Cord Cutting - Amazon Firestick and Roku options

We may earn a small commission from affiliate links and paid advertisements. Terms

Briansol

Admins
Admin
VIP
After a long debate, the wife and I have decided to cut the cable cord at the end of our contract (next week).

Planning to go for internet, keep netflix and prime as we've always had on top of cable.

Use pluto mostly for tv,
add discovery+ and amc+ apps for 13/m total on top of internet which should save us 60/m over cable and still be able to watch most everything we watch today, with the exception of local programming (abc/nbc). I tried an antenna and picked up nothing that doesn't flicker, so that's out. I'm honestly not worried about it.

But I am worried about hooking it up I've pretty much decided that we want to run amazon fire stick or fire cube devices instead of the built-in tv apps (not many options on it and out of date app hub) or Roku. The roku was a big contender for a while but i have 2 sticks already (man cave and guest bdrm) so might as well keep it consistent.

The firestick needs power and i don't have power where my living room tv is mounted. My master bdrm tv is fine, i have power in the sunk-in box behind my tv.

For the living room, HDMI's are in-wall already and I can't see myself being successful at running a 10ft usb power cord up there.
So, i'm thinking since i'm ditching the cable box anyway, i'll just plug the firestick in on top of my dvd player with a coupler like this:

Amazon product
but that may look stupid just lying on top of the the dvd player... ya know, this is the living room and the wife needs approve of the aesthetics :D

So there's also the fire Box, but it's from 2019. It seems to have better specs than the sticks (twice the storage, more cores), but it's 3 years old now.
Amazon product

It will look better on the shelf. I don't care about the voice features at all... have an echo show in the kitchen in the next room over.

the 4k stick is also from 2018.
Amazon product

The regular firestick is from 2020.
Amazon product

None of my tv's are 4k and frankly, i don't care about it, especially now with comcast imposing data caps..... i'm happy to stream at 720.

One thing i have noticed is that the stick fills up. In my man cave, i stream a lot of youtube music videos. I end up having to delete some apps. Im' hearing that the 4k stick has more processing power, but i don't know if that's true any more giving the 2020 update.

The box is looking like the best option for the living room, but it's 100 bucks vs 40 and it's 3 years old.

WWHSD?
 
We use the old 4K stick, and an app called cinema HD to watch pretty much everything we want. The power comes from the TV usb which depending on your tv may or may not work, mine is an old plasma so it does but it won’t power up on aylas Visio. It just does cinema though - so it never fills up. We use an xbox one to do Netflix / YouTube and friend-shared services like Hulu and hbo.

we have removed all our burned movies and shows because of this. I had hundreds of discs...
 
yeah, the tv won't power it... it's only a .8A output on the usb and the stick wants like 3
 
We currently have both Roku (4) and Firestick (1) in the house and I would say I prefer the Roku. To be honest we went with Roku because at the time YoutubeTV and Amazon were not compatible. I also think the picture and streaming work better on the Roku devices. The FireStick is actually on the TV right next to the router so it isn't a WiFi thing. I haven't looked at the FireStick app library lately but there is a ton of free content on Roku and I like the search feature where I can search a movie and it shows all the apps that carry it and the cost to rent it if required. I know it is a personal preference but that is my .o2. By the way once we cut the cord the option of taking the 60inch TV on the back deck to watch games/movies outside was a game changer. In 5 minutes I can be set up with my beer in hand watching the Packers, Brewers or Badgers. During quarantine we also had a couple of movie nights with our friends and a bonfire in the background.
 
Hrm, i hadn't considered the Roku for its free streams. I was thinking Pluto would be good enough. is it mostly bs or something good in there?
 
we originally had trouble with the firestick i had to move it out from behind the TV. its been flawless since it has LOS to the router about 12 feet away.
 
yeah, i had the same issue when it was directly plugged in. I had to use the flexible adapter to let it hang an inch away from the tv. The tv shielding must block some signal frequencies.
 
I ordered a Roku Ultra
Amazon product

for the living room and a Streaming Stick +

Amazon product

for the master bdrm

Will be here tomorrow.

Calling Comcast today to convert to just internet plan and put my old router/modem combo back in place instead of the Xfi box.
 
Hrm, i hadn't considered the Roku for its free streams. I was thinking Pluto would be good enough. is it mostly bs or something good in there?
It is hit and miss but we have been pretty surprised with what we could find on those nights where we are just looking to kills some time. My parents love that feature because they can watch some of the movies from their younger years that are out there. When we set it up my dad was in heaven watching all the old B movie stuff from when he was a kid. Also depending on who your cell provider is you can score some extended free trials. I took full advantage of Verizon when they had a year of Disney+ and now 6 months of Discovery+. My parents share those accounts with us and are new to the whole streaming thing and are picking it up pretty quickly. My wife has her Beachbody app on it so she can now work out in any room in the house too. The only downside I can see is that are watching slightly more tv than usual but that may be pandemic related too, LOL
 
After a long debate, the wife and I have decided to cut the cable cord at the end of our contract (next week).
I'll be doing the exact opposite....I've been cut for two+ years, first with Youtube TV, then they got rid of YES network...and for over a year with Hulu and now they got rid of YES Network.....So now I'm pretty much forced to go back to Cable because every single streaming service has stopped carrying YES network and there is no way I'm not watching Yankees baseball. So the only choice I have for YES network is COX Cable. Also, the streaming services prices just keep going up and up and up. I started at around $50 a month now I think I'm close to $70/m with no addons. So between $84 for my internet and $70 for Hulu live, I'm creeping a lot closer to the $180ish I was paying with Cox and now the savings is almost not worth the hassle of streaming apps. On top of that, Streaming services are just going to keep increasing their prices every year until they are as much as cable because of all the original content they offer and own. The good thing about cable is the convenience of it. You just turn it on and it works. No waiting for apps to load, no apps crashing, no buffering. You just turn your tv on and boom, you are watching TV.
 
