Dumping Direct and Cable TV

[jeb6294]

They claim that this super hacked fire stick has all PPV, HBO, SHOWTIME, Sports, and every new movie out there?? Is this for real?? Thinking about getting one.

DAMMIT MAN!!!  The first rule of Kodi is DON'T TALK ABOUT KODI!!!  You'll ruin it for everyone.

I see guys selling "jailbroke" Fire Sticks on the neighborhood Facebook for sale site all the time.  I just think it's funny because they're getting a $35 Fire Stick, spending 5 minutes to put Kodi on it and then selling it for $70.  If this is really a "super" Fire Stick, the only thing it can be is a different app to install.

 

[knight1fox3]

^ LOL

Ya it's not difficult at all. Similar to that of rooting a stock Android phone and installing a custom ROM on it for better app access and system performance.

We also do not talk about Bit Torrent. Though that technology is dated. There are now better alternatives to that. Even the streaming variety. :thumbs:

 

[kevo_55]

Shit, I use Kodi on my raspberry pi.

Free stuff is going bye bye.

 

[Voomie]

I got media apps on my fire tablet but I am having issues streaming them wirelessly to my smart tv. Anyone know of any fixes.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[NJmike PE]

So tonight I completed it. Tonight I dumped the cable company and activated playstation vue. Not too bad. I'm really happy with the quality between that and what's available on the firestick

 

[knight1fox3]

So tonight I completed it. Tonight I dumped the cable company and activated playstation vue. Not too bad. I'm really happy with the quality between that and what's available on the firestick

 

[TNSparky]

I was an early adopter of DIRECTV Now. Yeah, it's got its bugs but generally works well for me (but I have fiber optic internet hardwired to my Apple TV). 

But I got an email last night.....free HBO for a year. Not a bad little perk, along with 100+ other channels for $35/month.

 

[jeb6294]

I actually got DirecTV way back in the beginning when I got my first house.  Started out great, but over time the signal got worse and worse.  It got so bad that you would lose the satellite when it was windy outside.  Seemed the only way to do anything was online so I was trying to contact the help desk constantly.  When Time Warner started doing their deal to buy your dish for $50 I asked them how soon they could show up.  It was only when I called to cancel my account that DirecTV finally decided to talk to me.  They put me on the phone with one of their "retention specialists" but I told her it was too late, I'd been trying to get help for months and thatdish was already off the house and in the back of the TW van.

 

[Road Guy]

as we approach football season (can I get a hallelujah?) I need to stabilize my no cable system for football.  I have one of those cheap flat 12" x 12" antennas that actually works well but only when I run it up on the wall and hang it on a nail, (which apparently the wife is none to thrilled about) - it gets hardly any TV when I lay it just on the TV.

Have any of you tried one of these by chance?

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Digiwave-Amplified-Digital-Indoor-TV-Antenna-ANT4002/44984453

Is it really worth the effort to install one of the outside units?  I don't mind doing it but was just curious before I went through the whole misery of drilling a hole in the basement wall and fishing a coax up the side of the house to make it look transparent. I live in "one of those" neighborhoods and anything that looks out of ordinary gets critiqued. 

 

[knight1fox3]

I don't recall if your house has an attic or not. But below is what I installed in our house up in the attic. Really enjoy the signal quality and number of channels I can pull down. I can't say I've ever had any signal degradation and/or pixelation during inclement weather. Amplified omni-directional is the way to go IMO. I can send you a photo of how my install turned out. Was nice to be in the attic as I didn't have to mess around drilling external holes and installing outside. Plus the antenna is better protected from the elements. The only drilling I did was up through one of the spare room closets to get the coax cable from the basement to the attic.

This the amplified antenna that I went with that's installed in my attic. I can pull down around 25 HD channels, some as far as Chicago.

https://www.amazon.com/TERK-Amplified-Indoor-HDTV-Antenna/dp/B0007MXZB2

I used Antenna Web to help determine the most optimal direction.

