Amazon Echo Club

[Catlady]

I guess I'm in a very small minority, but I don't mind commercials--at least not in shows that were made with commercial breaks in the first place; they were taken into account in the flow of the narrative. I do mind them in movies; I haven't watched any Hulu movies yet to see how commercials are worked into films.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

Thanks. That's odd. It doesn't matter if the show you are watching was originally shown more than a month or so ago maybe?

I'd guess that factors in, but it's not just that to be sure.

[OtinG]

There are plenty of restrictions, contractual I assume, with many of the streaming providers like Sling and DirecTV Now. Some shows cannot be recorded at all. I think this is mostly for sporting events and that is a mess on any system. But some channels are blocked occasionally for recording and/or on demand. Some streaming providers have a time limit on how long you can keep recordings and of course how long shows/movies are available for on demand streaming. Unfortunately, the current trend is to ratchet up the commercials, and I don't see that ever improving. The streaming/cable/satellite contracts are extremely complex and complicated as more channel owners want much more money and some or apparently heading into only offering their channel(s) via subscription apps. So get ready for more commercials, less selection on streaming/cable/satellite and more out of pocket expense to get subscriptions to some of your favorite channels. It is getting ugly out there as channel owners get more and more greedy!

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by Catlady

I guess I'm in a very small minority, but I don't mind commercials--at least not in shows that were made with commercial breaks in the first place; they were taken into account in the flow of the narrative. I do mind them in movies; I haven't watched any Hulu movies yet to see how commercials are worked into films.

I agree. I grew up 20 miles north of a city with 125,000 people in a rural area. The large cities were 200+ miles away. In the mid-1960s we only had one TV station and it was CBS. So as a child we received only one TV station to watch and you basically watched what was broadcast or you found something else to do. TV commercials were simply a fact of life. I didn't even know they had such a thing as cable TV until I went off to college in 1976. Wow, suddenly I could watch a couple dozen channels rather than the four we had back home! So I guess it boils down to perspective. I remember when we had only one TV channel and we thought that was way cool to watch on a B&W TV with VGA resolution, and today we have access to thousands of channels in color and HD and UHD. A few commercials don't really bother me if that is the price for having so many channels to choose from and much better video quality. As far as Hulu, if I want to get rid of commercials it only costs an addition $4/mo which prices it around the other services, so it isn't really that big of a deal to me.

Originally Posted by Purple Lady

For the commercials Hulu does play, are they repeated constantly?

Each show/series has pretty much its own set of commercials/sponsors, but I haven't noticed commercials repeating within the same streaming episode. However, if you watch multiple episodes of the same show then yes they might all have the same commercials on any given day, but repetition within a single episode I haven't noticed. But I tend to tune out commercials and do something else while they are playing. I haven't watched any movies on Hulu, so no clue about them. Over all it is much better than cable/satellite which will show the same bleeping commercial several times during a single episode, sometimes even during the same commercial break.

[John F]

Originally Posted by OtinG

There are plenty of restrictions, contractual I assume, with many of the streaming providers like Sling and DirecTV Now. Some shows cannot be recorded at all. I think this is mostly for sporting events and that is a mess on any system. But some channels are blocked occasionally for recording and/or on demand. Some streaming providers have a time limit on how long you can keep recordings and of course how long shows/movies are available for on demand streaming. Unfortunately, the current trend is to ratchet up the commercials, and I don't see that ever improving. The streaming/cable/satellite contracts are extremely complex and complicated as more channel owners want much more money and some or apparently heading into only offering their channel(s) via subscription apps. So get ready for more commercials, less selection on streaming/cable/satellite and more out of pocket expense to get subscriptions to some of your favorite channels. It is getting ugly out there as channel owners get more and more greedy!

If you lie down with dogs, you get fleas. Read books instead.

I'm quite happy with my video services. On some of the services I have no commercials, and on the others I can fast forward over the commercials. There is more content than I can watch. If they ever go to far, I'll just read more, or use the video services from my libraries.

[Purple Lady]

Originally Posted by OtinG

So get ready for more commercials, less selection on streaming/cable/satellite and more out of pocket expense to get subscriptions to some of your favorite channels. It is getting ugly out there as channel owners get more and more greedy!

Just get a Tivo and a cable card and I don't think the cable company can put restrictions on what you do with equipment that doesn't belong to them. They haven't done it yet, and I pay a lot for Tivo equipment and service. I don't know if Tivo could survive those kinds of restrictions. Of course I don't expect to be able to record pay per view.

There were two reasons we went with Tivo instead of the Xfinity DVR. One is because it's now a cloud DVR, and two was because you used to be able to skip ahead five minutes or so on an on demand show you were watching. You then could rewind back to the end of the commercials. I won't watch any on demand except for shows with no commercials. I can still see on demand shows on the Tivo and I tried one with commercials recently, but I just couldn't stand it. There were only a few commercials per break, but they kept repeating them.

[ApK]

We love TiVo, and stayed with SD TV for quite a while to keep enjoying our DirecTV TiVo DVRs. We retired them several years ago, and missed them.
Now that we've cut the cord, we tried the TiVo Roamio OTA, but ended up returning it because of the total system cost for whole-home viewing, considering the amount of OTA content we watch.
I ended up getting a Tablo DVR on sale, and am pretty happy with it. For several hundred dollars less than the TiVo, the feature set is ideal for us, the price was good, and while it's not NEARLY as polished a DVR as TiVo, it's sufficient, and they are constantly improving it.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by ApK

We love TiVo, and stayed with SD TV for quite a while to keep enjoying our DirecTV TiVo DVRs. We retired them several years ago, and missed them.
Now that we've cut the cord, we tried the TiVo Roamio OTA, but ended up returning it because of the total system cost for whole-home viewing, considering the amount of OTA content we watch.
I ended up getting a Tablo DVR on sale, and am pretty happy with it. For several hundred dollars less than the TiVo, the feature set is ideal for us, the price was good, and while it's not NEARLY as polished a DVR as TiVo, it's sufficient, and they are constantly improving it.

