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Got the Ooma Telo; will probably set it up tomorrow.

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Bad news on the Roku 3 though. It only outputs HDMI and my old TV doesn't have an HDMI input. The TV does have available VGA, DVI, Component video (RGB), red-white-yellow a/v, and when I finally unplug DirecTV and my old DVD boxes, it'll have an S-video input.

Converter cables are available but some quick searches show that they can be expensive (nearly twice the cost of the Roku3) and not all converter cables will work correctly.

The other option is to buy a new TV with HDMI input, but if I were to do that, it would likely be a SmartTV anyway and have most everything that Roku 3 offers. Rock, meet hard place, hah!

So I'm a bit stuck on that one and I didn't buy it. More research needed.

If you get a "smart" TV, I'd still suggest you get a Roku. My Roku 3 is awesome. The coolest thing about Roku? It's access to Plex. You can put all your media on a Plex server and access it from many, many devices including your Roku. Honestly, it's a very small price to pay (I got my Roku 3 for 80 bucks) to have all that stuff (netflix, hulu, youtube, plex, amazon, hbogo) in one spot that works so well, unlike most built-in "smart" features on TVs.

BIF wrote:

Got the Ooma Telo; will probably set it up tomorrow.

Bad news on the Roku 3 though. It only outputs HDMI and my old TV doesn't have an HDMI input. The TV does have available VGA, DVI, Component video (RGB), red-white-yellow a/v, and when I finally unplug DirecTV and my old DVD boxes, it'll have an S-video input.

The other option is to buy a new TV with HDMI input, but if I were to do that, it would likely be a SmartTV anyway and have most everything that Roku 3 offers. Rock, meet hard place, hah!

I have a high end Samsung Smart TV, and also have experience with high-end models from LG and Sony. Every single one of them is buggy, slow, has stupid quirks, and a lousy clunky interface. They basically just slap some half-baked Android apps in there with no optimization or quality control. The Roku3 beats all of them across the board, no contest. It also has access to many other free streaming services which likely aren't available on the TVs.

As for your HDMI problem........I remember you mentioned in your other thread that you're in the market for a home theater upgrade? I recently bought a Yamaha RX-V477 within the past month, and so far it's been fantastic. I have it running to a pair of Polk tower speakers (which I picked up a year ago on sale for $100 each) and a ~$120 Polk 10" subwoofer. That basic setup puts my friends' crappy soundbars and chintzy home-theater-in-a-box setups to shame. If you were to get any stereo receiver along those lines, you could run all your HDMI devices to it, use the stereo for sound, and then run a single HDMI-to-DVI cable to the TV.

+1 to the idea of cutting all other services, just have Internet and stream from Netflix + Amazon Prime Instant Video. The rest can be had through other cheap or free online streaming websites. The History channel for example was offering free streaming of a show they had on there once, don't recall the name.

Yeah, it sounds like its time to re-evaluate needs and wants. Good on you for realizing you should pocket more rather than hand it to these companies.

Im on a 100mbit down 5mbit up connect for $125 a month in Alaska, it saved us $50 from the older 22/2 connection we were on. Otherwise a 50/2 connection is an option for $82.99 a month but reduces monthy allowance to 150gb vs 300gb. We come close when on 200gb as I have an in home office.

I cut the cord a few months ago and also replaced Vonage with Ooma.

Ooma has been quite reliable so far. A couple of misconceptions on this thread that I would like to clarify:
a. Ooma is free. You have to pay $3-4 every month but that is federal tax (maybe 911 service - i don't know). Ooma itself does not charge anything. I also don't understand how any other phone vendor cannot charge you tax. I also use Ooma a bit for international calls. I like their "pay as you go" model - they charge about $0.08 a minute for international calls (which I think is reasonable) and have a nice option where Ooma will automatically top up your balance by $10 if your balance falls below $5 - so I don't even have to do this manually. Certainly beats $50 a month for the "all you can eat" Vonage option or the bundled phone option that cable provides.
b. In my case, my Panasonic cordless phone is plugged in to Ooma. So my Ooma is placed near my wifi router (and I have physically wired it to the router). Not sure about the Ooma handset though - but I would imagine that it connects over wifi, so again, the Ooma base device placement shouldn't be an issue. Meaning, the handset coverage is dependent on wifi coverage (or cordless coverage for cordless phones), not proximity to the Ooma base set.

Some other observations - I sunk a lot of money on a Channelmaster DVR+, a 256GB pen drive acting as the HDD, and Mohu Leaf indoor antenna. But I find myself hardly watching OTA. I'm instead watching Roku all the time - Hulu+, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Sling, and Dishworld for interational content (my wife). I will likely get rid of Sling ($20 a month is too steep for the content). Maybe it is my sports preference. I wasn't into the whole March Madness thing. Maybe I will keep the OTA setup until football season starts. I also had to replace my wifi router that made a significant improvement in overall stability. Upgraded from Belkin to Asus.

