Cutting the Cord - Part 3 (The First Month)

If you haven't yet, you should read Part 1 and Part 2 first.

After officially "cutting the cord" for over a month now, I can give a little update with my experience.

The ROKU works fine, but I can get most of the same functionality with other smart devices.  If you already have a Wii, PS3, XBox, computer or smart Blu-Ray player; the ROKU is not really necessary.  The ROKU are nice for TVs that don't have any smart device attached.
 
By far and away, the best purchase I made was the PlayOn software.  However, as mentioned in my blog, it does take a little effort and knowledge to get it setup.

With the proper scripts installed, I can pretty much watch any episode of any show whenever I want.  If I want to set down and watch all 98 episodes of Gilligan's Island over a long weekend, I can.  Or, if I want to watch last nights episode of The Walking Dead, it'll be streamed from multiple sites by the time I get home tonight.  There are also an unlimited amount of movies available to watch.  A lot of content is not HD quality, but it is not poor quality either.

The other nice thing about the PlayOn software, is that I can watch shows on any device on my network.  Not only smart devices on my TV, but there are also apps to watch it on smart phones.  So, with the 4 TVs and 3 smart phones and 3 computers in the house, finding a device to watch on is not an issue.

Live TV is possible, but I've found the video quality for the most part is pretty poor.  Since the only TV I watch live is Sports, this hasn't been too much of an issue.  Most sports I watch while I'm doing other things.  NASCAR, basketball, baseball, etc., I usually turn on the TV while I'm on the laptop and just listen and occasionally look at the TV.  Since the audio is fine, it really isn't an issue that that picture is jumpy.  We get all the local channels (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX and PBS). So, I get a decent amount of sporting events there on the weekends.  I think my biggest issue is going to be Monday and Thursday night NFL football.  However, I'm sure I'll find a solution by then.

A nice little story/shout out about the NCAA.  With the NCAA basket ball tournament on, I was looking for a decent stream for games I wanted to watch.  However, they were all jumpy or buffering like crazy (I have a feeling this might have to do with everyone else trying to watch it).  So when I got my phone (android) out to check the scores of other games, I notice the NCAA had an app to watch the games live on your phone in HD.  I downloaded the app and sure enough, live games in HD right on my phone.  My phone has a mini HDMI port, so I grabbed my HDMI cable ($5 on amazon) and plugged my phone into the TV.  Just that easy, I had access to all the NCAA tournament games in HD right on my TV.  The best part for the NCAA is that I had to watch their commercials instead of what the networks were showing.  I also assume they keep that of the number of people that streamed the games.  So, by making the games easily available, I'm guessing that advertisers money when right into the NCAA's pocket, instead of filtering through the network first.  All other sport leagues should take note of what the NCAA did.  My guess is we see more of this happening.

The biggest downfall I've found with the with the PlayOn software, is that is pretty much requires a dedicated computer.  At least is requires my cheap $300 computer I bought at walmart over the winter to be dedicated.  If someone else is doing something on the computer (usually my 5 year old playing flash games), the stream we are watching really starts to buffer.  If no one is using the computer, then we usually don't have buffering issues.  Not sure if a beefier computer would handle it better.  However, if I have to go by another $300 computer for the kids to play on, that's about the same as 4 months of cable bills I was paying.  However, I'm going to finish my 3 months (original return on investment) before making any changes to my setup.

As usual, any questions or comments, leave them below, and I'll try to answer or reply.

Also, I'm not associated in any way with and do not endorse any of these devices, software or companies.  This is only my experience that I'm sharing with people who are interested in cutting the cord themselves.

If anyone decides to use PlayOn, Please use this link so I can get the referral.