways, so it balances a little better for us anyways. But our main problem is that we can ONLY get Dist or Direct out in the boondocks and they are just crazy after we get everything we want in the tiers. Two years though and we will have other options when we move, so really I just need to persevere and deal with it. Blah.
 
We tried but cannot get an antennae to work. Tried three different styles. No luck. So back to cable it was. I'd miss the shows. No easy way to stream CBS. The others are on Hulu mostly. But sports is the problem and cost for a DVR for over the air recording from an antennae isn't cheap. For now we deal with the cost. Would be nice to save the $60/mo or so, but it's no big deal.
 
Canadan said:
I saw some comments earlier this year or last year about people dropping cable.. Did you do it? Did you drop everything?

We're talking about dropping cable and bolstering internet. Honestly I wouldn't even think twice, except that I love watching hockey and golf. Problem is, hockey gets blacked out for local games with Gamecenter Live (which i still think is completely stupid)...

Who's done it with success?
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We got rid of our cable/DirecTV almost 2 years ago. I purchased an HD Antenna (+/- $100) and attached to my roof. Used the current cable lines running through my house and now get HD signal for local network stations for free. Get all of the major networks (NBC, CBS, ABC, CW, FOX). We also purchased ROKU players for 2 of our TV's (we found them for about $70/ea). We use these to watch network shows that we may have missed on the selected nights that they are on (all but CBS are on Hulu Plus). We also purchased a TIVO box for our living room TV to be able to record any CBS shows that we like, along with other networks. Both Hulu ($8/month) and Tivo ($15/month) have monthly fees as well as our Netflix ($8/month). Here is how it broke down for us:

DirecTV - $160/month (included 3 DVR boxes for our TV's) Total of $1920/Yr

HD Antenna - $100/One time purchase
Roku Media box - $70/ea X 2 = $140/One time purchase
Tivo DVR - $100/One time purchase

Netflix - $8/month Total $96/Yr
Hulu Plus - $8/month Total $96/Yr
Tivo Record Service - $15/month Total $180/Yr

First year investment in boxes and antenna plus service for the year is $712. After first year, the cost is $372/yr for the services.

I will say that the hardest thing for me was not having ESPN for all of my sports. But that has changed as well since there is an ESPN app on ROKU. I had a friend of mine log into his cable carrier, input a code from my Roku, and now I also have ESPN. It is not for everyone, but we made the choice for 2 reasons. To save $$ and to help cut back in the amount of tv being watched in our household. It has worked pretty well.
 
JB said:
Maybe I am crazy, but when you start adding up these services, plus the cost of antenna, etc the cost differences (while there) are not as glaring as they need to be in my opinion.
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For me it's pretty big, Netflix is $8, Prime is free since I'm a student, and Hulu Plus is $8. We got our antenna for free. $16 +$30 for Internet is much better than $140 for Internet and TV
 
Baseball and hockey keep me from doing it. I could give up to shows, most golf and football I want to watch is on network and the small amount of Auburn games I would need to see on espn could be viewed at my parents or a friend's house. But I would hate to lose hockey, and especially baseball.
 
Wake said:
Baseball and hockey keep me from doing it. I could give up to shows, most golf and football I want to watch is on network and the small amount of Auburn games I would need to see on espn could be viewed at my parents or a friend's house. But I would hate to lose hockey, and especially baseball.
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With the Roku, and I'm sure with others, you can use the MLB.tv Premium app and the NHL Hockey Gamecenter app that are included and watch the games. All you have to do is purchase the viewing package and you should be good. I usually do the MLB.tv Premium package ($129/season) and can watch ANY game being played. I'm a REDS fan so I watch their entire season. I believe you can pay $20 more on the package and can choose whether you want to watch the Away or Home televised feed.
 
I want to drop our Starz movie package with Uverse. But, it has some shows my wife likes. (Da Vinci's Demon's). I look at our UVerse OnDemand and I see DVD's there. But, you have to have Starz to what it via OnDemand. Does HuluPlus or others offer up these types of shows?


KnightLightPro,
Awesome cost breakdown!!! Top notch! Top notch!
 
KnightLightPro said:
With the Roku, and I'm sure with others, you can use the MLB.tv Premium app and the NHL Hockey Gamecenter app that are included and watch the games. All you have to do is purchase the viewing package and you should be good. I usually do the MLB.tv Premium package ($129/season) and can watch ANY game being played. I'm a REDS fan so I watch their entire season. I believe you can pay $20 more on the package and can choose whether you want to watch the Away or Home televised feed.
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But like Canadan they both block out the local team I believe
 
I hadn't, that's pretty....interesting. Hell of a concept.
 
Wake said:
But like Canadan they both block out the local team I believe
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It's such a stupidly annoying thing -- GCL is awesome too.

Called the cable company tonight hard pondering removing it altogether. Couldn't execute. Yet.
 
Jman said:
I hadn't, that's pretty....interesting. Hell of a concept.
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JB said:
Between that and the Amazon 3d phone, lots of interesting stuff coming down the pipeline.
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rtparty said:
Bad A for sure!
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I found it to be pretty cool. The ability to upgrade certain parts of your phone and not the whole thing is pretty interesting. Plus making it easier to fix broken parts is very cool as well.
 
