Backstory
My brother-in-law John lives with my wife and me. He has cerebral palsy and is mildly autistic. He is probably 80% capable of living on his own, and my wife and I willingly provide the remaining 20%. He is not retarded in the conventional sense, but with his autism his brain works... differently from yours or mine. This difference is most notable in John's inability to handle complexity.

John's world is his 42" television connected via satellite dish. He lives in that world 18 hours a day, and seems to be content there. He is at his complexity limit handling the two remotes (TV set and cable box) for his system, and usually a couple times a month I have to help him restore things when he inadvertently presses a wrong button on one remote or the other.

Dilemma
Thanks to hard work and campaigning by some local businessmen, my little village of Ajijic is about to receive a serious upgrade to our internet service and I will have fiber optic connection all the way to my router. My current connection is supposedly 15 Mbps. On a good day I will see five. Right now I am at 2.56 Mbps. The new company, who are well established in Guadalajara and in the neighboring state of Michoacán, are guaranteeing 24/7 service at 75 Mbps, and if I want to pay 40% more I can have 300 Mbps. The 75Mbps service will cost me slightly less than the 15 Mbps I supposedly have now that is usually 5 Mbps or less.

With this new service I want to cancel John's satellite TV which is substantially more expensive than the upgraded internet service will be, and set him up with streaming TV through a device like the Amazon FireStick or something similar. I don't know for sure, but I suspect a setup like that will be an order of magnitude more complex and totally beyond John's capabilities. Hell, it's probably beyond my capabilities.

The Question
What can I do to make this idea (stop the satellite service, go to internet streaming) workable for John?

tanstaafl.

I think there would be ways to transfer over to some streaming with relatively simple button pressing.

However, are there particular shows or channels that he must have or is it just any form of reasonable content is enough. I think you might need to take a look at potential content providers first and go from there.

If there are specific content requirements you might need two or more streaming services and that could get complicated.

Could he use a smart phone/device? Chromecasting might be the easiest way to put streaming content onto a TV. It's not fool proof though. It's also fairly cheap to try if you have a spare phone lying around. Would allow free content like Youtube as a starting point however finding the right show to watch might be too complicated compared to channel up, up, up until he finds something he likes.

As well as the complexity issue, you also need to work out whether what he wants to watch is available on the streaming services.

Does he use the programme guide on the existing setup ? Or is he just punching in channel numbers ?

I'm assuming he wants programming in English? If so your options are limited, most of the streaming lineups geoblock those outside the US.

Until recently I used a service called USTVNow with my Roku, and it worked fantastic and was super easy to use, but for some reason Roku shut them down. You can actually still get it if you run a Plex Server by installing a user channel, but I think we're getting out of bounds for both you and him there.

Netflix and Amazon, in addition to geoblocking US content, actively block VPN connections if they can figure out that you're on one. That said, Netflix Mexico has a pretty good lineup of programming, almost all of which is available in English, and Amazon's catalogue is slowly growing but mostly consists of Amazon Originals at this point.

I've never tried the firestick with Kodi. It's illegal to stream content that you would normally pay for, so I tend to stay away from that sort of thing. It may however work well here, and chances of getting prosecuted for it in Mexico are fairly slim.

Unfortunately, no. One of the side effects of his cerebral palsy is nystagmus which makes it difficult to read anything unless the letters are very large.

Something that worked like the original Tivo would be nice. I never had to worry about channels or programs. Once it was set up with my preferences, I always had 40 or 50 hours of programming, I would just scroll down to something I liked and play it, delete it when done. But of course the only reason that was possible is that Tivo "knew" what the programming schedule was for every channel I could receive. (All four of them.) That's not the case with streaming.

I saw a demo of the Amazon FireStick here in Mexico, and it seemed like it would do the job except I think it was too complex for John to use.

I don't think there are any programs that he just has to have. Given enough variety, he would always find something to entertain him. He is easy to please.

tanstaafl.

He has channel numbers that he watches, probably at specific times.

tanstaafl.

Unfortunately, streaming video is still going to be more complex than traditional television no matter what you go with. The others make a good point about geoblocking, too. Have you tried any streaming services yourself to see which ones you can get?

I would like to make a suggestion for a remote. The best universal remote I've ever used is the Harmony Smart Remote. It has three buttons at the top to choose what you want, a button for turning everything off, and the rest of the buttons map to most remotes I've found. The setup is pretty easy and the remote has a great feel to it, but whether he could use it might be a subjective thing only you can answer.

Stupid question probably, but does the fibre company not also provide cable tv over that same fibre? Over here these sort of companies do, which would mean nothing would change really for your brother-in-law.

