Online tv question

[Jstpssng]

"Did they change something? Last time I tried to set up a new Gmail account (within the past year), they required a cell #. It would not let you set up an account without one, nor would it accept a landline #. Some BS about "so we know you're really you" or something like that.
I Googled ways to try and circumvent that, but none of them worked."

I also ran into that yesterday when I wanted to register onto an major online auction site.
No cell reception where I live unless I drive up the hill. Giving my home bell # did not work either, the reply was that it could not confirm me. (I've had that # for over 30 years)

Hopefully with the mega $$'s being spent on rural internet we'll soon be high speed 'on line'.
They say so, but I'll believe it when I see it. They claim 'by Sept'.

I had something similar a few years ago when trying to get a CC through my local bank. They said "The postal service doesn't recognize your street address"...
Why do they think I have a PO box? The irony is that my road name is so unique that typing it into a search engine either gives "No Results" or finds me without typing in town and state.

 

[PILOON]

I had something similar a few years ago when trying to get a CC through my local bank. They said "The postal service doesn't recognize your street address"...
Why do they think I have a PO box? The irony is that my road name is so unique that typing it into a search engine either gives "No Results" or finds me without typing in town and state.

Probably due to modern search software
Things like using St vs Street, St, Ste or Saint (Sainte) would throw off many searches.
You need to be precise and hope the software is equally well programed with the common variants.

 

[EddieWalker]

When my Dish bill went up to $140 a month, I decided it was time to make a change. My wife had already bought a Roku, but neither of us knew what to do with it, or how it worked. It just sat there for several months. I bought an antenna for local channels and that's been really good. We have 3 towers. One is close by, just North of us, the others are 30 miles away, kind of to the South. At first, we got 13 channels from those towers. Now we're over 30 channels with a few that are kind of decent, but mostly we just watch the main networks for local news and evening shows.

The Roku allowed us to pick and chose what we wanted to watch for a lot less money. Prime and Netflix have a few good shows, so we pay for that. Philo is probably my favorite App. It has all the cable channels that we watched, and it's really nice to favorite a show and then watch every episode, from season 1, all the way to the end. Currently, we're enjoying Master Chef. We just finished season 5, so there is a lot more to watch. The other thing that we like is being able to watch a show that is coming on that evening, after it starts and not miss anything. Oak Island comes on at 8 pm, but if it's nice outside, we might be sitting on our back porch with a fire going until 830. Whenever we decide to go in, we can start watching the show from the beginning. It no longer matters when we turn it on. I guess that we have about 2 dozen shows that we have favorited, so there is always something to watch that we enjoy. The other good thing is that if we try a new show and it's not any good, who cares, we just move on to something else.

I watch YouTube for free. I can't see any advantage to paying for it. Most of the time I click on something, it's horrible and I switch to something else. I have to wait for the commercials to end, but I use the Mute button and wait to get through them without too much pain. Most of the videos that I watch are on Mute anyway.

Our Wi-Fi is OK. My wife can do Zoom meetings and we can watch most shows, but we've found that all her Apple devises have to be turned on is it's an older show, or sometimes, just because. Older shows seem to require more bandwidth. My guess is that they are not digital in the same way that a new show is, but that doesn't make sense to me, so I'm just guessing. Once we have all our devices turned off, we rarely get any buffering.

 

[Oaktree]

I had something similar a few years ago when trying to get a CC through my local bank. They said "The postal service doesn't recognize your street address"...

I've never seen a road that wasn't recognized, but around here there are plenty of the opposite situation...a long-abandoned road that still shows up on maps. One near me hasn't been in use since the late 1800s, it's RoW is used as a snowmobile trail in the winter, but is so wet as to be impassible any other time of year. It is possible that it was never officially abandoned, not sure on that.
When I was a kid we had several neighbors who had long driveways that got plowed by the town since they were once considered town roads and never de-certified. I don't recall the town handling any other maintenance on them though, just snow plowing.

