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Millions of Subscribers Leaving Cable TV for Streaming Services
suraj.sun writes "Netflix and Hulu are convincing millions of cable, satellite and telco subscribers to cut the cord and dive into video streaming. That's the conclusion of a new report released this week by the Convergence Consulting Group, which finds that 2.65 million Americans canceled TV subscriptions between 2008-2011 in favor of lower-cost internet subscription services or video platforms. Though Convergence co-founder Brahm Eiley projects that the number of people opting out of TV subscription services will begin to slow in 2012 and 2013. Part of the problem, Eiley argues, may be the rising price tag for streaming rights to programming which could cause fiscal fits for Netflix."
It's cheaper to get Amazon Prime, Hulu, AND Netflix than it is to pay for cable.
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Also known as the Department of Shit We Already Know. Next, we explain how fewer people write handwritten letters after the advent of "electronic mail".
My mom learned to use bittorrent to get new shows, and also watches Hulu. My brother uses an Xbox with a friend's Netflix account and also torrents. They canceled cable TV last month. There's really no need to have cable anymore unless you want live sports. Practically everything else is available online for free.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Dropped all cable TV subscriptions and use only their internet service to stream HULU+Netflix and through my internet TV, ROKU and Logitec Revue boxes. In addition I stream numerous live news services directly though both the ROKU and the Logitec boxes.
Since I am not a sports nut I am not affected by the lack of live HD sports coverage through the methods outlined above, but I have saved hundreds every year with more programming that I actually desire than the crap that was "served" to me by my local Cable operator plus fewer or no commercials.
Most people pay extra for a DVR since they cannot enjoy the shows when they air. This method functions pretty much the same way and allows my TV shows to revolve around me, and not the other way around. CABLE is DEAD!!
1) Doesn't it bother anyone that by having the choice of what to see and when, you simply reinforce your own interests/prejudices, rather than open your mind to new ideas? This is probably the Internet's greatest sin.
2) Doesn't it bother anyone that unicast is a horrible waste of bandwidth?
After 12 years of paying for TV, I finally cut the cord. The final straw for me were the distracting popups shown at the bottom of the screen in the middle of the shows. I mean really, think about. You are paying for the "priviledge" of being a product subjected to insistent advertising. How ridiculous is that? My average bill was around $100 month. That's over $12,000 a decade for chrissakes! What do I have to show for that expense now? Absolutely nothing!
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
It wasn't long ago that you'd have had to watch these on a laptop, at best hooked up to the TV for the duration of the show. Complete, probably, with AV, update and email pop-ups...
Now we just watch it on our $200 XBMC boxes, our XBOX 360, Wii or whatever device it is we normally hook up to the TV. We also get it in every room (Wii in the Playroom with Netflix + netflix kids, Xbox 360 in the main room, old xbox running xbmc in the kitchen, tablet everywhere else).
And that's even with a very limited selection of shows - just wait until the rest of the world catches up with content, Cable and Satellite will be converting all their resources to suing their customers MPAA stylee!
These days all you really need is a powerful laptop & a smart HDTV connected to it and an unlimited or very high cap cable/dsl service then you get access to TONNES of Online Content World Wide The people have spoken. Convergence is IN!
And Depending on where you live you can agument with OTA antenna to your HDTV.
This strange comment at the bottom of the message is illogical.
Let's see:
* Cable TV with the few channels that air shows I want to watch: ~$100/mo.
* Cable TV with only basic channels + Internet ~$75/mo.
* Internet only: ~$50/mo.
Netflix: $8/mo.
Between stuff available online, stuff downloadable as a torrent and netflix, WHY would I want to watch something that is:
* Only available according to the broadcaster's schedule
* Chopped up to make room for 15mins of advertising at a minimum
* Where the ads are broadcast louder than the shows
* The shows worth watching are all scattered on specialty stations each of which costs me extra $$$ to watch, or broadcast in another country but not here and simply not available.
Cable TV and the 5000 channels of shit have priced themselves out of the market, the huge number of (mostly pointless) channels have spread the advertising potential so thin that none of them can make anything that isn't a cheap reality tv show etc.
TV is dead IMHO. The only problem is that the shows I like to watch still cost money to produce, and they need revenue from somewhere. Hopefully the deals with Netflix and other services are sufficient to provide that money. Hopefully this also kills off the shitty programming that isn't worth the time and money it took to make it. Let the viewers decide. I would much rather spend $8 per month than ever see another ad again in my life.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
First, yes, cable costs too much. I'm not technically old enough to "remember" the days when one of the major selling points of cable TV was the theoretical lack of commercials. After all, you're paying for the TV channels directly, why would you need commercials? But companies are greedy, and folks learned to tolerate commercials, and now you get where we are today. You're paying to be advertised to. And don't think I've not noticed the same creep happening with Hulu, originally one commercial per show, now 2-3 commercial breaks per half hour show, with 1-2 commercials each break... (However, Hulu's the internet equivalent of free-broadcast TV, so I cut it a lot of slack.)
What really turned me off and pisses me off now, though, is the return of the cable box. When cable was new, the cable box was a requirement. I remember it oddly fondly. Old fake-wood plastic with a sliding linear tuner, up to channel 35 or 55, even though we only got up to 21 or 22...
Then came Cable-ready TV's! You can just plug 'em in, use a remote, handy dandy!
Now, with the Digital transition, you're dependent on cable boxes again, which I understand from a practical stand point. Older TV's aren't Digital Cable ready. Annoying, but acceptable.
However, even with Digital Cable-Ready TV's you still need to rent a "box" from the cable company, except now it's a card. You have to have a cable-company specific decryption card, which my local company charges you monthly rent for, in addition to the "subscription" fee for digital cable, which just happened to increase as they transitioned these past 6 months. Plus, my understanding is, they can use it as a poor-mans Nielson, track my habits, make MORE money from me that way...
Oh, and let's not forget that there's a new format/standard for the cable cards that's coming out, and your "Digital Cable-Ready" TV may not be able to use the NEW card, so you're back on the damn box again...
