| Lets face it TV is too expensive and too littered with commercials. Who still wants to pay for that garbage? |
|
 CjaicemanPremium,MVM
join:2004-10-12
Parker, CO
kudos:2 | OTA and the internet serve me just fine... They can take their rate hikes and obnoxious commercials with them. I cut the cord last year and I feel better, as well as my wallet feels fatter... 
--
TorDek: "DSLR... Here, were not just experts... were also vindictive bastards..."  |
|
 LinklistPremium
join:2002-03-03
Longport, NJ
kudos:5 | reply to aciddrink
said by aciddrink:TV is too expensive and too littered with commercials. Who still wants to pay for that garbage?
But will the total monthly cost to obtain content for the home really drop with these changes? I don't think so. Streaming may replace QAM cable feeds, but internet access costs will rise. You may be able to drop Cable TV, but you will be paying subscription fees to streaming providers. Mobile streaming may replace some fixed wire access but those costs will be even higher. And the content companies will STILL get their cut one way or another. The changes may be coming, but the costs won't go down, though who gets what % of the pie between content and delivery may shift around some.
--
The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
»www.politico.com/2012-election/
|
|
| Problem is that Cable/Satelite is Funding High Sports Salary If you want cable and satellite price is to go down then users should not be made to pay salaries of sports icons.
Have you ever wondered who pays the salaries? |
|
|
|
| Cut the cord (Dish) in November I finally dropped Dish service in November. Most evenings there'd be nothing I wanted to watch on, even with 250 channels. Probably because of things like Discovery no longer showing documentaries, History no longer showing history, MTV/VH1 no longer playing music, Science turning into the "How It's Made" channel, AMC going commercial and no longer showing classic movies, IFC going commercial and no longer showing independent films, Game Show Network no longer airing old classic game shows, TV Land not airing NEAR the classic TV they used to, Discovery Health getting hijacked by Oprah, etc...
Don't have anything like Netflix either, because the quality is TERRIBLE on my DSL connection, near unwatchable.
Surprisingly, I find MORE than enough to watch on the 16 local OTA channels I get for free with the antenna on my roof! |
|
 NightfallMy Goal Is To Deny YoursPremium,MVM
join:2001-08-03
Grand Rapids, MI
 ·Comcast
 ·Callcentric
 ·Site5.com
| They are real, but rare Its quite easy to explain why people are cutting the cord. Most of the people are switching to over the top video options (IE Antenna and Netflix). Some are just going without. A few are technology enthusiasts who use torrents, netflix, and a variety of other streaming services in order to get all the content they want.
Cord cutting is still not the norm though. The people who are cutting the cord are doing it for financial reasons. If you look at the figures for the last year, the amount of subscribers for the respective cable and satellite outlets are just slightly edging up. Over the course of the last three years, there has been a .2% increase in subscribers.
»allthingsd.com/20120301/where-di···ters-go/
Losing 1 million subscribers is really a drop in the bucket. Still, its a drop that should be evaluated by the cable and satellite companies. The cost of their product is high enough where pay TV is viewed as a luxury now. In my household, if I lost my job, pay TV would be the first to go. Since I am gainfully employed, I will enjoy my HDTV and Comcast cable TV.
I have said it before and I will say it again....
You won't see a mass exodus of people cutting the cord until you can get all content online easily in the same HD quality. Right now, you have some content that is online, but not everything. The ease of use really factors in when the common person is using it. My parents wouldn't put up with finding torrents and loading them on a computer. Its so much easier to hit "Recorded TV" and push "Play".
Sports are still being streamed illegally in most cases. ESPN is leading the charge for sports streaming right now, but many other sports are demanding that you pay $160 or so for their league pass, and even then you have blackouts. In short, if you are a sports fan, pay TV is really the only way you are going to see the content in HD quality on your TV.
So much has to change in order for there to be mass cord cutting.