Pluto got rid of the Eye Candy channel

:(:mad::thumbdown::thumbdown:


Bastards!!!

That was the greatest thing to happen to TV since squiggle porn :lmao:

thWEtIXB_400x400.png
 
Yeah, sports and local stuff will be missed... I really don't care about sports so that doesn't matter to me.

95% of the time, we're binging a show on netflix or something anyway. Most of the live tv i watch is background crap like gold rush and some alaska show or something while i'm half paying attention. i'm excited to save 60/m.
 
Interested to see how this goes. I find having to go to different apps and determining what app has what a pain. Not easily explainable to my wife either...
 
it's certainly annoying having to traverse around. I'm already a bit annoyed with it if you're not searching for something specific.

The good news is that voice search works really well and gets you right where you want to go cross-app.
 
Yeah, sports and local stuff will be missed... I really don't care about sports so that doesn't matter to me.

95% of the time, we're binging a show on netflix or something anyway. Most of the live tv i watch is background crap like gold rush and some alaska show or something while i'm half paying attention. i'm excited to save 60/m.
$60 is about what we were saving too and it was great.
it's certainly annoying having to traverse around. I'm already a bit annoyed with it if you're not searching for something specific.

The good news is that voice search works really well and gets you right where you want to go cross-app.
All set up.

Watching the game on the cbs app. So far so good I guess.
Nice...

i actually ended up going with no contract option ATT TV Choice Streaming Service with two streaming boxes that include Google Voice Remotes. My Samsung TV upstairs already had the ATT TV app built in so it's up and running until the streaming boxes come tomorrow. My Man Cave LG TV does not have the app so good thing I got the box. I already like the interface way better then Youtube TV and Hulu. The streaming boxes are nice because they act like a hub with a bunch of popular apps installed and the Google Play Store available to download more. Even with the streaming boxes which are $10/month for 24 months, ATT turned out to be cheaper than going to COX by almost $30 a month, which is not to say this this whole fucking thing isn't expensive. With $84 for Cox internet and $110 for ATT TV I'm back up to $194/m.

I can care less about the NBA, the NFL, College Sports, etc.....but I just can't give up on watching Yankees Baseball.

Good thing my wife got her 15% salary back this month :)
 
yeah, it's super expensive. Remember when internet was $30?

I'm hoping 5g and maybe even 6g ends up offering some crazy compression and the idea of cable lines in the hosue (tv or internet) are just as not relevant as landline cat-3 POTS is today.

If I were building a new house today, i wouldn't even wire it for POTS or have jacks.

maybe we can say the same thing about coax soon.
 
if you want cheaper internet, just sign your wife up for service at your address and cancel your account :)
 
yeah, it's super expensive. Remember when internet was $30?

I'm hoping 5g and maybe even 6g ends up offering some crazy compression and the idea of cable lines in the hosue (tv or internet) are just as not relevant as landline cat-3 POTS is today.

If I were building a new house today, i wouldn't even wire it for POTS or have jacks.

maybe we can say the same thing about coax soon.
$30....i honestly don't recall it ever being that cheap....my $84/m only gets me 150MB speed. I have(or will have) a 17 devices connected to my network and the Wifi is run with Orbi Mesh. I was thinking about going to 500MB but they want another $25/m. And ill also have to buy a new modem because mine is not rated for that speed.

3 Cameras
2 AV receivers
3 Smart Tv's
1 Kindle
2 Cellphones
1 Alarm System
3 Computers
2 Streaming boxes(coming soon)

I don't see 5G becoming the standard in home internet unless you are in a major metropolitan area. Hell, i remember when Fiber Internet was all the rage and Fiber is still not available to me some 10 years later.
 
$30....i honestly don't recall it ever being that cheap....my $84/m only gets me 150MB speed. I have(or will have) a 17 devices connected to my network and the Wifi is run with Orbi Mesh. I was thinking about going to 500MB but they want another $25/m. And ill also have to buy a new modem because mine is not rated for that speed.

3 Cameras
2 AV receivers
3 Smart Tv's
1 Kindle
2 Cellphones
1 Alarm System
3 Computers
2 Streaming boxes(coming soon)

I don't see 5G becoming the standard in home internet unless you are in a major metropolitan area. Hell, i remember when Fiber Internet was all the rage and Fiber is still not available to me some 10 years later.

With Comcast, I pay $150ish for 220+ channels, HD DVR, Showtime, and 600MB internet. I have my own router / wifi and its good when its low volume times. Aka Not the work day and not on VPN. I have probably 20 devices on it including all my home stuff.

Regarding Fiber, my dad got it probably 13 years ago. Started as Verizon Fiber, then Frontier Fiber, then they filed bankruptcy but still survived. His bill was always $300+ and internet was aight (movie channels galore and bad rental equipment). He switched to comcast, got seemingly better internet (Equipment?), and he's paying about $150 due to all his movie channels.
 
Back
Top