re: So I cut the cord on cable and need help.

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YouTube TV is so reliable. Great layout. Take it anywhere on your mobile device. And football season will cost you about $200.

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i cant find some very important channels to me on youtube. lol all ya want to. but i love the hallmark christmas movies plus the regular hallmark movies. i dont see any hallmark channels on youtube. have i just overlooked them?

Anyone using Mediacom? I have had AT&T for a long time. I have thought about ditching Dish Network, but I am not sure if my current internet speed would be sufficient for Hulu or You Tube.

Here’s the deal for both of you. I did the same thing and got the orange and blue sling package 45 a month. BUT now that you’re streaming you have limited data usage. I’m in Cox cable here in BR so we’d run out they’d charge an extra 10 for so many added bytes or whatever of data so I ended up having to upgrade my cable service to unlimited which now means I pay 160 plus for internet service and 45 for sling. My bill went from 260-275 a month to 205. The internet companies like COX have adjusted to losing cable customers so they go up on internet service as well as limiting amount of data similar to cell service.

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You only need about 5mbps max download for most streams.

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Not true.

First, your advertised internet speed in actually your 'throughput'. Throughput is the maximum speed you could attain in perfect conditions once you get your download going. But really, you need much more than that to have fast, reliable internet.

When you test your internet speed, you'll see your throughput as well as 'ping'. Ping is incredibly important - it's how fast you can send and receive a piece of info to the ISP's server. This is particularly important because this number represents how long it takes to get a download restarted if it's interupted. Well, guess what? Your download, i.e. game stream, can be interrupted several times a minute, or even several times a second. Good internet is going to have a ping under 10. To put it into perspective:

Internet connection 1:
10mbps with ping of 4

Internet connection 2:
100mbps with ping of 160

Internet connection 1 is going to do a much better job of playing your game stream (although I'd prefer a little more than 10mbps to play true 1080p streams confidently).

Additionally, bandwidth is an issue, which is the total number of users a line can support. If your internet comes to your house via coaxial cable, your bandwidth is usually arse. This is why your speed is great at this 2am but sucks at 8pm. Everyone is watching Netflix at 8pm.

Additionally, coaxial cable is significantly affected by static electricity, and so rain affects it tremendously.

I can't really soeak too much on DSL, but I had it in Boston years ago from Verizon and it was arse. Same thing for satellite - no idea what to expect, although weather can be a bastard.

Lastly, there's the issue of the stream itself, which could be hosted anywhere in the world. And it should be obvious that a stream hosted in Atlanta will play better in Alabama than a stream hosted in the Ukraine, assuming all other factors are equal. The info literally has to travel that distance physically. Well, guess what? When talking about streaming games, these streams can be hosted all over the world, and one stream can have very different characteristics than another.

Also, what if you want to watch 2 or 3 games at a tome, or glip between games? 5mbps won't handle that at all.

My strong advice to anyone is: if a company is offering fiber optic internet, meaning a 100% fiber optic line from your modem to their servers, then buy it. It's another level of technology and is simply amazing. You'll receive a higher speed than what you pay for (by a little) and have a near instantaneous ping (under 5), and your speed won't decrease during peak usage hours. It's shockingly fantastic.

And so, in summation, saying '5mbps is enough to play most streams' is just plain wrong, especially if you're talking about HD. I'd really want a minimum of 20mbps and a good ping to feel confident about smoothly streaming a 1080p stream to a large television. A speed of 5mbps will only reliabily play streams that were filmed with a potato. I'm not saying this to argue or get into a pissing contest, but rather to help our fellow consumers.

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YouTube TV

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So I get local tv, SEC network and ESPN etc with them?

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I can't really soeak too much on DSL, but I had it in Boston years ago from Verizon and it was arse. Same thing for satellite - no idea what to expect, although weather can be a bastard.

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Sadly these are my only 2 options... and despite taking billions from our government, at&t did 0 infrastructure upgrades on the dsl in my area. Been at max capacity for half a decade+. So I'm forced to endure the locals at the bar on game day, cause antenna signal is questionable af too

Not to anyone in specific: And why do people say cut the cord? Is your cable internet somehow a different cord than your cable? 9/10 it is not

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at&t did 0 infrastructure upgrades on the dsl in my area.

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I live in a densely populated area of Bham(280/Inverness area) and we still only get U-Verse DSL up to 25mbps in my area. They've been promising Fiber for a couple of years now, but still nothing. Charter is the other option, but everyone I know with it says they have pretty frequent outages and evening slowdowns.

I rarely have trouble streaming to 2 or 3 TVs in the house with just the 25mbps plan, though speed tests show it usually caps at around 17 or 18mbps.

Our hunting camp in fairly rural Etowah County gets faster internet than I do at my house in Bham.

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How does it do for older TV shows and such?

My biggest reason for going with Hulu is my wife watches off the library of shows. It's basically a lot like netflix, with a different selection. Plus, they have their own shows.

And you can get that library commercial free for $13 without the live TV, which is what I do in the offseason. Going to Live takes the price up to $45. But it's really only about a $30 increase.

If a TV show comes on tonight, you can usually watch it on Hulu the next day or 2 without commercials. She likes those singing shows and we don't even need to pay for live TV, unless you just really have to watch them the night before.

When I tried the trail last year, I didn't really see stuff like that. All I saw was live TV.

But you mention all those old sporting events all neatly categorized and all that and you have gotten my attention.

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Well, it is a bit different than Hulu+. It's strictly cable, so, it doesn't have a large catalog of stuff like Hulu or Netflix.

However, if the old show is syndicated somewhere, all you have to do is hit the "+" button on it and it will record every time that show comes on and then categorize it under the show.........and in 3-4 weeks you'll have the entire series laid out by season and episode.

Example - Wife and I have wanted to watch Modern Family for years, but it was never on Netflix/Hulu and I wasn't buying season of it. We got YouTubeTV and I added it as one of my shows. Within about 2 months we had the entire series (plus new eiposes that came on) neatly show up under the show in our shows and we watched it all the way through, all because it is syndicated and 3-4 episodes of it come on a night on USA. It was incredibly easy.

The stuff that is current and you want to watch later is easy - you just add the show to your shows like on Comcast or something, it automatically DVRs it and you can watch whenever you want. And, like Comcast, it's just a recording (not OnDemand), so you can fast forward through the commercials.

FYI - here are some screenshots from my computer just to give you an idea of the logistics of it