“Thanks to the many streaming services, ‘cable lite’ companies, and on-demand apps, you don’t have to settle for paying $100 or more every month for 200 channels you never watch,” Lory Gil writes for iMore. “Instead, you can customize your TV and movie watching experience with individual subscriptions, over-the-air connected devices, and à la carte style content.”
“One major experience you might feel is missing when you cut the cord is the ability to simply turn on your television set and watch whatever is on. How do you access your local news channel? What about the Sunday night lineup? Not to worry,” Gil writes. “There are a number of services that specialize in providing access to whatever shows are airing at any given time. Many of them also offer DVR-type features so you can record your favorite shows and watch them whenever you’re ready.”
“Of course, you don’t want to relegate to just live TV services. Being able to watch TV shows and movies whenever, wherever is one of the best parts of cutting the cord. You don’t have to worry about setting up a recording time or needing to clear out your storage to fit more content,” Gil writes. “There are some great apps that provide on-demand content that you can watch at your leisure.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve cut our cords with Apple TV 4K units, Playstation Vue, Netflix, and other content apps. Whenever (if ever?) the promised Amazon Prime Video app arrives, we’ll be all set (we use Amazon Prime via the built-in app on our Sony 4K TVs for now). Depending on your location and desires, throw in an over-the-air antenna and an HDHomeRun or other DVR and your cord is as good as cut!
SEE ALSO:
Record live TV without a cable subscription – March 23, 2017
Making sense of myriad cord-cutting options – March 17, 2017
The ultimate cable television cord cutting solution for Apple TV owners – February 17, 2017
For those of you with AppleTV – how do you get the channels normally seen on cable/DirecTV?
The reason I ask and single out AppleTV is that I have not tried it (yet) on the Amazon FireStick. On AppleTV, if I try to watch anything from, let’s say, The History Channel, Fox, USA or TBS, before I was granted access, I had to login with my subscriber information. For us, that means choosing DirecTV and logging in with the DirecTV account.
If this is normal, how do you get access to the content if you cancelled your cable subscriptions?
Sports: if you watch sports and are out of the local area, how do you watch your games? This is one of the main reasons we have kept DirecTV for over 17 years – for the NFL Season Ticket. In the past few years, I really haven’t seen the benefit for it, since my team was on a national channel for 10 of their 16 games. This year, looking through the schedule, I can estimate about 9 games on national TV. However – if they keep playing like they have the last two games, the NFL might not air them at all next year. . . . I am just wondering, if we were to cut the cord, how can I still watch my team’s games Live?
I got mad at DirecTV because they claim, for me to have 4K receivers, they have to come in the house and rewire it. I asked them what kind of wiring are they putting in and the response was RJ6. Well, that is what we have in our house. So if it’s already RJ6, why do they need to come and install it? I was never given a direct answer other than “Its the way it has to be done”. So, needless to say, I will not be installing DirecTV 4K in the house, but our receivers are “ancient” and before I commit to two more years and upgrade both boxes, I want to weigh my options.
You would need to subscribe to the Hulu App, The HBO-go App, the CBS App, etc… On top of your ISP charges, they end up making it cost MORE than a package with all the channels.
We consumers can’t win.
Yes, we can win. Turn the _ucker off and do other things. I have not watched a TV show in years.
You know how you can tell if someone doesn’t watch or own a TV? They’ll tell you!
Playstation Vue app. Click the link MDN provided in their Take.
I do not watch that much TV. Got out of the habit when living in Germany years ago,and never fell back into the trap. I watch Real Time with. Bill Maher on HBO, some college football- like Auburn’s beating (grossly overrated) Alabama. I give money to KQED, so I can stream most PBS programming on demand, a little Bloomberg , a little CBSN and a little on demand HBO stuff- that’s it. I read my news online as most American TV news is political gossip from talking heads in the paid service of some special interest.
When the college bowls are over with, I will probably drop DIRECTVNOW as I will not need ESPN until next fall. I can get HBO via the app after dropping DTVN. ESPN is mostly sports gossip and I couldn’t give a shit about pro sports.
A la carte cannot come quickly enough for me- especially if we could pay per view sports and bypass Disney/ESPN.
Biggest problem is with sports (hockey, football, etc.) Since I absolutely hate commercials and their PC content now (most are ridiculous and not realistic and a bloody waste of your time and pretty offensive anyways) I find that having Directv with a DVR, allows me just to watch what I want, when I want, and skip all the commercials, thereby increasing my quality of life. A small price to pay for the subscription to Directv.