newviewEx .. Ex .. Exactly Premium Member join:2001-10-01 Parsonsburg, MD
5 recommendations |
newview
Premium Member
2014-Jan-20 1:23 pm
Shooting themselves in the footTwice yearly fee hikes, bogus "Broadcast TV Fees, exorbitant below-the-line fees, a recession that's not over, unemployment and other factors eroding the economic well-being are all contributing to an atmosphere of consumers questioning "how can I save money"?
This will only get worse ... and yet the cableTV industry blithely ignores the trend and continues down the path of their own destruction. | |
|
|
1 recommendation |
Bogeljubov
Anon
2014-Jan-20 6:12 pm
Re: Shooting themselves in the footWe do not have a tv, but we see all the tv shows we like, which is not too many, by downloading them the next day from a torrent site; We get news from a half-dozen online newspapers / news sites, and that includes video; we download movies from torrent sites.
Except for sports, which we don't much care for (though I would enjoy seeing a baseball game now and then), we don't need more than our $35/month dsl connection (6/1).
We have a voip telephone setup that costs about $5 per month for all the calling that we want to do, and we have a seven-11 cell phone that costs about $25/year that we keep for emergencies.
Why does anybody need more? It seems like a big waste of money. | |
|
| | Wow @sbcglobal.net |
Wow
Anon
2014-Jan-21 9:33 am
Re: Shooting themselves in the footSounds like a hell of a lot of work to save $35. | |
|
| | | |
CableCutter
Anon
2014-Jan-21 11:37 am
Re: Shooting themselves in the footsaid by Wow :Sounds like a hell of a lot of work to save $35. I know in my situation, I've been a long time cord cutter. I have an OTA antenna connected to my mac with 4 tuners available for recording. I get over 26 channesl available to me OTA for free. I found 80% of my shows are I would watch OTA for free. Why pay the for a worse signal when OTA is uncompressed and sharper than any Cable/Sat provider can ever offer. The rest I have setup in a program that automatically searches and downloads torrents for my shows. It will download them, email me when it's done (even extract and move into a folder) then my plex system hooked to my 55" tv auto indexes and finds the video every 15 minutes. Pretty painless really. With the Plex apps available I can watch my shows anywhere in the world as long as I have access to internet. Most cable companies want you to be "IN" your house in order to watch tv on your devices, not Plex! I also have the EyeTV app so I can watch Live TV across the internet straight from my house. I get almost any super popular show within hours of it showing on the east coast and in HD quality might I add. For 55+ bucks a month savings I'm happy! | |
|
| KrKHeavy Artillery For The Little Guy Premium Member join:2000-01-17 Tulsa, OK Netgear WNDR3700v2 Zoom 5341J
|
to newview
Oh, they have plans.
They are going to monetize internet access to replace the income PayTV loses and far, far more. IMHO Cable companies are looking even better from a future revenue standpoint then they did 10 years ago.
Of course, they all assumes they can continue to exist in the current regulatory environment (basically, where they are free to do as they wish.) If Net Neutrality fails permanently then cord cutting will be irrelevant. | |
|
| KrK |
to newview
Imagine a world where Big Cable buys out Netflix.
Oh Snap. | |
|
|
for whom the bell tollsthe cable industry's had their head in the sand for quite some time about the necessary changes in their business model. the number of hours an individual watches can be streamed over the internet quite easily on demand and/or queued onto local or remote servers for later viewing. while it's possible to get subscription fees for the limited programming that *MUST* be watched live such as sports or "breaking news" events.. the amount consumers are willing to pay is breaking past it's limits and therefore you see not quite consumer backlash.. as in they have NO alternative-- you are seeing alternative choices and paths being taken... including "piracy".
and you can probably guess why the cost of an internet service as a stand-alone product is rising in cost. afterall, why let a consumer get $250 in services, taxes and fees included for a mere $50. | |
|
| elray join:2000-12-16 Santa Monica, CA |
elray
Member
2014-Jan-20 3:09 pm
Re: for whom the bell tollsThe cable TV industry is and has been fully aware of the desires of a small minority of their customer base, but their hands are tied by content licensing.
Absent some form of national legislation requiring wholesale unbundling of desired content, pay-tv pricing is going to continue to increase, and the vast majority of households will simply pay it, as most of the content is *not* available conveniently through other means.
We may still be vastly underemployed and in a deep recession (with a lot more to come), but the average household can and will still well afford $70 a month for pay-tv - its still the best value out there.
