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Is TV Over the 'Net Really Cheaper Than Cable?
jfruh writes "More and more people are joining the ranks of 'cord-cutters' — those who cancel their cable TV subscriptions and get their televisied entertainment either for free over the airwaves or over the Internet. But, assuming you're going to do things legally, is this really a cheaper option? It depends on what you watch. Brian Proffitt contemplated this move, and he walks you through the calculations he made to figure out the prices of cutting the cord. He weighed the costs of various a la carte and all-you-can-eat Internet streaming services, and took into account the fact that Internet service on its own is often pricier than it would be if bundled with cable TV."
Lets do the math. The most my ISP (Suddenlink) will sell is 250GB/mo at up to 15mbps. Put two TVs in a home, that is pretty minimal these days. So you can't expect to stream more than six or seven Mb/s and have any hope of keeping a second set going. Now an hour of HD programming on my MythTV system scarfs down GB/hr when recording HD and perhaps one GB/hr for standard def.
Add it up and if you stream you are going to settle for a lot lower quality and still be watching the bandwidth counter the last part of the month. The bandwidth caps ended cord cutting as a viable tactic for any home where the TV runs a lot, i.e. children are involved.
Democrat delenda est
...OTA is cheaper than cable and that's all I need.
You can be assured that there are people within the cable and satellite TV providers that run this math to help them set their pricing. If you have cable the satellite promo pricing always looks better until you start to match it box by box and channel by channel. Same goes for satellite users that look into switching to cable. Every time I do the math it's so close it's not worth the trouble. Unless you are willing to give up content expect to pay about the same no matter what path you take. The only true break in costs can't come until governments stop enabling collusion. Same story applies to cell phones.
I used to pay just over $100 for Internet and Digital Cable - 90% of which I never watched.
I now pay $54 for internet, $8 for netflix, $8 for hulu, and OTA is free.
Yup, its cheaper.
It depends upon how much you're being charged for cable and for Internet and what you watch.
YMMV
Void where prohibited
...unless the total bundled cost is LESS than the price of internet alone. That's never the case.
I cut the cord almost two years ago, and have Netflix and Hulu+ ($17/month, I believe, for both). I was paying nearly $70/month for cable. The $50+/month difference paid for my three Rokus, my $50 tuner, and my $300 HTPC in the first year after I cut.
Between OTA, Netflix, Hulu+ (which you can suspend easily if you're not using it) and all the free channels on Roku, I'm never lacking for anything to watch, and I'm still saving $50/month over the cheapest cable plan. It's not going to work for everyone, but it's absolutely the right choice for me.
I imagine it depends on location, but:
Internet: $40 unlimited (at least the data caps haven't hit here yet)
Cable tv: Last I heard it's a 3 digit number for any number of the "good" channels (aka: the only ones we give a shit about)
Yep. Internet wins.
In my country a-la-carte works like this: the price per channel scales depending on how many channels you buy, such that the total cost you pay is always at least equal to the cost of the traditional bundle packages. It's totally pointless. Also in my country, over the Internet broadcast licencing hasn't really been established (for the most part).
The result is that over the net tv is far cheaper, but in no way legal.
Even if it's 50X more expensive your options for content, delivery, interface, etc are amazingly diverse and constantly improving and changing. My cable box hasn't changed much in 10 years, aside from adding a HDD to record a few shows.
porn, informercials, and shit like ancient aliens
At the same time?
Heh, I wouldn't be surprised if Adult Swim aired fake ads for alien porn. Or real ones for that matter.
For us, setting aside cell service (which also get from Verizon, but mostly because we're idiots and are still under contract) we pay around $140/month. That includes the VoIP landline. Cell service in our area ain't great so we can't ditch a landline of some sort and stick with the mobile phones. Dropping the TV portion of the FIOS service and sticking with the same speed connection is $80/mth. So if we go with just that and get some sort of VoIP replacement, I think that adds another $15-$20/mth. Netflix adds around $9/mth (we looked at Hulu+ but it didn't add that much that we wanted.) So we end up saving around $30/mth; it's not a huge amount but it adds up to a lot of diapers and baby food. I just wish iTunes or Amazon was cheaper for renting individual episodes of shows. Going piecemeal ends up being more expensive than just sticking with cable.
Bark less. Wag more.
...and got a divide by zero error. I kept cable internet and dropped cable TV service for a year. I reconnected last night. 1000 channels including HD service. Searching for "Nova" returned no instances of the PBS show; if I want to watch my favorite show, I still need to buy it from iTunes and download it. Jury is still out on the other reason I dropped cable TV; I want to watch WWE Summer Slam in HD, live when it broadcasts (not three months later on DVD). It's not showing up in the listing yet; I'll try again two weeks prior to the event. Haven't tried to find a 2012 BBC Top Gear; had to 'torrent last winter's shows because they won't even sell those to us yanks. The funny thing is, Comcast never asked why I dropped TV service in the first place.
