Couple years ago I went on a "how much money am I leaking each month" quest. Figured I should start being responsible with my money (so I could have a bit more for my fav hobby). Cut out quite a few things as I marie kondo'd my finances. One bill jumped out and that was my Shaw cable. About the same time a buddy called me up and said get over here for a few drams and to see something cool. He was running IPTV. $100 for the linux - media box and $15 a month for the subscription. This was from a guy out in the valley who was the 'distributor' of the service.
I don't think there was one tv channel on the planet that wasn't in the list. Same as movies including current in the theater just released a few days ago movies.
So I got hold of the guy, set up a meet, I gave him cash, he gave me the hardware and I plugged it all in. It worked. Reasonably well, certainly for what I wanted, good enough. I ditched my cable.
Fast forward 10 months or so and I'm watching some playoff hockey and the damn channel freezes. I switch to a different sports channel showing the same game, it works for a few minutes then it freezes, and so on. After fucking with this, and having it happen fairly regularly I decided to move up to the Shaw 300MBs service. After I got that worked out I was amazing myself how fast my interweb connection was but ... the linux box still had periodic events. I called the guy who agreed it happens and its the live stream - nothing to do with my hardware or for the most part my connection.
At about that time, and lucky me, Shaw contacted me with a 'deal' to add pretty much my old cable package back for what was about $20/month for two years. So I figured OK.
So .. to round up this long diatribe, I still have my IPTV and can find most movies and tv if I want it. Live doesn't work well on it but streamed works Ok. I have my usual netdix, amazon, and whatever else my Roku serves up and I have cable. If I had a steady stream of SP's visiting me and someone dropping off a bottle of scotch and some food, I would never leave this place as I have about as much media as anyone can handle. Was there an earth shattering deal in the mix. No not really. The ISP's have us. They have a monopoly and we are consuming what they are providing. My IPTV works but it is not consistent. My fast internet is great so kudos to Shaw for that.
I guess its a game of buck up for the fast internet. Then stream for awhile the usual things and wait for a deal. Good luck with all this.
