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How to get my senior citz. parents TV without cable? 255$ month cable bill!

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Beamin:
I'm sure some of you here have this delema: your parents are older, not technically inclined and have an outrageous cable TV bill for a handful of shows news, and movies they watch.

They have a nice TV but its not a smart TV. Hooking the computer up to the TV through the HDMI port is not an option, they like their remote control and while they do own a laptop and ipad they use it for basic stuff and I cant really see them doing a remote monitor setup just past their level of tech. So what would you guys do?

I was thinking they keep just either comcast internet only or fios internet only. Right now they have TV/Internet and with two leased boxes and fees and BS they are paying 255$ for what little they watch. I was thinking go aerial for their local/news stations but they tend to watch CNN. Unlike me where I just have youtube premium and internet only they like live TV for the News and football.

So is there a solution/box they can connect to their wifi that includes a remote and to the HDMI port of the TV that essentially acts as thier cable box and they can stream? If it was me and I watched TV I would be using a raspberrypi/wireless touchpad/keyboard as the remote) as the cable box with a bunch of paid streaming services (netflix,HBO, Discovery+, hulu= 40$/mo.)but is too technical for them unless someone has come up with a specific remote and OS (great product to market BTW) but I cant find anything simple. They are willing to pay they just dont need to pay thousands per year just for TV. Whats a simple pay per month subscription/ solution that works with the HDMI port? What did you install in your parents house?  :scared:

geggi1:
There are some TV-settop boxes that are hackable. You can probably set this up to stream Tv stations over internet.

alpher:
Genip.tv plus a settop box or even rasp. pi 4 running libreelec (that's what I did in exact same situation).

rsjsouza:
Having moved from cable to the zoo that is the internet TV markeplace, I find the interface of the cable set top box to be light years ahead in terms of ease of use and performance - the various applets and internet TV gizmos have a wide variability in UI and performance.

In terms of cost, we gave up on quite a few shows/channels to limit the monthly fees incurred in signing up to the various applets available (Disney this, Paramount that, something-something channel other thing,  and so on) - otherwise, the monthly difference would be close to zero.

All this to say that, in my opinion, leave the sleeping dogs lie. Otherwise there is a chance you will see yourself being their technical support or user's manual (that was my experience with my tech-unsavvy mom after my ultra tech-savvy dad passed away).

BrokenYugo:
Roku?

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