Really? I'm really going to PAY for a service that's LESS convenient than it was in the 1980's? That makes my functional technology artificially obsolescent? I'm going to accept a BACKWARDS movement in capabilities and convenience? When I don't even use 95% of what they make me pay for anyways, but tolerated because it was "good enough, barely?"
Hell, NO. I'm taking advantage of the digital transition to drop cable. I'm not dropping TV entirely, I know myself, but Over-the-air, with Netflix, Hulu, and DVD supplements will be enough for me.
Screw 'em.
(Of course, I think those cunning bastards at Comcast, or some of them at least, have realized that as cable becomes more of a hassle more people are going to be Net-only households, thus their aggressive acquisition of so much internet infrastructure, but that's another delusional rant for another time.)
I get the basic channels for free. How? Simple, I have cable internet and phone over which basic cable comes through unfiltered. When I asked the installer about it he told me they do not have filters for that range. Since that gets me my locals, weather being most important, its all good.
What is really sad. I was paying for basic cable. I subscribed to the basic service using the website for 12.95 a month. Then come January someone at work mentioned that their cable bill went up by $5.00 and they say increases in internet charges too. Other people later chimed in to say similar. Well I did check my bill and lo and behold, I was now being charged 17.95 for basic cable. I called, cancelled it, and still have it all because my televisions can read it just fine. Best part about it, on their website it is still 12.95 but I cannot get it. Seems the local version of the same provider could care less about the web site pricing.
TL;DR. Cable is killing itself because the right hand doesn't let the left hand in on what it is doing. Worse, they have tried to follow this combo model where they aim for over one hundred a month in combined charges. I am at 62 now with phone and internet (16/4 btw) and still have more TV than I want.
I do know one thing, more people would drop cable and sat like a rock if you could stream HBO; there are people at work who get HBO and Cable simply for Game of Thrones!) and other "premium" channels.
A side note, my cable lists a cap of 250g a month. I haven't hit that cap yet but I am wondering if the improved show quality (1080p) offered by some services will push me over.
TV schedules need to revolve around me, not some schedule determined in a room in NYC or LA. Once a provider can time shift all their content then they will have value to me, but probably not as much as they will want to charge.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
With atleast 33% of every program slot consisting of ads, I would prefer shifting to online ad-free service as soon as possible.
To Share Is To care
We ditched land line and TV service last summer. Currently we watch OTA, Hulu Plus, and Netflix (DVD and stream). None of us feel like we are missing anything worth the cost of TV service. Amazon Prime may get added to the list.
Keep the Classic Slashdot.
I've been a "streaming" customer for close to a decade- used to be mail order DVDs, now internet available movies.
Cable has WAY too much shit attached to it. No, I do not want someone to teach me how to construct a piece-of-garbage melamine shelf.
It's cheaper to get Amazon Prime, Hulu, AND Netflix than it is to pay for cable.
And I can create my own science fiction channel! On AC TV, Firefly is in continuous reruns, along with Star Trek, Doctor Who, Torchwood, and best of all, all those indie real science fiction movies like: Pi, Prime, The Man From Earth, etc ....
Now if only Netflix would get their act together and have more content streamable because their selection is getting long in the tooth for me.
Hulu is annoying because because for many shows they just have clips or just a few episodes at a time - e.g. "Good Eats" with Alton Brown.
Stuff like Game of Thrones gets made so that people sign up to HBO. If enough HBO subscribers move to streaming (which brings substantially less revenue) - good bye expensive premium content. That's why it's not unreasonable to predict that Game of Thrones will last to the end of the saga (even though that bit hasn't been written). The production costs are simply to high and HBO won't be able to maintain its subscriber base as people move away from the Cable TV model to streaming.
TV has become almost unbearable indeed. I guess that this evolution will repeat with streaming too. We see the trend also in youtube. First it was completely free, then adds appeared at the begnning. the next step is to have adds to appear during play or interrupt the movie for ads.Once TV is less relevant and streaming the only possibility, the crap will creap in too. The movies will be interupted regularly for advertisements, or adds will be injected into the movies and show and on will only be able to get rid of it by paying more.
Basic Cable - with *some of the local channels that you could get for free anyway with an antenna - has just crap on it with tons of advertisements.
They should be paying you to watch that shit.
* - What I've found with the local channels on cable is that they don't have the sub-channels. Meaning, you get channel 2.1 but not 2.2,2.3 or 2.4. So, basic cable gives you less than broadcast TV.
I think in a few years we will see netflix style "or a better organized company" come out that will have full access and stream all TV shows past and present. No longer will you have to wait and see what is on, or have to use a DVR or be limited to a small amount of media on netflix/Amazon style systems, but contain huge amounts of media, from sports to shows. The user will just pick what you want to watch say "MacGyver" or "Mama's Family" and watch it, all of them. It would hosts everything from odd news broadcasts, sporting events, everything. Think about how much money is being wasted by the owners of content due to lack of distribution or networks that simply don't want to air them. This was they get X amount per viewing. Free money. Then when a new episode is created it will simply be added to the lists at a given date and time. This would also given better feedback about what shows are popular and what shows aren't. Say $30 dollars with commercials. $120 commercial free access?
I just quit watching it all-together. The
Only thIng I watch any more is college basketball and NFL, wh
Gone!
We had Satellite (We're in the boonies) and honestly at the time we coonsistently watched the Daily Show, The Colbert Report, various documentaries from the science networks that were, at their best, only on par with average PBS programming, and often no where close, and some news.
HDTV and a MythTV box were easily worth trading those out for. DailyShow and Colbert are online. Since then I've done Netflix and caught up on some good TV series. I bought a Roku box when my Wii was in for repairs - I wish the interface was as good as the Wii interface, but it does have a lot of nice features.
Why would I pay for satellite?
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
This is an amazing opportunity for amateur film makers. Make small, interesting/entertaining movies, get them available online (perhaps even with Amazon, Netflix, etc) and push out the big players. The viewers are there now that they are giving up TV services - they will be looking for new stuff to watch. Just reel them in and let word-of-mouth reel in more.
I simply hooked my cable up in that fancy green box up the street and ordered DSL service for my interweb tube. I pay 49 a month for what I consider good service and the cable company can suck a fat babys dick as far as I am concerned.
