Cutting The Cable – Part 3

by Jonathan Hensley on March 22, 2012 in How To, Main, Movies, Tech, TV, Videos

Internet Streaming Content Providers

In Part 2, I shared how Comcast gave me the “how not to do customer service” demonstration.

Today we finally start getting to the good stuff! Now that we’ve killed cable how do we get content? Luckily, there are several viable options… but as we’ll see, some more viable than others.

Netflix

As far as Internet TV content providers go Netflix is a must. For a mere $7.99 per month you get tons of streaming shows and movies.

I wasn’t always as sold on Netflix as I am now. What I once thought of as a service that only delivered year old movies via mail has really changed in the past couple years. The brilliant thing Netflix did was know 2 years ago that what I was really going to want today was TV episodes – and I’d want them NOW. I wasn’t going to want them 2 days from now via snail mail. They knew I would want it instantly and they delivered.

I’m amazed at the catalog of TV programming Netflix delivers. Nearly every episode of every show… ever. It’s really crazy when you think about the hundreds of thousands of hours of episodes available to watch at the click of a mouse (or remote… more on that next time).

Netflix seems to have every previous season of every show currently on television. The beauty of this is that you can start from season 1 of a show you missed the first go-round and watch every episode of every season with the exception of the season currently airing on cable.

If I were going to try to sell Netflix to my dad I’d tell him Netflix has all 249 episodes of The Andy Griffith Show. To convince my father-in-law I’d tell him they have all 80 episodes of Star Trek and all 177 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. As far as education goes there are tons of documentaries on animals, planets, science, etc. Being a homeschool family we were further convinced as parents when we found other homeschool families listing their Netflix favorites like Liberty’s Kids, Creatures That Defy Evolution, and National Geographic specials. My 3 year old loves all The Land Before Time movies and my 8 year old likes Phineas & Ferb (and so do I).

I can’t speak highly enough of Netflix. Once you get past the idea that you have to watch what everyone else is watching tonight on cable you realize there is WAY more content available on Netflix than there is with any cable or satellite company.

Huluplus

This one is very frustrating for me. Hulu is awesome and features new episodes from shows on NBC, FOX & Disney/ABC. Hulu.com only works on a computer. If you want to play Hulu content on your TV you need a $7.99 per month subscription to Huluplus (yes, I realize you can hook your computer up to your TV to get around this limitation but I consider that more of a workaround than a solution). However, in this case you don’t always get what you pay for.

Unfortunately, Hulu’s original contracts only included streaming shows on the website. Once they introduced the Huluplus app for TV’s and mobile devices they had to go back to each of the show owners to negotiate a new deal to allow streaming to a TV. As of now, there are many shows still not available on Huluplus. Don’t even get me started on movies… there’s hardly any movies worth watching on Huluplus.

Pandora

Since my family is home most of the day doing school work they would often have one of the Comcast music channels turned on in the background. This was something we needed to replace when cutting cable.

In this case we’ve turned to Pandora. Pandora is nothing like the Comcast music channels we were using before… it’s much, much better! There’s tons more selection and customization options. It’s completely free with minimal commercials. You can also pay $30 per year to remove the commercials if you want. We find they are rare enough and short enough to not be a problem.

I would recommend Pandora to anyone especially if you are currently listening to music channels through your cable provider or even local radio.

Network Websites

Most of the networks are streaming current episodes on their respective websites. You can catch most current episodes from ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX, USA and others on their websites. But as I stated above, how much TV can you comfortably watch on a computer?

For most of us I don’t feel these are really viable options to replace most of our TV watching especially considering families. Watching TV on a laptop or plugging it into your TV and browsing different sites with a wireless mouse or even a remote just doesn’t cut it. The hassle outweighs the benefits.

Network websites can probably be used to supplement a more robust system (like Netflix) to catch a couple shows that you just have to watch the current season or isn’t covered by Netflix, etc, but that’s about it. It likely won’t replace your cable.

Over The Air

For local network content you can get an HD antenna. You can check the FCC site to see if you are in decent range of the signals and an antenna makes sense for you. This is a good option if you want to catch some network sports programming like college and NFL football.

There’s also a device called EyeTV One that uses an HD antenna and allows you to record programming to your computer for time shifted playback of primetime shows, etc.

EyeTV One Demo

Cutting The Cable – Part 2

by Jonathan Hensley on March 7, 2012 in Gear, How To, Humor, Main, Movies, Tech, TV

Ditching Comcast ‘The Experience’

In Part 1, I shared how we went from cable TV lovers to deciding to ditch cable TV and become an Internet only household. Now I’m going to discuss how the process went finalizing the decision and making it official.

As a test, we signed up for Netflix. Something we’d done in the past for a couple months at a time just to catch up on our movie watching. But this time was different. This time we were looking for a complete content replacement.

Being a house with kids we had to make sure there was sufficient appropriate children’s content. This is where we were most doubtful. Having never looked for more than movies we were pleasantly surprised to find out that many children’s shows were available on Netflix. Many of them being complete series listings from shows like: The Electric Company, Wonder Pets, Phineas & Ferb, and my youngest’s favorites The Land Before Time movies.

We were quite confident via word of mouth that Netflix would provide plenty of primetime type content for the wife and me. Turns out word of mouth is correct. There are dozens of complete series shows available that we didn’t catch the first time and appear to be up our alley.

Feeling comfortable with Netflix as a viable option at this point we were ready to make things official. It was time to disconnect the DVR’s and tell Comcast the price hike was the last straw!

Comcast Cares

At least that’s the moniker they use on their social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, Comcast Cares. Really. website.