Am still unhappy with Dishworld (Sling uses the same backend platform) - previews often never load, and pause/rewind experience is often quite bad and buggy/laggy.

Am also half considering getting rid of my existing local internet provider (lots of connection drops) and going back to Comcast for cable internet. No matter how much I disliked Comcast, their internet service was really good (if a bit pricey). Still, at about $55 for 50mbps - that are not horribly priced. Maybe 20% more than I would prefer, I guess. My local guy gives me a ton of bandwidth (100mbps) but I have realized that stability is actually more important.

asliarun wrote:

Am also half considering getting rid of my existing local internet provider (lots of connection drops) and going back to Comcast for cable internet. No matter how much I disliked Comcast, their internet service was really good (if a bit pricey). Still, at about $55 for 50mbps - that are not horribly priced. Maybe 20% more than I would prefer, I guess. My local guy gives me a ton of bandwidth (100mbps) but I have realized that stability is actually more important.

Is that a promotional price? Right now I'm paying $67 for the non-promotional without TV 25mbit service. Unless pricing is different in your part of the country, I think you may be reading the fine print incorrectly.

I'm still on the fence about moving my parents and a few other family members to Ooma. From everything I've read I would probably give it a green light, but I know I'd be expected to provide setup and tech support for something that I have no hands-on experience with. That makes me mildly uncomfortable.

I recently noticed that Sling TV is slated to get A&E as well as History and H2 within the next month for the $20 package.

To be honest, I am talking from memory (when I spoke to the Comcast rep when I returned my Comcast modem/DVR etc). I do believe it was 50mbps though, not 25. But the price could have very well been closer to $70 as you say. I live in Chicagoland area.

Setting up Ooma was a breeze and I haven't had to do anything geeky at all - at the time of installation or even afterwards. I don't have any of the fancy features enabled though (the ones for which they charge 10 bucks a month). The only risk/downside to it is that its uptime and availability is directly dependant on the internet connection.

In a couple of cases, I have heard people complain about latency causing some call quality issues (which Ooma tech support knows how to handle by the way), but I have never faced any such issues in my case.

I guess media consumption and content is a very personal choice thing. I still believe Sling is an awesome service, and is *almost* a DVR for free too. Doesn't record but lets you pause, rewind etc and lets you see any show in the last 48hrs "on demand" which even a DVR doesn't do. But maybe I am spoilt by the relative low rates that Netflix and Hulu offer. I still feel that Sling should be in the same ballpark ($10, not $20). But for ESPN lovers or for reality TV junkies (I'm a bit of one - especially food network, travel network, DIY channels, and the Alaskan frontier stuff), it has a few decent options. Maybe once sports season starts, I will change my mind.

I've had MagicJack for almost 7 years now and the only problem I've ever had with it was a dropped call issue when using my old DLink Gaming Router, and that was with the original Magicjack plugged into an old PC. I've used three different routers since then and never had an issue. The newer MagicJack devices are likely even less picky. In that 7 years I've spent a total of $120 on the phone service. Plus $50 for the unit originally, and I think $35 to upgrade to the "Plus" when it came out a couple years ago (no longer needed a PC).

I've been very happy with it. I've also ported numbers to MJ for a few people I know and they've had good results as well.

As for TV, haven't had it in years, so I can't comment there. We're always doing other things, and only generally have time to watch a show on DVD once in a while (most of which we borrow from family!).

Currently paying $62 a month for 30/3 cable from Atlantic Broadband, using a Cisco DPC3010 modem I bought on eBay for $18 to avoid modem rental fees.

asliarun wrote:

To be honest, I am talking from memory (when I spoke to the Comcast rep when I returned my Comcast modem/DVR etc). I do believe it was 50mbps though, not 25. But the price could have very well been closer to $70 as you say. I live in Chicagoland area.

Setting up Ooma was a breeze and I haven't had to do anything geeky at all - at the time of installation or even afterwards. I don't have any of the fancy features enabled though (the ones for which they charge 10 bucks a month). The only risk/downside to it is that its uptime and availability is directly dependant on the internet connection.

In a couple of cases, I have heard people complain about latency causing some call quality issues (which Ooma tech support knows how to handle by the way), but I have never faced any such issues in my case.

If you're in Chicagoland, the non-promotional no-BS price without TV service is $67 for 25mbit, and $79 for 55mbit. That's assuming you buy your own modem, which you absolutely should do (their rental fees are outrageous).

After revisiting the idea, my other concerns with Ooma are that it might not work properly in case of emergency (for my aging parents), or that something might happen during the phone number transfer process which might cause them to lose the house number that they've had for over 40 years. Even though they both have cell phones and it's probably not their primary method for phone calls, I'd still be very upset if I was responsible for either of those things happening. For other family members, neither of those are really an issue. Having a battery backup for the networking equipment probably wouldn't be a bad idea though.