This streaming video thing is very cool...

[prairierabbit]

charlottezweb raised the concept of watching television shows via the internet. Since I use dial-up at home, I'm finding myself staying after work to watch things of interest, like Jon Stewart, and other things of some interest. It's also fun when the weather is too awful to walk at lunch to have something playing while I eat lunch. Who knew

Comments

[flarenut]

I wouldn't really trust a cable company to provide phone service, but your area might be different. A lot depends on what wires are already coming to your residence -- the choice is often made for you. Also, it won't be cheap, but if you're willing to get addicted it's fun.

[charlottezweb]

We didn't get cable but we do have high speed internet which is about $50/month and we use vonage for our phone which is about $30/month. If we had a better cell plan, we wouldn't get the vonage but I've been happy with the $50/At&T internet. Cable was just too expensive and the internet/cable hybrids were also too much considering almost everything we want to watch comes on the internetz. :)

[velochicdunord]

Be sure to ask whether either provider is throttling down download speeds. (affects evenness of signal feed, especially in the evening when traffic is heavy) Both are in my jurisdiction and I could cheerfully throttle both major service providers. Supposedly this was done to discourage downloads of movies, but what it also does is slow down uploads and down loads of Really Large Websites and packaging artwork files.

The third, more technically oriented ISP has installed a work-around (you can hook DSL modems up in parallel) and I'd be moving there if I was staying.

It won't be cheap. I'm running $54.00 Cdn/mo. for DSL = $32.00/mo for cable (throuh the co-op) +$34.00/mo phone (old service, before the long distance plan). Connectivity costs.