I can acquire every show we watch on iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, or streaming from the network's website. Adding up all that cost is still far cheaper than cable. I don't watch sports, so there is really no point. Of course, I can also tune in the networks for free over the airwaves.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Cable companies and content providers want to live in a world where all play back devices are "pay for play" and consumers have to pay a marginal fee for every video watched and every song listened to. Even better would be if the play back devices could detect how many people were in the room and a charge per viewer/listener could be assessed. Fortunately for consumers such a system is presently unworkable.
But encrypted digital channels allow cable providers to get pretty close. On top of subscription fees and premium packages, consumers now have to rent a set top box (or cable card) for each playback device in the house. My television with clear QAM tuner, useless. My wife's eyeTV with the clear QAM tuner, useless. My DVR with the clear QAM tuner, useless. To get set top boxes for all those devices would almost double my cable bill.
So I did the reasonable thing, I cancelled the TV portion and kept just the Internet and phone service. But, unlike the ones mentioned in the article, I didn't replace the subscription with online streaming. There are some shows I miss (AMC's Walking Dead, Comedy Central's The Daily Show, MSNBC's Morning Joe) but, at least so far as I can tell, there is no streaming service that has all of those shows available unless I sign back up for a TV package at a cable provider.
I gave up cable two years ago. And with my current Usenet+Sickbeard+Couchpotato+XBMC combo, I dont give a flying **** about streaming either.
People have hit on two major issues as to why cable is dying: first, the on-demand issue (who wants to have to be in front of a TV on a weekday at 7pm to catch their show - or what if it only comes on at 2 am?); second, the cost (paying for Netflix and internet can be a lot cheaper than extended cable and internet, and it can offer more variety of shows).
However, I want to expand on the cost issue. For me it isn't just the rising cost, but the cost for comparable goods. Who here remembers when over-the-air (OTA) television stations when off the air in the wee hours of the morning? Ah, I fondly remember the "Indian" crying or the waving flag/bald eagle playing at sign-off. To fill their late night blocks, many stations (especially the independents) would buy up whatever was cheap - old movies, B movies, or whatever was in the equivalent of the discount bin for TV. Eventually cable took over with its 24 hour schedule of reruns - and TV viewing was good for insomniacs.
However, things have changed significantly in cable land. Late night shifted from a "lets fill the airwaves with cheap shows" to "lets make money by selling ad time to people who make 30-60 minute commercials - score!!!".
I am a night owl, I am most likely going to watch TV between 10pm and 4am. Not their main market, I know, but I've watched infomercials take over the wee hours of the morning, creep into the just after midnight hour, and now see the bloody things as early as 9pm. Heck, they are even creeping into the daytime hours now.
TL;DR Long story short - I dumped cable not only because the price kept were going up, I dumped it the minute I realized they were asking me to pay to watch commercials (infomercials) rather than entertainment shows during the hours I was most likely to watch! As mentioned, the shortening of shows due to increasing ads is hard enough to swallow - but when most of the channels of expensive extended cable are nothing but ads on the late night, why the heck should I keep paying more for less?!? This is why I dumped cable and even have to avoid many OTA channels. Thankfully, ad-free Netflix and Amazon Prime is there for us night owls.
Apple are on thier way to winning this war on cable. The new AppleTV was quietly updated to 1080p and requires no local time shifting storage solution. The have secured agreements so you can get most shows one day behind air date, with premium shows from HBO released after season ends. No commercials for the majority except for Glee which did put in post show adverts that put it in my will not watch again list. No monthly fee so you can not buy anything new and still have access to you previous purchases. Prediction: Apple will release AppleTV iOS apps with user selectable channels and lower the bar to become a broadcaster with Apple doing delivery. Tight integration with iPads and iPhones for remote control with Siri voice query as option. Maybe a TV set with AppleTV docking station to allow for brain upgrades without replacing set every time.
to pad their subscriber numbers. I cut the cord over a year ago and they keep calling me to give me "free" basic cable in order to pad their subscriber numbers and get more ad money. I always find it amusing when the person on the phone can't believe that I don't want "free" cable. I tell them I get everything I need over the internet and down't want cable. If they offer it to you, don't take it. It'll just prolong the life of an obsolete business model. I can only assume Comcast will eventually take the next next step and *require* you to have cable if you use broadband. If and when that happens I hope there is a firestorm of lawsuits...
I know this is going to rub a lot of people here the wrong way, but I've always thought that Netflix needs to have some shows that are ad-supported. If they do not do this, I doubt they will be able to secure the licensing rights (or they will cost an arm and a leg) for tv shows as soon as they come out. For most people the appeal of streaming services is the ability to watch what you want, when you want it. If someone wants to watch the latest episode of X show, they are forced to either rely on basic cable, or pirate it.
AccountKiller
I quitted watching TV channels years ago. The only incentive for me to pick up one right now, is probably when I get a new video game console...
Eventually your cableco will go all digital and encrypt the feed. Want basic cable? You'll need our set-top box for that. No more free basic channels.
Everyone seems to be forgetting how terrible TV is now-a-days. Reality TV is awful. They have shows about parking meter attendants? Pawn Shops? Random slutty women that marry rich and then spend their days gossiping about each other? How many carbon copies of "Star Search" are they going to make? The only decent TV is on AMC, HBO and Showtime. All of which you can get on DVD/Netflix after the seasons over. Network and cable TV is doomed.
In 2004 I got fed up with the commercials, the repeats, the mindless blather and the realization that sitting in front of a TV was a consummate waste of time. It wasn't entertaining - one rarely sees "entertainment" of any value. It wasn't informative - "if it bleeds, it leads" being the editorial policy of "news" programs. The movies were limited in availability, always way behind the current theater showings, and rarely good enough to sit through. I gave my TV to a shelter for women, canceled cable service (satellite, actually) entirely, renewed my library card and rediscovered the unlimited world of books. It felt like my IQ increased by 20 points within weeks. I suddenly had a lot of time to be with friends, read, and take my dog for long walks. I could go to bed when I got ready, not "having to" finish a 10pm show or the 11pm news. I was able to approach purchasing decisions without the "help" of TV ads. I was able to decide whom to vote for without hearing attack ads for months before an election. (Money in politics? Meh.) How liberating! If anyone wants their life back, they ought to think carefully about how many hours they spend in front of the box being immersed in pseudo-entertainment and plied with propaganda about products, services and politicians. Think carefully, too, about whether they really like being the lowest common denominator to whom most TV "content" is pitched. And think of how much richer life could be with all those hours devoted to something else.
