Reader survey: what streaming provider do you use / how is it?
I’ve been very slowly nibbling away at the cord with plans of cutting it for a while. These things take time when you’re a parent and have kids who want to do/watch things. A few days ago I ditched Comcast and have supposedly reliable fiber internet now through AT&T U-Verse.
And now I’m ready to ditch AT&T’s other product – DirectTV. Yes, I know this will make my $70 internet bill go to $80, but my satellite bill is now $90 on its own. Add to that price, the picture’s pretty bad even with full signal, and 1080P is only available on my box streaming a few items.
Here’s a survey, I’d appreciate if you can answer in the comments.
- What streaming service do you use?
- Local channels available?
- Have you had any problem with billing?
- Have you had any problems with outages?
- Does it support live TV, DVR, how many TVs can stream at once?
- Frame rate, maximum resolution, audio capabilities?
- Separate accounts for people in the household or just one (for DVR)
- Maximum effective bandwidth used?
- Any gripes about said service?
- Used any other services? Issues with them?
- Does it work with Roku, Chromecast, Apple TV, etc?
- Does it have any channels you’re missing you can’t replace easily, or how did you replace said channel?
I’m hoping to get answers from people who have used a couple, can recognize low framerates and dropped packets, low resolution and sync issues, and have a setup with more than L/R speakers, can tell the difference between 480i and 4K.
What I’m finding when I look is nobody advertises the max frame rates, mentions the upper capabilities of the audio/video (EG: 1080P vs 720i, stereo vs 5.1 vs 7.1 etc.) or provides statistics on uptime, network interruptions, or how many people hate their billing department with a passion.
