- I usually side with Roku when asked what additional set-top box to buy, since Roku allows the easy use of Amazon Prime Video, but the Teter cord-chewing (it’s not cutting if it ain’t cut!) project has unearthed the fact that Roku’s HBO Go channel does NOT work with XFinity, whereas AppleTV’s HBO Go option DOES work with XFinity. Since I would pretty much cancel all channels other than HBO and NESN, and simply watch the Patriots with an antenna or at a bar once a week, this discovery has pushed the AppleTV over the Roku… even though we have both… and they’re 5 inches apart… and they’re on Video 3 and Video 4 on the same television… and we only watch tv in the kids-are-asleep window from 8:15PM to 9:00PM because we’re more tired these days than the Ridgeback, who is about as tired as you can get and still be alive.
- Motorola’s X Phone is good-not-great. It is innovative with its always-on-and-waiting-for-youishness and the way it tries to tap into Google Now better… something that really blows Siri out of the water by the way. The specs are a little weak and the display is little weak, but the real deal breaker for me is that the camera (from what I’ve seen) still takes too many craptastic pictures. Repeat after me, Motorola: “a stellar camera joined to solid Motorola hardware with maybe adding back a dash of kevlar would = you winning.” I’d say wait for the second generation of this and hope that Google bakes some of the extra Motorola functionality into Key Lime Pie, so that this could be a viable Nexus device.
- Chromecast is a neat little toy that made sense to buy when it came with the three free months of Netflix. It works… it’s kind of neat to throw a browser to your tv… if you want to put browser-based video on your tv, or if you don’t have a Roku or an AppleTV or anything else to watch Netflix, ok… but it’s raw and hiccuppy at the moment. It’s got great potential, but if you don’t like to beta test… well… I’d wait until they start giving these away or integrating them with newer tv’s. People will do cool stuff with this thing down the road, but no need to rush out now.
Category: Cable
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Score one for the AppleTV and a few other quick hits…
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Denting the Cable – Part I
No… it’s a mule, jackass! We don’t really mind paying what we think is fair, but considering how little television we watch these days (damn kids! damn jobs! damn time wasted on exercise and the outdoors!), it bothers us to pay upwards of $170 a month for cable television, internet, and a phone line from Comcast.
We like Comcast. They’re friendly on the phone. They give us new remotes if/when our dog eats (or more likely sits on and crushes) our clicker. Their services almost never go down for us, and when they do go down, they seem to come back up quickly. FIOS is not available where we are, so there’s no real competitor offering a comparable suite of services.
The real hurdles to us ditching television programming from the cable company boil down to 1.) the need to lean on television programming to keep the kids sedated for a few minutes, 2.) the need to watch NFL Football and 3.) the need to keep up with an endless list of craptastic, reality-themed, or so-you-think-you-can-do-something television shows my wife watches. These problems require different levels of gadget enthusiasm and tenaciousness.
Tech tastes good! The child challenge is easily solved by a combination of the Roku and a subscription to Netflix and/or Amazon Prime. The whims of little people are admittedly unpredictable, but right now Dora the Annoyer, Dinosaur-themed toons like the odd Dinosaur Train, and Curious George are getting the job done.
I’m under the impression that the NFL challenge requires little more than an inside antenna. An antenna candidate is on its way this moment (more details on its effectiveness to come upon its arrival and setup). It also requires a small bar tab allowance for watching any necessary NFL network games at a local dive, but hey… that’s just like an away game once in a while. Done.
The “I want to watch the crappiest crap on television” issue is more difficult, because it brings crap channels like Bravo! into play. Can many of these be watched online? Yep. Is this as good as watching them easily on the biggest screen in our house? Nope. Netflix, Amazon, and even iTunes cover part of this problem, but too much of the pay per view route and we’re back where we started, but without the convenience of cable. Hulu? Maybe, but Hulu has some real programming holes, and what’s with the commercials? Antenna-powered Tivo to pick up the recording of over-the-air, and to provide access to Web content? Maybe, but apparently Tivo can’t stream Amazon Prime (as opposed to Amazon for pay), so that means the Roku has to remain as well. Clearly the solution is some sort of combination of these and maybe a few as yet unnamed services, with perhaps a way to easily sling a browser on to the big screen, but this is not sorted yet.
A quick look suggests that this is possible: $20 per month for 20MB down Internet from Comcast, $20 per month for digital phone line, $7 per month (broken down by month) for Amazon Prime, and $15 per month for Tivo subscription. This totals up to $62 for month… down from $170… not too shabby.