What would change is that of the hundred or so channels that will come bundled with the fibre, at least 90% (if not more) of the channels will be in Spanish, and most of those would seem to be soccer games -- excuse me, futbol games -- which hold little to no interest to him.

Mexican television has given me my life back. Before I moved here I was a TV addict, probably watching 50-60 hours a week because my Tivo always had 50 or more hours stored that I wanted to watch. In the nearly 10 years that I have lived here now, I have watched perhaps 10 hours of television. Sadly, I admit that I am hooked on YouTube now, so many documentaries, and some very respectable production talent. Watch Clickspring do improbably precise machining building a clock; or Floz putting together an hour-long video about Hamillton vs Vettel in the 2017 Formula One championship with production quality that Spielberg wouldn't be ashamed of.

We may just end up keeping the satellite TV for John.

tanstaafl.

Ah, gotcha. Then I would have indeed suggested the very same thing you suggest in your last paragraph.

Keeping the satellite seems the best option, my wife's dad has early stage dementia and it's very difficult for him to make even tiny changes to how things work in his life.

Is there a possible solution with a DVR? Something along the lines of I would load the DVR with programming and John would play the programs from the DVR? Sort of like a manual-load Tivo? Can a DVR be set up to record channel 362 every Tuesday at 7:00 pm? If so, how many different channels/dates/times could be set?

tanstaafl.

Does the satellite service not include a DVR? I thought they all did these days.

Another possibility: Let's say you have a U.S. friend willing to subscribe to cable TV and you pay the bill / split the bill with them. On the U.S. side, you put a TiVo box with multiple tuners and a suitable cable card. On the Mexican side, you put a TiVo Mini and set up a VPN so the TiVo Mini sees the U.S.-based TiVo as a local device.

At that point, it's the usual TiVo user interface, but you're dependent on having a stable home network connection on two sides.

Every DVR I have ever seen has been an insanely over complicated device, with flashing GUI overlays and lots of "sparkle" to confuse the user. And with a remote control that has 50-100 buttons on it.

That's why TiVo was so amazing. Incredibly simple interface, super simple remote that felt fantastic in the hand. Too bad they stopped innovating about 15 years ago.

No... too bad they STARTED innovating about 15 years go. The original TiVo, as you pointed out, was a marvel of simplicity and utility. Then they started adding "features" and wrecked the whole concept.

tanstaafl.

That's not innovation, that's bloat

I really wonder if this would work. Do you know anyone who's tried it?

I often find that many - if not most - people who say Tivo is dead are the ones who haven't used one in years.

I've used a Tivo exclusively since around 2002, and while they did go a long stretch there without any innovation, I think they're doing a pretty brilliant job lately. They made a pretty huge shift that integrated streaming video with regular recordings. They have a box that's designed for OTA users to appeal to cord cutters. They were VERY early to the multi-room set top box setup, if not the first ones to do it.

I still consider the Tivo to be the best way to watch my TV. It does the best job of organizing the programming, the UI looks better than the others, the remote is still king, and the mobile app works really well (on iPhone at least).

Doug, I still don't think we've heard about availability of streaming services in your country...

*raises hand* Guilty. After like 8 years of nothing meaningful I gave up and moved on. Perhaps when I move back to the US I'll have to revisit.



Actually, we did, it was just in my post instead of Doug's. We live less than an hour away from each other.

Just curious, when did you give up on it?


Ah, I see. I read your post but forgot that you lived nearby so I didn't know if the same restrictions applied.

I had a series one that I hacked and added an turbonet ethernet card and a bunch of other stuff. Then eventually got a series 2, and finally upgraded to a Series 3 when they had the offer to transfer your lifetime service over. I sold it just a month later when I couldn't get my cable provider to do CableCards. I'm thinking early 2007ish?

I wanted HD and that was the only HD solution that TiVo had, so I ended up just using the cable company's DVR, which was terrible.

Yeah I think they've done quite a bit since then, including the Tivo Mini, the OnePass, and an HD menu overhaul that was long overdue (I'm still getting used to it).

They've also added a feature that works on select shows where you can press one button to skip an entire commercial break. It's not automatic like ReplayTV, but it's pretty good. I've seen it available for - and this is a VERY rough estimate - about half to two thirds of the network TV shows I watch, and it's only messed up about two times (where it missed a segment of the show and I had to rewind).

I'm sure I'm missing some other features but it's been a super long time since I had my own Series 3. I then had the Premiere and now the Bolt.


Ha! I think I did that too. I remember that when I was trying to buy my first Tivo, I went into a Target with my girlfriend (now wife) and asked them if they had it. To this day we joke about their response: "you mean the kickboxing thing?"

I just remembered: they made their remote (already the best remote, IMHO) even better.

Though to be fair it is an add-on.