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One In Eight To Cut Cable and Satellite TV In 2010
r0k3t writes "It looks like people are finally getting sick of overpriced, ad-infested cable and satellite TV. I had predicted that by 2005 we would mostly be using the net for video — seems like I was a few years off. From the article: 'A cutting-the-cord trend has been the subject of speculation for some time, as networks have increasingly made television programming available for free on the Internet. But a combination of other factors, including a growing number of battles between cable companies and networks, soaring Internet video viewings, and an increase in connected TVs and devices, suggest the trend is finally upon us. ... The biggest reason why customers will cut the cord, according to the study, is the growing cost of pay-TV service. Cable and satellite viewers pay an average of $71 per month, and they receive an average annual price hike of 5%, according to research firm Centris.'"
How many of you have made the switch to Internet-only TV, or are considering it? Any regrets?
I made the switch in 2007, when I got my 24 inch iMac, and an EyeTV TV tuner. No regrets, really. Between Hulu and Netflix and OTA, I can watch pretty much everything I want.
After all, I am strangely colored.
I'm sick of overpriced, ad infested internet.
There, fixed it.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
We watch what we want OTA from the networks, and with the help of an OTA DVR (DTVPal DVR) we "tape" what we can, and use Hulu for the rest.
The way the networks are run I'd swear that they _want_ people to download shows instead of using their services. A typical show seems to run for 2 weeks, then be interrupted for some special event. Then, they'll show another episode, and then quietly move it to another time slot. Then, they'll show another 2 episodes, and then 2 weeks on re-runs. Then time for a 3 month break for the holidays. When they come back after that, the show will be offset 5 minutes because of "Dancing with the Frikkin' Stars" and I miss the end because they've lied to my PVR about the start and end times. Seriously guys, you're driving people to download the damn shows.
Actually, you'll have the cable/telecoms companies become the only providers of Internet, legislate away p2p (see the ruling earlier today "unmasking" file-sharers), strangle services such as netflix, cut the selection of available shows and then push even MORE INTRUSIVE advertising down our throats.
IOW, I don't see any great, worth-while trade offs here, especially since the only decent broadband provider I have access to is my local cable company. They get their cut either way (and I get ads and shit tv shoved down my throat either way).
The only winning scenario I can see involves boycotting television altogether.
Ha! If only.
The Discovery channels are full of sensationalist garbage.
Pretty much. I have a fairly comprehensive cable package (not a big deal; I can afford it), but I'm getting ready to drop it anyway after many, many nights of "500 channels and nothing I want to watch." On-Demand helps a bit, but I'm thinking that Netflix or just buying DVD / BluRay makes more sense at this point. If I price out the programming that I actually "look forward to" I'm probably paying something like $20 / hour / month (with a massive pile of crap added on for "free").
There is some value to be had for the convenience and being able to participate in the social interaction geared around the current shows, but I'm not sure it's worth it. Offsetting that, not having 500 channels of crap will probably be life-enhancing (after a period of adjustment).
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
People are cutting out non-essentials so they can get out of debt or simply be financially secure. An extra $71 on a $150K mortgage will cut years off the time it takes to pay it back and save thousands of dollars.
If we didn't get cable forced on us through our HOA (at $8 a month, a steal) we wouldn't have it. We have NetFlix and the internet for watching movies and shows. We're getting rid of our landline to save $25 a month that we don't need to be spending. We have MagicJack, Tracfones and a company provided cell-phone.
All the money we're saving is being snowballed onto debts which are quickly disappearing. Once we're out of debt then we can decide which luxuries we'd like to have.
Work Safe Porn
Go outside?
Seriously, if they throttle Netflix and Hulu (or Hulu kills itself with an asinine payment system) I'll just do without. It can only make my life better.
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
TV is a way to get people to voluntarily plug into "the matrix" to get fed an artificial reality -- to have things put in your head that other people want in there ... Buy this product! Invest in this! Be scared, and continue to spend billions a day on the biggest socialist enterprise ever, the military industrial complex. Health, education and recreation are less important (leave those to nordic countries). The dollar is strong ... etc.
Content on the internet is more democratic, less controllable by big money, and much less dangerous to the notion that the best way for things to be rigged is in favor of the general public.
End of rant.
