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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Jul 17, 2019 13:22:48 GMT -5
Last year, we discovered that the Met Opera and the Bolshi Ballet will stream performances to local movie theaters. They do this about every 4-6 weeks, and the times are frequently mid week or early on a weekend morning. Tickets are not inexpensive, they tend to run about $25/ticket.
You can live stream the performances to your home if you buy a subscription for $150 (which I think includes about 8 operas, not sure about ballets) and have a Roku, so I bought one yesterday as part of Amazon Prime's offers.
What am I getting into?
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Anne_in_VA
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Post by Anne_in_VA on Jul 17, 2019 15:38:03 GMT -5
We’ve got Roku sticks on 3 of our tv’s and love it. We use it to stream Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu. We have an antenna in our attic through which we get about 25 or so local channels. We used to have cable but decided to cut the cord when it got up to almost $200 each month and it seemed that they put through an increase every few months. We now spend about $100 each month.
i love that I can get programs I couldn’t even get with cable.
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Cheesy FL-Vol
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Post by Cheesy FL-Vol on Jul 17, 2019 15:53:20 GMT -5
We’ve got Roku sticks on 3 of our tv’s and love it. We use it to stream Amazon Prime, Netflix and Hulu. We have an antenna in our attic through which we get about 25 or so local channels. We used to have cable but decided to cut the cord when it got up to almost $200 each month and it seemed that they put through an increase every few months. We now spend about $100 each month. i love that I can get programs I couldn’t even get with cable. What does your internet service cost?
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Happy prose
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Post by Happy prose on Jul 17, 2019 16:07:05 GMT -5
If you had a smart TV, would you need a Roku? Like does it have other perks?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2019 16:22:44 GMT -5
If you had a smart TV, would you need a Roku? Like does it have other perks? I have one Smart TV and one with a Roku stick. To me, the only advantage of the Smart TV was that it didn't need a separate Roku stick. I'm pretty tech-friendly and LOVE Roku. For me it was truly plug-and-play. I use it only for Netflix and my Great Courses account but I can see that there are plenty of other free and subscription options I can access. I don't miss cable programming at all.
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Lizard Queen
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Post by Lizard Queen on Jul 17, 2019 16:30:46 GMT -5
If you had a smart TV, would you need a Roku? Like does it have other perks? No, you don't. I think that we might have problems accessing some of our stuff on our older smart TV, but my DH might have solved that problem. We use a firestick on our dumb tv. We used to have a roku, but that got outdated. Those devices all pretty much do the same thing.
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pooks
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Post by pooks on Jul 17, 2019 16:31:38 GMT -5
I have 3 rokus, one fire stick, and a smart TV. By far my favorite is the Roku. It is so easy to interface with and Roku has more apps available than my smart TV, which drives me crazy for so many reasons.
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countrygirl2
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Post by countrygirl2 on Jul 17, 2019 16:33:02 GMT -5
We have 3 roku sticks, 1 for my basement TV, our bedroom, DD's and a roku TV for the living room. It's a lot easier to use. We dropped our TV viewing costs over $100, now only have basic cable. I do subscribe to hulu and starz, for $5.99 and I think $8.
Also when cable goes out in storms this does not. But we have fiber optic internet, you need a certain speed to use it.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2019 16:41:56 GMT -5
Our Smart TV kind of sucks. It basically has Prime and Netflix and the interface is slow. My Tivo box is awesome though. It has about 30 apps and does searches for shows through all the different streaming services. Online guide for the antenna (we get like 25 channels with the antenna) and the of course the DVR. I think Roku and Tivo interfaces for the apps are pretty similar.
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Anne_in_VA
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Post by Anne_in_VA on Jul 17, 2019 17:32:31 GMT -5
I don’t remember what our Internet service from Verizon costs, but I think it’s about $75. We pay $25 plus another $10 or so for Hulu and Netflix. Those two may be a bit higher because they come out of DH’s separate account. When we started getting rid of cable we were paying almost $200 and dropping cable dropped us to just under $100, but I’m sure the Netflix and Hulu have gone up a little in the past couple of years.
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Cookies Galore
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Post by Cookies Galore on Jul 17, 2019 20:53:20 GMT -5
We have a Roku tv. I don't know what to tell you other than it makes streaming stuff easy and also functions as a normal tv.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2019 16:58:11 GMT -5
I don’t remember what our Internet service from Verizon costs, but I think it’s about $75. We pay $25 plus another $10 or so for Hulu and Netflix. Those two may be a bit higher because they come out of DH’s separate account. When we started getting rid of cable we were paying almost $200 and dropping cable dropped us to just under $100, but I’m sure the Netflix and Hulu have gone up a little in the past couple of years. Interesting- we were paying close to $200/month for everything with Comcast/Xfinity and when I was about to switch from that to Google Fiber + Netflix, I called Comcast and asked about what they'd charge for Internet-only service, which would be $70/month with Google Fiber. It was MORE than $200 and the speeds were slower than Google Fiber. So.. the marginal cost of their cable TV programming package was negative. I calmly told them what I thought of that pricing but I did use the BS word. I'm guessing that companies that have Google Fiber as competition are learning they have to lower their Internet-only pricing. My Netflix subscription is $13/month but you're allowed to share the account with family, although only two devices at a time can be used. It works well- I live alone and DS and DDIL don't use it often so we've never had a problem.
