So I’ve been experimenting.  I have Optimum right now.   My major beef with cable now is paying $10 per box for every other TV.  It adds up to $40 more a month!!

so to mitigate that I’ve been buying Roku sticks and ditching cable boxes.  BUT not all tv is live feed with Roku.   Bummer.  BUT THEN I discover DirectNow which gives me live on any device so BOOM I can cut the cord.  But wait, no DVR on DirectNow?!?   Sucrebleu!!!   75% of my viewing is 

Try Sony’s PS Vue. Similar service with DVR included. Went with it about a year ago and ditched the triple play. That and internet from Optimum and phone from Ooma and I am saving about $100 a month over what I used to pay.

Can you access the DVR from any tv with that Sony or is it only doe that device?

Can you access the DVR from any tv with that Sony or is it only doe that device?

I have an AppleTV, a FireTV Box, 2 Roku streaming sticks and 2 FireTV sticks that I use on the account and can watch live and dvr on all of them. I can also view on a PC on my iPad and my iPhone anywhere for dvr stuff. The limit is only five streams at the same time. Great service. Try the “free” five day trial.

Which service is the actual recording device?

my major beef with cable is......i remember when cable didn't have $%^%^ commercials. now? every goddam channel has commercials. on top of that, the hbo's, cinimax's, and showtime's are all having $#%$% documentaries. i don't pay for those channels to watch goddam documentaries. i pay for them to see movies.

6 hours ago, Howard said:

Try Sony’s PS Vue. Similar service with DVR included. Went with it about a year ago and ditched the triple play. That and internet from Optimum and phone from Ooma and I am saving about $100 a month over what I used to pay.

One year on PS vue myself. 

6 hours ago, Barms said:

Can you access the DVR from any tv with that Sony or is it only doe that device?

It’s cloud based DVR, there’s a menu that says my shows and viola there they are.  The interface will also show you on demand items as well.  

Yeah I cut the cord and went with fire stick with Psvue. Also ditched the phone and got ooma and bought a modom instead of renting. We saved about 120 bucks a month. 

Which service is the actual recording device?

The Vue recording is in the cloud and can be seen on any device you have.

The PSVue is very interesting. How’s the guide interface?  Looks like it gets the local channels and Local NBC/Comcast sports channel. 

Guess I’ll do the math of scaling back comcast to just Internet and see what the savings would be. 

The guide is great on Apple and FireTV and mobile but not nearly as good on Roku devices.  I get all the locals with it except Ch-11 which I could care less about.  They have several packages above the base $39.99 one, and you can add movie stuff a-la-cart as well

DirecTV Now actually has DVR in beta and they expect it to go live next year. It will be cloud based and not need physical storage, so you can for example DVR on your Roku stick and finish watching later on your tablet etc.

3 hours ago, Howard said:

The guide is great on Apple and FireTV and mobile but not nearly as good on Roku devices.  I get all the locals with it except Ch-11 which I could care less about.  They have several packages above the base $39.99 one, and you can add movie stuff a-la-cart as well

If you have a PS4, my son does, the interface is the best of the bunch.  I use AppleTv.

2 hours ago, mossburger said:

DirecTV Now actually has DVR in beta and they expect it to go live next year. It will be cloud based and not need physical storage, so you can for example DVR on your Roku stick and finish watching later on your tablet etc.

Direct TV Now allows only 2 simultaneous streams vs 5 for PS Vue

They all suck because nobody seems to have the Sportsman’s Channel or Outdoor Channel! Hurumph! 🤨


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I tried PSVue and for the most part liked it with 2 deal breaker issues.

2 of the channels my wife insists on having were not available.

With the DVR you can't start watching a show 15 minutes in and watch it till the end which is how I watch Walking Dead. You have to wait till the show is over to watch and skip commercials. 

I tried PSVue and for the most part liked it with 2 deal breaker issues.
2 of the channels my wife insists on having were not available.
With the DVR you can't start watching a show 15 minutes in and watch it till the end which is how I watch Walking Dead. You have to wait till the show is over to watch and skip commercials. 

That is not true about the DVR, I routinely watch shows that are already in progress from the start. They recently changed how you do it as when you pick the show it now gives an option to watch from the start or at the current point. You used to have to know a convoluted set of key pushes that were not intuitively obvious nor published to be able to do it but it still could be done.

Just now, Howard said:

 

That is not true about the DVR, I routinely watch shows that are already in progress from the start. They recently changed how you do it as when you pick the show it now gives an option to watch from the start or at the current point. You used to have to know a convoluted set of key pushes that were not intuitively obvious nor published to be able to do it but it still could be done.