I severed the cord from Cable in 2007. No way I was going to pay over $100 for internet and channels that I did not want. We all know how to get shows via downloads, (torrents, ect). But now the streaming services (Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Youtube) are starting to have their own content. Hell, my wife watches the Soaps she missed online, no bubbles, no troubles. Some of the cable channels get the whole online thing, just look at comedy central. I'm sure people that are connected to the internet would be willing to pay for channels they want to stream (HBO, ESPN, ect).
repressive commercials lead to this behavior.
no one likes the MAFIAA anyway.
We sneakernet 1TB now.
fukkem.
These days all you really need is a powerful laptop & a smart HDTV connected to it
Except nobody* wants to connect a computer to a TV. See this comment and this comment and this comment. If you want, I can dig up more.
and an unlimited or very high cap cable/dsl service
Which the cable Internet companies are trying to kill precisely because it encourages cable TV customers to become former customers. Comcast prefers to just let its Tata uplink saturate.
* Outside the tiny, commercially insignificant minority that reads Slashdot and the various HTPC forums.
Being a somewhat typical software engineer I have trouble paying bills on time, for want of attention rather than cash. Like most cable companies (and unlike phone, gas, etc which have to observe regulated protocols), Comcast reacted by quickly cutting off my service. So far, that seems fair. But since I rarely watched TV anyway I often went weeks or months before paying the bill so I could get the service restored. I figured Comcast wouldn't charge me for the time when my service was interrupted, but no. They charge me in full every month, regardless of whether I had service or not. This was definitely not OK. When I asked one of their CSRs this once (after waiting on hold for forty minutes) they told me that my service technically wasn't interrupted, that there was a way of getting basic cable if I pressed some hidden combination of buttons on my cable box.
Needless to say, cancelling that service was a pleasure. And of course, a couple days later one of their sales reps called me with a "what will it take for you to come back" spiel.
Once again, MBAs and their lack of understanding of the real world of technology and how it impacts competition. They see their products and services as a fixed value (with adjustments for inflation) and little else. They can't handle the notion that as cheaper alternatives come out, they need to adjust the perceived value of their products and services in some way.
Cable and other TV service providers have not adjusted their pricing structures. What's more, while they continue to rake in lots and lots of advertising revenue, they feel the need to gouge their viewing customers for premium TV rates. Everyone else seems to have noticed the shift to streaming entertainment. It seems the Cable TV service providers either didn't notice or refused to accept/believe it and have certainly and unquestionably failed to respond to it.
What SHOULD the Cable TV service providers be doing? Offer service for FREE or damned close to free. Without taking this measure, they are risking the loss not only of their viewing customers but also the advertising revenue that comes with having viewing customers. This means they will make less money either way, but if they want to keep the business running, then they need to make a change. Doing nothing will eventually result in a dead business.
Instead, what do we see? Basic TV provided for between $30 and $50 per month depending on your provider in most of the cases I have seen. Consequently, I only get internet myself. If I have to pay for TV, I'm not going to watch it. I used to get it illegally, but since my internet installer refused to take a bribe, I have been living happily without basic cable for more than 2.5 years and counting. Nice thing is I have come to realize how entirely needless TV actually is. I do other things now. And the things I watch are much more limited... much, much more.
The TV providers are over-valuing themselves in much the same way I see complaining American women over-valuing themselves and wondering why they can't "get a good man" and all that crap. Well guess what idiots? You have to offer something of VALUE at a REASONABLE PRICE before you will get what you want. With increased competition and people learning to simply go without or entertaining themselves, the expensive service providers will find themselves without customers. (Yes, I'm still talking about American women.)
Can't you just call them and tell them to turn it off?
If the cable company turns off TV, it'll still charge me nearly the same amount for a "dry loop fee" that it charges for TV if I keep Internet.
What's online is online, whether it be a networks website
"We could not validate your subscription with a participating cable or satellite television provider."
bittorrent
At thousands of dollars per show (cf. Capitol v. Thomas)?
Beside the fact that watching TV without ads means only watching shows that have been released on DVD, then either buying/renting/borrowing the DVD, downloading a ripped copy (which I do not condone) or using Netflix (hopefully they have the rights to offer it on their streaming service), there is one really big reason why this "solution" to the cost of cable/satellite/broadcast TV will inevitably fail: it doesn't pay for any of the production costs of the shows you watch. This is the catch 22 of the situation. Production costs are paid for by advertising dollars. Sure there is money to be made from DVD sales and syndication, but those revenue streams are largely deferred and are way too risky, from the production company's POV, to be the basis for investing millions of dollars into creating even a single season of a new show, and even then it would STILL not even be viable for syndication which typically requires 100 episodes.
So you can stop watching ads, and the networks will have to either sell more ad time (shorter shows) or go with cheaper alternatives (reality TV). Hmmm, sounds familiar. Of course, we can hope that a fundamental paradigm shift will occur that allows everyone to get what they want; on demand, ad-free, high production quality shows available on all devices for pennies on the dollar that somehow the networks and production companies are still able to make a profit from. Yeah right. Maybe getting the the networks out of the way will help, but I doubt it. More likely, we will all just bank on our neighbors continuing to be suckers and footing the bill so that our shows stay on the air and eventually end up being available on our cheaper alternative media provider of choice.
I find it amusing that the general population of /. is totally blind to this simple logic.
Yeah it seems that there are a lot of companies trying to steal a piece of cable's pie but speaking as a cable employee I really don't see a huge drop in customers. Competition is good for everyone so I say bring it on.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
1. Three types of companies: pipe providers, content providers, device providers. No one company covers more than one of those areas.
