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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 gave up TV in 2003. Just use BBC iPlayer for the Doctor Who episodes now. Everything else is a combination of iTunes rentals, torrents and podcasts.
Jonathanjk.com
There just is not the content out there worth paying the amounts they want.
The price set exceeds my demand.
Also 99% of it is crap.
Off the air for what I can get if it fits my time. Really don't even watch stuff off the net.
Sure, I miss not getting shows that friends talk about at work, but I have other ways. And with Hulu and Netflix, I rely on those other ways less and less, if at all. I want to pay for my content, but not everyone else's. Watching the fiasco's with Disney and ESPN (among others over the years), I was glad that I wasn't involved and getting suckered.
For me, it began over watching the Discovery Science channel. It was channel 101 and suddenly just out of my lineup range. I had been trying to explain to my father (who lived with me) science concepts, as he was opening up more and showing interest. The TV shows's imagery and hosts could often explain things better than I could, and I might learn something new as well. My free trial was over, and so I called Adelphia (now Comcast) up. They said that not only would I have to forsake my special rate of something like $35 for the next 6 months (I think I had it for a year total) I would have to pay for digital cable and also the first additional digital package. So, for 1 channel they wanted me to almost triple my bill to $95. My next words were, "Cut it off."
Unfortunately I still am dealing with them over Internet service, but maybe in time things will get better.
Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.
"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.
So... why would I (or numerous others in similar situations) do this when we can get high speed Internet for $30 a month IF we spend another $30 on cable?
So, honestly, I could drop cable (and thus Internet) and then spend more than $60 a month to get Internet (of a similar speed) from someplace else? See why this article doesnt make sense? Nowadays with the cable/Internet bundling prices, people would simply revert to basic cable (ie: no HBO, SHO, etc) and keep their cheap-yet-decent-speed Internet.
After all, without that decent/high speed Internet connection, one cannot watch "online TV" - and for many that means keeping cable as well (and for a growing number, it means keeping Verizon's equivalent or paying a lot more for just Internet).
Now, as far as satellite goes... sure... I could see a bunch dropping that. My brother got satellite for a while... but it meant he had to pay extra to get Internet from someplace else, so, even though satellite at least offered more channels and somewhat better quality on a bunch, overall it wasnt worth it when getting a comparable Internet connection to the previous cable one (28Mb/7Mb) would cost quite a bunch. So, out went the satellite, back in went the cable.
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
But then how do you get that Internet access? If you cut your cable, you can't easily get cable Internet, and if you switch to a cell phone, you can't easily get DSL. Well, you can, but they charge you a "line fee" equal to the price of limited basic TV or basic telephone service. Nor can you get a video-grade Internet connection over the air. And if you try to get your Internet access by tethering your PC to your cell phone, the 5 GB per month cap will ensure that the only Netflix service you get is DVDs by mail, not Watch Instantly.
At the risk of being "That Guy", I don't have a TV and I don't really have any plans of getting one. My old roommate just moved out, and the cable was in his name. I just ordered service (currently, I'm leaching Wifi... sucks), which despite the fact I have gear and am already wired, apparently they have to send someone to me or some crap. Point is, despite the fact they really wanted to bundle me TV and digital phone service (I have a cell phone, why do I need a 'land line', especially if it'll go down if the power is out?), I had no reason to bite.
I think that as younger generations come up and are the ones making these types of purchasing decisions, it's going to be more and more common to just "do without" "old people" entertainment. The few things I want on cable, I can get on Hulu, or on southparkstudios.com the day after the episode was on TV. I use the internet to keep in touch with my friends that don't live near by, group coordinate stuff with those who do, get my the news that I don't get off of NPR in the car, obtain my software updates, work on personal projects, and sometimes work from home. I don't really need TV and I don't want it. Hell, I think if my parents' generation realized that they can get the weather on the internet without having to weight until "the eights", they'd probably ditch cable, too.
Of course, that means that the service providers aren't going to let "network neutrality" ever happen, aren't going to stop doing stuff like DNS hijacking if they can get away with it, and advertisers are going to continue polluting the tubes. Why? 'Cause they have to make up the revenue somehow, and if we're not watching TV, they'll move to where we are.
Now, I'm a person who loves good TV. However, cable has never made sense for me, because I don't watch TV on a schedule. Even back when Firefly was on, if my girlfriend had amorous activities in mind, I would regretfully have to catch up on the missed episode later.
Up until recently, I was combining broadcast TV (I watched a lot of syndicated TV like the Simpsons and various sitcoms) with DVDs and the Internet. Then the government helpfully killed my TV, the digital box I bought (in part with YOUR TAX DOLLARS) never really worked well enough for me to use it. Currently, the only channel my TV picks up is the Nintendo Channel (my Xbox 360 is hooked to a computer monitor).
The only show I really make it a point to catch these days is Breaking Bad which I'm subscribed to through Amazon's Unbox (normally I'd wait for the DVD, but someone at work will spoil the episode for me if I don't watch it the morning after it airs.). By the way, I'm aware of the negatives of Amazon's Unbox service, but it works for my narrow use.
Now, of course, this is not to say I've never mooched off of anyone's cable, as my parents can attest, but since I've been moved out I've never gotten cable or satellite in my home.
Why would I when I can watch just about anything I want to whenever I want to on the Internet? I'm serious, it's rare I can't find somewhere to watch something online nowadays.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
For the cost of cable or satellite for a year ($70 * 12) = $840, you can afford to buy season sets of about ten series, assuming $80 per set, which is a high assumption; season sets frequently sell for a lot less.
And you get to keep it afterwards, and the quality is better than what you get on TV and without commercials.
