It's 2020, is most everybody streaming on the road?

[dkperez]

It’s 2020 and things SEEM to be moving away from other sources to streaming. We’ve put streaming in at home, and it works fine. And there’s the bonus of dumping Directv, which makes us very happy.
I see periodic topics in here about streaming on the road. How are you doing it? We’ve got Verizon, and they admit their “unlimited” is anything but, with a cap at 15GB for the hotspot or 30GB if you spend more (I’ve got a Jetpack we currently use for Internet data). I’m not sure how much data it takes for an hour of tv, but I’m guessing between the grandkids wanting to watch whatever and the wife watching Food, that 15GB isn’t going to come close to covering a month.
It appears there WAS a true unlimited prepaid hotspot plan from Verizon, but it also appears Verizon killed it sometime in 2019 – at least I can’t find any references to one available now.
So how are the people RVing and streaming their tv doing it? Or does everybody STILL have to have a satellite system too?

[lllkrob]

We use an old plan from AT&T called the Connected Car Plan. This plan is no longer available in it's true unlimited status. My friends are using OTR Mobile which is on the AT&T network.

[tcg]

I have over a TB of movies and TV shows on an external drive that plugs into the TV in my RV.

If there are no over air stations or nothing on local TV I have hours and hours of stuff to watch.

We mostly watch in the evenings or rainy days.

For Christmas I got the complete Columbo collection and a few other TV series collections that I enjoy.

I'll have to rip those to mp4s before spring but it's enough to keep me happy for a couple years.

But sooner or later I will end up with a portable satellite dish because I love channel surfing.

[rvneil]

I've been happy streaming using OTR Mobile with a Netgear Nighthawk MR1100 hotspot. It's ATT's network, unlimited but network managed. We've streamed from Massachusetts down to New Orleans, then west across Texas to Las Cruces, NM. The only dead zone was the Davis Mountains State Park in Texas where no carrier has service unless you drive to the top of the mountain. Overall, I've been very happy, moreso knowing what my buddy pays for Verizon. The OTR plan is hotspot only, so we pay for our phones (and our adult children's phones) separately.
The MR1100 is pricey new. I got a used one on eBay for $167 in very good condition.

[crb478]

I am still new to this but also have the jetpack with verizon and 15 kb of un throttled data before it starts to slow down on this "unlimited plan". My wife also has an additional 8 kb on her phone as a unthrottled hotspot. We have not used this enough to know how well it will work when we are on the road.
I was told that it would be about 1kb an hour to stream tv, but that internet searches would use less data.

Also it appears that since I don't need HD that the throttled rate should be able to screen Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Direct TV to my RUKU TV's. If this works like advertised it will be great. We will probably only watch TV in the evenings when on the road,but may be on the computers anytime.

I will have to play with it more to see if it does indeed meet our needs.

[Unicorn Driver]

We download all our content from Netflix, Amazon, PBS, to a dedicated android device at home and then screens share it to one of the TVs.

We will occasionally download more content via cell network if needs be.

[FatChance]

We full-time and hardly ever stream. Between Dish, OTA and several hundred recorded movies on a hard drive, streaming isn't that important to us.

[rk911]

nope, not streaming here. dish network and OTA.

[PbdBlue]

Dish + 8TB media library. Where we tend to camp cell service is not adequate to stream if it's available at all.

[Davdeb1]

There aren't currently any plans available to get now that will allow you to stream "unlimited".
The best solution is to join FMCA, and get their offers.
Verizon "unlimited" from FMCA allows 25 gb. The Sprint plan allows 50gb.

These are both exclusive of FMCA.

[rvneil]

Originally Posted by Davdeb1

There aren't currently any plans available to get now that will allow you to stream "unlimited".
The best solution is to join FMCA, and get their offers.
Verizon "unlimited" from FMCA allows 25 gb. The Sprint plan allows 50gb.

These are both exclusive of FMCA.

Check out https://www.otrmobile.com. As I mentioned above, it's unlimited at $65/mo.

[wjohnson913]

Another vote for OTR Mobile for unlimited, unthrottled data. For tv we use YouTube TV, Netflix and Prime Video.
OTR is 60 bucks a month and YouTube TV is about 50 bucks. Love YouTube TV and their cloud based DVR.

[Isaac-1]

I would vote for OTR mobile out of the plans that are available at the moment, note I also have the no longer available Mobley AT&T connected car unlimited plan, On our 25 day long trip in October we used 226GB of data on the CCU plan, which included a bit of streaming, most days as well as general internet access, my wife also had to do a fair amount of telecommuting for her job while we were on the road.

[moisheh]

One reply stated that streaming uses 1kb .make that 1 gig. Or morej