Another cord cutter

[Triple_Se7en]

I forgot to include the infamous * to relate to those that still arren't employing the new Internet TVs on the market.

So even myself, a WOW Cable user for almost a decade, am considering cutting the cord, because I just purchased a 65" Smart Sony TV that has all the Big Boys built inside it..... Youtube, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Cracker..........etc.

My Bad for not using that * which became popularly used when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's home run mark - then Barry Bonds afterwards.
Thank you MLB.com, for making the * (asterisk) famous.

Now I made it famous here at BITOG...... oh' my!

 

[alarmguy]

We have a 65 inch Sony 65f900x however I intentionally made sure not to hook it up to my wi-fi.

I use the Sony TV as an excellent "panel" to display a fantastic picture and leave the source for programming to my Roku Player, Channel Master and Sony 4k player.
I dont like the whole idea of them controlling our $1,600 TV with software/programming updates as well as reporting back everything we watch and having an advertising profile on our family/privacy.

More or less, once hooked up to the wifi, you no longer control your TV, they control it. All this cr+p they call smart TV is just that, garbage marketing, a Roku player does much better. So for $1,600 for a TV, I then went out and bought our 5th Roku player to plug into the Sony for $70 for a 4K Roku player and I control the TV, not them.
)

 

[JustinH]

We don't mess with the smart TV's either, we use Roku as well.

Some of the TV's have embedded ROKU and we prefer to upgrade our Roku as we see fit.

 

[Donald]

Our cord cutting experience so far (two or three weeks) has hit only one issue so far. When watching HULU live TV we sometimes get a small horizontal bar in middle of screen. Seems somehow related to ads. Anything but live TV works fine. I assume the bar means buffering. We have 25 Mb up/down. Our Roku is pretty new and supports Hulu live TV.

 

[alarmguy]

Originally Posted by JustinH
We don't mess with the smart TV's either, we use Roku as well.

Some of the TV's have embedded ROKU and we prefer to upgrade our Roku as we see fit.



Exactly, wow! We could not agree more

 

[Donald]

Originally Posted by alarmguy
Originally Posted by JustinH
We don't mess with the smart TV's either, we use Roku as well.

Some of the TV's have embedded ROKU and we prefer to upgrade our Roku as we see fit.



Exactly, wow! We could not agree more


+1 - our smart TV would hang or other odd things when using streaming functions. Roku on same channel does none of that.

 

[CKN]

Originally Posted by Donald
Originally Posted by alarmguy
Originally Posted by JustinH
We don't mess with the smart TV's either, we use Roku as well.

Some of the TV's have embedded ROKU and we prefer to upgrade our Roku as we see fit.



Exactly, wow! We could not agree more


+1 - our smart TV would hang or other odd things when using streaming functions. Roku on same channel does none of that.


Yes-some of the new "smart TVs" have software bugs. They do roll out patches time to time to fix these issues.

 

[Triple_Se7en]

So let me see if I have this right.
Most Smart TVs either are dumb, or they have bugs when streaming.
When does this start? After my warranty expires? My Sony 850 has none of these symptoms. Even Alexa seems well educated / smart. I'll bet she has a PhD.

 

[Skippy722]

Originally Posted by Triple_Se7en
So let me see if I have this right.
Most Smart TVs either are dumb, or they have bugs when streaming.
When does this start? After my warranty expires? My Sony 850 has none of these symptoms. Even Alexa seems well educated / smart. I'll bet she has a PhD.


Our Samsung, TCL, and Insignia have been great. I prefer the Roku of TCL and Insignia personally.

 

[alarmguy]

Originally Posted by Triple_Se7en
So let me see if I have this right.
Most Smart TVs either are dumb, or they have bugs when streaming.
When does this start? After my warranty expires? My Sony 850 has none of these symptoms. Even Alexa seems well educated / smart. I'll bet she has a PhD.


None of the above.
Its just a matter of preference, if your happy with your system that is fine.

For us, we choose to keep our sources of programming separate from the display panel (TV) and having used Roku's for the last, gosh somewhere around 10 years we much prefer their interface.
We now have 5 of their players. I have a problem paying $1600 for a TV (panel) and being limited to the interface that they put on the set (and most likely making money off the sources of the apps being placed on it?) so we bought Roku's latest 4 k player along with the new TV, cost us an extra $75. to remain independent. )
Not only that, over the years, we could update the hardware on the player of our last TV without replacing the TV *L*

Yes, some TVs (not sony that I know of) have had issues as the apps and device built into the TV do get updates, very rare but one of these updates actually messed up the entire TV on one brand, forgot who but was fixed with an update to the update..

 

[CKN]

Originally Posted by Triple_Se7en
So let me see if I have this right.
Most Smart TVs either are dumb, or they have bugs when streaming.
When does this start? After my warranty expires? My Sony 850 has none of these symptoms. Even Alexa seems well educated / smart. I'll bet she has a PhD.


No....not most. Just a few do. If they really have an issue-it's nothing that a Roku/Firestick, etc., can't solve. It's not the end of the world.

 

[marine65]

Originally Posted by marine65
I have Direct T.V. satellite for $105 a month.
I just checked Direct T.V. streaming ($50 & $70 a month) and no cooking channel.
My wife loves that channel so that service is off the table.
Trust me to save $55 a month and no cooking channel?
Not going to happen.


cancelling Direct is totally off the table.
last wednesday my wife fell down the stairs and completely broke her left lower leg.
now she is a couch potato for awhile.

 

[wag123]

Originally Posted by marine65
Originally Posted by marine65
I have Direct T.V. satellite for $105 a month.
I just checked Direct T.V. streaming ($50 & $70 a month) and no cooking channel.
My wife loves that channel so that service is off the table.
Trust me to save $55 a month and no cooking channel?
Not going to happen.


cancelling Direct is totally off the table.
last wednesday my wife fell down the stairs and completely broke her left lower leg.
now she is a couch potato for awhile.
Sorry to hear that Marine. I hope that she has a quick recovery.

 

[Triple_Se7en]

Originally Posted by marine65

cancelling Direct is totally off the table.
last wednesday my wife fell down the stairs and completely broke her left lower leg.
now she is a couch potato for awhile.


Being she is entering a period of non-exercise, remind her to avoid the potatoes. Similar injuries result in weight gain from inactivity. My wife had her knee replaced. I know!
Hope she heals quickly and never attempt hiding the remote control from her. That's her sit-down crutch now.

 

[Donald]

I think streaming saves time. If I watch a Law & Order episode on Hulu there are only a couple of short commercials. If I watched it on a normal TV channel there are several minutes of commercials.

 

[Rat407]

We are lazy and DirecTV and the HD DVR is worth the cost. I know we can stream. But fo us it is way easier to just turn it on, go to the saved program,(we record everything, we don't watch live TV) and go. We are to lazy to have to turn on and then go to the streaming program of choice and search the program to watch. Not to mention our internet connection isn't the greatest.

So cutting the cord for us isn't going to happen. It does suck now since CBS for us and the CW are off DirecTV. Hope they settle soon but at least we can get those channels over the air.