free tv
Hi, Has anyone used a cell phone and tv with any of the following? Did it work well? https://corp.xumo.com/#home-top-slider https://www.bumblebee.tv/pages/discover/d/movies https://v...
Forum Discussion
pianotuna wrote:
Perhaps I was not clear.
Do these free services work well with a cell phone wobbly wide web connection?
Do they still work when throttled?
Which ones work best?
Do you know of others that work well?
I see this as a technical question, not the philosophy that it is low cost. For that matter--you do have to buy a tv and probably an antenna to do over the air--so it ain't free either. It is a one time cost.
Depends on the "throttled" speed and what "definition" you are wanting to watch as to if ANY streaming service is going to work.
MOST cell Internet providers will throttle you down to 53kbs-128kbs once you hit your data cap, however, you do need to understand, cell signal and just how much traffic is on the towers near you can and will greatly affect the data speed you may get. Providers do have in the contract that they can throttle your data at anytime when the networks are busiest.
SD video scaled back to much less than 480i might be doable at 128kbs but it may be choppy, blocky or studder or such bad quality it will be unwatchable and HD (720, 1080 or higher) will be out of the question.
For some references on how much data is required for some of the common streaming services check out HERE
They mention Hulu as the lowest for SD video at 1.5Mbps (MEGA BYTES) which is considerbly much faster than a throttled speed of 53Kbps-128Kbps.. So I would have to say, absolutely no to streaming most services when throttled.
As far as buying a TV or antenna, yes, that is not free either since you have to buy it, but hey, neither is your cellphone, tablet, laptop, desktop or the Internet provider that is required to stream..
TV and antenna are the cheapest way to go since you have no other ongoing bills after the initial purchase other than the electric to power it.. But at least you aren't paying bunches of money per month for the data usage and if you don't use all the data you paid for you LOSE IT!
Until there is a 100% free wireless Internet with 100% all in one free streaming service, folks are only kidding themselves that streaming is cheap and is the same as cutting the cord.