Based on this perception, I expected excellent customer service and maybe even a special offer to keep my TV service. I was prepared to politely listen but turn down any discount offer and disconnect. I was completely wrong about how this process was going to go down…

Instead of an appeal to keep me as a customer I received a complete lack of interest. I wasn’t greeted with a smile, asked how I was doing or really asked anything other than, “You want to disconnect your service?”. After I replied in the affirmative there was no more conversation… on my part. From there on I got to stand there and listen to the ‘Customer Service Representative’ making changes to my account talk to the ‘Customer Service Representative’ next to her about how her dog had trashed her house the day before. Never once was I asked another question. I wasn’t asked why I was disconnecting, if I was switching to a competitor, if I was disconnecting due to price, service problems or anything.

Comcast Cares. Really.

What was even better was when I asked about my Internet speed/plan. I wasn’t really sure what level I had but I kindof wanted to upgrade just to make sure I’d have enough bandwidth to stream Netflix on two HDTV’s simultaneously. This part of the conversation went something like this…

Me – “What Internet plan am I currently on?”
Comcast Rep- [she told me the name of the plan, I forget the name, one level down from the top]
Me – “How much more is the next plan higher/faster?”
Comcast Rep - “Oh, it’s really expensive. I never sell that one”
Me – “Really? Wow, how much more is it?”
Comcast Rep – [after actually looking she tells me it's $10 more per month]
Me – “That’s not bad, bump me up”

You have got to be kidding me! Seriously? Comcast Cares so much that they didn’t ask why I was cancelling my TV service and to make matters worse they tried to talk me out of upgrading my Internet! It was completely clear at this point that we were nothing more than a number.

Anyways, after the bazaar cancelation/upgrade experience we were officially an Internet TV family. It felt good to know we were going to be saving money… nearly $100 per month, every month. It was pretty cool… but it didn’t last very long…

Cutting the Cable – Part 3 – Internet Streaming Content Providers
Netflix, Huluplus, Pandora, etc.

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Cutting The Cable – Part 1

by Jonathan Hensley on March 6, 2012 in How To, Main, Tech, TV

Part 1 of our family’s experience ditching cable TV.

This decision kind of came out of the blue. We didn’t really put too much thought into it or over analyze the situation. At the end of the day it’s really not a big deal… it’s just TV, right?

In reality, for most of us, TV is a big deal. For us, it was pretty much on all the time. We weren’t necessarily watching it but it was on. TV played many roles: entertainer, educator, news source, baby sitter, time waster, radio, background noise and probably many others. And then January happened.

This past January our church, NorthStar Church, was challenged to ‘fast’ something. Kind of like Lent but in January. As a family we decided to fast TV. For 21 days we pretty much (with the exception of football playoffs and a few movie nights for the kids) didn’t watch any TV. During the 21 days we realized that TV had taken too much focus.

A few weeks later, we received a letter from Comcast telling us that our already outrageous TV/Internet bill was inadvertently too low and that as of the next billing cycle it would be even more outrageous.

That was the last straw.

I started researching other cable TV options. Lucky for me I’m in a good area and have several options. However, ATT U-Verse is just as outrageous as Comcast after the introductory rate expires so I ended up deciding to switch to Knology which is considerably cheaper.

it’s really not a big deal… it’s just TV, right?

But then it hit me, if we’re going to switch anyway why not use it as an experiment. We want to be less dependent on TV but we don’t want to give them to KARM and never watch anything again. We know from the ‘fast’ that we can live with less TV but how much less? Can we ditch Comcast and watch shows online? What about Netflix? Are there other options?

Cutting the Cable – Part 2 – Ditching Comcast ‘The Experience’
Giving Comcast the boot. Signing up for Netflix and more…

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Church At The Joe Site

by Jonathan Hensley on February 13, 2012 in Events, Jesus, Main, Web Development

I recently had the honor of building the site for Church At The Joe. A cool new ministry from a church in Knoxville, TN that’s started holding monthly services in a country music night club.

The vision was for a rough and tumble western style while integrating rugged multimedia and social media functionality. Building on WordPress I found a great premium theme to use as the bare bones. Being a site for a church I then customized the Hell out of it (pun intended). Taking inspiration from the clubs rustic weathered wood floors the design began to come alive.

For more views check out the full Church At The Joe website.

New Year, New Possibilities

by Jonathan Hensley on December 27, 2011 in Main

As my good friend Hallerin Hilton Hill always says (he doesn’t know me but I listen to him enough to count him as a friend ), “Anything is possible“.

He’s right! Whether we’re talking about our faith in God, our personal or professional goals or even just our life in general… anything really is possible.

I don’t know why we wait until the first of the year to decide to do new things or bigger and better things. The truth is we can change our lives at any moment. We just have to decide to DO it. We can’t just sit around thinking about doing it. We can’t just tell other’s or ourselves we are going to do it. We actually have to DO it!
Take time this week to pray and think about your goals for 2012. Write them out, share them with someone you are close to and this time actually decide to DO it.

After you’ve decided to DO it don’t look back. If you look up in February and you’re not where you wanted to be just keep pushing, fighting, clawing and scratching your way toward your goals.

William Feather said,

Success is a matter of hanging on after others have let go.

One of my all time favorite quotes is from Thomas Edison who said,

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.

Persistence is key. Once you decide to Do it you have to decide to keep on DO-ing it until you succeed. The only failure is quitting!

I don’t know what it is that’s on your list of goals for this coming year but if you really set your mind to it and keep on pushing you can achieve your dreams.