Post-cable, one week in.

Last week we got rid of cable TV in our house in lieu of internet entertainment options.  Between my Roku and my Chromecast we've been watching a lot of stuff we haven't seen.  One remarkable thing is that while we miss certain shows (notably Big Bang Theory), my wife and I have been forcing the kids off the television more and watching our own shows (my wife has been catching up on Grimm for instance). 

By far, we use the Roku more often than the Chromecast, but that's largely a geography thing.  The Roku is connected to the main television downstairs while the Chromecast is connected to the TV in our bedroom.  So far, I've been streaming Youtube to the Chromecast at night, watching some of my favorite channels like "Tested" and "hickok45" - watching their longer streams that I never really had the time to sit at a desk and watch. 

Do we miss certain aspects of Cable?  There are a few shows, but we don't really miss live events as we didn't really watch sports to begin with, and the news we get through the internet anyway.  My biggest gripe with the Chromecast is the lack of support for phone apps, and navigation on my phone for Youtube channels is kinda wonky (the kind of wonky most people are used to already).  Trying to find specific videos is not as cut and dry, but I'm figuring it out. 

My Roku does randomly lock up, which is annoying.  Its patched all the way up, and I have it on a hard-line to the main router (not wireless).  I have to reset the whole thing by pulling the power cord out.  Overall its been fairly stable with only a handful of lockups.  I need to lock down some sort of security into the Roku as the kids have been caught unknowingly watching stuff on Vimeo that was not age appropriate (mostly Lego stop animations), but we're working through the kinks still.  Looking forward to hooking the Raspberry Pi up on one of the media server distros and giving that a whirl as a possible replacement / enhancement to the current setup.