an obvious life hack: how to make streaming more affordable and still enjoy ad-free viewing

Much ink is being spilled, metaphorically speaking, about the changing trends in subscription-based streaming services. Headlines scream that shows on Netflix and Prime will now include ads, implying that users will pay the same rates plus see ads, as we did with cable TV. 

But that's not true (at least not yet). So far, most streaming services have started offering a tiered system, with a less expensive, ad-supported level, and a more expensive level without ads.

For Netflix, the difference is substantial: $5.99 vs. either $16.49 or $20.99 for the two ad-free options. Disney also has three tiers: $7.99 with ads, $11.99 or $14.99 without. Amazon's deal is worse: in order to avoid an upcoming price increase for Prime Video, you'll need to pay an additional three dollars a month. (These are Canadian prices only, of course.)

No ads. Ever.

No one likes price increases, and I'm no exception. But for me, ads are a deal-breaker. I'd go back to watching on DVD before I'd subject myself to advertising during shows. No question.

The only time we see ads are on YouTube. We've opted not to subscribe to YouTube Premium -- me, because I don't use it often, and Allan, because he's more motivated to keep expenses down. (The apps that block ads on YouTube can't be used on our streaming devices.) But I don't watch full movies or series on YouTube, so it's not a big deal.

Up until now, I've enjoyed the convenience of subscribing to multiple platforms at the same time. With the price increases, the convenience feels more like a luxury. 

Streaming on rotation

So I'm using a simple solution: rotate monthly subscriptions according to what we want to watch. 

As my thrifty partner points out, you can only watch one show/series/movie at a time. (Even if you follow several series at a time, your eyeballs are only one at any given moment.) So when you're watching something on one platform, you're still paying for all the other service that you're not currently watching. 

Like most people, I find the movies and series I want to watch scattered across different platforms, and there's a limited number of shows that interest me from any one service. Take AppleTV+ as an example. When we first got Apple's streaming service, I thought it was amazing -- so many great shows! Then we saw five or six really good shows*, a few others...  and that was it. There was nothing else we were interested in.

So why not rotate?

Subscribe to Netflix to watch specific titles, then after you've seen what you're there for, find something that appeals on a different service, subscribe to that one, and cancel Netflix. Keep an eye on what other services are offering, cancel and subscribe, mix and match. 

It will take a bit more planning, for sure. I'll put reminders on my calendars for the monthly renewals. That's not a big deal, plus if I miss one, it's not a disaster. (I acknowledge this is challenging for some people. I have many challenges, but staying organized is not one of them.) 

Current streaming lineup

Right now, I'm subscribing to Disney and Crave on annual plans. I fell for what appeared to be a better value, imagining I would want to continue indefinitely. When those annual subscriptions run out, I'll put those on rotation, too. 

I'll continue to subscribe to Prime, to get free shipping on Amazon.

I want to get Paramount, to finish "Yellowstone," then watch the two Yellowstone prequels; I've been waiting for the second half of Yellowstone S5 to drop. Now I'll also wait for a good break from some other service, cancelling something before I get Paramount. 

There is one Canada-only snag: when licensing runs out, shows disappear. With this mix-and-match approach, I may miss something I wanted to see. But that's what downloads are for.

Many people will choose lower prices over ad-free, because paying less or "saving" money is more important than not seeing advertising. And for some people, Netflix may suddenly become affordable. But I can't imagine that many people will go back to cable -- expensive, tons of ads, limited viewing options, scheduled (as opposed to on-demand), and for the most part, crappy shows.

------

* Best: Bad Sisters, Shining Girls, Slow Horses, The Morning Show (S1 and S2 only). 

Very good: Severance. 

Good: Ted Lasso (S1 only, emphatically!), Truth Be Told (S1-S2), For All Mankind (S1-S2), Shrinking.

streaming follow-up: we need a universal watchlist app: updated!

On my recent post about streaming -- five reasons streaming is still better than cable and etc. -- I alluded to something towards the end of the post that I want to spotlight here.

We need a universal watchlist app. Perhaps several universal watchlist apps, so we can choose the one that suits us best.

This app would combine all your watchlists, from all the different streaming services you use, into one list. I wouldn't have to look through Netflix, Crave, Prime, and Britbox - not to mention some free services that once in a while have something good.

I wouldn't have to wonder, Where did I see that show? Was that Netflix or Prime or Crave? Didn't we see something good on Tubi? Or was Hoopla?

All my watchlists across all services would be combined.

Reelgood and JustWatch may do this, but it's unclear. I'll try them both and report back.

One thing right off the top: Reelgood doesn't include Crave, even on their Canada site. Crave is where Canadians can legally watch HBO, Showtime, and Starz movies and series, so it's important. I did email Reelgood to ask if they can pick up Crave. JustWatch has Crave, so it's possible to do.

