The Apple store today for some iPhone info and
 

And we saw the Apple TV box. The woman told us about the TV situation with the box, $150 for the plug in set up. Anyone using this and what do you think. I would love to dump cable and the three channels we watch. She said there are no sports with this set up. By the time college football comes around maybe there will be.

Not sure of the question.

I'll answer what I think you are looking for.

They are not cable set top box replacements.

Apple TV's, ROKU's, and the like will not get you broadcast channels / over the air (OTA) like ABC, NBC, CBS, etc....

However the networks have already built or are building streaming apps. NBC has one that works reasonably well. Some of the oddities are the commercial breaks. They have not sorted that out yet so a lot of times while watching for example The Today Show you'll see a camera shooting an empty hallway or some other behind the scenes stuff during commercial breaks.

So full network is still 6 months to a year out.

What you get are things like HBO, BBC, SHOWTIME etc... which are the extra premium content on cable networks. Typically access to that content is ~$10.00 per month per content provider.

You also get subscription services like Netflix and HULU but again you pay for them.

They will also stream content from your libraries, music, DVD's that you've ripped to disk. Pro Tip: Redbox DVD rentals are a buck and change, rent a disc, rip it to your media library, watch at your leisure.

If the 3 channels you watch are network then downgrade to the lowest service your provider offers, typically called Antennae Service. Usually dirt cheap. Then use one of the streaming boxes to access any premium stuff like HBO that you may want.

It's kinda a la carte that way.

You have to do some math and figure out if it's cheaper to pay individually for the content you want or if it's cheaper to get a package with 5,000 channels that has the dozen you will watch.

No expert, but if you have a smart TV you don't need an Apple TV anymore.

If you want to seriously geek out a small PC, a couple of appropriate multi-channel Hauppage capture cards, some MythTV+Linux and you can do soooo much more. Once basics are met costs are determined by how much storage you want... I know a few folks who spent $600-900 on building setups with multiple capture cards (basically able to record *all* OTA channels at once), terabytes of redundant disk storage not just for recordings and previously downloaded movies (ie, getting Netflix/Redbox DVDs and ripping them, etc) but also their audio collections, backing up their laptop/desktop computers, etc.

Or if you are happy with the basics, the Apple TV, a Chromecast (much cheaper than AppleTV), or other commercial offerings.... or just a Smart TV.

No matter which way you go, you'll still need data service... so depending on your options there (cable, dsl, fiber to the house, etc)...

But Chromecast requires a device to feed it a stream so if no compatible device is already owned its an additional expense, usually at least equal to or greater than the cost of an Apple TV or ROKU.

Not a fan of Smart TV's.

If you do the math you are paying a premium by buying a smart TV vs a dumb TV, usually equal in cost to an Apple TV or ROKU.

You lose the flexibility of the mobility of a streaming device, Apple TV and ROKU can run wireless and are easy to move making every TV you own a potential smart TV.

Then there is the KISS principle, if some part of the smart functionality, for example the WIFI card, goes south you can't just run out and get a replacement. You end up with an expensive dumb TV.

You also have to have confidence that the TV manufacturer will keep up on software / firmware updates / enhancements /new feature support which based on how the Android phone / tablet categories went is, IMHO, a bad bet.

If you are buying a new TV then buying the functionality separate is generally a better long term option.

What three channels do you watch?. That's the most important question.

no, just exaggerated, we watch more than that, it just seems like it plus BBC on the nights Graham Norton is on

I would do the roku(it's much cheaper) and pay the $20/month for SlingTV to watch regular tv. Not sure if they have BBC but they do have ESPN for sports

https://www.sling.com

We love our AppleTV.
We download all the shows and movies we are interested in to iTunes and stream to the big screen tv. There are lots of 'channels' available but we pretty much only use YouTube.

I've been using an Apple TV unit more-or-less exclusively for three or four years now - no cable, no need. Between simply buying what I want on-demand through iTunes and a Netflix subscription I get more than enough. I only watch maybe 2-3 hours a week between television and movies anyway so I don't see any value in paying for lots of cable programming - I mean commercials. I think I haven't seen a television commercial in maybe a couple of years. How many hours of my life have I gotten back that way?

Local programming? Meh. Who needs it? I have rabbit ears for the once-every-year-or-two sporting event that's not on Apple TV that I actually might want to see, or I just go to a sports bar. My bill is (including typical on-demand purchases) about $30 or $40 a month ($8 Netflix, maybe $25-$30 in iTunes buys, if that).

It's a good setup - no time warner, no comcast, no commercials, no endless self-promotional crapola, no bullschyte. Works well for me. Oh and everything is viewable across devices (iPhone, iPad, laptop, tv) whenever I feel like it. Not too shabby.

We might try it, get HULU and Netflix to see how it goes. If things go bad we can always go back to cable. But I hope not.

Good luck finding a decent size tv with good specs that isn't also a smart tv. I tried earlier this year with about a 50" and couldn't find anything that isn't a smart tv, except for ancient 720 plasmas on closeout.

Can't you just buy a monitor or television now and simply disable all the extra crap you don't want or need? Of course the counterpoint is then "why pay for it in the first place" but if that's all there is now is it really affecting cost at that point if it's now an automatic assumption? Remember once upon a time seatbelts, power brakes and cup holders were all considered "options" that you'd pay for. Now they're all expectations and there is little if any cost add to having those things present.

the Octo Core Android L might be a better choice. works like a jailbroken apple tv box. buy a cheap wireless keyboard to interface with the unit.

btw. we have the apple tv unit as well. definitely better build quality. the series two - available used - can be jailbroken.

Well part of the issue is the privacy invasion.

The Samsungs are notorious for phoning home and even disabling the feedback "feature" does not stop them. They've been shown to still send data.

The voice enabled sets are particularly disturbing because by nature they are always listening.

Don't get me started about the sets with built in cameras.

^in the same camp as P-O-P. Have used Apple TV exclusively for the last 4+ years. We have a Netflix subscription, and buy content a la carte from iTunes for shows or movies we want to watch. They have been adding "channels" to the platform as well. NBC has a pretty good one that is free, and you can watch their shows but they do throw some adverts in there. PBS also has a channel so you can watch Nova, Nature, among others.