Cord Cuttin' Update 26Feb19

Folks know I long ago cut the cord and depend primarily on OTP (over the top) streams for entertainment, on top of my broadband buy for Summit & El Paso. Key aspects of our current scheme include:

Pricing (Total $311/mo for all wireless, resi broadband x2, and all content services)

• We enjoy two lifetime fixed prices on broadband from CentruyLink. In COS we pay $40/mo for 40MB down and 12MB up. In Silverthorne we pay $35/mo for 14MB down and 1MB down. Both of these are plenty sufficient. $75 total for residential broadband at 2 sites.
• We pay ~$180/mo to AT&T for 3 LTE lines, with a 20MB/mo total limit, and 3 phone leases. We could likely slow our iPhone upgrade pace and reduce our monthly rate.
• We've dropped most premium entertainment services except NetFlix for $11/mo, Prime for some portion of ~$9/mo, and SlingTV (ESPN, Outside & Bloomberg, etc.) for $35/mo - this is the most dubious and next droppable right now. We are also getting Hulu for <$1/mo for a year (gotta get Handmaid's Tale). Total paid OTP streaming content is $56/mo for all TVs and devices in 2 sites and mobile.
• To get HBO, SHO, History, etc. I am using others' credentials (who subscribe to cable) - it's all fair & legal in cases where multiple users are allowed.

Technologies (Highlighted by Plex/video and JRiver/music media servers)

• We have 4 HD HomeRun receivers plucking terrestrial HD broadcasts from my bow tie array antenna and converting them to packets for my Plex server DVR to record via the house LAN. Plex can replay on and control from anything attached to the local LAN/WLAN or remote LAN/WLAN (that's Silverthorne) or any mobile iOS device via LTE. I paid ~$120 one time for Plex Pass several years ago; it's awesome.
• I stream FLAC audio from the same Win7 server via JRiver Media Center. This to any device locally or remotely on LANs/WLANs or LTE. I paid ~$30 for JRiver one time (but I do upgrade about every 3 years). HD audio streams are rendered via my HiFi tube audio systems (either the Schitt Mjolinar amp & Gungnir multi-bit DAC in COS or the Woo Audio 7 Fireflies in Summit) through planar magnetic headphones (Mr Speakers Ether C Flow in COS or Audeze LCD2 in Summit, though I do have dynamic headphones as well, for fun comparing).
• On TVs we use Roku 3s to replay and control all this stuff. On PCs & Macs we render mainly through browsers. On iOS we use the native apps of these systems: Plex, ESPN, HBO, etc. I'm not gonna get into the TV monitors or the sound transducers associated with them but they are decent with 5.1 THX certified surround.
• Google Home Mini (~$30 each) is integrated with my Logitech Harmony universal remotes (~$70/TV) to control this stuff via voice - but just like wired Ethernet vs WiFi, pushing buttons still works best.
• I'm still on Microsoft Win7 for our server and it dishes video & audio as described above but also does automatic backups for the iOS, Mac and PC devices we use, through Macrium Reflect (backup software) - I did try cloud services but that was slow and incurs monthlies. I did flip to a Brother L8360 color laser for printing recently (with those prices so affordable and my Microtest-based B/W laser printer finally weakening). The server employs a 6 drive SATA array of 4TB devices to store the stuff and backup the backups via Raid - I prefer the IBM/Hitachi drives for rotating magnetics as they are more reliable and often lower latency.

That's it these days as to "TV," I've simplified things quite a bit but I continue to look for ways to shed more monthly burn without giving up too much content or quality. Our IoT SmartHome in Summit Co is a whole different topic - but that's monitoring and control, not "TV."