More info when I have it.

Important update below.

*  *  *  *

I've been searching for this for a while, but I didn't know quite what to call it. I was coming up with services like Cinetrack, Seriesguide, and TVTime -- there's a list here. This would tell you where you could stream a particular movie or series, and you could track what you've watched. But they are more streaming search engines than feed aggregators.

Plex has the idea -- all your media streaming through one app -- but it works with media you've purchased or downloaded, not streaming.

I just had no idea what to call this thing I was dreaming of, until I recently saw this post: Forget universal search; give me a universal watch list. That's when the light bulb went off.

Now I've found two services that sound like they can do this. The strange thing is, they are both referred to as streaming search engines. Yet both services claim you can create a master watchlist and click through to the service through this.

Even comparisons of Reelgood and JustWatch calls them streaming search apps.

Maybe that's what the universal watchlist will be called?

I'm going to try both and report back.

*  *  *  *

Update. Reelgood or JustWatch? Neither.

Neither service works properly. Choosing your streaming apps and adding shows to a watchlist is simple enough. But neither Reelgood or JustWatch functions as a streaming hub or universal watchlist on either Roku or AppleTV.

Reelgood has more streaming services -- but not Crave, which Canadian viewers need.

JustWatch has Crave, but is missing Kanopy and dozens of free services. Part of the beauty of the universal watchlist would be the ability to access the bits of decent content on each of the free apps.

But more importantly, neither of them works properly on a TV. They might function properly for people who watch everything on their computer or phone. But the quest for a universal watchlist app continues.

five reasons streaming is still better than cable, even if the price tag is the same (plus a long story mostly for myself)

If you stream movies and TV series, you know that the proliferation of streaming channels has had mixed results for consumers.

Many shows that were formerly on Netflix have been pulled by their media parents, and are now found on different streaming apps. At the same time, Netflix's monthly price has increased -- so you're paying more for less.

Those who still want access to the shows no longer on Netflix need to subscribe to an additional streaming service; Disney (which has all the Marvel properties) and Britbox are two big culprits.

Two other very popular streaming services, Crave (owned by Bell Media) and Prime (owned by Amazon), have exclusive rights to many enticing shows, including all the HBO and Showtime series. Recently Bell Media made an annoying cash-grab by offering a first season of a given show on Crave, then requiring an additional subscription to Movies+HBO or Starz to watch the rest.

Many people have observed that if you want a few of these services, the price tag will rival the cost of cable.

I recently decided to subscribe to whatever streaming apps I want. Previously I was holding it to Netflix and Crave. But we spend next to nothing on entertainment now, and watching movies and series is a principal form of relaxation for me. I'm fortunate that I can afford it now.

So I added a bunch of channels/apps/services/whatever (what are we calling these now?), and the combined price does rival our former cable bill.

However, I still find streaming far superior to cable. Here's why.

1. NO ADS. Paying for TV and still having every show stuffed with commercials is an indignity and should be considered theft. The paid streaming services are ad-free.

2. Streaming lets you purchase only the channels you want. Pay for what you use, don't pay for what you never use. When we had cable, I found 95% of it completely useless.

3. The low monthly prices for most streaming services give you flexibility. You can get an app for a month or two to watch a specific show, then easily unsubscribe.

4. Which leads to the next reason: there are no installation fees or other rip-off costs.

5. Which leads to reason #5: you don't have to deal with telcos at all. All you need is internet.

In conclusion, streaming > cable.


* * * *

I was looking back through some of my early posts about cable, access to baseball, Netflix, Roku, and etc. I had forgotten about some of the twists and turns I went through. I want to document it all here. Totally boring stuff, but I want to have it in one place.

1. In New York, we subscribed to Netflix, back when it was only a DVD-by-mail service. Netflix was a huge game-changer for us, as renting quality movies in our neighbourhood was always problematic. We subscribed to Netflix for DVDs for several years.

2. When we emigrated to Canada, I knew there was no Netflix (at the time), but I heard there was a Netflix-type service called Zip.ca.

3. I subscribed to Zip, but there were issues. One, they sent you movies in random order. Netflix didn't guarantee you would receive movies in the exact order of your queue, but you got something close to it. Since we don't watch blockbuster movies, we almost always received our top three choices. With Zip, it was totally random. The next baseball season would roll around, and I hadn't seen my priority movies. I did find a workaround, but it was limited.

4. At the same time, we were spending a lot of money to see our out-of-town team's baseball games. We had to subscribe to cable at a high level, then add the MLB package, plus we subscribed to MLB online, so Allan could watch games while at work (which was at least half the games for the week, sometimes more). But we couldn't watch MLB only online, because Rogers capped our internet usage!

5. In 2006 I lost my job and was unemployed or very under-employed for many years. Spending less was a priority, one that we often failed to achieve.

