Streaming live TV and what are you using?

Hi. I don't have an apple tv, but here's what I'd suggest for streaming tv shows and movies. I use Netflix, amazon prime, and fios tv from Verizon. Note that the third service I mentioned will only work if you already have Verizon fios in your home. As for direct tv now, the app appears to be mostly unuseable.

I just have Direct TV now. I did have the regular Hulu subscription, but I was unsure on accessibility, because last year they did do some changes that brought accessibility to completely useless.
I'm unsure if Hulu is accessible now, but if it is I'd appreciate knowing.
Depending on where you live you could try and get Youtube TV. Though like I said depending on where you live.
Chuck

This topic is still trial and error. I had Direct Tv Now for a few months, due to a free Apple 4k. After three months I canceled. The UI stinks, and not just for blind consumers.
I ended up getting a Toshiba Fire TV. I get 30 local channels with an indoor antenna, subscribed to Hulu, Netflix. Between the Apple TV and Fire, I have iTunes and Apple Music, Amazon gives me prime Video and Amazon Music. Saving a ton of money not having cable.
direct TV and Sling both have serious accessibility issues. I've heard YouTube is the most accessible when going that route.

I am using Youtubetv I love it. I get my locals plus the sport programs I want.

Hi Jim, depending on who you use for internet, if it's Spectrum, they started their own tv streaming service, which is suppose to be cheaper than cable itself. It lets you choose what channels you actually want on your package.
Also, doesn't the Apple TV appp serve as a hub for most streaming services? It should be able to aggrigate alll your subscriptions into one place and let you choose what to watch from there. Last time I tried it on the iPhone, it would show me stuff from both DirectTV and Prime, which I have on my phone. It might be different for the tvOS, I've not tried it on there yet, so don't know. But check it out and see.

Have you considered Roku instead of Apple tv? I baught a Roku for $35 and it's built in screen reader works well with Amazon video and Netflix. It appears to work with Sling TV as well, but the sign-in process is a bit anoying. I didn't play around with Sling TV much since the IOS app frustrated me, but I was able to sign in, look at channels, favorit a channel, and play my favorit channel. The Youtube TV app on the Roku is not accessible, when I launch it I can't even sign in. I can cast from my iphone to the Youtube TV app on my roku once i installed it. Because it's casting instead of airplay you can use your phone as normal once it starts playing on the tv, including exiting the app, locking it, etc. I can not do this at my parents house, but they bought the cheepest Roku so maybe that isn't supported on there model? If you like I can sign up for the 7 day direct tv now trial and test it out on my Roku.

I use HULU for live TV streaming. The interface on iPhone could be better, but on the Apple TV, it works very well. I also subscribe to Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.

We were heading down the track of Android TV, but changed at the 11th hour to Apple TV 4, primarily because of VoiceOver.

Over the last few weeks I have regretted the decision, finding that most services want their pound of flesh - even if their content is cack - which you only discover after paying the subscription.

As a sighted intruder on this forum and as a sound engineer, here are some gripes:

a) non-accessible add-ons. Some that appear great seem to fail at the last hurdle when the programmer was rushing to finish and disregarded VoiceOver. Even Netflix - come on guys!

b) bloody buffering. I was led to believe that a 1080p, 32GB Apple TV would work well for us. Certainly, running the debugging tool we have the broadband speed, CPU and memory to spare. but still with the buffering madness. Incidentally we have Netflix, YouTube, Kodi, etc., on a Windows PC on the same network and there is very little, or no delay;

c) audio description/commentary. What am I missing? Can you search for movies with audio description, or is it just pot luck?

d) ...and when you do stumble upon audio description, more often than not there is a huge discrepancy between the movie audio content and the commentary - often the volume of the commentary ruining the movie by effectively removing all the drama of the actors and removing any viewer/listener enjoyment. My wife (totally blind) usually gets sick of it before me and I am delegated the job of audio describer. Come on you people - this is my industry. Have the sound engineers and technicians not been paid enough to do the job properly and haven't bothered to try and enjoy a movie with their crummy audio track running? Oh, I forgot. "Blind" always means "deaf" as well...

e) (but wait, there's more) Put my vote into the ring for controllable VoiceOver volume. There is a nice volume ducking algorithm that kicks in. The release may be a little long, but it's mostly effective. I understand that it is difficult to achieve because the threshold volume level has to be based on the movie or TV audio content, which often has huge variations between movies, but surely someone with a bigger brain than mine can sort it out!

f) to be continued...

