Any of you guys completely moved away from Cable TV to strictly Internet TV??

[Rick Buffkin]

I know this is a kindof off the wall question but, I'm seriously considering cutting the cable at my house and trying out Streaming only. I've been doing a little bit of research on this and alot of ppl are using these little boxes with a program called "KODI" on it. There's actually a ton of these boxes available on Amazon with 4k features and upgraded processors and so on. From what I've found so far you can pretty much get every channel available know to man through this program and these boxes. I'm just curious if any of you guys have used this before or are currently using it. Can you offer any advice to someone making the move over to it. Another concern is how secure are these boxes. At my house we pretty much do all of our banking and other transactions online. Just wondering if anyone here can give some advice and pointers. As always, any advice is always appreciated!!

 

[Alex Snyder]

I originally cut the cord about 10 years ago and wrote about it here: http://www.axspot.com/2010/03/06/mac-mini-home-entertainment/

If it weren't for the rest of the family we'd be cable-free now too. But the house is ready to make it happen and I personally live cable-free. http://www.ourwilliston.com/2016/08/05/home-network-is-all-set/ I like to run things off a home server mostly because of photo editing. My photos are backed up to a redundant drive and accessible by any machine in the house. I've stuck to Apple because the integrations between the devices is incredible. Once you nail their ecosystem it is hard to escape it. So I can't help you with KODI. But I can speak to Plex, XBMC, and the Apple TV.

The big question to you, @Rick Buffkin, is what are you trying to accomplish? What kinds of things do you want to watch.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Thanks for chiming in @Alex Snyder . Thats a great question. Right now, I have everything Comcast offers along with a big ass cable bill Originally we watched quite a few movies along with disney. Currently and for the last year or so there's maybe 10 channels we seem to bounce between. Discovery network channels, New channels (Fox, CNN, etc...) and the weather channel. Once in a while we will flip to the movie channels. HBO, Showtime, etc.. but not very often anymore. I would really like to be able to live stream these particular standard channels (really don't care about the movie channels). I'm not sure exactly how to do that nor have I really tried to. Curious if you can live stream with these boxes.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Live streaming the news channels sucks. None of them offer as good a service as they do on cable. 24/7 news and sports are the laggards in this. Movies are definitely the easiest. I love the History, Discovery, and Nat Geo apps on my Apple TV. Waaaaay better in the apps than on the cable box.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Thats kinda what I'm scared of. Going through the motions of setting everything up and then it not working correctly for some reason. I may go ahead and purchase a box and try it before I cut the cable. Ironically I did just get a $25 Amazon Gift Card a couple weeks ago from DDC for doing a dealer survey Maybe I'll use that towards the purchase!

 

[Rick Buffkin]

Ok... Since I was looking at this app called KODI, I figured I would download it to my S5 phone. Well, just downloading the app, it gives you alot of choices. Well, I started searching for Kodi Live TV on Google. I came across this website. Basically it explains how to install KODI on the phone. I saw there is an app called Exodus. I went through the motions and installed the addon. Immediately I had access to all of the TV series out there. Network series, HBO, Showtime and even NetFlix series. Then I noticed a selection for movies. Once I clicked on it, all the movies are available as well. Even the freaking movies in the theaters right now are on there. I'm thinking Dang... this is crazy!!! I still couldn't find streaming news though. So, I kept searching and I found a Configuration Wizard addon as well which is here. Once I went through the motions for that addon and installed it, I now have all the news channels and more than I could possibly imagine streaming!!!! Basically streaming news from all over the world. It's part of the cCloudTV addon which comes in that config addon. I'm at work and I have no idea what this will look like on my TV at home. I'll check it later and let you guys know tomorrow. From the looks of it, it looks pretty strong!!

 

[Troy Hartenstine]

"the decline of Pay TV households really accelerated in 2Q 15" http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-29/hbo-killed-cable-bundle-and-espn-latest-victim and the trend is only in that direction. I read Lifehacker for this type of news, advice, how-to, etc, here http://lifehacker.com/tag/cord-cutting

 

[RobMc]

@Alex Snyder KODI is the new name for XBMC

You need to be aware of the legality of running an Android KODI box. There is nothing wrong with having a box but the source of the media is the major issue. Here in the UK there have been cases brought against people who sell these devices http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37474595, as long as the content you stream is your own (ripped from media, downloaded from iTunes), or you pay for a streaming service Hulu, iPlayer, Netflix then you should be ok.

 

[Alex Snyder]

Thanks @RobMc

It is about time XBMC rebranded away from the XBOX. I haven't touched XBMC in about 2 years as Plex has become more powerful and simple. I think I'm going to shy away from it after reading that BBC article. Mostly because I'm quite happy with how things are running in my house, but I also don't trust Comcast (my provider) to protect me if I were to ever watch something "illegal."

 

[Chris Leslie]

We cut the chord at my house a few years ago and have never looked back.. I did try out running KODI on an old macbook i have at the house. I never did run one of the Amazon Fire sticks you are talking about with Kodi on it though.

We run a few different apple TV's at home so it turned out that we actually have enough content without KODI. Between Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, Hulu and HBO Now. We honestly never run out of stuff to watch. I've connected a Leaf 30 TV Antenna for local stations and it works really well.

If you have a ton of content already like DVD's and Music on your devices and want more security. You could run your own home NAS. Synology offers a ton of affordable products. Plus you can run Plex on it and link all of your devices. Even in the cloud.