6. In 2010, Netflix came to Canada as a streaming-only service. There wasn't much on it.

7. In 2011, my workaround with Zip -- which depended on a willing and creative customer service person -- ended. (Soon after that, Zip was purchased by Rogers and became a standard pay-per-view service.) I subscribed to a different DVD-by-mail service, called Cinemail. It sucked and I quickly cancelled it.

8. In 2012, two extraordinary things happened at that same time: my friend M@ told me about Teksavvy, and I learned we could watch MLB through a Roku streaming device. Minds were blown, worlds were rocked.

I'll let an old post tell this part of the story.

In February, I asked for help with my movie-season problem. We had been getting special treatment from Zip, but once that ended, Zip became useless again. I knew there had to be a better way. It's the 21st Century, for crissakes. Why can't we get on-demand baseball, movies, and whatever else we want to watch? First world problems? Absolutely! But that's where I live.

In the past, no suggestions really worked for us. We couldn't get rid of cable TV, because we needed it to watch baseball. We couldn't watch baseball online, because we had a cap on our bandwidth usage. (And because of our work schedules, we had to subscribe to baseball through cable and internet!) I didn't want to watch movies via Netflix only on computer. I didn't want to buy a gaming system just to watch movies. Nothing was quite right.

And then, everything came together.

M@ started it all by identifying the root of the problem: the first step was to get rid of Rogers and their ridiculous bandwidth cap. Switching to TekSavvy was fast and easy. We save money, we get more, and suddenly... we have choices.

Next, we bought two Roku devices, one for each TV. Allan drove to Buffalo to make sure we were set up for the baseball season, but they may now be shipping to Canada.

Next, Roku began to support Netflix Canada.

And next, Netflix Canada has hugely improved since I first checked it out. It has even improved in the last two weeks, growing by leaps and bounds.

I thought that getting rid of cable would be slightly inconvenient, but I'd adjust. That's because I didn't know what awaited me through streaming, via Roku.

Baseball without commercials! (At least the ones between innings.)

Movies! And lots of them. No more waiting to see what we receive in the mail - but without having to watch on a computer, or having to hook up a computer to the TV.

And not just movies. The small amount of TV I care about is suddenly now available on demand. Without commercials. . . . .

From the earliest days of Netflix DVDs-by-mail and cable Pay-Per-View, I used to wonder when we'd be able to watch any movie or any TV show, anytime we wanted, in our own homes. I just moved one giant step closer to that.

9. We learned how to create a wireless VPN, so we would have two IP addresses, one in Canada and one in the US, so we were able to access both versions of Netflix, plus baseball without blackouts.

10. In 2016, Netflix cracked down on VPNs. You could still watch US Netflix on a computer, but I could no longer get it wirelessly through Roku. (VPN providers still claim that you can, but really... no.) Fortunately by this time, Netflix Canada had improved significantly.

11. Also in 2016, Amazon's streaming service, then called Amazon Instant Video, finally was available in Canada.

12. In 2018, we purchased an AppleTV, which has exclusive rights to Crave -- which has all the HBO and Showtime shows. Turns out it gives much better access to MLB than Roku. Nice!

13. In 2019, I gave myself permission to add any streaming service I want, to have maximum options. I am pretty happy about this.

14. One last bit. I am dreaming of an app that would let viewers track their watchlists across different services. Not a media server, because I won't have the shows downloaded. And not quite one of these, as they are all limited in different ways. I want a master watchlist that can click through to the show on the appropriate streaming service.

mlb.tv, roku, and appletv: why is this so difficult?

If you're an app developer for MLB, or if you're with Roku or AppleTV, skip down to the final paragraphs!

Because Allan and I follow an out-of-town baseball team, we subscribe to MLB.TV, and have done so for ages. As much as I dislike pay-per-TV services, being able to watch any baseball game at any time, with either the home or away feed, is amazing.

Once we were able to do this by streaming, as opposed to through cable, the price went down and the quality went up. I've blogged many times about the wonder of the Roku streaming device, and how it solved so many issues for watching baseball, TV series, and movies.

Last year, I learned that the Canadian streaming service CraveTV offers lots of Showtime and HBO content. Thanks to exclusive licensing deals, Crave is not available on Roku; it only streams on AppleTV. (You can watch on a computer or mobile device, but we don't like that.) So in order to get the additional Showtime and HBO content, we bought an AppleTV device.

Lo and behold, AppleTV is now way better than Roku! When Roku first came out, it was widely agreed that it was the best streaming device on the market. Now fourth-generation AppleTV blows Roku away. The streaming quality is much better, the interface is easier, and it offers more premium content.

