monty wrote:
SO I have two accounts, direct and dish at two houses, I just cancelled them for the end of the month. Just got tired of the creeping up of costs, and then arguing with them and just getting an offer to go back to where I was. Combined they were about $140 a month, so I will save about $1700 a year. Have 3 young kids, dont let them watch a ton, but need good content for them.
But I need to replace them with something, thinking Netflix? I also would like some local channels, what can I do there, any antennas that bring in the digital signals? One house in a big city, other is rural. My wife has a $5 a month Hulu, figure to keep that, add in the 4 tv Netflix, and maybe another cheap one?? Do I need something to connect it to my tv, like Apple TV? I know I can connect my computer to it, but don't really want to tie it up every time we want to watch, so some set top box?
Ok, lots of questions for those of you that have cut your cords, I would like to keep the monthly under $25 total so that I actually save a decent amount of money. Dont mind up front costs of equipment, that will amortize it self over time to almost nothing, just want to get the best bang for the buck.
I went down this path late last year and, as is typical for me, I decided to take the most complicated route. I built my own Plex server. Here is a mile high overview:
https://nymag.com/...rvice-with-plex.html I built my Plex server on an Intel NUC with a 4TB hard drive (about $400) and I buy Blue Rays off of eBay (typically will get a bundle of 10 for $20-30). I've bought entire seasons of some shows (The Office, House, Game of Thrones, West World, etc.). It kind of becomes a "batch" thing that I might do once a month while doing laundry (pop a disc in, let the computer do its thing, come back again in a couple of hours). I probably have 200+ movies and a dozen shows at this point with less than $1,000 and 20 hours of time invested... but said time invested is kind of overblown since, like I said, I incorporated it into normal chores.
One of the reasons I did this was I anticipated weekend trips in a camper to remote places where I was unlikely to have great internet but still might want to watch a movie at night. I can "download" YouTube videos and podcasts as well to Plex which is something I intend to do.
That said, I still have Netflix at home.