There are still ads on the internet? I haven't seen one in about 4 years now.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
A story from someone who used to watch TV like *ALL* the time. It simply costs too much for what is there. They cater to a small segment of watchers the 'sports guy'. The rest of us just suck it up. The 'sports guy' will buy the 200 dollar package. The rest of us are left with the 'low' priced 60-80 dollar packages.
10 years ago it was 25-30 for a decent package. Now it is nearly double on its way to triple. Yeah not a good deal. Then they made using DVRs a pain in the ass. But turn around and rent you a crap one. Then want to rent you a 'digital' box which they overcompress the feed anyway and you end up with the same res as you had before just more boring stations.
Yeah I cut the cord. It was overpriced and my tastes had changed. So I was not watching much anymore. I now buy DVD's and games with that money. I can buy a whole season for 15-60 bucks. Sure I am a bit out of sync with everyone but who cares! I even 'know' that there is a serious amount of stuff on the net. I do not even bother with it. I dont have time for that. I just buy whatever season I am interested in.
I remember as a kid there where few commercials on cable TV. It was one of their main selling points. Your paying for it... I then remember them butchering the shows that were on so they could get their 5 mins of commercials in.
Once you 'cut the cord' you crave it for a couple of months (yes I was 'addicted to it'). But after that you dont even look back. Cable 'missed' the PVR revolution then tried to co-op it. Too late. They should have been ALL over making Tivo and others like it almost stupid easy to do. Instead they were trying to figure out how to monetize it. Instead of making their service more compelling to keep (as they were raising prices) they made it less compelling and still raised prices. The one thing that made cable 'take off' in the late 80s early 90s was the cable ready TV. Then the companies fell back in love with the extra box for some reason (money). But it is costing them dearly.
But here is the BEST bit here
http://stopthecap.com/2010/04/27/ted-turner-slams-former-time-warner-ceo-for-google-is-a-bunch-of-bullsh-comment/
When you have the dude who practically invented the cable franchise telling you your doing it wrong... that says a lot.
So Cable dudes look out your customers are starting to notice you charge too much for too little these days. It was a 'good deal' 20 years ago. Not so much anymore.
We've got a contract, so we can't just bail, but when it is up, that'll be the end of it. It isn't because of the Internet, though -- HD reception via satellite is much better quality than the vast majority of Internet streaming video. The reason why is that the programming is just terrible. The things that they put on television simply aren't the things that entertain me and mine. It doesn't matter where you get your programming if watching it makes you feel like you're wasting your time.
We do still have the Internet if something comes up we need to know about, and it's likely to be both more timely, and available on demand, news in particular. News networks - CNN, FOX, etc. - are just pitiful. FOX is like a work of (bad) fiction, and CNN is a reach-around fest for the clueless. Half a country can be in ruins and the top story on CNN will be that some Hollywood marriage is breaking up.
As far as what we continue to use the television for, there's still plenty without broadcast: XBox 360/HDDVD (yeah, we have a few), PS3/Bluray, Wii, DVD, and our media Mac. It isn't like we aren't entertained -- far from it. We've got an adequate collection of movies and games, too.
Television is probably the technology that had the most potential to be a force for good in our society. Today, it seems to me to be the technology that has least lived up to its potential. Not that it hasn't matured technically, no question that it has, but that the content is, socially speaking, crap.
There's some kind of thing that goes on in marketing, entertainment, and politics that almost always seems to go for the left side of the Gaussian, as if collecting the not-so-clever is easier than collecting the clever. Maybe it's just that simple. All I know for sure is that currently, television content is mind-numbingly awful, and on the rare occasion that they produce something worth watching, it rarely survives the seasonal cullings by the networks. And in the end, you can get all the shows on a DVD or Bluray (if you're lucky), and watch them without commercials, in very good quality, as many times as you like, and furthermore, you can legitimately loan 'em to your friends.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I am sure the various telcos are acutely aware of this trend, and have plans in place to cover their bottom line. When subscription numbers drop drastically, be on the lookout for internet connectivity prices to skyrocket. I sincerely doubt they'll go quietly into the night as half their business fades away while the other half makes the same money as before. Remember, they have the monopoly, they can do it.
Name...That...Autocomplete!
You're not getting any if she's focused on the TV.