Here's where baseball comes in. MLB.TV on Roku lets users choose separate video and audio feeds. For many reasons, I prefer the NESN (Red Sox) TV feed with audio from the local Red Sox radio on WEEI. Roku lets you do this, and it syncs. (In the olden days, I would watch baseball on TV with the sound on mute, and keep the game on the radio. This was my preferred way to enjoy baseball, but the audio and video were completely out of sync.) So Roku did away with all that, and we've been in baseball heaven.

But now, with the 2018 season, the Roku MLB app is a total shambles. It stutters, freezes, and crashes constantly. We could barely make it through a half-inning without frustrating stops, starts, and reboots. And the definition is awful. It's like we're streaming some analog feed with a dial-up modem.

On AppleTV, MLB streams beautifully and in good-quality hi-def. However, the MLB app on AppleTV does not let you choose separate video and audio feeds. We can watch NESN with the NESN announcers, or listen to WEEI with no video at all, but we can't mix-and-match feeds.

Roku: Please fix your MLB.TV app!

AppleTV: Please get your MLB.TV app to have this capability!

MLB.TV: Please get your developers on this!

streaming update: we add appletv to the mix

We've added something new to our streaming capabilities: AppleTV. I never thought I'd own an Apple product, but one app made it irresistible: CraveTV.

Crave is a Canadian streaming service that has exclusive rights to HBO and Showtime content, shows that will never appear on Netflix. And Crave, in turn, has an exclusive deal with AppleTV. Researching this, I could see that Crave won't be available on Roku anytime soon, if ever.

So we bought AppleTV 4K, and it's great. We had been watching HBO and Showtime series through "other means," and now we can stop that. This is easier, not to mention legal. At $250 US, the AppleTV itself is not cheap, but to my mind, it's well worth it. Crave is only $8.00/month.

Like Roku, AppleTV's set-up is simple and takes less than a minute, the remote is super simple, and navigation is intuitive. The only thing AppleTV doesn't have, strangely, is a USB port. But we still have Roku for that; we can leave them both connected and easily switch back and forth.

I can't offer an actual side-by-side comparison of Roku and AppleTV, as our Roku model is old, and the AppleTV is the newest, fourth-generation model. When we first starting using Roku in 2012, the reviews of AppleTV were terrible. CNET and other trustworthy sources advised that Roku was the way to go. Now it's possible that the newest Roku works just as beautifully as the newest AppleTV. But unfortunately, it will not have CraveTV, and that's what I needed.

And just a reminder of what makes all this streaming possible: unlimited internet through TekSavvy.

adventures in streaming: tubi, dick cavett, and the manster

The Roku streaming device gives you access to thousands of apps... most of which are completely useless.

That doesn't mean I don't love Roku. I do! But we use it almost exclusively to watch Netflix and the Red Sox, and to access downloaded files on the TV. We've also installed a few other apps, most of which we rarely or never touch: PBS, Democracy Now!, Google Play, National Film Board, a cooking channel or two. Sometimes I page through the available apps, install one, try it, then immediately remove it.

There are dozens of apps for movies and TV shows. Some are the streaming option you get when you already have a network or cable channel. Some have expensive monthly fees, others are expensive pay-per-view, and lots are free. If the description says "classic movies" read "public domain". Classic or contemporary, there may be one or two movies of interest, then a whole lot of filler.

One popular free movie app is Crackle, owned by Sony to stream their own content. I installed Crackle because it had one movie I wanted to see that I couldn't find anywhere else. We found the embedded advertising (which you can't skip) too intrusive, almost as bad as watching commercial television. I removed Crackle, but it wouldn't unsubscribe me, and I finally had to kill-file their emails. When I checked back recently, they no longer even have that one movie.

We recently had better luck with TubiTV. It's also free, and so far, the ads are only at the beginning, and it's not too annoying to wait through them (on mute, of course). So far Tubi has given us two gems.

One is the old Dick Cavett show. Cavett was known to be a thoughtful host who did lengthy, in-depth interviews, sometimes featuring one person for the entire show. He was also really into great music. There are performances by and/or interviews with Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and others, an impressive list.

From the movie "Janis: Little Girl Blue," an excellent biopic of Janis Joplin that I saw on Netflix, I learned about her connection with Cavett. I was once obsessed with all things Janis Joplin, and still love and admire her, so I was excited to see her appearances on The Dick Cavett Show available on Tubi.

There are also interviews with famous writers, comedians, actors, athletes, politicians -- a wide swath of interesting people. Check out this episode list, it's pretty amazing.

Tubi also has a "Cult Favorites" category, on which I found my favourite B movie of all time: The Manster. I'm not especially knowledgeable about B movies, but I watched a lot of old movies when I was a kid, the good with the bad. (This is in the dark ages when we watched whatever the networks and weird local stations aired.) I've seen The Day the Earth Stood Still, Night of the Living Dead, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Plan 9 from Outer Space, and all the other big B movies from that era, multiple times. My favourite is The Manster.

