Cutting the cord

[cral12]

Originally Posted by Wormius

Anybody here running in Calgary with either Teksavvy or Lightspeed now? Are they both basically identical? I assume Shaw is their infrastructure supplier, and if, as Yelle said earlier that Teksavvy is running perfectly that Lightspeed would be also. I think Lightspeed is $42/month vs $49/month for 30mbps, unlimited.

There seem to be a host of Teksavvy threads, but not much on Lightspeed.

Also curious is anyone has tried Lightspeed?

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by cral12

Also curious is anyone has tried Lightspeed?

I ended up switching a few weeks ago from Shaw and everything is great so far.

[btimbit]

Finally convinced my wife that nobody watches TV. She kept saying she would if she had more channels, but also finally conceded that more channels are a ripoff.

Will be cutting the cord later this week. Thank God for GCL.

[ken0042]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Any thoughts on what I need to get it working today and where to pick it up in town?

Most TVs now have a digital tuner built in. It is required by the FCC in the States, so that standard follows here. If you can post the model of your TV, somebody can help. You are looking for it to have an ATSC tuner.

As for an antenna, where in town are you? That will affect if you just need a basic tuner, or something better.

[Rathji]

I am out east of town right now, between Chestermere and Langdon essentially.

The TV is a cheap 19" Dynex that we bought maybe 6 years ago. Will see if I can find the specs online.

[ken0042]

You may need a better antenna then. I bought this one for our permanent camping site:
http://www.bestbuy.ca/en-CA/product/...8f739fd3d0en02

The owner of the site came over to tell us not to waste our time, no way to get a signal in the campground. I was able to pick up two channels with this antenna. Well, until it started to rain. Which was the entire reason for a better antenna. But it did work really well on a fringe area.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by ken0042

Most TVs now have a digital tuner built in. It is required by the FCC in the States, so that standard follows here. If you can post the model of your TV, somebody can help. You are looking for it to have an ATSC tuner.

As for an antenna, where in town are you? That will affect if you just need a basic tuner, or something better.

I have confirmed it has the tuner. I will test the antenna we have and see if we need to upgrade.

Thanks.

[cKy]

So I have been trying SmartFlix (www.smartflix.io) for a few days and I'm crazy impressed. It's basically the entire Netflix library regardless of region. No VPN needed. It also has some cool things that Netflix should think about introducing like 'Expiring Soon' sections and other stuff.

I was looking for a specific episode of something and did the live support chat and got a answer/fix within 3 minutes - pretty impressive stuff.

It's currently only for Win/OSX, but it looks like I can slip it into Kodi on my HTPC to make it easier for the Family..

[cral12]

^Do you have to have a Netflix account with Smartflix, cKy?

[cKy]

yeah you do. it seems to act as a proxy for netflix. you download it (free 7 day trial) and then log in with your netflix info.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by cKy

yeah you do. it seems to act as a proxy for netflix. you download it (free 7 day trial) and then log in with your netflix info.

So it's actually Netflix and not a file sharing service merely offering up identical content?

Did any of the alternate DNS addresses given by unblockus ever work?

[Coach]

Originally Posted by polak

Matty were you using the Reddit Streams during the regular season?

I'm wondering how they are when their isn't only one game on a day.

I wasn't before the playoffs, but I will definitely be checking next season.

Honestly, before I happened upon it looking for streams this year, I have never really used Reddit for anything at all.

During the season, I would just type "flames vs x stream" and usually the top result had a few different links. Sometimes they're decent. Sometimes they're complete garbage. There were some games that would literally stop to buffer EVERY time something exciting began to happen. A slap shot wind up...freeze. Powerplay chance...freeze. JG pulling sweet dangles... freeze. And then freeze during the replays too. But then during regular play it would flow just fine. Super annoying. I'd watch the whole game and feel like I hadn't seen any of the action.

As soon as I started using those Reddit links, I was wondering why I wasn't having those same problems. So we'll see once the winter rolls around. Although I'll be in Van next year, so Gamecenter might actually make sense for me.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by polak

Matty were you using the Reddit Streams during the regular season?