Well, maybe doggy style so she can still see the TV. If she does cum, probably she's fantasizing about some guy on TV instead of you.
Evidence suggests that people fuck like mad when they can't watch TV. South-central Florida had a bit of a baby boom about 9 months after having a week or two of hurricane-caused power loss. No power means no TV, which means passionate fucking.
Sports is the biggest thing that has kept me subscribing. Most TV programs are available for download in some form. Sports is something you generally want to watch live. More content is being moved online but it often is very restrictive, blacked-out and expensive. Then again nerds don't watch sports do we?
I ditched cable in 2005 in lieu of downloading shows, and it was one of the best things I've ever done with respect to my entertainment time and money. I simply Bittorrent all the new shows that I watch, which is incredibly convenient, because it allows me to watch them, commercial free, when I want to (instead of when the networks dictate that I should watch them), and I can also save them permanently by collecting a season at a time and then burning them to DVD.
Furthermore, it makes me use my entertainment time more judiciously. There's none of that bad habit of plopping down on the couch in front of the TV and spending an unsatisfying three hours watching whatever happens to be on, much of which is crap or reruns. Now I have a directory full of new episodes of shows (or backlogs of old seasons of shows I intend to watch), and I simply pick one and watch it. Unless I specifically choose otherwise, my entertainment is always new, fresh, deliberate, and uninterrupted by advertising.
I do disagree with the people who say that TV content sucks these days. A few years ago, when reality TV became the norm rather than the exception, I would certainly have agreed wholeheartedly. Nowadays, though, many great shows are being released, and although I hate to admit that I'm a TV junkie, right now I have a list of about 50 shows that I watch each year, and while some of them are simply mediocre, there are some really great programs on that list with exceptionally creative writing and acting. IMO, 2009-2010 has been an extraordinary year for television.
oh the horror!
someone wishes to watch ONE hour of television per night during the weeknights, and NONE during the weekends.
what are they, insane?
Can't they see there is something better to spend their life on?
Shouldn't they take that same 1 hour per day and spend it outside instead (regardless of weather) or doing something else, because obviously, they are spending too much time watching television.
(i'm betting 90% of the people reading /. spend more than an hour per day surfing the internet. maybe we should berate them too......)
I'm getting ready to drop it anyway after many, many nights of "500 channels and nothing I want to watch."
They know the answer. They refuse to offer it. All they have to do us unbundle. Want ESPN2 without ESPN? Want anything in Disney's lineup without the rest? Then unbundle. Order just what you want. Then you'll not have channels you never watch.
One thing I've always said they should do (And should be exceedingly easy to implement) is to have channels be able to be deleted from the lineup. That way, I could, saw, delete QVC and never run across it again. Not in a menu, not in the listings, not when I channel up, never. I never watch it, so having it on my list of 500 is an annoyance. (and no, "favorites" isn't the same thing, though some implementations have come close)
They distribution companies are used to the TV model where the advertisers are the customers and the watchers are the product. With cable/satellite, the customers are the watchers and the product is the content. But because that's the opposite of the TV model and still part of the same industry, it confuses them. They should be looking at what people want, and try to give it to them.
And yes, I'm aware of all the complaints about unbundling. I've never seen a complaint that prevents it from being done today, just with higher cost (i.e. you could enable just ESPN2, but you'd have to pay for ESPN as well). And when a couple of the big companies do it and refuse to accept future bundled sales of channels, everyone will do it and it will improve the sales of cable and channels.
But they'll never do it unless the FCC requires it.
Learn to love Alaska
Commercials are what pay for (or at least subsidize) the programming.
No they don't. They just hide the cost and foolish people think they're not actually paying because the costs are hidden in the products they buy. Not to mention taking billions of manhours per year watching/avoiding advertising drivel.
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The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".
Yes, but not as much as having to pay / pay more for content. I'll put up with commercials just fine if it means I pay little to nothing for it.
Ah, you subscribe to the fiction that ad's pay for anything. Who do you think pays for marketer salaries? You do via higher cost products. In fact you're paying twice over, once in time to avoid/skip the ad (billions of manhours each year are lost due to useless advertising drivel) and twice to pay for the ad.
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The majority of modern marketing is nothing more than an arms race to get mind share. Everybody loses except the parasitic marketing "industry".