In The Manster, an American journalist goes to Japan to interview a scientist rumoured to be experimenting with youth serums. In his secret mountain laboratory, the scientist keeps various creatures locked in cages. (We later learn that one of the creatures used to be his wife.) Scientist secretly injects journalist, which causes a second head to grow out of his shoulder. The second head is evil and causes the transformed journalist to murder people.

After a manhunt, as the police close in on the two-headed journalist, the suspense builds to the shocking conclusion. With the manster standing behind a tree, we hear a giant tearing sound, like the world's biggest velcro strip being opened. Tearing, screaming, tearing, screaming... the monster rips apart from the man! Interestingly, both man and monster now have two arms and two legs. Police kill the murdering monster and the journalist is carried off on a stretcher.

There are also some riveting subplots, featuring the doctor and journalist drinking and carousing, the doctor's assistant falling in love with the journalist, and the journalist's wife trying to win him back from his new profligate life. The doctor's assistant ends up in a volcano, courtesy of the newly liberated monster.

I was so pleased to see The Manster on Tubi that we watched it straight through, something I haven't done since I was in my pre-teen years. It's a classic B movie combo of wild histrionics, meaningless cliches, giant plot holes, and bad lighting. But the real reason to watch are the awesome special effects. I swear you can see the strap that's holding the extra head on the actor's shoulder.

Before writing this post, I didn't even know The Manster was a famous B movie! I found it on many best-of lists. There's even an action figure.

excellent selection, price, and service from canada computers

Allan has been using Canada Computers & Electronics for a while, but for some reason, I was not onboard. I thought they were a small outfit that wouldn't have a good selection or good prices. Wrong! They have a full selection, very good prices, and excellent customer service.

Right after we moved, we needed three computer-related purchases in a row. When it rains, it pours, eh?

First my computer wouldn't connect to the internet, and we suspected it needed a new wireless card. At the store, we didn't have the right information, and bought the wrong one. Allan returned it the next day, very easily, and came home with the correct card (which was less expensive).

Next, setting up our TV and Roku, we couldn't get a decent connection. It's a good thing we already knew that Roku works great, or we would have thought the whole streaming thing was crap. In the last two places we lived, the distance from router to Roku was much greater, and our connections were always fine. Now we're in a smaller space, the router is much closer to the Roku, and we can barely connect. We find this very strange!

I did some research online, and thought we should try a wifi range extender. Back to Canada Computers: another good selection and very good price. (The range extender solved the problem, and we intend to buy a second one, to cover both our wireless networks, the ISP and the VPN.)

Then, most annoyingly, my external hard drive failed. That's my backup, all my photos, my own writing clips, and whatever else. Yup, I failed to backup my backup. Photos from trips are also on CD, and some are on Flickr, so it wouldn't be a total loss. But it wouldn't be fun.

We went straight to Canada Computers. They told me how their data recovery service works: a minimum of $20, and if they can't recover the data, they'll let you know and you can collect the drive, no further cost; if they can recover it, it's $80 per hour for labour, and usually runs around $200. I expected to pay around $200, so that seemed fine. I also had to buy a new external, someplace for them to save the data if they could recover it. (It's been an expensive move!)

Two days later, they called to say the data was recovered. When we picked it up, we were very pleased to be charged only $80, the minimum one hour of labour. That kind of honesty gives me a really good feeling about going to Canada Computers again.

Also, although I always call them "Canada Computers," the store is actually "Canada Computers & Electronics". They sell TVs, home appliances like refrigerators, and small appliances like coffee makers and toasters. Their staff actually knows about the products they sell, and their prices are competitive. Good bye, Best Buy and Future Shop!

"hide my ass" is far superior for vpn and wireless vpn

My adventures with VPNs, wireless VPNs, and other fun IP-address changes just keep getting better all the time. My new favourite addition is called HideMyAss - a stupid name, but a terrific service.

When I last updated you on our awesome wireless VPN + Roku experience, we were using two separate routers - one for wireless VPN, and one for everything else. This was necessary because MLB.TV - through which we watch baseball on our TV, via Roku - didn't get along with the wireless VPN router. The feed would continually stop for buffering, making it impossible to follow a game. To watch baseball, we would use our regular router, with our normal Canadian IP address. To watch US Netflix, we'd use the router with the non-Canadian IP address.

Flipping routers, as we call it, was no big deal. But recently, anytime I was using the wireless VPN router, my internet connection would slow to a crawl. Plus the selection of IP addresses offered by Acevpn was getting less and less reliable. And the only way to find out if a particular IP address woud work was to try it. That meant going into the router, manually changing the gateway IP address, waiting a few minutes, seeing if it worked. If it didn't, try another. And another.

Recently it dawned on me that perhaps the VPN service itself was the problem. The original instructions that I used to set up our wireless VPN mentioned HMA (and for all I know, it is stealth marketing for HMA), so I tried them.