I was paying a lot of money to watch bad programming full of irritating adverts, so I cut the cord 3 years ago and never looked back. I read more, do art projects with my kids, and when do feel the need to watch something, I use netflix, hulu or BBC. It is great not having the ads and being able to watch what I want, when I want.
If I absolutely must watch "Some Premium Show X", then I may be stuck with TV service providers. After cancelling my TV service and going with OTA, NF and Hulu, I can still watch television, I just don't get to watch premium content like HBO/SHO originals. I cancelled my service, changed my viewing habits and I'm saving more than $100/month.
assuming you're going to do things legally
This is where things go south. If I could get the shows I like from a streaming service like Netflix or Hulu, I would not mind waiting a few weeks or months after the original airdate, but I can't. A lot of the shows I watch, I can't get at all without paying $120+ for the "everything" cable package. They simply aren't available anywhere else, so I choose option C: Usenet/torrents.
If I were living in the U.S., things would be different, as the vast majority of popular TV programming is stubbornly geo-blocked as soon as you cross the border. I can't even begin to describe the stupidity of locking your content to a mere 5% of the world's population, but that's precisely what these media companies do. Fuck 'em! I have money, I want the content, but they won't sell it to me unless I agree to a 3 year contract with a cable company I absolutely despise, a fixed schedule that does not work for me, and invasive advertising wasting one fifth of my time. Fuck 'em. Fuck 'em dead!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
I already need high speed internet so that's not really an additional expense since it wasn't through a cable company, none in my area. I did the math and I figured I could get somewhere between 50 and 75 movies and 20 and 25 TV series seasons on DVD or download for what my cable was costing. This is far more than I actually watch. Throw in Netflix Streaming which sucks for selection as in not much current but a ton of old and obscure which I like and I really have no need for satellite or cable. The Dish/AMC fight was the end for me. I already buy Walking Dead on Blu-Ray and they cut AMC anyway so I see no need to have Dish. Direct is almost as bad. I may be a season behind but most of the stuff I watch I'll own and I tend to watch stuff multiple times. Most of the stuff on Netflix is HD where as cable is all highly compressed HD which looks like crap. Alot of it is blown up cropped as well. If they offer Ala Carte streaming I'll consider buying AMC and a few of the movie channels, things like HBO for Game of Thrones and Newsroom. At this stage I have zero interest in ever having cable again.
- it comes in through my antenna (40+ digital channels)
- supplemented by Hulu so I can watch Syfy
And yes it's not only cheaper, but a VASTLY cheaper than the ~$900/year that Comcast wants to charge to hookup two sets.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I'm sorry to say that it isn't about price. It's a philosophical issue to me - to subscribe to a 'push' service or a 'pull' service. I choose 'pull' where I have control on what garbage can or cannot enter my life.
Not having to deal with the cable company ever again?
**PRICELESS**
I've been doing this for quite a while now. Between HULU and Netflix, you're pretty much covered. And you can watch whenever you want without needing to record shows on a DVR. Also, many shows are available on network websites.
First he assumes that whatever shows you watch, you NEED to watch, and you need to watch them NOW.
For example, his wife likes Amazing Race, and (apparently) none of the streaming premium services carry it, so it would "have to be written off"...well, except for the fact that in about a 5 second search, I found it at least 3 places. Certainly, it wasn't current-broadcast, but it's still there.
And of course, he talks about the 'broadband internet cost' - as if most people considering this don't ALREADY pay for that.
So really, not much of a comparison, or analysis. Save yourself the read.
-Styopa
Cable/Satellite are a vast wasteland of channel surfing. We all know this. I ditched Satellite after years because with NF I only watch what I want, and plan to. No surfing, which encourages time wasting.
Another key thing is that I just really fucking hate the cable and satellite companies and I don't think they deserve another dime from me.
Their service sucks, their policies suck and they're way overpriced.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
For movies and TV shows Netflix, Hulu and Crackle works well. Where do you go when you want to watch your local TV station over streaming media. Don't care for OTA right now.
We've pointed this out in so many blog entries and whatnot. It's not about cost. I'm ok with paying more on video entertainment through streaming than I might have through a cable bill. It's not about cheap. It's about choice! I want to purchase only the shows I care about, I want to watch them exactly when I have time to, and I want to do it on whatever device I feel like. I don't want to pay for MTV or the Home Shopping Network. I'll never watch Real Housewives of Wherever-the-fuck. I just want my GoT fix, a few shows from PBS and the Discovery channel, and the occasional interesting sci-fi series. Everyone will have a different set of choices. We're tired of being bundled-to-death. I need high speed internet regardless, and I like paying for it separately from my occasional on-demand streaming purchases from Amazon (or my Netflix subscription. while netflix *is* a bundled service full of shows I'll never watch, it's also dirt cheap).