 

They changed it since I did the trial last year. As for it being available at that time "a convoluted set of key pushes that were not intuitively obvious nor published to be able to do it" is not a great selling point in my book.

Now that they've changed it I will give it a second look. Maybe the line up has added my wife's channels.

They changed it since I did the trial last year. As for it being available at that time "a convoluted set of key pushes that were not intuitively obvious nor published to be able to do it" is not a great selling point in my book.
Now that they've changed it I will give it a second look. Maybe the line up has added my wife's channels.

What channels, I’ll look and see if I have them.

3 minutes ago, Howard said:

 

What channels, I’ll look and see if I have them.

 

CMT was one I can think of and Hallmark or Lifetime something along those lines.

CMT was one I can think of and Hallmark or Lifetime something along those lines.

Nope don’t get those but I only have the base package, they might be available on a higher level of service by I don’t know. You might check the new Hulu streaming service or the one offered by YouTube.

Some channels you can add seperate.  Wife just added Hallmark channel.  You can pay a small fee ($5 I think for Hallmark).  She only wants it for Nov and December.

The "watch from start" option on PS Vue is great!  Used it to watch Walking Dead this past Sunday.

My Comcast bill was almost $300 a month for the triple play with an extra phone line. I shut all down except internet access about a year ago. I went free with 2 phone lines ported over to Google Voice. used Roku boxes on the TVs and HD Homerun.

I lived like this for almost a year then gladly welcomed Comcast back into my life with the X1 Dvr Triple Play with all the premium channels. The bill sucks but it's only money and my sanity is now back! 

My Comcast bill was almost $300 a month for the triple play with an extra phone line. I shut all down except internet access about a year ago. I went free with 2 phone lines ported over to Google Voice. used Roku boxes on the TVs and HD Homerun.
I lived like this for almost a year then gladly welcomed Comcast back into my life with the X1 Dvr Triple Play with all the premium channels. The bill sucks but it's only money and my sanity is now back! 

What do you mean by your sanity? My Ooma gives me much better service than the cable companies VoIP and PS Vue gives me better reception than I got from the cable company with no limit on how much stuff I can store on multiroom
Dvr that I can actually watch away from home.

53 minutes ago, JohnnyB said:

My Comcast bill was almost $300 a month for the triple play with an extra phone line. I shut all down except internet access about a year ago. I went free with 2 phone lines ported over to Google Voice. used Roku boxes on the TVs and HD Homerun.

I lived like this for almost a year then gladly welcomed Comcast back into my life with the X1 Dvr Triple Play with all the premium channels. The bill sucks but it's only money and my sanity is now back! 

May I ask why?  

I have Comcast now with a similar bill. Strongly considering ditching tv and  voice switching to Vue. 

The only real concern would be how Vue bandwidth and Xfinity throttling limits. 

2 hours ago, voyager9 said:

May I ask why?  

I have Comcast now with a similar bill. Strongly considering ditching tv and  voice switching to Vue. 

The only real concern would be how Vue bandwidth and Xfinity throttling limits. 

I can't speak about Vue since I did not have or know of it. My wife (the cheapskate) complained to my Son-in Law about the Comcast bill. He filled her head with how he could take the bill to almost nothing. We wound up with an over complicated pile of boxes and a computer (to act as the DVR and Plex media server that we could never figure out) that cost me $500+! Sure, my Comcast bill went down to a little over $100 but my live channels went down to about 25, my phone service sucked and my wife, the cheapskate, begged me to get Comcast back again! I happily complied since life off the grid sucked!

Now I can watch any channel I want, DVR anything and watch it anywhere, phones do not suck and internet speed is double or better. All this for less than a days pay. I am one happy camper! It's great to save money but at what cost?

Sorry to bring this up again but the DVR thing is really paramount for me.  For those using the PS for the DVRing.   Are you able to record ahead in a schedule?  Or can you only record what is playing live?  I’m still perplexed how s 3rd party device can record another company signal “smartly”?  (Meaning setting commands to tape shows at any time forever... etc  )

 

Sorry to bring this up again but the DVR thing is really paramount for me.  For those using the PS for the DVRing.   Are you able to record ahead in a schedule?  Or can you only record what is playing live?  I’m still perplexed how s 3rd party device can record another company signal “smartly”?  (Meaning setting commands to tape shows at any time forever... etc  )

 

 

You don’t actually record per se. You tell it which shows are your favorites (as many as you want) and it just records every episode of them. There is not storage limits, but recordings are only kept for four weeks. But most convert to video on demand. Check their faqs.

Just realized PSVue doesn’t have Viacom channels. Thst may be a showstopper. My wife likes some shows thst are only on those channels. Does she like them more than $100-$150 a month, I dunno.