Our non-promotional standalone internet (2/1) is now $14.99/month. | |
|
| | |
Re: for whom the bell tollsSome independent polling organization should poll cable and satellite customers and ask them if they would like to stop paying for all the channels they never watch. Do you really think THAT would be a small minority?
What makes you think the "average household" can still well afford $70/month for CATV? Something tells me you are not in an average household. Nor is it the best value out there. I think most people would tell you that their cell phone bill is a better value.
And the $14.99/mo standalone Internet is slower than DSL and for all practical purposes is totally useless. | |
|
| | | |
Re: for whom the bell tollsExcept for using Netflix, watching youtube, Facetiming, websurfing, steaming music, emailing. Except for all that, yes it is useless. | |
|
| | | | |
Re: for whom the bell tollsIt can't be used for any of those functions except streaming music, email and limited Web surfing. It's way too slow for watching video. Have you ever used a connection that slow in the last 8-10 years? | |
|
| | | | | |
Re: for whom the bell tollsI use it now, for all those things. Netflix, Facetime, Youtube. In fact, it'll run two of those things at once. Two Netflix streams. A Netflix stream while Youtubing or Facetiming. It'll even run two of those thins and still be able to browse the internet.
I have the $15 2/1 standalone from Time Warner and Netflix and iPods and laptops/netbooks. | |
|
| | | | | | RRedlineRated R Premium Member join:2002-05-15 USA |
RRedline
Premium Member
2014-Jan-21 9:19 am
Re: for whom the bell tollsI guess now you're going to tell us that you have a 60" TV, and 1 Mbps streams looks "amazing" on it? | |
|
| | | | | | | |
Re: for whom the bell tollsNope. | |
|
| | | elray join:2000-12-16 Santa Monica, CA |
to waycoolphil
It isn't a matter of what they "want", per a poll, but what they vote for, with their wallets.
2M/1M worked fine for Netflix, YouTube, and every other streaming service I tested, anticipating unfounded remarks like yours.
Clearly, it would fall down trying to do "4K", whenever that actually becomes relevant, but by that time, I would expect TWC and other last mile providers to raise the floor speed again. | |
|
| | | | |
Re: for whom the bell tolls"4K"? Are you kidding. 2/1 can't even do a single 720HD stream on Netflix. There's nothing unfounded about my remarks. You make it sound like there's no need for anything faster until 4K is available. What a jokester you are. | |
|
| | Netgear R6300 v2 ARRIS SB6180
|
to elray
said by elray:Our non-promotional standalone internet (2/1) is now $14.99/month. ouch, mediacom charges me $30/mo for 3/256k "intro" if i drop basic tv add on another $15, oh and thats a 150GB/mo cap. said by waycoolphil:And the $14.99/mo standalone Internet is slower than DSL and for all practical purposes is totally useless. when i had dsl on the other side of town, it was 1.5M/256k, with a 2/1, you can easily do all of those things, its called a buffer. and a consistent connection speed, what screws things up is speedboost, that makes the servers 'think" you can go faster than you actually can sustained. for the record, i used netflix, hulu, youtube, pandora, and a myriad of other things with no issues what so ever, you dont need a 1GBps connection for video. as for using a connection "that slow" im betting a lot more people than you realize do. most folks probably just want the cheapist connection, and could care less what the speed is. | |
|
|
Change it up:Put those $15/month commercial free "premium channels" on the bottom as standalone products and I'd bet we'd see the number going up. All the junk that has to be bought to get them has to hurt them.
If I could get just an HBO package (without a $20/month box fee and basic cable subscription) I'd add it to my internet from Time Warner. | |
|
1 recommendation |
Cable TV is only a small part of itCATV just happens to be an obvious and easy way for people to cut back on expenses. They're also cutting back on TVs themselves, cell phone bills, driving, dining out, holiday gifting, new clothing, health care, etc. etc. etc. Both the lack of jobs, very low wages and the end of unemployment compensation means they can't afford to buy the stuff these mega corporations are trying to sell to them. They don't have any money any more. These industries should be working to ensure that their customers have the funds to purchase their products. Stockholders do not have the final word. The broke customer gets the last shot. | |
|
|
Hence the big push against net neutrality...The TV providers see this as lost revenue which needs to be recaptured, so they'll try to limit access to Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, Hulu, etc. in an effort to force people back to their premium channels.