They are great! Here's why.

1. HMA has hundreds of IP addresses all over the world. By contrast, Acevpn had a dozen or so in the US and a handful in the UK.

2. For the standard VPN connection, on your computer, you can download and install their software. It gives you a handy, user-friendly dashboard with a simple on/off button and a full choice of IP addresses. No fiddling with routers or code.

3. You can test the IP addresses before you choose one!

4. And, most importantly for users of Roku or other streaming devices, HMA's wireless VPN does not interfere with any other internet functions. We can watch MLB via Roku from a "different location" with no buffering issues.

This rocks.

Canadians, there is no reason to put up with the sub-standard content available on Netflix Canada, or to be blacked out of sports you want to see, and which you are already paying for.

We're not stealing. Netflix and MLB are still getting their monthly fees. We're just not letting Rogers dictate what we can and can't see.

more roku joy: post your pbs and nfb recommendations here

Roku has added an app for PBS! This means we watch music clips from Austin City Limits, and in the winter we'll binge on American Experience history documentaries and American Masters biographies. These documentaries are consistently worth watching, and often truly excellent.

On American Masters, we've recently seen "There But For Fortune," about Phil Ochs, and will eventually see bios of Philip Roth, J. D. Salinger, Johnny Carson, Mel Brooks, Rosetta Tharpe, and James Baldwin. American Experience has a spate of docs we haven't seen, including "The Abolitionists," and films on the building of the Panama Canal and the Hoover Dam.

Roku has also added an app for the National Film Board of Canada! The choices there are overwhelming, so if you've got NFB recommendations, please post them here.

The appearance of these two apps is good news for streaming in general and for Roku in particular. Now that all my TV and movie viewing is on-demand, and I have so many choices, I often wonder how I managed with cable. But this is how I managed: I hated it and I complained often. Streaming through Roku plus downloads plus our US IP address equals movie and TV heaven. Maybe one day Netflix Canada will get up to speed, and we'll drop the US address, but until then... If you want to know how, go here, then here.

* * * *

There are many excellent videos on the Roku PBS/Austin City Limits app, but for me, none tops this gripping performance by Richard Thompson: "1952 Vincent Black Lightning". Enjoy.

in which my roku experience gets even more awesome: how to set up a wireless vpn

You may recall that we switched our internet provider from Rogers to TekSavvy in order to get more bandwidth, then dumped Rogers altogether by switching from cable to streaming. We bought a Roku streaming device. And I fell in love with it.

No more paying for dozens of channels that we'll never watch. On-demand viewing without DVR'ing. And no more cable bill! We even upgraded one Roku to the model that has a USB port and a media server, so we can watch our own media directly on our TV. Awesome.

There was only one piece missing.

If you use a streaming device, and you don't live in the US, your options are very limited. For us, there's Major League Baseball, Netflix Canada, and... that's it. There is a pathetic Netflix wannabe called Crackle, and Roku hosts a zillion little homemade niche channels, but nothing that would cause you to dump cable TV. Netflix Canada has improved a lot, but it's still very limited compared with US Netflix. You also can't get Amazon Instant Video, which has a ton of movies and TV shows, or Hulu Plus, which I personally don't want, but is very popular.

You can easily get around the restrictions and watch content from those sites on your computer, by using one of the many proxies or tunnel services to change your IP address to a US location. But your Roku or streaming device work with wireless internet, and your wireless router will still be using a Canadian IP address.

Unless it's not.

You can follow these instructions, and change your wireless IP address.

We bought a new router, a specific model that supports the third-party, open-source firmware DD-WRT. We downloaded the software, followed these instructions, et voilà, US Netflix and anything else will now stream through Roku onto our TV.

I wasn't sure we should try it, but after getting encouragement and support from a very techy friend (partner of wmtc reader James), we decided to give it a go. We figured the worst that could happen was we'd go back to our old router and return the new wireless router to the store.

But the process wasn't too difficult, and worked the first time.*

There was some question if this would cause problems with our VoIP phone, but it didn't.

We did find one glitch. With the new IP address, MLB.com didn't stream properly on Roku, and certain websites, especially those with videos, don't load and play properly. For now, the solution is simple, if a bit clunky: we simply swap routers - one router for Baseball Season, one router for Movie Season.

The Asus RT N-16 router costs about $85 before tax, the equivalent of one or more months of cable, depending on your plan. Like the Roku, it's a one-time purchase.

You can use any VPN service. The instructions I linked to are for Hide My Ass, but we are using AceVPN. The free level of service is adequate for accessing sites on your computer. We decided to use the $6/month level for streaming.

It works and it's fun.




