Well I’ve finally done it. I finally cut the cord on cable TV. Frontier’s FIOS TV has just got too expensive for me, especially in light of the fact that I’ll be re-retiring in a couple of years. With some help from their Retention Department I decided to keep FIOS internet and bumped my speed from 150/150Mbps to 500/500Mbps but I still dumped their “cable TV” service. I still have Amazon Prime, Netflix, YouTube Red and to those I’ve added YouTube TV and I’m still saving roughly $100/mo. I just didn’t watch the “cable” premium networks like HBO enough that I’ll miss them. Besides, they were just a no longer needed morale sustaining luxury holdover from a successful cancer battle a few years ago. Anyway, the additional speed has improved the reliability of multiple 4K streams.
In anticipation of this occasion I sidelined my still hooked up Shield TV and bought the latest (new this month) version of the Roku Ultra so that I can take advantage of Amazon Music HD. I originally moved from a Roku 3 to the Shield because at that time YouTube was just too dang slooooow on a Roku 3. I’m glad to report that the latest Roku Ultra is very fast. That said, there have been a couple of small disappointments. The first is that it’s been bit unstable and so far, in one week, has needed a couple of hard restarts. I’m hoping the recent addition of a fast 32GB microSD card will solve that. My second quibble is that the Roku still saddled with with a 100Mb Ethernet port. Not a deal killer for a $100 media player.
