Last year in April we got a letter from our cable tv provider stating that they would be dropping their cable tv service by the first of July and that we had until then to find an alternate service..This would effect about ten people in our little town of four hundred,as mot homes already had a dish of some sort.. I thought well here we go. gonna get us our dish network back.. we had it, or I should say I had it for about ten years, but then decided to go with cable tv as a money saving venture.. And we had cable tv for about five years and now we will have dish again.. But early last year I was already looking at a different delivery system for programming.. Streaming as it was called is called.. And what services were there.. Well this was last year in January and while it wasn't a possibility to be used, I liked the services that were being offered... My little brother had Sling... I liked HULU, in fact the live tv was something I really saw as a great possibility.. But then there was Play Station Vue And Directv Now As well... What to get... When the letter was sent to us I thought instantly dish would be the way we would go, but I really wanted to try streaming service just to see.. The ISP would up our internet speed to ten megs, so that seemed like a good idea.. So in MAy I started to talk to everyone involved, the main person would be my mom.. She was convinced that dish was the way we would go but I talked to her several times about trying the streaming cable services.. My brother was using Sling and so we would get Sling tv.. And that is what we would try first//Over Memorial weekend we would get Sling tv.. It was great.. where our cable tv was snowy and grainy, Sling was pure.. Fantastic to watch and every channel was there..Two drawbacks from using Sling and these are fairly huge.. One I set it up to have the odd ass setting of the Orange and Blue tiers... Orange has ESPN and can only be viewed on one device at a time which is to say if I wanted to watch ESPN and someone else wanted to watch using a different tv they were SOL, or verse visa because I wasn't sure who's roku was receiver number one.. Anyway Blue tier was three devices could watch that but there was no ESPN on the blue tier.. Strange how they hamstring you that way, but.. People really do like Sling... Number two on the strikes against picking Sling was it has nearly NO locals, and they want it that way, it is how they are keeping the price so low.. That is fine and if we had locals that would be no issue, HOWEVER we don't get hardly any in our valley of no signal... It was a downer, I really liked Sling and what they offered.. Another thing that I didn't like during the free trial is I set up to have a couple of the extras (tiers) that wre not on the Orange and Blue base tier programming.. I would make that mistake again trting out the next service.. Now When we first started this streaming tv service exploratory thing, free trials are offered by all the services to try to show what they have.. I wished Sling would do a step by step type of thing where they give you Orange tier for a day, then Blue for another day, then bothe blue and Orange together and then multiple extras for the final two days.. I think they give you a free five or seven day trial of whatever you want in their trail package thing.. Really nice thing there but Like I thought later, we should only trial what we are going to get, what we are planning to get.. So when I went to trial Play Station Vue I would make that same mistake again but this time there would be an internet issue.. The next week we had our internet upgrade to ten Megs and a new modem and router whole kitten kabudal.. But in this case we would trial PSVue and I would trial the top tier of PSVue which inclded at the time every channel except Showtime and HBO... We would have 70 plus channels, and I would be lost.. The thing didn't work... I hated it.. And before we saw the final day of the trial I shut it down.. It wasn't working worth a shit on my Roku (and HD model) and my mom didn't even try it on hers, we still had cable tv so there was no rush to even try for her.. I Thought well there would be no streaming service for us.. This was the second week of June, and we had until the first of July to get something.. I thought we might try Directv Now next but I decided it would be PS Vue or nothing in the streaming tv circles.. I had been hearing horrible things about Directv Now buffering issues.. But i has heard nothing about HULU because it wasn't yet available for us to try in any form.. I really liked the HULU lineup and the VOD programming they had seemed like the biggest selling point.. What to do??
Well We got new Roku's, first for mom, then myself a few weeks later.. The change was incredible, however I would get one closer to football season starting, I wanted mom to have hers, and hopefully to sell her on the idea that streaming would be the way to go.. She was still talking dish and was sold on the idea.. but dish costed a lot more than streamng does.. So the day we tried PS VUE again was after the cable was shut down.. this time I ordered the Access tier, the lowest tier, reminded my more of what we had on cable tv and the day we got the trial going we also got FOX as well as CBS..ABC would come in October And in December we would get NBC although we would see FOX go from live to VOD (bummer) ..... I would get the new Express Roku by August and by football season I was shitting in tall cotton, I had never had that much choice in football before... Everything semed fine, we had the next tier up so we could get BTN network for our football team.. Then as football season ended instead of going to the cheapest tier we went to Directv Now for their ten dollar a month celebration thing.. I thought what better way to try a service than to switch to it and try it out.. There were things I liked about DTVN, and things I didn't like.. I liked the programming guide, you turn on the service and the last channel you were on was where it started from.. And it wouldn't go off when switching to another channel, this was more like what dish does.. The biggest drawback was the buffering which I had heard was under better control but was an issue right a way.. I mean it was almost impossible o watch and we had the super bowl coming up and the Olympics.. How do watch buffer zone tv ... After a buffering situation one day I said we are switching back to PS Vue on the due date.. And we did.. By then we now would have NBC.. all the channels we needed were there.. By March I had wanted to try HULU tv, I said back in November of last year I would give HULU a try.. The idea was to try HULU during an off time, or when we were still on PS Vue but able to decide at the due date to switch.. I however felt that I had heard that HULU was still having buffering issues and decided not to bother.. If Directv Now was having nearly no buffering issues and that was their idea of nearly no buffering then HULU with all I ever heard was how horrible their buffering was and it never has gotten better... Would we be lucky enough to not have issues?? You don't hear that everyone is having troubles, but then not everyone knows about the Facebook fan sites of these places and so there are actually very few people talking about the trouble HULU is dealing with.. I decided not to bother.. Couple that with the fact that PS Vue is giving us the Elite tier package for free and leaving for any other service just doesn't make sense right now... Now to be honest I don't watch the elite tier very much if at all.. I do try to watch a little but when it comes time for us to be back on our loly package I don't want any temptation to go up a tier at all...
Something else has happened since going back to PS Vue.. My second choice streaming service is now available.. Not HULU, HULU is s till my first choice and hope some day to hear they have no issues at all.. My second choice is YouTUbe TV... I liked what was there before they added the Turner channels.. But it is still attractive to me but we didn't jump for it mostly because of the Directv Now fiasco.. I think we will stay with PS Vue at least for the forseeable future.. I keep thining we will stay there until dish give a great offer.. By great offer I'm talking about the old smart package but they don't offer that anymore.. Sad because the day is coming when they might have to offer more pakages to save their company.. I can't see paying ehat peaople are saying they are paying for tv on dish.. Actually I follow a site and this guy says he can see a day in the not too distant future where there will be only one satellite service ... I tend to agree... Someday...
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