* Why do this instead of physically connecting a computer to the TV? Once it's set up, it's always there - no need to continually connect and re-connect. You can use your computer and the TV at the same time. You can buy a Roku device for each TV in the house, and they operate independently of each other. The picture quality is better. It's simpler, easier, and more pleasant to just pick up your remote and watch movies or shows the way you normally would, as opposed to dealing with a computer that is connected to a TV. And frankly, between baseball and movies, and the little bit of TV I like to watch before I go to sleep, I couldn't see having to deal with a computer hook-up every time.

i ♥ roku

I am absolutely gaga over Roku. This was exactly the missing piece we needed. And it all started with getting rid of Rogers cable.

In February, I asked for help with my movie-season problem. We had been getting special treatment from Zip, but once that ended, Zip became useless again. I knew there had to be a better way. It's the 21st Century, for crissakes. Why can't we get on-demand baseball, movies, and whatever else we want to watch? First world problems? Absolutely! But that's where I live.

In the past, no suggestions really worked for us. We couldn't get rid of cable TV, because we needed it to watch baseball. We couldn't watch baseball online, because we had a cap on our bandwidth usage. (And because of our work schedules, we had to subscribe to baseball through cable and internet!) I didn't want to watch movies via Netflix only on computer. I didn't want to buy a gaming system just to watch movies. Nothing was quite right.

And then, everything came together.

M@ started it all by identifying the root of the problem: the first step was to get rid of Rogers and their ridiculous bandwidth cap. Switching to TekSavvy was fast and easy. We save money, we get more, and suddenly... we have choices.

Next, we bought two Roku devices, one for each TV. Allan drove to Buffalo to make sure we were set up for the baseball season, but they may now be shipping to Canada.

Next, Roku began to support Netflix Canada.

And next, Netflix Canada has hugely improved since I first checked it out. It has even improved in the last two weeks, growing by leaps and bounds.

I thought that getting rid of cable would be slightly inconvenient, but I'd adjust. That's because I didn't know what awaited me through streaming, via Roku.

Baseball without commercials! (At least the ones between innings.)

Movies! And lots of them. No more waiting to see what we receive in the mail - but without having to watch on a computer, or having to hook up a computer to the TV.

And not just movies. The small amount of TV I care about is suddenly now available on demand. Without commercials.

And to complete the picture, if someone wanted to get around Canadian copyright restrictions - speaking hypothetically, of course - that someone could set up a VPN to access Amazon Instant Video. And then that purely hypothetical someone would have access to a full range of media, all streaming through the little marvel that is Roku.

If you haven't seen one yet, Roku is a little black box - 3.3-inches square and just under an inch tall - that plugs into your TV. Configuring it takes five minutes, max. You can't even really call it configuring; it just picks up your wireless, and you're ready to go. In keeping with Roku's keep-it-simple approach, even the remote is minimalist.

You choose what apps to load, some free and some for purchase. It supports MLB, NHL, NBA, and MLS games, Netflix, Hulu Plus, Crackle, Amazon Instant Video, and a bunch of other options.

From the earliest days of Netflix DVDs-by-mail and cable Pay-Per-View, I used to wonder when we'd be able to watch any movie or any TV show, anytime we wanted, in our own homes. I just moved one giant step closer to that.

It's completely ridiculous to be this happy over a device. I heart Roku!

follow-up: dumping zip and dumping rogers!

Thank you to everyone who participated in the recent "help me get rid of zip" discussion, both on wmtc and by email. And thanks to CNET, for this video! I started out asking about movies, but ended up with so much more. Goodbye, Rogers! Whoo-hoo!

So many friends and readers have told me they've cancelled cable TV service, but we weren't able to do that: we needed cable for baseball. And we also subscribed to MLBTV online. I hated the redundancy, but there was no other way to have baseball both at home and for Allan at work (where he watches three games each week). But thanks to you all, we've done it.

So here's what we have:

1. I've already cancelled Rogers cable and internet! I had already dumped Rogers for cell phone service, getting more for my money with Wind. So now I am Rogers-free.

2. Later this month, (at the time suggested by friendly, helpful customer service rep) I will order TekSavvy cable-modem internet service.

3. We will purchase a Roku, through which (we are told) we can stream MLBTV onto our TV, and which will eventually support Netflix Canada and other streaming services. If that doesn't work for some reason, we'll get a PlayStation3 for the same purpose.

4. We continue to subscribe to MLBTV, as we always have.

5. One-time expenses for Roku purchase, any necessary adaptors, and TekSavvy modem.

6. I'll subscribe to Netflix Canada when it's available on Roku, because for the low price, why not have the option.

7. I'm also subscribing to Cinemail, a low-budget version of Zip, with friendly service and a wide range of plans, so that I can continue to subscribe in the spring and summer at a lower level, then bump up to the higher level in the winter.

