We currently have DirectTV and Netflix, which we've been happy with, but our 2 year contract is up on the DirecTV and the price doubled this month. We had a 2 year price lock when we signed up. The price raise was expected, so it wasn't a big shocker. We're just looking to drop the price of the now doubled bill. Worst case, we'll cancel DirecTV then put it in my wife's name to bring the price back down.

What are some of the cable/satellite alternatives yall have used that can still get some of the major live tv channels?

Do any of them offer apps for watching on tablets/ipads for the kids on road trips? Anything recordable on say a dvr or something similar to our DirecTV that we can access via an app?

What features of any of them do you like or dislike?

I've done some Google-fu, but it all seems so similar and they tend to run together in my brain.

Just call direct tv and ask for the retention dept. It may get you a discount.

The tv in the playroom is a Roku TV so we use our Uverse log in to get pretty much every channel possible on it for when we are using it. We don't use it too often for live sports, but one thing I have noticed and also at other people homes who use it for live sports the picture isn't as sharp. Now that is when the tv is connected wireless opposed to using a cat5 cable. There is also some lag time with live sports, so if you have notifications set up on your phone with live scoring updates you will want to turn that off.

This past Saturday we were at a house that uses online service for tv and his tv's were hooked up wireless, the picture just was fuzzy enough that it gave me a slight headache. The best thing to do in this situation is go to someone's house who actually has it and see how you like it.

Call Direct and ask to talk to customer loyalty, insist on the customer loyalty department and not customer service. They will give you a better rate to keep your account. Customer loyalty has plans that the regular customer service doesn't know about or aren't authorized to offer you.
When I called I got a better rate than I initially started with.

Sling tv is good.

PlayStation Vue by far the best.

I use a firestick and have the Hulu app on it. And Netflix
I get all local channels on Hulu plus a bunch of cable channels
They have an app for your phone and tabs Also

You can play the switching game between Direct and Dish. I have even terminated one or the other early and it paid off in just a few months.

^^^^^^^ This ^^^^^^^

Play their game. You might be surprised what offers they will make.

Put up an outdoor TV antenna & you may be surprised at what shows you can get. Throw in a Netflix or Amazon subscription & you'd be GTG.

BTW: The only big drawback to over-the-air (OTA) TV is there is no slick interface like Direct & Dish provide. At our house, we'd be lost without being able to look at the guide, freeze, back-up, record, by-pass commercials, etc. But there are several one-time purchase boxes that allow all those features.

Thanks for all the help, yall.

I've looked at sling tv a little bit and it seems pretty decent. Sold my Playstation when my boys were born, so it's out.

I agree with you pertnear about being lost without any kind of guide. Not having that wouldn't be much fun. We have an indoor antenna that we used for a while, but our Samsung tv wouldn't remove all of the unused channels for some reason when scanning. We would manually have to type in the channel we wanted or scroll through all of the dead channels to get to where we wanted.

I'll give DirecTV customer loyalty a call and see what they can offer me. I was telling my wife last night that if they don't do anything for us, I'm going to be ready to just cancel it right then. She pouted a little because of everything she has saved on the DVR, but she realized what i was saying.

this

You don't need a Playstation, any device that can stream will work.
The only negative I found was no DVR. Programming is great!

They won't let you cancel, They will offer you something.

Sirius radio will do the same. They sent me renewal notice for somewhere over $200. After the call I ended up paying $72.

At my rural place South of Bowie, I have an antenna. It’s about 80 miles to D/FW and I can generally get about 75 stations. That’s depending on the weather. Of course, some are Spanish, some Vietnamese, some continuous commercials, other 1960 game shows, etc. But, it’s free and I don’t really miss movie channels, sports channels, etc.

In D/FW, I have AT&T dish. They recently changed out the cable box and the guy told me that AT&T would send me a mailing box to return the old box. If not, just toss it. After a couple of weeks I tossed it. Then my next bill showed a pretty big charge for not returning the replaced gear. I called and the nice lady on the phone said I was SOL . I said OK but would damn sure be making a change of providers. She asked me to hold just a moment while she talked to her Boss. She came back in about 30 seconds and said that I qualified for a customer loyalty rate. They took about 60% off the monthly bill for a year. I expect that she had that option all along for customer retention. Just call and ask.

We like Hulu Live TV. It has all the sports channels we watch and good cloud based dvr playback. Its limited on the number of channels, but has the majors. Make sure you have good internet service and lots of data if you are prone to leave tvs running 24/7.

The best alternative that I have found is ditching the tv, altogether. Seriously, I know it sounds severe, but I did it several years ago, and it drastically improved my life, as well as my family. I don’t miss it, at all. I don’t even think about it. It’s not for everyone, but you could try it for a week or two, and see what you think.

Think about how even more wonderful your life would be if you ditched the internet also.

Could be. I see both as a tool of enrichment or degradation. They can be used as either, and I personally find the tv to be less useful. The internet is more useful but also more dangerous and distracting, given its broader range and accessibility. It boils down to the individual user and their experiences and inclinations, or simply their preference of entertainment, if it’s really as simple as entertainment.

Direct wouldn’t worth with us so we cancelled. Must’ve talked to the foreigners

We did away with Time Warner Cable TV and internet. Our TV service was always having problems and internet was always slower during peak usage times. It was our most expensive bill and they would not work with us on pricing. Went to super fast AT&T Fiber and streaming TV over internet. Fubo for local, sports, and just about everything else we watched that was on cable. Through Fubo we also have a cloud DVR. We have Amazon Prime and Netflix. We may drop Netflix altogether or switch it out to a cheaper streaming service if we find we don't use it much. Local Channels on antenna, though there is only one of the regular local channels that is not on Fubo so it is rarely used. We will add premium channels to stream on a temporary non contract basis only when there are things like game of thrones that we want to watch. And there are some other free Apps and Websites that we use for streaming occasional movies and shows. We went to smart TVs to make it easy to put it all on one format and ethernet cables to all TVs instead of wifi. We do have wifi with an extender on the far side of the house for phones and laptops. Only a small TV in my office is not a smart TV. It has a Roku on it that allows it to do just about everything the smart tvs can. Combined it cut our cost considerably over what we were paying Time Warner. And we have more things we like to watch than ever before. We are not tied to any long term contracts, so can and will shop around for better streaming options from time to time.