--
My domain - Nightfall.net |
|
| I cut the cord I cut the cord and the ROKU is Great! the atleast $1200 dollars a year I save on cable is great. I have no regrets. I use sprint 4g hotspot on my HTC EVO plays very well with the ROKU and all the other wireless items I use in my home. and Sprint is totally cool with the 100 gigs of data used last month. and no overages. I have a very small antenna for the locals on the back of the HDTV's. I should have done it soon. |
|
| reply to Linklist
Re: Lets face it yes, it will drop significinally, unless you want to subscribe to every venue out there. For most, they will "pay" for a lot of channels they never even watch. For instance, most cable/satellite lowest packages, make you pay for ESPN, or other sports --- the non-sports customer subsidizes the sports viewers, keeping the expensive prices low by spreading the cost. Once folks catch on to this, and pick and choose a-la-cart packages they want, the costs will go down (unless you're a sports watcher of course--- but those costs are already high) |
|
| reply to NO to ESPN
Re: Problem is that Cable/Satelite is Funding High Sports Salary Actually, if you want all prices to go down... (If they banned commercials from broadcast sporting events, then the sporting businesses/franchises would either go broke/out of business or they'd start charging $10,000 per seat for a ticket per game--gee, I wonder which would happen. ) |
|
| reply to aciddrink
Re: Lets face it Not me... that's why I dropped cable TV many years ago. "Premium channels" with commercials? ...what's "premium" about that? |
|
 espaethDigital PlumberPremium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
kudos:2
·Vitelity VOIP
| False dichotomy If many regular TV viewer were switching to over-the-top services it would show up in the numbers. Instead we have data points like the Wired article that showed about 300k Netflix users consumed traffic that represented 20% of total US peak Internet traffic on a nightly basis. If that had ballooned out to 3m streams on a nightly basis, the numbers would be far more staggering and reported regularly.
I think the story here is far less interesting: people who don't watch a lot of TV canceled their pay TV subscription.
*yawn* |
|
| Cut Mine I cut my cable yesterday...Comcast just does not offer anything that is well priced for the channels. I was paying 20 dollars for only local channels. |
|
espaethDigital PlumberPremium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Minneapolis, MN
kudos:2 Reviews:
·Vitelity VOIP
| reply to tuliplover18
Re: Lets face it The problem with this argument is that you're assuming Disney will allow ESPN to be broken out of a package so that you can get other channels at a lower cost.
There is a reason that channel packages from every pay TV provider look nearly identical -- it's the content producers who are forcing the bundling of channels. |
|
| reply to aciddrink
The other 200 million Americans... no way could I be without my TV.  |
|
| Zzzzzzzzzzz Another thread that all the "cord cutters" flock to giving the impression that EVERYONE IS DOING IT. Sorry, aint happening. If everyone that subscribes replied to this thread, it would already be 5 miles long with replies. |
|
 VanPremium
join:2009-07-08
New Orleans, LA | Will consider cutting mine as well if prices do not drop over the next few years....
I watch TV but nothing outragous |
|
poolek
join:2003-11-04
Austin, TX Reviews:
 ·AT&T U-Verse
·RoadRunner Cable
·ViaTalk
| cut, but reattached... We cut the cord and were cable-free for about 3 years. We used OTA via Windows Media Center, Netflix and Amazon VOD. We're not huge sports fans, which seems to be the biggest draw back to dropping pay-TV. We also have young kids and really liked have much more control over advertisement exposure by limiting what they watch to Netflix and PBS. All was well. Money savings was nice, and it made me feel good to say 'I don't have cable'.
Then Oprah retired.
I fought valiantly, but the wife eventually won (who saw that coming?). I now have a Homerun Prime and a $70/mth bill for freaking OWN. In SD. Double-letterboxed. My geek credentials and manhood have been permanently impacted.
|
|
 vpokoPremium
join:2003-07-03
Boston, MA | reply to ITALIAN926
Re: Zzzzzzzzzzz Umm, I think the number of people cutting the cord was quantified pretty well in the OP. Whether 10 or 100 people post here, the number of cord-cutters is 2.65 million in the last 4 years. Neither staggering nor insignificant. |
|
| reply to poolek
Re: cut, but reattached... Don't worry, this is a fleeting setback. From what I've read, OWN has been a ratings disaster. I wouldn't be surprised if it is gone within a few years. |
|
| Movies I just cut the movie package cord. I get my movies from Netflix now. Not worth paying $20 for a couple of movie channels. Most of the time they repeat the same movie over and over again. |
|