 

[jeb6294]

I got one of these from Walmart when I got tired of messing with the "sheet" antenna:

It's not nearly as big as I pictured...I was picturing one of those old '70's things...only about 2-3 feet long.  I mounted it up on the eve of our 2-story house.  Because of our proximity to downtown, it's on the back of the house, but even if it had been on the front, it isn't terribly noticeable.  Cincinnati has 41 over-the-air channels and I get all of them.  I actually ended up clearing out some Dayton channels because they ran duplicate channels.  Far superior to the sheet.

 

[Road Guy]

Our house has an attic but our main tv area is on the main floor and there isn't a really good way to get the cable through the second floor and into the attic. 

I have seen some "less antennae" looking ones for the outside that I could probably get away with, I just don't think I could put anything outside that looked like an actual antennae - but its BS that somehow satellite dishes have some Federal Code that prevents HOA's from discriminating against them!

I do have a large maple tree on one side of the house and I am thinking about running the cable to it and figured it would be a good disguise

 

[Supe]

Dude, just disguise it like the Charlotte Tree Tower.  FYI, it actually looks much worse from the highway.

 

[knight1fox3]

Our house has an attic but our main tv area is on the main floor and there isn't a really good way to get the cable through the second floor and into the attic. 

Does your house have distributed coax ports throughout, or just a few main ones? That's where my application was a bit easier. I ran the main antenna cable from the attic to right near the electrical CB junction box where there's a "media hub". Which is basically a central hub for all the coax cabling that distributes throughout the rest of the house. So all I did was disconnect the main incoming line from outside and then connected the antenna cable. So now that OTA signal is distributed to any port we connect up to in the house. YMMV.

 

[Road Guy]

we do have that and its in the basement and back in the winter when it was cooler temps I looked around our attic trying to find a line I could pull through from the attic to the basement and didn't see anything I could fish easily from that far up.  I did find some electrical holes but I couldn't get the fish tape to go beyond the second floor (the genius's in CO have the fuse box on the outside of the house so everything is very tightly ran into one hole on the other side of the house from where I would really need it..

 

[Audi Driver P.E.]

Our house has an attic but our main tv area is on the main floor and there isn't a really good way to get the cable through the second floor and into the attic. 

I have seen some "less antennae" looking ones for the outside that I could probably get away with, I just don't think I could put anything outside that looked like an actual antennae - but its BS that somehow satellite dishes have some Federal Code that prevents HOA's from discriminating against them!

I do have a large maple tree on one side of the house and I am thinking about running the cable to it and figured it would be a good disguise

Just run the wiring on the outside of the house, and paint it to match the color of the house.  It will be nearly invisible.

 

[jeb6294]

I am lucky in that the house had a central vacuum in the basement.  There's a 2-inch PVC vent running from the basement up to the roof.  My initial thought was to mount the antenna up on the roof by the old vent and then run the cable down the PVC.  That ended up being a no-go so it went on the eve on the corner of the house and the cable runs down the corner of the house and into the basement via an existing vent.  The cable is hardly noticeable...the 2nd floor is vinyl siding so it's tucked into the corner trim and it blends in pretty well with the brick 1st floor.

 

[matt267 PE]

I just recently installed an attic antenna. I was able to get the coax to follow the chimney chase down to the basement where I split the signal to two TV's.

 

[Road Guy]

You know when I was up in the attic looking around the thought occurred to me that they should require some type of conduit to be placed from attic to basement for things such as this..

I think I will be okay I have some paint from when we got the house painted a few years ago. vinyl siding doesn't stand up to the wind here so everyone has that concrete masonic siding, which is good it just sucks to be painted...

But really we haven't missed that much of regular tv or cable tv that much, it just sucks for football.. I guess I could pay the $20 a month for sling tv which gets espn for 4 months?

 

[knight1fox3]

I think you already tried one of these, but I noticed this was on sale for 75% off because of "Amazon Prime Day" or whatever.