Cable/Internet service for new residents
 

Good morning,
My wife and I will be moving to the villages right after Christmas. My question has to do with cable and internet service. We have a dish on the side of the house. What's the best way to go, and what's the approx. cost. Up north we have Comcast, but it is very expensive, over $250/month. Regards.

Which village are you moving to? TV is very large and not all providers are available everywhere.

Near LSL, 200 mbps internet, phone and middle cable package with DVR and cloud storage 168/ month xfinity

South of the turnpike; Spectrum internet for $58/mo; using Amazon Prime and Netflix; will add YouTube TV when I get bored. Don't want a land line. I was tired of paying $280/month for Comcast up north, so I know what you mean.

As others have said, it depends on your village.

Xfinity has a starter package, first year $20/month. 25mbit. Yes, this is enough bandwidth for multiple streams. Yes, I know what I'm talking about, I do this kind of thing for a living.

Century link is another provider but their speeds vary depending on distance to the head-end and your village. Century link in my village only offers 2mbit. This is enough for email, that's about it. In other villages it's 100mbits or more even. Check first because they are typically the most affordable option. If they have a 20mbit or better plan on the cheap, get it.

I have no personal experience with Spectrum, but they are a large provider, so as long as their plan is over 20mbit and is reasonable, go for it.

We stream Hulu on the Hulu plan "Hulu + live tv". Some people use youtube TV. Both are great. Hacked firesticks and other hinky pirate connections for $10/month should be avoided.

Good luck, welcome.

We purchased our home in October. Bought my own modem and Roku's and use XFinity for internet. $50/month for 300MB service. I know, overkill. Youtube TV, $65/month. House up north with Xfinity everything (phone, internet, cable) was $265/month. Best feeling in the world to bring the huge box of equipment back to the Xfinity store.

Dropping Comcast was a good day in my life (AT&T too but that's a different story).

We're quite happy with You Tube TV ($75) and my wife likes Hulu basic ($9) as a kicker.
Century Link ($45 plus tax) works great for internet We're just north of CR-466A

All Villages homes are prewired for Xfinity/Comcast. The only provider that broadcasts The Villages TV and Radio stations on 02 and 99. Others have to run a cable under the grass. You can get a idea of package prices with and without contracts, just type your in your address on Xfinity site. Dish has lousy quality over cable.

In my opinion You Tube TV is doing everything we need at $64.95 a month plus internet , more channels than we ever watch plus local and regional broadcasting . As a side comment dump the unsightly dish.

The problem with xfinity is that their upload speed is crap. I won't argue your 25Mbps is [barely] enough for streaming (I prefer more for file download reasons), their upload speed might be 1Mbps. Yes, a measly "1". And, that's megaBITS. So, I need about 10 seconds to upload just 1MB (megaBYTE). That a very sluggish 6MB / minute.

Before you just dismiss that as "who needs upload speeds?", let's remind the reader that you need upload speed for things like dropbox, video uploads and cloud backups. If you want to backup a 100GB computer to Carbonite for example (which is not an unreasonable amount today), that would take 277 hours or a little over 11.5 days with xfinity.

You don't see those numbers in the advertisements for internet service. When shopping for internet, ask everyone of them what UPLOAD speed to expect. They all tout their download speeds but most don't like to talk about upload speeds which are critical today.

And, I too know what I'm taking about as I also do this kind of thing for a living.

Experience for consideration
 

We are south of 44 but I found in researching that I could put my address in the various websites and see what the packages offered at my address were out there.

That being said we selected Centurylink 1Gb service at $65/month price for life. Have had Spectrum, Comcast (Xfinity) and cannot describe my feelings in words appropriate for this forum. Currently streaming only with YoutubeTV (unlimited storage for 9 months and local channels), Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu. Significantly less stressful not dealing with the S & C companies after that first year tickler price is past.

Many of the dishes have been disconnected, but not removed.

Good Morning,
We are moving to the Village of Hadley. I understand every home is prewired for Comcast. My further conclusion, shows cable is preferred over dish, must better quality.

I'm one of those guys that actually uses upload speed. One small part of my job is video production. I also have had a youtube channel since 2006 and lately been doing BBQ videos. My NJ home is in the sticks and only recently was I able to get a 30mbit download pipe with 1.5mbit upload. It blows. We have been streaming for years on a 15mbit pipe though. When I do big uploads I bring it to my office where we have twin 10GBit pipes u/d although the 2nd one is just a fail-over on a different provider. This won't be an option when I retire in a few months and finally move to TV permanently.

99.99% of people in TV don't know what their upload speed is, nor do they care because they never push anything of substance up to the internet. Nor do any of them patch games, like Cyberpunk 2077 where a big download matters. We're not going to be back in TV again until next week, so I'm still in NJ. Last night when Cyberpunk went live, there was a 10gb patch!!!, this sucked because wife was streaming TV and so I had to limit the patch to 2mb on Steam. No, I am not a kid, I just act like one.

After the first year of Xfinity, I went to the 100mbit plan and I get 5mbit upload. Not anywhere near great, but again, it beats the old 768kbit I lived with in NJ for years. It's kind of like smoking a brisket. You just have to wait :)

Comcast/Xfinity is the best voice remote/ internet by far superior. Ours is $176. You will probably get a deal as a new customer. Plus you don’t lose it with the rain storms. Good luck.