8. When I cancel Zip in April as always, I will not re-subscribe in the fall.

We gain:

1. No more paying for cable TV! Wow! An entire bill disappears!

2. No more paying extra for baseball on cable TV!

3. No more giving money to over-priced media giant!

4. We will pay slightly less for internet, and will lose the 95GB cap. The cap will now be 300GB (and if you go over, which is tough to do, it's only $0.50 per GB).

5. I can rent movies all year, because we're no longer paying for the baseball cable package, and because Cinemail has cheaper plans.

We lose:

1. Red Sox games when they play the Blue Jays, which are available on cable TV but subject to local blackouts on MLBTV. It's only a handful of games a year, plus Allan is blacked out at work anyway. We'll listen to them on the radio (which I really enjoy). No biggie.

2. I will have to watch Coronation Street online.

3. My half-hour of TV before bed, a lifetime habit of how I fall asleep. Not sure what will happen with that, but I know I'm not paying for cable TV just to watch re-runs of The Simpsons.

And that's it. Allan doesn't watch any TV. My TV watching is very minimal. And now it's over.

* * * *

Movie season may be a bit more challenging, a combination of Cinemail, the library, streaming Netflix, and borrowed DVDs. But I've had it with Zip.

We still have to hook up the streaming-to-TV thing, but we have two months to work that out, plus at the minimum, we can certainly watch on our netbooks.

Predictably, when I called Rogers to cancel, they offered me all kinds of promotions to try to get me to stay, including a deep discount on TV. That just makes me more pissed off and determined to leave. As you know, I hate haggling.

help me get rid of zip

When we lived in NYC, I was hugely into Netflix. The selection and convenience were terrific, and for frequent movie watching, the flat monthly fee was a great value.

After moving to Canada, we joined Zip... and thus began the saga.

Zip (now owned by media giant Rogers) has a good (not great) selection, their ship-times are good, and the price is decent if you watch a lot of movies. But. Two big buts.

Their system doesn't work if you have less than 20 titles on your ZipList (the equivalent of the Netflix queue). This would not be a problem if they shipped titles in your order of preference. You could simply add junk titles that you didn't really want to see to the end of your list.

That's where the second but comes in. Zip does not ship titles in any order even resembling your preference. You're as likely to get a movie from the bottom of your list as you are from the top.

Now, as you all know and are undoubtedly sick of reading by now, I watch movies for half the year, and watch baseball during the other half. Movie Season begins in November or (grumble, grumble) October, and ends at the end of March. By January, I have a short list of movies that I really want to see before April, but my ZipList is running low, so service slows down.

I then have two choices. I either add a bunch of "filler" titles to my list, and hope they don't ship, or I get movies much less frequently - which sucks, plus what I do receive is still unlikely to be any of my top choices.

When we first joined, we really struggled with this, compounded by truly terrible customer service. At that time, Zip's idea of customer service was to tell me that my problem was not really happening, and if it is, it was my own fault, and I should lower my expectations. (I wrote about it here, here, and here.)

To keep my business, a customer service manager gave me some special service: she did something to my list so that movies would continue to ship, even though the number of titles on the list was dwindling.

The following year, I contacted her again... and she again obliged. This special service - which I know some of you will not approve of - kept me a reasonably happy Zip subscriber.

It worked for four years, but now she has left the company. Zip seems to have fixed their customer service problem - they're not arguing anymore, they're polite, and sympathetic - but no one is interested in helping me with this issue. I understand that I can't expect special service forever, but I don't understand why they can't figure out how to run their business better.

Now I really want to get rid of Zip, but I don't know how to replace it. Here are the options that I know of.

- Netflix. I know many Canadians are excited that Netflix is now available in Canada, through a streaming service. However, we don't have a gaming system, so it would mean watching movies on a computer, which both Allan and I find very unappealing. In addition, I've heard from many people that the quality is very bad - sputtering, buffering, skipping. We would hate that. Unless the quality improved and there was some easy way to watch on our TV, this is not an option.

- Downloading from iTunes. Even if we can somehow work around our Rogers download cap (which is an inconvenience for Allan), we're talking $13.00 per movie. That's all right sometimes, but during Movie Season, I see two or three movies each week. Through a Netflix or Zip type of service, I can do that for about $30 a month. Thirteen dollars a pop is not affordable. Plus, the selection will be minimal.

- Pay-per-view on cable. No downloading issues, but other than that, same as above.

- Movie rental stores. Do these even exist anymore? Inconvenient, crap selection. Return to the 1990s. No thanks.

- The library. Good when movies are available, but right now, for example, there are 12 copies of Moneyball and 115 people waiting for them ahead of me. Also, selection will be spotty.

- Other services like Zip? I found something called Canflix, formerly in Calgary, now out of business, and CineMail.ca, in Winnipeg. I haven't found any user reviews yet. Their website looks so rinky-dink, I'm already skeptical, but I'll continue to investigate.

Anything else? What can I do???