So yeah, I canceled cable and haven't looked back. If you're willing to bend the law you can also get torrents if you want instant gratification. What the heck is the point of cable/satellite, unless you like sports?
I'm sure many fellow geeks who couldn't care less about sports feel the same way.
I was a DirecTV customer for nine years. I've been running home network with a PC on each TV for about the last four years, however, the PCs were just for watching movies, listening to music, and looking at pictures off the network.
Then I found the jewel that is the Hulu desktop. I don't watch a lot of TV, but everything I do watch is on there. The Hulu quality isn't very good on an HDTV but the interface is generally ok. So, in the end we dropped DirectTV and now the media PCs run the Hulu desktop, BeyondTV to get HDef over the air, and Boxee for everything else. It's pretty slick.
As a side note the guy at DirecTV would not let me go because I'd been a customer for so long. I think he must have made five different offers to me, each getting progressively better. In the end he offered me an upgraded package and nine months of free service. It was crazy.
I haven't owned a television in years, never mind cable TV service. My cable bill is ~$80/month for internet-only, but that's beside the point. According to a calorie burn calculator I just checked, a 180 pound human will burn approximately 81-86 calories per hour while watching TV. The same amount of time spent sleeping (depending on which calculator you use) will burn 96-155 calories.
When you are watching TV, your brain turns off.
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.. and couldn't be happier.
It wasn't so much that we switched to internet (we did somewhat for my wife's foreign language programs) but a value for money proposition. We were getting close to zero value (unless you count our daughter's watching Treehouse or whatever it was .... and that was becoming a problem).
We have been better off financially without Rogers, and our daughter gets 2 movie nights a week and she is FAR better behaved/attentive/learning enabled without television. We're a few years behind (starting on Madmen now) but there are definite advantages to that. We don't waste time on crap,or ads.
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"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
I haven't had cable since 2001, except for a brief period (with digital cable, new & shiny) in 2004. DVRs still weren't quite the thing in 2004, though, so in general I discovered that there was (still) nothing on, even for $75/mo. I mostly watched Stargate SG-1 reruns on the SciFi channel. Making any sort of "syfy" golden age argument, however, would be a serious mistake: in those days Stargate reruns were just the leader for...Crossing Over with John Edwards. Oh, an CSPAN. It's all over the internet and satellite radio now, though it is, problematically, still financially supported by cable companies.
Today, it is perfectly possible to do the same thing I have been doing since 2001, without even breaking copyright law (well, mostly). For example, recently I (finally) watched all 17 episodes of the classic (1967) "The Prisoner." For some reason AMC won't put it on Hulu (though there is a link), and instead makes us watch it in their crappy player with inserts one 30-second Google video ad at the beginning, one around eight minutes, and one whenever you pause it and then maximize or minimize (and if the moon in in the house of Jupiter...). Further...there was only one ad available. That's right, I watched the exact same fucking 30-second content-less Siemens ad roughly 50 times...in a row. They don't even have consumer products. "Imagine an America..." in which I don't fucking want to murder every person in Siemens advertising agency and everyone who was involved in this technical clusterfuck at AMC or Google ads!
Now that I am calming down, I will say that AMC's decision to maintain "control" of their video appears a bit counterproductive from a commercial standpoint. This model is still...immature. Since it was The Prisoner, the mindfuck, irrational aspect of showing me the same meaningless ad until I was losing my sanity was actually oddly appropriate, though. It's a pity the parallel wasn't intentional. Still, we have reason to hope. If AMC can somehow make money that way, just think of how much they will rake in with a less Kafka-esque profit model. For a similar experience, I recommend reading the C.S. Forester's excellent novel "The Good Shepherd" in one sitting, after remaining awake for thirty-six hours. Whoa.
Some day...there might be some sort of...market...where better shows are rewarded, and awful shows are canceled. Instead of "ratings" there will be "revenue." An unlikely-sounding dream, I know, to say nothing of the dangerous meaning of "better." If people will now spend less on TV, something may have to give, but I doubt it will be anything that we will actually miss. Besides, the internet offers the added value of targeted advertising and accurate (by TV standards) metrics. There is obviously enough demand for what AMC and HBO (and Showtime, and FX, and even...ESPN) are producing (since people pay extra for HBO & Showtime & certain ESPN already), just like the book market has room for John Barth and Gene Wolfe at the same time as Dan Brown and Stephenie Meyer without the (TV-esque) need to generate sales for Barth and Wolfe by bundling them with vampire-romance-thrillers. There's even room for John Irving to sell the same novel fifteen times, so maybe sitcoms will survive...de gustibus non est disputandum?
I haven't paid for cable since 1998 or so and have been quite happy with my setup. Though I actually just took the plunge about a month or so ago and signed back up at $10 a month for a year as part of some promotion. I was hoping that the technology had matured enough to meet my expectations, but sadly I was mistaken. Glitchy hardware, static, repetitive programming and overall poor quality of content is an absolute deal-breaker for me. I will be canceling fairly soon I think, as even $10 a month is not worth the headaches of this system.
Most programming designed to appeal to the majority would thus appear to you to be pandering to the not-so-clever, when it's actually just trying for the middle.
That was how TV worked 20 years ago. Since then, it has degraded further and further.
TV programming these days quite frequently is targeted to small subsets of the population.
If you are outside of the target demographic, it is likely that you won't enjoy that particular programming.
Even if you enjoy the programming itself, those ads targeting 15 year olds will be disgusting.
Then,grandparent is correct, a lot of programming is targeted for the idiot subset of the population, the lowest
common denominator. Because those are the people where TV ads are likely work, and thus advertisers
want to target that demographic.