Wifey has given up and I am in charge of the remote for now and I generally resort to the Windows PC because of the buffering issues. She is waiting for free time to be able to familiarise herself and/or wait for me to instigate HomeKit and get some sort of voice activation working for TV. [Don't even get me started on the frustrations of Siri's interpretation of a New Zealand accent].

We like movies (except for the waste of time and annoyance of the audio description) and live TV. We are unlikely to search for cat videos or binge watch TV programmes - except maybe from when TV was entertaining and the rare and occasional intrusion of a modern (non-reality) programme that ventures into "entertainment" territory.

KODI. I can't attest to it's accessibility, but she's a powerful beast. Also you have to be a bit geeky with installation onto an Apple TV and have to take the rough with the smooth as far as which add-ons are from legitimate sources and which are torrents. Also a wee issue of KODI not timing out after a week on iOS. I am experimenting with blocking a URL with parental controls on our modem and will know in a few days whether that has worked. The geeks tell me you can "just" reload KODI and you don't lose any of your settings... maybe!?!

It is interesting to find that the live TV from my birth country (the UK) have the same rubbish shows that are airing here in New Zealand. So many channels. So little joy to be had...

Unfortunately nothing is perfect and trust me you would have probably run into more issues with android I suspect, as with android tvs they have speech built in to some extent but this wouldn't work once you go into apps running on the tv.
I can't comment on most of what you say, but Netflix does actually have a specific audio described category its not a case of hunting and just taking pot luck.
I always think its a joke the name apple tv as its not really a tv, it just streams media from other services, plus at least in the UK I think you can get some live channels through it but not all.

This is where subtitle description would come in handy, it's a pity it doesn't exist.

Voiceover can read subtitles, so why don't we have descriptive subtitles? Surely there are deaf-blind people that want to enjoy television, but you don't have much of a choice, it's one or the other.

But wait, blind people don't like it when TTS is doing the describing for them.

I watched a few shows with voiceover reading the subtitles and it worked quite well.

Subtitles would also work with braille, provided you're a fast reader and the braille desplay can keep up.

You could then enjoy the description in braille and not annoy the people who don't need the audio description, but this will never happen.

My experience with Kodi is only on windows, and there is already a decent screen reader in the official kodi repository.

I wrote a quick little how to on getting kodi up and running with speech for windows, but I don't know if the screen reader will work on other platforms.

A friend of mine tried it on his firestick and it didn't work, so I'm just going to assume it won't work on anything but windows and mac for the time beeing.

I was using YouTube TV and actually really enjoyed the current version of the app. I could browse the guide, see channels, do all I really needed to do. I never used the DVR function but considering everything else was easy enough to use I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.

Unfortunately They already don’t carry one of the channels I need for one sports team and as of Sunday they are dropping Fox Sports Southwest which means no more Stars or Rangers games. Sports are the main reason we have a streaming TV service. To be clear sports and my wife since I would happily listen to them on the radio.

My only options are now Hulu Live TV or AT&T TV Now. I had AT&T when it was DirectV Now and didn’t find it to be very accessible and we tried Hulu Live TV when it first hit the market and I don’t remember it making a good impression. So what’s changed and does anyone have anything to add?

Using an Apple TV fourth generation, I have found that the Hulu Live TV streaming platform works well. You still receive all of their on demand catalog, plus you also receive your local channels and mainstream channels, as well. HTH