Alternatives to Cable/Satellite - ROKU?

Hey folks -

Didnt wanna treadjack Uba, so I wanted to focus a discussion on what alternatives you folks use to the traditional cable or satellite providers? The main goal here is to still have some media options available at the end of a day, but to reduce (as much as possible) the cost.

So, a few co-workers highly recommended Roku. Seems that by utilizing Netflix streaming and Hulu plus (combines for about $20/month) we can watch a lot of what we do already plus focus on older stuff we never saw. Biggest hurdle seems to be watching the Bravo programming my wife and I like - especially Top Chef. We'll deal though if it saves us some bucks. Seems like we could just get a cable to connect our new laptop to the TV to cover a few bases as well (wouldnt want to rely on this for a lot though as it seems like it'd be a nuisance).

What are your thoughts? What solutions have you come up with? Obviously obstaining would save the most, but I dont think we're there just yet.

Thanks!

Keep in mind that a lot of ISPs are pushing harder and harder for stricter caps. I'm with AT&T right now and will probably be dropping them pretty soon. If I want the same speed from another company without the cap, it costs $60-70 as opposed to AT&T's lower rate. To drop cable and add an ISP without caps would cost around the same as I'm spending now. I would have the advantage of not worrying about going over AT&T's cap.

Hulu Plus offers a free trial. The only good thing about the service are the Criterion movies. Generally, you'll spend way too much time surfing through a bunch of shows on Hulu Plus that you don't want to watch. A few other black marks against Hulu Plus: you don't have access to their entire library on your TV and you still have to put up with commercials. Options like TVersity ($40+ a year) allow you to stream plain old Hulu to your gaming device/media player.

Thanks MDM!

Yeah, I need to double check, but I have never seen or heard of data caps with my Comcast home internet service. In fact, they just wrote to tell me they wanted to send me an "improved router" - uh, sure?

And I'm thinking we'll roll with Netflix (already have it) streaming and regular hulu for now and see if we really miss anything else and figure out how to fill in those cracks.

Will definitely check out TVersity! Thanks for the heads up!

LOVING the Roku in my house. We dropped cable down to just networks about ten years ago when Paris Hilton became famous for no reason. We totally canceled cable once we got the Roku about three years ago. Netflix streaming is so awesome. With Roku, you also get Revision3 which has some quality shows: BYTEJACKER and THE BEN HECK SHOW to name two. There are some janky channels as well with forgettable content, and Amazon Streaming if you simply must.

Get one that's HDMI capable--I bet they all are now, but it's worth it to check.

I don't have a smartphone, so my media is all coming over the DSL. I have 6Mb down for $35/mo, plus $9 for 1-disc netflix with streaming. I don't bother with HULU. My wife has watched GREY'S ANATOMY, DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, WEEDS, DEXTER, and I've been watching TORCHWOOD, THE TWILIGHT ZONE, PARTY DOWN, and MYTHBUSTERS all on Netflix. Cult of the Slightly Old beckons to you!

I have been mostly cable free for 2 years now. we got cable 2years ago for football, but i'll probably pass on that this year again.

Netflix is awesome. I miss the foodnetwork stuff. But that and NFL/ Virginia Tech football are the only things I miss. I used to torrent alot of stuff, but i've been hit with 2 cease warnings about that, so no more for me. which sucks, because the samsung allshare program (basically a system that allows you to stream to the tv) is great.

TV Versity is okay. hopefully it works for you, but i've never been able to get satisfactory performance out of it for online things, such as hulu. I used it primarily to stream downloaded stuff to the tv.

for now, when we want to watch hulu, I physically hook up a vga cable from my laptop to my tv. it works, but isn't all that convenient.

Roku and over-the-air are providing 90% of our television viewing. I'm still on Directv for $45 per month that includes multiple sets and a DirecTivo service, but it's really to support the weather channel and two kids channels.

Roku's choices are expanding daily and there's some good stuff hidden in the minor channels. Worth looking at all the material they offer.

My concern is that bandwidth caps will cripple Roku eventually, but given the entry price ($70 or so) I'm riding that horse until it runs out.

S.

I have this thing called an antenna as an alternative to paying for shitty shows on Cable. I get plenty of shitty shows for free now !!!

We stick with Netflix and the ol' antenna for our TV viewing. Assuming you have a home video game console, Netflix is a no-brainer. Don't have any experience with Roku, but I hear good things.

I do wish I had cable, if only because all of college football has moved to ESPN.

So apparently I should be hating on you jerks for not bringing this to my attention sooner. Behind the times I guess... Internet tv certainly doesnt get a lot of press or else everyone just assumes it's common knowledge.

Oh yeah - I forgot that I could get an antenna for the local channels (score!) which is what? Just stuff like ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS? That'd be sweet right there for stuff like news and network stuff except my wife and I would definitely need to adjust to watching shows in real time. We have no clue when stuff comes on - it just magically appears on our DVR!

Thanks everyone whose answered so far! Great to hear everyone's opinions and solutions!

We don't have cable (well, I guess technically we do cause I sweet talked the dude who set up our internet connection into not putting the TV filter on so we get some random channels in the wrong places that frequently change around, but we never use it). We run Netflix and PlayOn through the XBox 360 and it's totally awesome and works great. I think PlayOn is now subscription based which is kind of a bummer, but we got in on it early and just paid a flat fee for lifetime membership (it was like $20 at the time, score!). Depending on what it costs, it's still totally worth it and works great for a whole host of services.

No matter the particulars of how you actually run it all, using some relay box to the internet services is SO much cheaper than cable and you really won't miss much of anything. The only time we've been kinda bummed is that we now have to go over to our friends to watch Game of Thrones, but then it's an enjoyable event thing anyway so no big.

The networks have huge amount of bandwidth on Antenna, so they generally each stream a couple of other random channels to you as well as their main channel.