Leverage Home Cable TV for Weekly Rental Property?

Question

I have a pricey cable TV package at my primary residence.   I also have a beach rental property that is used for weekly rentals in the summer.  I have only owned it for a year, and have not yet had a renter on the off-season months (but am considering it for the income).

Anyways, I am currently paying $50 a month for cable TV at the vacation property.  This will be going up to $75 a month next month after the initial promo price ends.  I would like to make a one time purchase of a devise that will allow me to stream from a cable box in my primary home to the vacation property and not pay any monthly fees for TV at the rental property.

Is this feasible, and if so, what device do you recommend?

Paul Sandhu · Answer

Xfinity probably uses proprietary software for the streaming.  You can't use a Roku on proprietary software.  This is similar to the recombinant DNA sequencing, they tried to do in the Blade Runner movie.  The subject died on the O.R. table in a few seconds.

Source - Roy Batty

Trenton Miller · Answer

Just get YouTube TV and a smart TV.  most smart TV's are application driven now and all you need is WiFi.  YouTube TV is $50 a month I believe for multiple devices at once.

Ken Boone · Answer

@Jeremy Mortimore Jeremy, as of 2 weeks ago this was working on all of my Roku TVs at my cabins that have xfinity service. You have to have already activated the Xfinity internet service and the Xfinity TV service in order to use the beta xfinity streaming app on roku.

Here is a link to xfinity describing this:

https://www.xfinity.com/suppor...

Now in that link it does not list all of the available Roku devices.  Like I said all my devices are TCL Roku TVs and they all work great with the streaming app.

Ken Latchers · Answer

Cable TV is usually billed per kitchen. If you try to stretch it to another building with kitchen you may get into trouble

Jose D. · Answer

I second the YouTubeTV suggestion. I have it in my house and split the bill for it with a family member in another city.

All you need is a smart tv or roku with the YouTubeTV app installed.

Jeremy Mortimore · Answer

@Ken Boone

Thank you for the information!

Ok, I took the plunge and either am not during it correctly.  I set up roku, but when I log into the xfinity streaming app it says that "this device can only access xfinity stream on your in-home Xfinity wifi.  Use the app on your smart phone, tablet or laptop to watch on the go."

What am I doing wrong?

Don Spafford · Answer

@Jeremy Mortimore With Roku, I believe you can link it to your premium cable channels like HBO & Showtime, but just general cable channels, I am not aware of that being able to be connected in other places. I have seen commercials for things like DISH that can stream to other devices but I don't know what is needed for that. I'm sure there are plenty of options out there but I assume most people will be fine with netflix or hulu as people have mentioned here, that most people have some account of their own they can connect to and use. If you have a current smart tv they may be able to cast from their phone to the tv for anything more specific they want.

Ken Boone · Answer

@Michael Baum That is exactly what I did at all my cabins.  Every cabin has TCL Roku TVs.  Very cheap to purchase.  Very good quality.  Very simple remote.  And if you have xfinity/comcast brought into the rental at one location, you can then load the xfinity streaming APP on ALL of the Roku TVs and stream all the cable channels everywhere in the house without having to rent additional cable boxes.  Sweet!

Michael Baum · Answer

I have to second what everyone has said. We don't have any kind of dish or cable service at our vacation home but to provide TCL Roku powered TV's for everyone to stream their favorite shows from their streaming services. No complaints at all.Now if I read the question right, you want to stream your home cable service to your vacation home. There is no box that can do that as far as I am aware. What you can do is get some kind of cable/dish service and "turn it off" when the house is dormant. Most cable/dish providers will allow you to put the service in hibernate mode with a maintenance fee. You can turn it off and on at will. Each provider has a different cost so you will have to check. DirectTV offers this service for sure and our Frontier internet also provides the same. We leave ours running due to network monitors for temp etc.Plus you can offer Hulu TV or do a Slingbox for streaming regular TV. Plus, depending on where you live, you can do a HDTV antenna. You can then grab the over the air HDTV signals and there is no cost for local channels.I tried the HDTV antenna at our Idaho house, but we are a long way from any antennas on the lake. I did manage to get 11 OTA channels but most were fuzzy. Plus I had inside the house. If you place the antenna outside you can really pull in some signals. I know Xfinity has their streaming service. That will get you everything you want if you are already paying for Comcast cable.

Beth Mulholland · Answer

Also highly recommend going the Roku/Netflix/Hulu/Amazon route! You can even have guests use their own logins (most people have at least one of these), just remind them to log back out in the check out instructions!

We allow guests to use their own logins for Hulu/Amazon/etc but have a communal Netflix account, so that way they still have one option should they happen to not have any digital tv subscriptions.

Leverage Home Cable TV for Weekly Rental Property?

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