One good strategy I've found is to cancel the premium channels, wait for the free premium channel preview weekends, then record a bunch of movies on there and watch them at your leisure. | |
|
| TechyDad Premium Member join:2001-07-13 USA |
TechyDad
Premium Member
2014-Jan-20 5:10 pm
Re: Hence the big push against net neutrality...This is also the reason they're pushing for data caps and overage charges. If you have 5GB of data per month and pay $1 for every 1GB you go over, suddenly Netflix/YouTube/Amazon/etc are much more expensive than Cable TV.
(Even if you watched Netflix in SD, you'd hit a 5GB cap after about 6.5 hours of viewing.) | |
|
| |
1 recommendation |
Re: Hence the big push against net neutrality...Ooh good point! I hadn't even thought of that...so that way they don't have to look like the "bad guy" by blocking/throttling Netflix outright, but instead they can go for the slicker approach.
Just price Netflix out of the market and then point fingers and say "See! We told them that the traditional TV model is the best!"
(mild addition, Netflix in its lowest quality, which we use, is 0.3 GB/hour, so theoretically you could stretch that to about 16 hours a month if you used that setting) | |
|
| | | TechyDad Premium Member join:2001-07-13 USA |
TechyDad
Premium Member
2014-Jan-20 11:23 pm
Re: Hence the big push against net neutrality...And, even if you soldier on and keep using Netflix and other Internet video services, the ISPs get money headed their way for that usage. | |
|
1 recommendation |
It is about price support of company stock.Since most corporate executives are heavily invested in company stock they must continue to show a ramp up in revenue each year to support stock prices. Executives don't care about providing value to their customers. In view of the fact that Cable Companies are essentially a monopoly executives do not have to worry about competition. Unless the cable industry is regulated, more and more crap charges will continue to be added to customers bills until customers will wind up paying $200.00 per month for 20 Channels. | |
|
|
i've cut the cordthey will never learn Netflix all the way | |
|
DeadSurvivorActor (The Asylum / Mill Creek Ent.) Premium Member join:2013-09-03 Tampa, FL ·Charter
|
Time To Shave ...Premium channels have never been a big part of my television viewing, which appears to become less important as time passes ... too damn many "MTV" Reality Show channels for my liking. I'll be shaving the television portion of my current cable bill and perhaps switch to Verizon's "Select" Triple Play since television is not a major part of my entertainment these days. | |
|
TOPDAWG Premium Member join:2005-04-27 Calgary, AB |
TOPDAWG
Premium Member
2014-Jan-20 3:33 pm
netflix is not much without the big guysWhile I agree with you guys about netflix being great. The fact is %99 of their content is owned by someone else. While netflix is starting to make their own content they can't survive without the other content markers.
Netflix needs them content markers a lot more then they need netflix. | |
|
| Bengie25 join:2010-04-22 Wisconsin Rapids, WI
1 recommendation |
Re: netflix is not much without the big guyssaid by TOPDAWG:Netflix needs them content markers a lot more then they need netflix. Only for a bit. Most young kids I know don't watch "TV" anymore, even if they don't have Netflix or Hulu. There is just too much entertainment on the Internet that is free. Most of these kids of spoiled and get to go to movies a lot, but if they want to watch "TV", the go to the movies, rent it, buy it, or pirate it. Anyone who doesn't recognize this it out of touch with reality. | |
|
IowaCowboyLost in the Supermarket Premium Member join:2010-10-16 Springfield, MA
1 recommendation |
I ditched the premiumsI ditched the premiums when the free trial ended. | |
|
antdudeMatrix Ant Premium Member join:2001-03-25 US |
antdude
Premium Member
2014-Jan-20 4:46 pm
OTA + InternetFTW. | |
|
| |
Re: OTA + InternetUnless you watch original content on the movie channels. Currently I watch 16 series between the four movie packages with a few on the way for 2014. At $3 per episode over the course of a 10-12 episode season, it's not much of a money savings versus the $42/month I pay extra for all of the premiums. | |
|
| | •••
|
BiggA Premium Member join:2005-11-23 Central CT |
BiggA
Premium Member
2014-Jan-20 7:57 pm
This actually makes senseUnlike cord cutting, which few people can actually do. | |
|
|
Careful!Careful! If you shave too much off that cord you might get a shock! | |
|
|
yates join:2010-04-30 V5X 0J3 ARRIS SB6183 Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway Ubiquiti Unifi UAP-AC-LITE
|
yates
Member
2014-Jan-24 10:17 am
Just joined the Cord ShavingAfter the promotional pricing on our cable subscription just came to an end and facing additional price hikes at the end of this month, I've now joined the group of "Cord Shavers." I downgraded to a more basic package that dropped all the premium channels with the intention of leaning more on outlets like Hulu and Netflix. | |
|
|
|