Intro To Streaming
As mentioned in Part 5, you can stream local channels into your home over the internet without an antenna. If that’s all you need, and you don’t care about recording, as long as you pay for your internet connection, you can get that for free.
However, perhaps you’ve gotten used to having certain cable channels like HGTV, SyFy, or sports channels like ESPN and FS1. If you are thinking about Cutting The Cord, you need to make a list of the channels you just cannot live without. Once you have that list, you can start to evaluate the various streaming services to determine the best set of options that will fit your needs.
Once again, unless your TV has this capability built-in (as do most of the “Smart TV’s” sold in the last 5 years or so), you’ll need a separate piece of hardware to manage the streaming. Many newer DVD players have this functionality. Otherwise, you’ll need an Apple TV, Amazon Fire Stick or Roku. There are others, but these are the most popular and most affordable.
Some of the streaming services, however, do NOT work on certain pieces of hardware. For example, you can’t get You Tube TV (a streaming service not to be confused with You Tube itself) on an Amazon Fire Stick. The reason is that You Tube TV is owned by Google who hates Amazon. So before you sign up for a service, you need to confirm which hardware will work with it.
Also, some of the older versions of these hardware products will not support the latest streaming apps. So if you have an older Apple TV available, you might need to purchase a new one (or a different streaming player) to get the latest streaming content.
Confusing? You bet. We’ll try to unscramble some of this as we explain some of the various streaming services in future blog entries.
If you have any questions about Cord Cutting, or any other Home Automation advance, feel free to give us a call at 303-665-2238.