2. Pipe providers using a price structure that has a fixed component (affording a certain amount of "free" bandwidth) then charges per-byte-transferred above that limit. Separate prices for "in-network" and "out-of-network" bandwidth since the former is cheaper than the latter. Other than in-network vs. out-of-network for the purpose of billing pipe providers are completely "traffic agnostic".
3. Content providers competing to present the best "deal" to content producers. Providers handle the technical details of streaming content online, billing end users and marketing the service.
4. Device providers quit ignoring consumers who view over-the-air content and would like to record it. Device providers start producing do-it-all devices. For instance, one box that has wifi, ethernet, a digital TV receiver, blu-ray, dvr capabilities, support for hulu and netflix, and a simple on-screen interface to manage them all.
Disclaimer: If I could get a decent internet connection and home phone that would be significantly cheaper than internet, phone + tv that I have now, I would drop the tv and get some netflix solution. I live in Canada, so might be different depending on where you live. I have considered dropping the tv subscription several times. I have satellite (only the 'basic' package, which includes a few HD channels), homephone and internet through the same provider. With the packaging deal for those three services, it would save me almost nothing if I were to drop tv from that and it would actually cost more if I added in the Netflix subscription. I am sure they have thought of this problem and are giving away the basic tv almost free now, just to pad subscriber numbers and hopefully get people to upgrade to a premium package to get some channels that are actually worth watching... And maybe make some money when people buy some incredibly overpriced paypervu movie when it is late at night and they are too drunk to realize what they are doing.
Added to the 'no cost savings' is the hassle of getting Netflix shown onto my living room tv (I don't want to add a separate computer just to watch tv, or run some long cable from an existing computer that I then need to leave on 24/7, and no - I have no game console that would serve as a netflix device).
Your cable company doesn't offer an Internet only connection?
In some small cities you don't have much of a choice of Broadband, just the cable company and the phone company, and DSL is usually slower than cable.
I have been doing that for over 10 years now, way to follow the trend now that it is "popular" to do.
there are lot's of SD only cable boxes out there so that will cost alot to swap them to HD or MPEG 4 only boxes.
why can't HBO just sell there own stream? maybe they can but the cable co will be pissed off if HBO where to bypass them.
Currently, my only paid video subscription is to Netflix. I also watch shows on the networks' websites. For example, I watch Big Bang Theory on CBS.com and The Middle on ABC.com . I also watch various other videos on YouTube, and just started following Geek & Sundry which has the potential to be interesting.
I also want to see massive consumer-union (cooperative) content libraries, and those libraries being the direct middleman between the producers and the consumers. The consumers band together to create content libraries, and pay the producers according to member decision. If I only watch two shows, I want my money only going to those shows (plus a little for distribution costs and some for the new development fund).
Through the rescission my employer grew its profitability without a bailout from the federal government, rolled out telephony services, hired 300 employees to support this product line, and grew HSD (Internet) by 20%. In addition to this they have built a new state side call center, relocated 1000's of local CSR's to that call center to avoid using (cheaper, lower quality IMO) CSR's. Whats more they have done this in a dwindling changing market that favors HSD over video. The nice part about all of this is HSD is practically 100% profit, as it is a product line the cable company doesn't have to pay into like video markets, AND additionally the video content comes unlicensed (as far as cable is concerned, you make your own deals with netflix, hulu, etc...). Sometimes we even see people making the decision to take phone on thier own further limiting our in home liability.
I understand the desire to want to lash out at "the establishment" and roll with the cable company is so horrible.... how many of you are accessing this web site through a Docsis modem right now?
Posting as Anonymous coward due to, Social Networking Policy at work....
A UHF antenna made from a coat hanger does a fine job of pulling in digital OTA broadcasts.
www.DIYTVAntennas.com
No company has tried to claim that piracy is killing cable. Why not? I expect better sleezyness from the media industry these days. They disappoint me.
I would like to add that it is even cheaper to just wait for the show to come out on DVD.
What you say is true of scripted series. But daily political commentary and sporting events generally don't come out on DVD because they'd be outdated by the time they did. Even for scripted series, your local library might not have a particular title.
For live sports, you can get something like the NBA League Pass
True, and that can be combined with over-the-air television. But aren't the online services of MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL blacked out if a particular game is shown on cable TV?
... no cable company will accept that. They want to sell lots of crap for the one channel you want.
I think sports is the only thing that keeps me on cable. If I could get that streaming, I'd jump ship in a heartbeat. It is robbery.
For the purposes of my write-up I am referencing QAM and QAM alone, rather encrypted or not. QAM from the beginning was created for HD with backwards compatibility for lower resolutions.
If you're referring to one of the older even more underhanded than plain encrypted QAM services that uses non-QAM encryption and did so since the SD days while offering thinly veiled excuses as to why "it has to be that way" that patched their system to allow some HD content beside their original lock-in crap fest that's outside of the scope of my discussion.
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This story, like most of the others on this vein, seems to avoid critical facts in order to support its premise.
1. There are indeed a few million people that have or will switch to streaming media. But, there are still hundreds of millions blissfully continuing to use cable.
2. Cable is increasingly "too" expensive and the streaming services offer cheaper options. But, the cheaper options come at the cost of lower quality video, buffering infuriation, reduced choice and increased difficulty in casual viewing. Yes, it is easier to find a specific show, but that assumes that you know what you want to watch. It is much more difficult to browse a streaming service, let alone multiple streaming services to serendipitously find something of interest to watch.
3. Cable is too expensive. There's no valid counterpoint to this statement. But, streaming is still not a viable alternative for casual large screen viewing.
We're in a declining economy, no matter how the politicians or "economists" try to spin it.
The price of cable keeps going up, and up, and up. The price of streaming services? Not so much.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
and God bless QVC & the 700 Club.
At that rate, it's over 150 hours of streaming - or about five hours a day.
Five hours per household, not five hours per person. Reduce that for operating system updates, application and game downloads, web surfing, Farcebook, etc.
I will never get off cable thanks to my love of college football. There are so many good games on cable you can't get on local channels.
If ESPN had a streaming-only plan (that did not require you to be a cable TV subscriber as well), I would have been off cable years ago.
