In addition to delivering able to your TV, many cable companies now offer a app or streaming channel for Roku et al. to allow you to watch TV on many different devices through the internet. Do any cable companies just offer a streaming option if you don’t want an actual cable connection in your house? If you just wanted to watch cable through your iPad or Roku, would they still force you to get an actual cable connection?
Dish offers something called Sling TV which is a small set of cable channels for $20/mo streaming only. It seems all the cable companies could essentially do the same thing with their existing service and apps.
I recently called Time Warner about doing this and the rep indicated I’d still have to get the cable installed even if that meant I’d put the box in a drawer and never use it.
Google Fiber is entirely Fiber To The Home. They have a TV Box that you need if you want to watch the TV channels, but they also have an app that you can watch the live stuff through, and a Network Box that has a hard drive to cache programming.
I honestly can’t say that I’m totally clear on what you’re asking.
I don’t believe any cable provider has plans for streaming only… yet. I think the closest you can get right now is PlayStation Vue. It appears to be available on PS3, PS4, and iPad.
Many cable companies have additional fees for converter box rental or other devices required for TV viewing. They provide a box which is hooked up to your TV. But in my case, I would not need any of that. Imagine that I don’t actually have a TV and I only have a tablet. I would just be watching TV using the app available from the cable company. I just want the ability to use the TV app on my tablet and I want to avoid all the equipment rental fees since, without a TV, I don’t need them.
To use the cable company’s app, you log into your account and it lets you watch the channels you have access to. If you don’t have TV service, you can’t watch anything. But if you have the a TV package, you can watch those channels on your tablet along with the OnDemand selections for those channels. The sticking point right now is that the cable company doesn’t let you sign up for TV service without also having to pay for the equipment to hook it up to a TV.
These days, viewing TV content should not require a physical TV.
But it doesn’t- getting it from your cable company requires equipment, but Sling, Hulu and other services do not.HBO and Showtime have standalone service, Netflix and Amazon have streaming subscriptions and there’s Playon.
You only need cable to get the exact channels that company provides,
Every cable company is different, both in the channels provided and the equipment necessary- your company may require a box, my company only requires a 2.50 per month cable card and some companies don’t require any equipment. If I switch to Dish or FIOS or move to an area served by Cablevision, I won’t get the local Time Warner News channel. Decide which channels you want want and whether you want live TV or stream anytime and you’ll probably be able to find it.
And BTW, I can’t get the all of the channels I have on my TV on the cable companies app. Not sure why, but the lineup is not the same. Could be because my internet is not from the cable company.
Well, in terms of having cable, it doesn’t matter whether it’s high speed internet streaming content (for the cable modem) or a modulated digital TV feed (for the TV’s cablebox) you still have to have a data stream of some kind coming into your home via a cable so you still need the cable company. You don’t have to pay for the TV ‘package’ or to rent a cablebox, but you still need someone as your ISP.
To clarify, Google Fiber is $70 a month for gigabit internet (both up and down). If you want cable TV, that is an additional $50 a month. But the TV boxes sell for $120, outright, but you also have the option of paying $5 a month over a 2 year period. In theory, you could watch everything live on the Fiber App, but the various channels are not allowing the app to access DVR functionality. It’s not the fault of the cable companies, but the content providers.
In a lot of ways, the cable companies don’t have much of a choice. Not only are more people cord-cutters, the group of cord-nevers (never paid for TV) is getting larger.