One thing I sometimes have problems with on on-line orders (usually smaller companies) is that my zip code is not unique to my town...2 or 3 others share it. Some on-line order forms balk at the town name, insisting on using the town the post office is in. Not a huge deal, since I seem to get stuff so-addressed anyway, but still these databases should know this.

 

[Dftodd]

I've never seen a road that wasn't recognized, but around here there are plenty of the opposite situation...a long-abandoned road that still shows up on maps. One near me hasn't been in use since the late 1800s, it's RoW is used as a snowmobile trail in the winter, but is so wet as to be impassible any other time of year. It is possible that it was never officially abandoned, not sure on that.
When I was a kid we had several neighbors who had long driveways that got plowed by the town since they were once considered town roads and never de-certified. I don't recall the town handling any other maintenance on them though, just snow plowing.

One thing I sometimes have problems with on on-line orders (usually smaller companies) is that my zip code is not unique to my town...2 or 3 others share it. Some on-line order forms balk at the town name, insisting on using the town the post office is in. Not a huge deal, since I seem to get stuff so-addressed anyway, but still these databases should know this.

My street wasn't recognized until a week before Thanksgiving on Google maps or wave (New housing development)

Postal service and the big shipping services knew the street though.

When the street did finally pop up, Google maps had our house listed on the retention pond around the corner, and the retention pond listed as a cul-de-sac. Even shows a dead end street going through someone's yard

 

[BigBlue1]

I switched from DirecTV to YouTube TV two years ago. Back then it was only $49.99/mo. Not too many months later they increased it to $65. That sucked. But it is a good platform for TV viewing.

As noted above, an Amazon Fire TV stick is a great device to use for streaming. Decent interface and simple remote. If you wait for a sale the 4K version can be had for under $30. Much more useful than the interface and app ecosystem on most smart TVs. Once you have a device like the Fire stick or Roku stick you then use it to download/launch any apps you want to get content from. Such as: YouTube TV, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, HBOMax, Hulu, etc, etc. Some are free (like YouTube) and some require subscriptions. You get to choose.

Ultimately I don't know that I spend much less today on video than I did with DirecTV (or Comcast before that) but I do have more control now. However, I still wish everything would be a la carte so I could pay for only the channels on YouTube TV that I want. I regularly use fewer than 6 channels out of the ??? they offer.

I'd also note that if you don't have a decent ISP with a good, reliable connection your streaming experience will be an unhappy one. You don't need a super fast connection, just a reliable one. We made do streaming Netflix on a sub-5Mb/s DSL connection for a year before I got something faster. Also, you'll want a very solid wifi connection from your TV/device to the router. If you have the router on one end of the house and the TV on the other even if you have a great ISP you may still have a crappy streaming experience. Consider getting a mesh wifi system to do a better job with wifi coverage if needed.

Rob

 

[PILOON]

It is getting so that we need Add Blockers to watch TV now.

Some channels are getting as bad as my computer B4 I installed my add blocking program.

Very thank full that we record and have fast forward.

 

[BigBlue1]

That's one nice thing about YouTube TV... you can fast-forward through all the ads. Still a pain, but not as much of a pain as having to sit through them.

 

[kcflhrc]

I looked up Youtube TV, it was like $65. Wow, that's pricey, that's really no savings over cable, at least by me.

Used to be $50 when it first came out. I agree, $65 a month isn't much if any savings over basic satellite service with local channels. Plus the interface is cumbersome. I like my Dish Network and on site DVR.

 

[EddieWalker]

Does YouTube TV have other channels or is it just YouTube without advertisement? I tried watching the free version last night, but never got through more then five minutes of anything I looked at. I was wanting to see how people handle and catch their goats, but almost everything I found was more of a rodeo then actually having something built that simplifies this and makes it safe. There is so much nothingness on YouTube, that it's sometimes hard for me to even bother looking for something that I'm curious about on there.