A lesser obstacle to dropping is the cable news networks. I know a lot of people here hate them - and the info can all be read on their websites - but I like to know HOW stories get reported on-air.
They do for me. I have it in an above comment, but here it is again:
When the installer came to hook up my cable internet (actually did require access to a locked box so I couldn't have done it myself) he asked if I wanted cable hooked up to my TV.
I said no.
Three times.
The fourth time he made it clear there was a splitter in his pocket (my cable modem is under my TV) and that it was free to me I said yes. My TV has a few channels on it now I don't watch, but my dad does when he visits so I guess that's alright.
I think he was genuinely shocked I didn't even want free cable because I don't watch it.
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Haven't looked back. After enrolling in the Hulu beta I just couldn't justify $65 per month for cable service when all I watched was History and Discovery and re-runs of "Law and Order." I don't do Netflix, and don't really have to since most of the shows I want to watch that aren't on Hulu are available directly from the producer websites. I even got to watch all five seasons of "Babylon 5" on The WB.
screw you, lameness filter!
Tried to set my old man up with Netflix, and got a rant about how it was killing the movie industry etc etc etc. I was rather stunned.
Perhaps he's right in that it's somewhat killing the stock-on-the-shelves-DVD-industry (moreso, the overpriced-stock-on-the-shelves industry), but the studio's are still making plenty of money.
Of course, he felt similarly about iTunes etc until last year when he finally hooked up and went "wow, I can find all these great albums that the local music stores never carried", so perhaps we'll get some traction there eventually.
Looking at all the various internet streaming, cable, and whatever other options for programming, in addition to all the various choices for TV and audio (since my current TV is 15 years old), I just decided to ditch it all. Too much complication for too little benefit. It's unbelievable that all this new technology is being used to show Snooki and pals. The only thing I really even care about in HD is hockey. Given the confusing array of choices on both hardware and programming, the expense, and the shit quality of it all, I'm opting out. The stereo I paid a fortune for 15 years ago still works great. My home theater is now simply a home concert hall.
I run a VPN to a colo so I have full control over the packet stream in both direction. I use PF on both sides with fair-queue (DragonFly of course), service separation, a separate channel for pure acks, etc. Works great, actually. I gang the VPN across both COMCAST and U-VERSE and tend to run full-out in both directions for long periods of time (I can even run it over 3G but my Android phone crashes pretty quickly when I do that.. oh well).
My cable bill has been about the same for the last 5 years, the only difference now is that the 'internet' portion of the bill is larger and the channel portion (I'm now down to basic cable) is smaller. But COMCAST is still getting their hunk of flesh out of me.
The COMCAST link has been the most reliable, and their bandwidth controls are fairly predictable. Even with the highest-speed internet plan they offer I can only count on around 2MBytes/sec downlink on a continuous basis, and around 250 KBytes/sec uplink. The only real issue I've had w/COMCAST is that their cable modem insists on assigning a non-routable IP when the physical link is down, but that was easily solved with a 'reject 192.168.100.1;' line in /etc/dhclient.conf.
I also have AT&T U-Verse... my advise, stick with COMCAST or, if you absolutely have to use U-Verse don't bother with the static IPs. Basically AT&T doesn't know what they are doing when it comes to providing internet access. Their U-Verse crap uses MAC based filtering and can't handle multiple IPs behind a router, and it loses its mind every once in a while. The only semi-reliable way to connect to it is via a hard port on the WIFI router they supply through NAT. Basically you have to use their NAT service and WIFI router (though you can use a hard port on the router) to get anything even remotely reliable, and you can't do any fancy MAC filters because their WIFI router forgets about them every so often and breaks you. Fortunately the VPN runs over the NAT service just fine.
Sustained downlink and uplink rates with U-Verse are about 50% what I can get with COMCAST, only about 1 MByte/sec downlink and only around 150 KBytes/sec uplink with their highest rated service. If I go any higher I hit long periods of time where their link can't sustain the bw and packets start to build up on their routers instead of mine (where I can't control them), killing ping times.
I had long conversations with two sets of AT&T techs. The second guy knew what he was doing and cleaned up the copper to absolute perfection, and I can check the stats on the short-haul DSLx2 lines (that just go to the corner of the street), so these bw and reliability issues are not related to my twisted pairs.
They (AT&T) are lying if they say you get more than that in any sort of sustained manner. It's limited by their upstream... the physical link can handle more and but even though I don't use the U-Verse TV service their hardware still reserves uplink bw for it, which is annoying as hell, and their uplink and backbone is clearly under-provisioned.
Still, at least AT&T is creating some competitive pressure on COMCAST. Not a whole lot, but some. I wish Verizon had fiber in my area.
I've noticed a few other issues with U-Verse. AT&T's backbone hits log-jams every so often, drops a lot more packets than COMCAST just generally, and appears to choose routes to various places that go through problem-prone backbone infrastructure. It's quite annoying.
I had a DSL line for a while too, but uplink speeds from my location are a joke and the pricing is no longer competitive for the meager amount of bw I can get. It was reliable, but couldn't deliver the bw.
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Insofar as streaming T.V. goes, it works pretty well here. NetFlix, Hulu, other apps. Strangely enough it works better through my VPN than it does directly, probably because neither COMCAST or AT&T can do content-aware filtering of an encrypted VPN's UDP stream (and ganging aside). I mostly use Apple products &
Something interesting has appeared on Netflix; Lilyhammer. An original series about a New York gangster living in Norway, available exclusively on Netflix. It's ok. If you liked the Sopranos you'd probably like this.
Streaming won't win by rebroadcasting stuff that is already provided by existing systems. Streaming will win with original content. CNN, The Weather Channel, Discovery, MTV, etc., are all original content that has always been exclusive to cable. Where is INN; the Internet News Network? This is the sort of thing Streaming needs to win.
i use Hulu. Hulu Plus lets me watch teh current network shows i like a day after they air. and Hulu has less commercials and you can rate wether the ad is relevant to you. i really like that. alot of the networks also have websites where you can watch vids of their shows. what i can't watch this way i can through getting season disks from teh local library. it allows me to be more flexible in how i order my viewing. the shows on Hulu i fav when an episode is added they sent me an email notice and add it to my queue which i can then watch at my leisure. i dont have to remember what day what show aires. it is all in one convient spot in a convient way. i have heard people complaining aobut cable. teh rates keep going up and up and no matter how good a customer you are you never get a reduction. all those "specials" they advertise are for limited time only for new customers. Hulu Plus is under $10 a month. even i can afford that.