I'm wondering how they are when their isn't only one game on a day.

They were hit and miss for me, especially if the only channel carrying the game was a regional American broadcast.

[EldrickOnIce]

I have a sub to NHL.tv - but if using Kodi, until NHL changed from neulion to MLB as provider later in the season, Phoenix hockey was perfect. Always excellent HD, always both feeds - but it didn't work on Android boxes, however the caststreams app worked pretty good for them. But that all was done when the provider switch was made.
Last I checked though, Vidtime addon (under VT SE) provided excellent streams (same guys who were behind the hack for Phoenix hockey), including for Android.

[bigbadboss101]

The Pro Sports Add on. Tuesday I was able to see the Pitt/TB game and NBA basketball game. Was that a lucky day or is that normal? I will install the Vidtime add on.

A lot of addons overlap. What are your 5 most used addons? Phoenix, Exodus, Sport Devil ...??

[EldrickOnIce]

I think that's normal for Prosports addon, for hockey and basketball. I expect it will be good for MLB too. It will probably fail in many cases for NFL, simply due to numbers of watchers. Vidtime (VT SE) only shows hockey, but is excellent, and simple one click links. Live sports is always a bit hit and miss though, as I am sure you know. I now use Castaway instead of Sportsdevil, where necessary. There is no dedicated repo to update Sportsdevil, so often links don't work. The problem with a newer addon, like Castaway, is support may dry up for it as well - where Sportsdevil will probably always be carried on in some form. For sports I use Prosports, Castaway, Vidtime, Phoenix, or Caststreams android app - depending on what I am looking for. I do not ever use peer to peer anything.
I pretty much exclusively use Exodus for anything TV or movie, and SALTS or 1Channel if I have a problem with Exodus. For live network TV, when not at home with Hdtv antenna, USTVnow Plus is pretty good. I do also use Filmon with FTV guide for live viewing when I don't want to have to choose something for background TV nonsense.

[polak]

Originally Posted by MattyC

I wasn't before the playoffs, but I will definitely be checking next season.

Honestly, before I happened upon it looking for streams this year, I have never really used Reddit for anything at all.

During the season, I would just type "flames vs x stream" and usually the top result had a few different links. Sometimes they're decent. Sometimes they're complete garbage. There were some games that would literally stop to buffer EVERY time something exciting began to happen. A slap shot wind up...freeze. Powerplay chance...freeze. JG pulling sweet dangles... freeze. And then freeze during the replays too. But then during regular play it would flow just fine. Super annoying. I'd watch the whole game and feel like I hadn't seen any of the action.

As soon as I started using those Reddit links, I was wondering why I wasn't having those same problems. So we'll see once the winter rolls around. Although I'll be in Van next year, so Gamecenter might actually make sense for me.

Originally Posted by rubecube

They were hit and miss for me, especially if the only channel carrying the game was a regional American broadcast.

Yeah that's what I was expecting. So far these playoffs have been phenomenal, to the point where I've caught myself trying to use the Shaw TV remote to pause the game cause I fully forget it's streaming but that's easy when there's designated NHL streams of the games.

O'well we'll see I guess. If the Reddit streams don't work and there's no passable alternative I guess I'll go to one of the cable companies for a new customer rate for the hockey season.

[calgarygringo]

This is quite normal. Phoenix is good too as it has some of the Sportsnet stations. Watch NHL on TV and the Juniors on Phoenix on another device. I did that the last few nights.

Originally Posted by bigbadboss101

The Pro Sports Add on. Tuesday I was able to see the Pitt/TB game and NBA basketball game. Was that a lucky day or is that normal? I will install the Vidtime add on.

A lot of addons overlap. What are your 5 most used addons? Phoenix, Exodus, Sport Devil ...??

[EldrickOnIce]

Vidtime - - > VT SE - - > Entertainment - - > Channels
Good stuff in there.

[ResAlien]

The only thing I've found with cord cutting that sucks is there's no AMC app and they're aholes who don't put their shows on Hulu. I just want to watch Preacher, dammit.