I finally made the leap yesterday to get rid of cable. We were paying $158 a month, and didn't even have HD, the picture looked terrible! I did a lot of research and took my time doing this, started thinking about it over a year ago.
Yesterday I took the cable box to Cox cable, and requested that they upgrade our internet one level to make it faster. The cost was $60 for just that service. I went to Target and bought a Roku box, and upgraded our router to an N750 so it would be fast enough for real time live-streaming. I thought about upgrading our modem as well, but I read in some places that it wouldn't make a difference. We have a Surfboard 5100 that I got free after rebate from Comcast like 9 years ago!
I went home with everything and first did a speed test with my current equipment. I had a speed of 3314 KBPS in the first speed test on my old equipment, this was with the upgrade to the service as it took effect immediately at the Cox cable office. I replaced the wireless router and did a second speed test, that one came back 8705 kbps. Now I am not very technical, so I don't know if that is particularly fast, but I will say my computer seems really zippy, and according to the test it nearly tripled the speed. The wireless router I replaced was also 9 years old and free after rebate, it was a Belkin F5D7230-4 in case anyone is curious.
Ok, so next I plugged in the Roku. I found the experience of setting it up really frustrating. It got locked up in settings and wouldn't show channels. I couldn't figure out why and finally just ended up unplugging it and restarting it, and viola, the channels showed up. I thought I had Amazon streaming, but no, Amazon mom does not include that feature when you get it for free. So, I went to E-Bay and signed up for Netflix through their E-Bay Bucks link, they are paying $15 in E-Bay bucks for their free trial right now. I knew I had to get either Amazon or Netflix, and since I was miffed with Amazon for taking the streaming part out of their mom membership, I decided Netflix was the best choice, I also read reviews and heard better things about Netflix.
Ok, so now the cable is $60 a month, and the Netflix will cost $7.99 a month after our free trial. A nice reduction in our overall bill, but will it work?
I went through and added a bunch of channels on the Roku, and was very impressed watching the Borgia's in HD on Crackle. But, I still didn't have any live streaming channels, and there are times in this house where we just want background noise, and live streaming tv is necessary. So, more research. I found out there are several news channels that stream live all day, including BBC (one of my favorites that we have missed since our trip to Germany), CNN International, and Al Jazeera.
These are all private channels and you will need a code to get them added to your Roku box. Here is a list of the ones I added and the codes to add them to the ROKU:
Al Jazeera English - ALJZ
BBC World News - BBCN
CNN - RBFA1 - CNN International with extra media to click on
CNN International - CNNI
NoWhere TV - H9DWC
Russia TV News English - RTNEWS
Russia Channels Live - TVTEKA
USTVNOW - USTVNOW
Ustream - IN4DN
With the current speed, and I have the Roku hardwired, not wirelessly connected to the router, I can live stream any channel and have had no issues so far. I have been sipping my coffee and watching BBC evening news all morning, I love it!! And last night I picked out a movie and watched it on Netflix. Now I just need to get my husband's opinion!
I really do wish I could get HBOGO without a cable subscription, that is one I would be willing to pay for, but currently, it is totally unavailable. Since it is always available in the hotels we stay in though, we will just catch up on the shows we have missed while we are there.
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