If you can do ANYTHING with a PC, then you can set up an HTPC. Ultimately, it's just installing some software.
And finding the right case, and building a small form factor PC. A lot of people who aren't PC hobbyists buy a ready-made PC instead of building one. However, not a lot of ready-made desktop PCs come in a case that looks attractive in a home theater setting, as opposed to a standard tower case that looks XBOX HUEG next to other consumer electronics. I went into Best Buy and asked about buying a pre-built PC in a home theater PC case, and the sales associate pointed me to the PlayStation 3 aisle because "nobody uses a computer for that". Nor is the local mom-and-pop PC shop willing to put any CPU more powerful than an Atom into any case smaller than the standard tower.
The first generations of home computers just plain used TVs as monitors.
And abandoned TVs as monitors because the SDTVs of the time couldn't display sharp enough text, as I explained in an earlier comment. This mental set against having a PC in the living room has continued among the general public despite the rise of high definition.
You're basically arguing that no one is capable of using PCs.
What I meant was that almost no one is willing to take the time to learn everything a PC can do to the point where he realizes that modern TVs can be used as PC monitors. Also more like no one is willing to buy a second PC to put in the living room so that he doesn't have to keep unplugging and replugging when moving the single family PC back and forth between the desk and the TV.
Why would I pay for satellite?
For sports. Some games are not shown OTA but are still blacked out on the league's website because they're shown on cable or satellite TV.
There should be all sorts of technical advantages to providing services on privately-owned media, completely out-of-band from internet service, but first the telephone industry and now television just insist on doing just about everything wrong and driving their customers to get what they want from that one pipe.
I paid $4 this year to watch the entire NCAA basketball tournament on my laptop
How many games were blacked out due to being shown on cable or OTA?
which I connected to my television via HDMI
Apart from the sort of geek demographic that reads Slashdot, most people either A. aren't aware they can use a TV as a PC monitor or B. don't have a laptop or a second small-form-factor desktop that they can spare.
This is the reason that there are bandwidth caps. It's no coincidence that almost all of the major providers of high-speed Internet are also television providers. They want to cap your downloads and throttle your connection so that you have to buy their service instead of using Netflix/Amazon/Hulu. This is when people who opposed 'Net neutrality are going to get bitten in the ass ... then their ISP makes competing services unusable and in a way that's completely legal.
once again, i must disclaim that i am a directv employee. you can guess which side of the argument i'm going to be on.
much of this thread seems to say two basic things
1) scheduling and ads suck
2) prices suck
i don't really understand 1 since any dvr will get around both of these issues. there are some esoteric cases where it won't, but it's certainly not the predominant way people watch tv/video.
on 2, there are several things to consider. i think internet video (netflix, hulu, youtube, etc) is awesome and if that's the right choice for you, by all means cut the cord. the thing i hate about this argument is everyone assumes everyone else is just like them. once you start talking about millions of people, you have to cater to the 80% that do things a particular way and i get the feeling most of slashdot is the other 20%.
the reason cable/sat survives is because it is very hard to do what the cable/sat companies do. if hbo tries to go streaming only with their content, good luck to them. however, they'll realize at some point that content creation is a completely different animal than content distribution. they've had a great string of success with their programming, but do they want to start distracting themselves from those creative endeavors with technical ones? what happens when some of their programming gambles don't pay off? i'm not saying any of this is insurmountable, but hbo (and all content providers really) need to ask themselves if they really want to be distributors and it should come as no surprise that many answer "no."
internet video is definitely growing and directv at least is trying to answer the call. for my own personal job security, i hope directv does. if it does, it will be in large part thanks to all the critics providing feedback.
How much are you paying for the "dry loop fee" from your ISP? Some phone companies charge such a high "dry loop fee" that it's almost like they're giving away the land line to DSL Internet customers, and some cable companies charge such a high "dry loop fee" that it's almost like they're giving away basic TV service to DOCSIS Internet customers.
Because HBO's parent company wants you to subscribe to CNN, HLN, Cartoon Network, TNT, TBS, TCM, and Turner Everything Else before selling you HBO separately.
Normally I just pay my cable bill and never pay attention to it till I finally look and i was paying $78 for second tier. WTF? My jaw dropped. So made an executive decision to get an Unlimited Internet package from TekSavvey ( I'll get both cable and dry loop adsl for redundancy) and I'm slowly compiling a list of sites/services that I can use to watch on tv. Its not easy especially when you have kids and a 92 year old grandma living with you but I have the grandma take care off ass news I can OTA and I got an Asus 0!play mini for her and been downloading shows like I Love Lucy, Threes Company, Golden Girls and etc... for her to watch.
Looking forward to be cable free in two months...
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
At our house, it's a math problem. When we had cable TV service, our costs were about $80/month just for TV service. We don't actually watch that much TV, so we did the math. Much of the current stuff we want to watch is on HuluPlus (Daily Show, Colbert, Castle, Modern Family, etc) and the rest is available from Amazon Instant Video at $2/episode. We also have Netflix to watch movies, and maybe discover some shows we missed via "TV on DVD".
Hulu + Amazon + Netflix is still less than the cost of cableTV. And that includes us buying a $99 Roku box so we could stream everything through that, directly to our TV.
As long as that math problem works out, we won't go back to cableTV. It's just not worth it.
You can get rid of the TV service but you still have to rely on Comcast, Time Warner, etc for your broadband internet access...and if they see internet streaming video as a competing threat to their services, they could potentially limit bandwidth or charge you extra to use these services over their network. They could even block the competing services altogether.
Millions of people subscribed to cable during 2008-2011. So it all balances out.
Antenna hooked to TivoHD, 42" plasma, Netflix. Total expenditure per month is about $25. The Tivo lets me record anything 24/7 from the free OTA.