Are you saying you can record streaming content on your own DVR? I'm about to cut the cord and I thought recording shows was a big thing I was giving up.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Are you saying you can record streaming content on your own DVR? I'm about to cut the cord and I thought recording shows was a big thing I was giving up.

My DVR is for OTA, that is Over The Air broadcast TV content. (Which is a surprising large amount good content here in the NYC metro area). The Tablo can then stream the recorded shows for us to watch on all our devices, including Roku.

It does not record content from streaming services (Netflix. Sling TV, Prime Video, etc).

To record those streams locally (aside from the potential TOS violations and other legal issues involved) is a technically complex hobby I have no time or patience for.
If I was that desperate to have a local copy of that content, I think it would be far simpler and faster for me to grab one from the darknet, thanks to the many pirates who do apparently have the time and patience for that hobby.....

For streaming services, I just deal with whatever cloud DVR and/or download options they offer, however limited they may be.

ApK

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by ApK

My DVR is for OTA, that is Over The Air broadcast TV content. (Which is a surprising large amount good content here in the NYC metro area). The Tablo can then stream the recorded shows for us to watch on all our devices, including Roku.

It does not record content from streaming services (Netflix. Sling TV, Prime Video, etc).

To record those streams locally (aside from the potential TOS violations and other legal issues involved) is a technically complex hobby I have no time or patience for.
If I was that desperate to have a local copy of that content, I think it would be far simpler and faster for me to grab one from the darknet, thanks to the many pirates who do apparently have the time and patience for that hobby.....

For streaming services, I just deal with whatever cloud DVR and/or download options they offer, however limited they may be.

Thanks. I got all excited there for a second. I have been using a Magnavox DVR to record from cable, mostly TCM movies; I was happy to find out that I could stream TCM from Sling TV. I'd love to still be able to record movies, but not at the price I was paying for cable. I feel deprived, but I'll survive.

I'm also in NYC; I'm having a devil of a time finding an indoor antenna that will pick up all the local stations. With my main TV, I've tried three different antennas, and none of them will pick up both WABC and WPIX--it's one or the other, depending on where I put the antenna. Really annoying.

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Thanks. I got all excited there for a second. I have been using a Magnavox DVR to record from cable, mostly TCM movies; I was happy to find out that I could stream TCM from Sling TV. I'd love to still be able to record movies, but not at the price I was paying for cable. I feel deprived, but I'll survive.

If your Magnavox can record from composite video and audio inputs, (rca cables) you could get a ruku express+ (the current model with rca output) and record anything you want. I used to have a little digital video capture box for stuff like that.

I'm also in NYC; I'm having a devil of a time finding an indoor antenna that will pick up all the local stations. With my main TV, I've tried three different antennas, and none of them will pick up both WABC and WPIX--it's one or the other, depending on where I put the antenna. Really annoying.

Oh, hey neighbor.
If you can't swing a rooftop antenna, try two small cheap indoor ones through a splitter/combiner.

[Catlady]

Originally Posted by ApK

If your Magnavox can record from composite video and audio inputs, (rca cables) you could get a ruku express+ (the current model with rca output) and record anything you want. I used to have a little digital video capture box for stuff like that.

Really? My old Roku 1 has composite inputs; that's how I had it hooked up to another TV. And my Magnavox was hooked up with composite cables as well. Wow, that would great if I could record TCM. I'll have to try it when I unhook the cable box and redo all the connections. But then I assume I would have to change the connections again to record OTA.

Oh, hey neighbor.
If you can't swing a rooftop antenna, try two small cheap indoor ones through a splitter/combiner.

That's exactly what someone else told me to do. For now, I'm just staying with the cheapest of the antennas I tried. I'm sick of playing with antennas for now.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Thanks. I got all excited there for a second. I have been using a Magnavox DVR to record from cable, mostly TCM movies; I was happy to find out that I could stream TCM from Sling TV. I'd love to still be able to record movies, but not at the price I was paying for cable. I feel deprived, but I'll survive.

I'm also in NYC; I'm having a devil of a time finding an indoor antenna that will pick up all the local stations. With my main TV, I've tried three different antennas, and none of them will pick up both WABC and WPIX--it's one or the other, depending on where I put the antenna. Really annoying.

If you don't need a local copy, some streaming services have cloud DVR functionality, although there may be limits. I'm using one such service, it has 1080P (I believe), you can skip commercials, and I don't know what the limitations are (although there is probably a time limit?).

[ApK]

Originally Posted by Catlady

Really? My old Roku 1 has composite inputs; that's how I had it hooked up to another TV. And my Magnavox was hooked up with composite cables as well. Wow, that would great if I could record TCM. I'll have to try it when I unhook the cable box and redo all the connections. But then I assume I would have to change the connections again to record OTA..

Your Roku 1 has composite OUTPUT.
You probably knew that, but in the analog era, in/out confusion was often what stopped non-techies from setting up a decent home theater themselves....
A small RCA switch would probably let you have your cake and eat it too. I did that kind of stuff for quite a while and only recently ripped out a bunch of old wiring and gear and simplified the whole house system.

I'm going to put on my psychic hat and say John F didn't read the last several pages of this thread before posting....

[John F]

Originally Posted by ApK

...

I'm going to put on my psychic hat and say John F didn't read the last several pages of this thread before posting....

I started about four pages ago. Although I do tend to skim. I just wanted to make sure Catlady wasn't missing anything.

Sorry for any confusion.