No more pondering for this guy. Pulled the trigger on the Galaxy S5 today. I almost bought it at full price when the girl told me she thought that going from 3g to 4g would not void my unlimited data. I was ecstatic and then the manager corrected her and told her that's no longer the case. Then the manager told me that my monthly bill won't change in price, but I'll get 6gb of data a month which I'm happy with. This phone is so much different from the iPhone, it'll take some time to get used to for sure.
 
Six4three5 said:
No more pondering for this guy. Pulled the trigger on the Galaxy S5 today. I almost bought it at full price when the girl told me she thought that going from 3g to 4g would not void my unlimited data. I was ecstatic and then the manager corrected her and told her that's no longer the case. Then the manager told me that my monthly bill won't change in price, but I'll get 6gb of data a month which I'm happy with. This phone is so much different from the iPhone, it'll take some time to get used to for sure.
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You'll love the it, Jimmy. It is an awesome phone, better than the iphone IMO.
 
moosejaa said:
You'll love the it, Jimmy. It is an awesome phone, better than the iphone IMO.
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So far I'm liking it. It's just taking some time to get it setup the way I want to. I think I'll get used to it pretty quickly.
 
Six4three5 said:
So far I'm liking it. It's just taking some time to get it setup the way I want to. I think I'll get used to it pretty quickly.
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You'll like android, that so has come so far in the last few years.
 
War Eagle said:
You'll like android, that so has come so far in the last few years.
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I do enjoy it so far. The only thing that freaked me out was how much crap was preloaded on the phone. I had to deleted or remove a bunch of stuff. Also I didn't like how my apps were in like 3 different places, had to fix that too.
 
Canadan said:
I saw some comments earlier this year or last year about people dropping cable.. Did you do it? Did you drop everything?

We're talking about dropping cable and bolstering internet. Honestly I wouldn't even think twice, except that I love watching hockey and golf. Problem is, hockey gets blacked out for local games with Gamecenter Live (which i still think is completely stupid)...

Who's done it with success?
Click to expand...
We dropped Time Warner but went with Google Fiber TV. It's $50 bucks a month, $70 a month for the internet. Much better than TWX, and with all the soccer we watch, it's not worth it to us to drop the TV part.



TexasHacker34 said:
I have often thought about giving up TV, and with Google Fiber I feel like I almost could give up the TV portion of it and just use the internet to stream.

The sport I watch the most (MLB) I have the MLB.TV which I stream through my PS4 to get all of the Cardinals games, and then I would have Amazon Prime and Netflix for streaming.

I just don't think I am ready to do it quite yet, but I have absolutely contemplated it.
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Sounds like it could be feasible for you Taylor.
 
Smallville said:
We dropped Time Warner but went with Google Fiber TV. It's $50 bucks a month, $70 a month for the internet. Much better than TWX, and with all the soccer we watch, it's not worth it to us to drop the TV part.



Sounds like it could be feasible for you Taylor.
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It could be but I'm not ready to do it just yet. Especially with a roomate paying for half
 
About to pull the trigger on a Finepix S1. Trying to sell our 7 year old canon and this seems like a good replacement.

Anyone with Fuji camera experience?
 
Can anyone explain to me the difference between a 120 and 240 HZ LED TV? I am looking at the Sharp Aquos 60" and the price difference was around $400.00. Any experiences with the Aquos?
 
I can save you the trouble as I recently researched this for days. The typical viewer will not see much difference in 120 vs 240. Is your current tv 60 or 120? If it's 60 then either one will have more of a soap opera type feel but typically you can turn off the super high refresh features if you don't like it when watching movies and such.

If you already have 120 hz then I would imagine you will not see much difference with 240 hz.

I'm trying to hold out for the Vizio P series this fall but my samsung is on its last leg.
 
it's not really about the refresh rate... or I guess it's not *just* about the refresh rate. Hz is another way of saying "times per second" for a given thing being measured. In the case of refresh rates, it's how many times the screen is completely reconstructed every second. The signal has a frame rate that plays directly into the equation. The screen refreshes X times per second, using X unique frames per second. Your TV signal is certainly not coming in at 240Hz/fps. standard HD 720p/1080p frame rates (unique frames per second) are generally 24fps (technically 23.97, but whatevs). Sometimes as much as 60 fps. Chances are not even your fanciest Blu-Rays are that high, either (though, some movies were shot in really high frame rates - James Cameron loves doing this).

So, what is the point of more than a 60Hz refresh rate? If the image processor in your TV has motion smoothing capabilities, then it will take part of the previous frame, part of the next, and display that in between the two. It essentially invents a new frame that isn't on the recording. That makes motion look smoother in many cases. There are other things that the image processor can do with those extra screen draws... but most of them will do little if anything to improve the viewing experience. 99.99% of the time, the exact same image is redrawn multiple times, even with smoothing turned on. There is no reason to redraw the same frame over again, except that *something* has to be drawn.

honestly, unless you're doing motion smoothing on a 60fps or higher frame rate source, there's no tangible benefit to 240Hz versus 120Hz. It's primarily a marketing thing.
 
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