I'm planning to cancel Netflix in favor of cable. I'm sick of too many choices and poor quality of content in Netflix streaming, and I like the curated, premium-quality content of the movie channels. I also like commercials -- I think it's interesting and weird to see what giant companies think that we think is "cool". Additionally, the technical quality is much better on cable -- everything is full HD with no waiting.
Its their own fault really.
1. Prices are way too high, especially in areas that have no competition.
2. Pay channels are based on tiers. The higher the tier the cable company purchases, the more movies that are played. For instance. Cinemax on Comcast is awful. They play the same movies over and over and over again for an entire month. This is because Comcast wont purchase a higher tier with more programming options. The more options people have, the happier they are.
So cable companies need to pucker up and serve their customers more content at better prices or they will continue to lose people.
Well back in the day when a show was picked up it ran 23 episodes per season. Today... lucky if they make 13. (If it even gets past the pilot) So more often than not that "new" show has 13 episodes and 13 reruns per season.
And gone are the days when your fav show came on say a Monday nite and you added that time to your schedule. Now... phttt... more often than not it's a rerun so folks pretty much got used to not wasting their time with anything.
Wuddooeyeno? IITYWYBMAD? Like nuts? eclecticallyincorrect.com
In my area, basic cable + internet is cheaper than just internet from Comcast, probably for exactly this reason.
I actually built a site/app called "CanIStream.It" ( http://www.canistream.it/ ) just because I wanted to get rid of cable, but I didn't want to search across all of the services. Plus I knew movies would eventually get to the service I had (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon) so I built a reminder system into it. Now when I hear about a movie somewhere, I just pull out my (free!) app and tell it to remind me when that movie is out on Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/etc. I don't get to watch everything right away, but at least I know I'll watch it eventually. /plug
A good friend of mine is an executive at Starz channel. He tells me he has to scramble every day to keep from sliding backward. On-demand viewing (aka Hulu and Netflix) and pay-per-view was the first reason he cited. The second thing he said was he hoped original content like Pillars of the Earth and Spartacus would revive their fortunes, which implies that the other content that's out there now isn't filling the bill.
But he also said that they're getting pinched on both ends of the demographic curve because the Baby Boomers are fading from the scene and younger people are not watching TV at any where near the rates they used to. That means the average age of the television viewer keeps creeping up and up. But advertisers want to reach males between 18-35, which is the most desirable demographic, so they're shifting their media dollars elsewhere.
And, to boot, he said recently a raft of new competitors have entered the cable business and are squeezing margins further.
It doesn't sound like there is much margin left in TV, and that a decline is inevitable. It will probably be gradual, but then again yet another innovation might come along in a year or two that makes the decline catastrophic.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Not sure why Hulu restrictions are a problem. Your a geek, you like computers, why do you have a "TV"? I have 2 computers, my computer, and my computer/DVR/Bluray, that happens to have a 48" monitor and a harmon kardon reciever for sound. Seriously, the OTR antena is plugged into the TV card, not the back of the, um, TV. The computer mediates everything. How does Hulu know the difference between a TV and a computer? In my case, my computer IS the TV, sort of. Make it complicated for them. :-)
Came in handy last night, a friend thought he was stranded in Death Valley with a broken water pump, and my "real" computer was blue screened (long story) and out of service. Still found him a water pump, which would have been hard with just a TV.
I've talked to a few cable salepeople who seemed genuinely flabergasted when I told them that while I could afford their service I didn't consider it to be worth the cost. I had one guy that seemed to think that $39.99 was practically free and an amazing value. I guess it's good that they believe in their product, but it's annoying to no end when they can't seem to take "No Thanks" as a final answer.
You're basically arguing that no one is capable of using PCs.
There's a concept of rational ignorance in play here in that most people remain incapable by choice because they don't see why they should value capability. In fact, your current signature on Slashdot alludes to this phenomenon:
Specs? That's too geeky. Just make it go.
People want to push a button and have things Just Work, not worry about choosing a motherboard, choosing a CPU, having to pay double for Windows because you're building a computer for yourself to use, keeping the operating system, antivirus software, and media player software up to date, etc.
I have the knowledge, even setup and configure one of the most famous group of video systems on earth, yet I lack funding for my own.
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I've heard of a lot of people dropping cable due to Bill Maher, in particular after his comments became widely known in the Rush Limbaugh kerfuffle.
its a "temporary phenomenon"? why are these fucks so behind the times?
...
I'm one of those rare young en's that reads slashdot everyday. When I moved out, I looked at Cable and Satellite prices. Nothing lower than $50/month... for only the most basic of basic. I got an ad in the mail for Netflix. Tried it for a month, and decided it was good enough for me. Been on Netflix now over 2 years.
I really wish there was a slightly cheaper plan though that had a 30 second commercial or whatever before shows like Hulu. Almost everyone in town talks about cools ads they've seen for movies and such. I didn't know about The Hunger Games until it was at my local theater, yet all my friends talked about how the previews looked so cool.
I browse with AdBlock-Plus because of all the annoying popups and such. I use Netflix because I don't want to pay $50 for 43 minutes of TV per hour per month. If someone would put ads in INTELLIGENTLY maybe people wouldn't mind ads. But you can only watch so many Oxyclean commercials per hour until you get really fed up with your TV service
Yup, exactly right. Same here.
Yeah, I had to say "no" three times the last time the person called.
Dropped Comcast completely. I use Sprint's WIMAX for Internet (not the best, but but it works where I live), Hulu, Netflix, and over-the-air HD channels.
24/7/365 news and entertainment subsidised by...product placements.
The logical conclusion of 'ad creep' in mass media.
THE TRUMAN SHOW showed the way....
I could not justify paying for 200 channels of the drivel that is on now days. Any more, I watch movies I choose to rent or purchase or old re-runs on HULU. I grew up, largely, in Alaska and a lot of the old shows were never carried on our local stations. Many of the old re-runs are new to me.
Even HULU can be annoying as they seem to think I want to watch the latest network trash and as soon as what I chose is over, they attempt to feed me some recent garbage.