There are many ways out there now to cut the cord, some legal, some not so much. How do you do it?
I use sickrage and couchpotato to capture my media and stream it from an old macbook with plex to my chromecast.
My previous set up was very similar but instead of plex I used xbmc on a rPi connected directly to the TV.
- Netflix - Amazon Prime - Stolen HBOGo login - 3 private trackers - Mac Mini running Plex - Synology DS1813 for backup - AppleTV - Roku - PS3 - SiliconDust It's an absurdly complex system but one that allows me to watch pretty much whatever I want, wherever I want, whenever I want. I'm recognizing how glorious it is to get my daughter hooked on Miyazaki rather than Disney and having her grow up in a world where commercials are these alien things that make no sense rather than just another exhortation to spend.
It is complex! I currently use a single private tracker that manages to have all the shows and movies I'm interested in on there. I've been keeping a synology backup but they're so bloody expensive. I have a JBOD set up since I had a bunch of spare drives laying around.
I haven't had cable for about 4 or 5 years. I never really watched much TV to begin with, even growing up. Commercials piss me off. They're so incredibly fake and I can't remember a time where I watched one and actually wanted to buy the product advertised. I don't understand the dancing and singing for cars or yogurt or deodorant. Who the hell would do that? The "catchy" songs just make me cringe. It's like if grandma wanted to make a commercial but was trying to be "hip" and "with it," except that's just about every commercial. I don't really find TV to be engaging enough, most of the time. I get bored pretty quickly, so I usually only check out a movie or show when I'm at work. I don't watch sports and just watch Netflix if I need to see something. If it's not on Netflix, I have a galleon out back that I can hop in and sail the seas.
The worst feeling in the world to me right now is "oh my god they're about to cut to commercial". I've lived for the past eight years without watching a single live TV channel broadcast or radio broadcast. Right now I'm staying at my in-law's house and they have cable. Watching a movie in FX or some other non-premium channel is just excruciating. How can people deal with commercial breaks?! It's impossible! I mean I follow baseball religiously and even then when a commercial comes on MLB.tv just shows "commercial break in progress."
Laptop. Bittorent. Peerblock. 1TB portable external HD each for: televisions, movies. No organization, just one folder for each movie or tv show, sorted alphabetically. No fancy catalog, no fancy system, just transfer via usb what I want to watch off the external HD to my laptop (I don't watch video files on the hard drive so as to reduce wear and tear), open it in VLC Media Player, maximize to fullscreen, sit back, and there you go, theater at your fingertips.
Short answer: I have a kindle. Seriously though, I'm amazed at how complicated some of these systems are. For me, the main thing has been to simply stop watching tv! Most of it is crap anyway. Besides reading, I do have an apple tv where I watch movies and series once in a while. For sports, I just don't follow everything anymore. If there is an important game, well that's a great opportunity to go to someone else's house :) I also have spotify and sometimes I just put on some music when previously I would have watched tv.
Just found this for setting up Kodi for streaming: http://www.htpcbeginner.com/best-kodi-addons-2015-for-cordcutters/ It installed a few of them on my laptops and it works pretty well so far. Gonna try to set it up on one of my rpi's and see how that goes.
I don't watch TV. As in at all. I also do not watch or read a large amount of fiction and just am not into the whole one-way media world. I enjoy interactive fiction, which is why Zork and Myst and games like the Kings Quest series grabbed me way back then. So, how do I cut the cord? I do not own a TV and have never had a cable bill in my name. The last time I lived in a house with cable/satellite TV was.. 1998? I think my friends who let me crash at their house had TV, but I'm not sure and that was 2002.
It's complicated. Right now, I have a Boxee Box that's hooked up to my TV, which connects to two external hard drives through my iMac on LAN. My plan this week is to move those two external hard drives into a desktop, along with 2 x 4TB drives, and have that desktop connected to my TV instead of the Boxee Box. I'm currently in the process of ripping my entire movie collection (Blu-Rays are done; DVDs are next) so that I won't have to fiddle with disks any longer. MakeMKV is free while in beta, and I downloaded the trial of AnyDVD while I'm doing this: a single Blu-Ray takes around 10-15 minutes to rip, and some DVDs (absurdly) as long. Netflix also, of course, both on my Boxee/future desktop rig and on the kids' Wii.
A bunch of Rokus in my house. Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. And A decent antenna for over the air stuff because we like watching our local news. I actually just bought one antenna, and plugged it into the old cable mainline in outside the house, so all of the coax outlets in my house are now antenna outlets. Worked out nicely.
Lots of videogames. And Netflix/Google Play for the shows/movies I hear about that I want to watch (which are very few, so far - I think the only thing I went "I NEED IT" is all of the MCU movies)
Over the air HDTV antenna connected to a DVR and TiVo service. You could do the same thing without the TiVo but you'd have to use something else to do the scheduling. This gives me all major television networks. Then I have Netflix for streaming. And most of all, some things I just do without. It's only TV.
This is my set-up as well, with the addition of a Roku 3 (so many more channels than the TiVo) and a Mac mini as a media server for my own music and movies. I've had this set up for almost 2 years now, and it is working really well. I decided to get Netflix this summer (when all my regular network shows are on hiatus) to binge on their shows - Daredevil, Grace & Frankie, and just started Sense8. I think I'll be doing this next summer, as well. To round things out, I purchase a couple of shows from Vudu that I loved on cable (Major Crimes, Teen Wolf), but the vast majority of my television is OTA with TiVo. I'm totally spoiled by all these options and the way I can fast forward through commercials, or avoid them completely.
Unfortunately, no. That's why I have both; TiVo for all OTA info and recording and the Roku for all my streaming channels (Netflix, Vudu, Amazon Prime, Plex, Google Play, and even my local PBS channel). They work great as a team.
I have a gaming laptop at the center of everything. From there I have a plex server that goes to chromecasts around the house. I also use netflix, amazon prime, youtube, and Google Movies (when I have the survey credits). I also use hulu on and off depending on if there's something I want to watch. I also have a shield tablet which I can use to play games around the house or hook it up to the downstairs TV to stream. If there are sports matches I want to watch I generally go to a bar. I didn't like that last part at first but there's a consistent crowd that's really into it and has some shared hobbies, so it ended up being better than I thought it would be.
The other thing I did was get a coax card for my PC. I installed a nice antenna in my attic and can record the signal that comes in. It's hit or miss but we get some sports, some news, some basic cable shows. All without tying up bandwidth.
I've not really been much of a TV watcher since I moved out of my parents, so I mostly get by on Netflix and watching it on my laptop. The only time I online stream is for sports (either VPN for the BBC coverage, if they have it, or try to find some free online stream)-- there doesn't really seem to be a good alternative yet. I'd be interested to hear other people's solution for watching sports (such as F1, rugby, soccer, american football).
The French version of iPlayer shows some sports (European football, rugby and, unsurprisingly the Tour de France) if you don't mind French commentating.