We turned on our TV one night, and the sound came on but the screen was black. Three days later, on the bedroom TV the same thing happened.

Coincidence? In this case: YES. I am not sure what our main TV’s problem is. The repair man will come next Monday. On the Westinghouse television, it appears that it is a very common standard problem. A bad capacitor in the power supply.

We decided to simply buy another television, so we got an LG 32 inch television, and we will sell the Westinghouse on eBay. Meanwhile, we have been using our computer to watch Netflix.

TV :: 2014 Q2 :: Consolidators

Here are some of the things that we have enjoyed watching with this alternate viewing schedule:

From Time to Time . A very well-done British film with much subtle imagery. As an unexpected surprise, two of the characters from the Harry Potter movies have major parts.

Grounded for Life: sitcom: a mildly amusing family sitcom about weak parents and a dominant daughter and unique son. Worth the watch.

Battlestar Galactica: series: starring Lorne Greene as Commander Adama, this classic follows a ragtag group of colonists on their trip through space in search for the planet earth

Sirens: sitcom: a fairly recent comedy following three EMTs (actually six EMTs) through their day today adventures. One very wannabe macho, one very gay, one probably in denial, one old guy, one borderline autistic counter, and one voodo princess. Very fun.

Saturday Night Live: I still can’t graduate from the glory days of John Belushi and Dan Ackelroid. Don’t bother.

Pocahontas: the movie: okay, so we finally watched it. Mildly entertaining. Worth a watch, but I still don’t like the ending AT ALL.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars: series: I expected bad, but was mildly surprised. Worth watching just to know what they are doing.

Miss Fisher’s murder mysteries: British sitcom: still too early to tell, but seems like it might be okay.

Patton: The movie: this one is one also that I have known about for a long time, but have never watched. Patton was a son of a bitch as expected. The plot holds together pretty well, and it is well acted.

Brain Games: can’t say enough about this one. Watch it.

Psych: I knew it was stupid and very entertaining. We are watching it again. We have not been disappointed.

Derek: made for Netflix series: if you watch only one thing on this entire list, watch Derek. Ricky Gervais does a stunning job in about eight episodes.

NEW CHANNELS

The title is because when I first created this page in particular, I dictated it through Siri. Siri has a problem understanding now and then. When I dictated COX, she heard it as cocks. Anyway, we have subscribed to Cox, not cicks! LOL

Since we started this webpage we have moved. We now have COX basic for an additional seven dollars per month. Not a bad deal. Initially, they installed the DVR box. This precluded the use of our TiVo. I spoke with them and got our straight cable for the same price. The link above is for us. The rest of this webpage still applies for you. Live long and prosper!

These pages are intended to help you reduce your monthly television viewing from (probably) over $100 per month to about ten dollars per month.  Seriously!  I am not selling anything, nor am I asking for you to give me money.  This page is mainly for use as a portal for my wife and me, but you can use it too.Send all comments and feedback to RobtAndr@gmail.com

We are using mostly local broadcasts run through a digital antennae into a TiVo recorder. This represents about 85% of our TV viewing. Total cost on this was under $100. To watch LIVE, there are no additional charges. To record on our TiVo, it requires a subscription to the TiVo service.

Netflix streaming makes up about 8% of our viewing. This requires an internet connection.

YouTube makes up maybe 3% of our viewing. This requires an internet connection.

And Roku only about 1% of our viewing. This requires an internet connection.

The last 3% is something new. Google ChromeCast allows us to use our iPad or computer to SET UP a video, which then broadcasts to our TV. See the separate article entitled ChromeCast for more information. This also requires an internet connection.

TV Stations Consolidators with Reasonably Good Performance

FanCast – Watch TV Programs
Hulu – More TV Programs

A lot of TV channels focus on specific interests. For example: History, Cooking, Travel, and so forth. These channels are mostly available through paid Dish or Cable TV channels; hoping that after you see their previews, you will sign up for their channel. There is quite a bit of really good programming here. This page features links to stations providing niche programming.

* Seems to be a lot of hype and advertising, but no programming.

As this project has been going on, we’ve found that a few channels, we watch more than the others. These channels are our Top Picks

Netflix is probably the single best thing that someone without standard Cable or Dish can subscribe to. It’s cheap, and there for you as often as you need it. As far as using your basic $9 “1 movie” subscription as a portal for watching On-Demand movies, it is indispensable. We combine it with a DVR and movies from the Public Library, in addition to the Internet channels.

These links may bring you some sit-com type entertainment, but this page is intended predominantly to bring you sites that offer full-length movie entertainment.

Face it… you could make an entire evening of watching stuff that people post to YouTube! There is much more than YouTube though. This page will bring that type of “amateur” publishing to your screen.

There are many sites that defy categorization. They are damn good sites, but not yet in a category. I present those sites here.

With the addition of TiVo Desktop (about $80) to our Entertainment System we can view nearly any YouTube video on our television. With the tens of thousands of movies published on the web, this gives us a lot of programming choices. Here is a small collection of YouTube Channels that have a significant number of movies on their YouTube Channel.

The process is (1) Create a directory on your computer (2) Save the YouTube video to that directory (3) Download and watch the movie from your TiVo TV.

Norden TV
Blue Crystals, Inc.
Keith Eric
Fadus Carulus
Laco Videos
Super Rod
Melody Dotma
Chich 234
Big Foot Isreal 100 (sic)