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Anne_in_VA
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Post by Anne_in_VA on Jul 19, 2019 18:45:25 GMT -5
We only use Internet for our computers and streaming services. We don’t have a home phone or whatever else they have in their bundle.
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Cookies Galore
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Post by Cookies Galore on Jul 19, 2019 22:57:11 GMT -5
I don’t remember what our Internet service from Verizon costs, but I think it’s about $75. We pay $25 plus another $10 or so for Hulu and Netflix. Those two may be a bit higher because they come out of DH’s separate account. When we started getting rid of cable we were paying almost $200 and dropping cable dropped us to just under $100, but I’m sure the Netflix and Hulu have gone up a little in the past couple of years. Interesting- we were paying close to $200/month for everything with Comcast/Xfinity and when I was about to switch from that to Google Fiber + Netflix, I called Comcast and asked about what they'd charge for Internet-only service, which would be $70/month with Google Fiber. It was MORE than $200 and the speeds were slower than Google Fiber. So.. the marginal cost of their cable TV programming package was negative. I calmly told them what I thought of that pricing but I did use the BS word. I'm guessing that companies that have Google Fiber as competition are learning they have to lower their Internet-only pricing. My Netflix subscription is $13/month but you're allowed to share the account with family, although only two devices at a time can be used. It works well- I live alone and DS and DDIL don't use it often so we've never had a problem. Well that's blatantly false. We pay $50 for Fios internet only; I just checked new customer pricing with Comcast and Fios and it's $40. Plus, we pay no taxes or fees with our internet only plan.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 20, 2019 7:00:40 GMT -5
Interesting- we were paying close to $200/month for everything with Comcast/Xfinity and when I was about to switch from that to Google Fiber + Netflix, I called Comcast and asked about what they'd charge for Internet-only service, which would be $70/month with Google Fiber. It was MORE than $200 and the speeds were slower than Google Fiber. So.. the marginal cost of their cable TV programming package was negative. Well that's blatantly false. We pay $50 for Fios internet only; I just checked new customer pricing with Comcast and Fios and it's $40. Plus, we pay no taxes or fees with our internet only plan. This was 2+ years ago, you and I probably don't live in the same area and I was not a new customer. As I noted in my earlier post, I'm sure Comcast and the others have smartened up and cut their Internet-only costs to a more competitive level since they were driving away customers like me.
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thyme4change
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Post by thyme4change on Jul 20, 2019 10:55:08 GMT -5
We loved our Roku so much, we bought 2 Roku TVs. Now we are waiting for our other "smart" TV to die because it sucks so royally compared to the other TVs. Is letting my son play ball in the house in hopes the TV gets smashed too much?
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Cookies Galore
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Post by Cookies Galore on Jul 20, 2019 11:04:12 GMT -5
Well that's blatantly false. We pay $50 for Fios internet only; I just checked new customer pricing with Comcast and Fios and it's $40. Plus, we pay no taxes or fees with our internet only plan. This was 2+ years ago, you and I probably don't live in the same area and I was not a new customer. As I noted in my earlier post, I'm sure Comcast and the others have smartened up and cut their Internet-only costs to a more competitive level since they were driving away customers like me. Interesting. Makes me think the customer service rep took the line of keep the customer a little far because that is just ridiculous. I've been internet-only for my entire internet having life. We've had Fios since 2008 and never had any price issues. The most I've ever paid was $80 and when that price increase happened I called Fios and the CSR agreed with me and lowered the price. And yes, we live in different areas of the country, so maybe I have more competition. I'm in metro Philly, where Comcast is headquartered.
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Cookies Galore
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Post by Cookies Galore on Jul 20, 2019 11:06:00 GMT -5
We loved our Roku so much, we bought 2 Roku TVs. Now we are waiting for our other "smart" TV to die because it sucks so royally compared to the other TVs. Is letting my son play ball in the house in hopes the TV gets smashed too much? Are you good at playing catch? Maybe you should join your son in a bonding moment. :-)
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Jul 20, 2019 11:26:52 GMT -5
Well, it arrived and is sitting on the coffee table unopened. Not sure if it is worth trying to figure it out until after we get home.
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countrygirl2
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Post by countrygirl2 on Jul 22, 2019 19:21:01 GMT -5
Our fiber internet is $65 a month. We are so lucky, just a few places in this small town can get the fiber optic service and we are on one of the lines that can. They won't run it through this tiny town as I'm sure it would cost more then the customers they could get, so we just lucked out. Yes, our landline, cable, and internet were running $250 a month, that had to stop and did.
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Rukh O'Rorke
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Post by Rukh O'Rorke on Jul 28, 2019 16:42:20 GMT -5
You could have just asked me directly!
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