The author took 4 pages (you start on page "1" and click through 3 other pages ... ads at each step) and basically he says this:
Open a spreadsheet. Enter in all the shows that you like to watch on cable. For shows that are available on HuluPlus, assume you'll subscribe to HuluPlus ($8/mo). For a show that is available on Amazon, enter it's cost per episode (less than $2). Same if your show is only available on iTunes or some other media center. Add up the costs, calculate a "monthly" cost to stream your shows. Compare to your monthly cost for cable TV.
That's pretty much what the article is about. I've just saved you a bunch of clicks and ads.
It is what I have been saying about my own television watching. When my wife & I moved two years ago, we opted not to sign up for cable TV, choosing to stream everything instead. We have Netflix for movies and "TV on DVD", HuluPlus for most of our current shows, Amazon for a few others. We bought a Roku ($99) to stream everything to our television - and it effectively paid for itself over a couple of months. Our monthly cost for all that is way less than the monthly cost of cable TV. And as long as the math continues to be in our favor, we'll keep streaming.
My cable ISP not only gives me unlimited bandwidth, but also free access to ESPN3; I subscribe to Amazon Prime for $49 a year; We actually do still subscribe to cable TV, but that is mainly for my dad. He is one of the many people that don't like change.
I hated that term since the first time I heard it. I don't know why anyone calls it "cord cutting" when it's really just "cord switching."
And if anyone thinks those in control are going to let millions of subscribers save millions of dollars this way, they've never heard of "equilibrium." Or "greed." They'll throttle you, or cap you, or charge more, or all of the above, until it's not worth it.
And yeah, long story short: for some people, it'll work great; for others, it won't. It depends how much TV gets watched in your household. If it were just me, watching my small handful of shows, I could have switched years ago. But it isn't, so I haven't and won't.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
My daughter summed it up best in a tweet to her friends: (paraphrase)
"wow, now the television doesn't tell me what I want to watch, I tell *it* what I want to watch". Unfortunately, she skewed my Netflix preferences so now I have a bunch of 'one-tree-hormoneville' shows suggested to me...
AND my son has his pick of whatever anime he could ever desire.
It takes a little time to adjust (you can't just plop in front of the tv and turn it on for 'whatever'), but everyone I show it to loves it. And I save US$60 a month!
Other than the quality of my OTA channels going down (a problem I had for awhile with DTV as well), I haven't missed my sat/cable stuff.
However, it DID take me over a week of arguing with the satellite company to get it disconnected. (go ahead...ask me about it...please...).
Netflix streaming has a poor selection (for my tastes anyway), and Amazon is only slightly better, and even then only if you are willing to pay to rent on top of the Prime membership. You can get a broader selection on disk from Netflix, but not on a whim.
Hulu has a terrible selection as well. When you want to pick up a show from the beginning, and it's been playing for a while, they have only a few episodes of most shows, even on the paid side.
You can get a lot from Apple, but expensively (about double the DVD cost to see a TV season). And even then, they don't have a long tail for those who prefer more obscure stuff. Probably because content providers are afraid Apple will do to them what Apple did to the music industry.
But you can get anything you want, even foreign or obscure material, by torrent easier than you can get Finding Nemo. So the bottom line is content providers suck at giving people what they want when they want it. Until they stop sucking or get disintermediated, there will not be a convenient and legal way to get content.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
And I've heard of people paying $190 a month.
It is insane. I'm surprised anybody does it.
I cut dish tv about 5 years ago. Hulu and Pandora plus an hd antenna have provided me free entertainment since then. I occasionally have to torrent a few shows that don't seem to want to embrace hulu (their loss in revenue). I even cut my internet over a year ago because of all the easily accessible wifi routers in my apartment complex. Saved thousands of dollars I reckon, which have paid for ipads and other entertainment toys to use. Not sure if I'll go back to cable anytime soon. I recommend giving it a try for a month (especially during the summer season with little new programming). If you can't live without cable they will be happy to take you back and probably offer you a discount as well!
I cut the cord. Installed HD antenna's for the local news and use Netflix for the rest. I was paying > $200 for high speed (50Mbit) cable internet and HD tv. Now (with a new higher speed lower cost product available) I'm paying about $85 for 100Mbit access with a 1 TB cap.
Yes, I'm missing a few shows we would like to watch. But, the reality is that we have only so many hours a week to consume TV (or any media.) AND there is more than enough available through Netflix (or Hulu etc.) that it simply makes sense to use them and save a bundle.
The more we reward the low cost providers the more content they will be able to get access to.
Did the same for our landlines two years ago. Went from two old style @ $45 /month each to four VOIP @ $3... (with more or less free North American LD.)
Overall I've reduced my "media" bill from over $400 to just over $100.
Yes. Next story.
In the US: quite often the oligopoly/monopoly on high speed internet are the same guys which sell television. To a certain regard, it isn't in the ISP's best interest to up speeds as more people will drop television. It is disgusting, but what can you do?
God spoke to me
If you live in a major market, the cheapest option is over-the-air.
The equipment costs are recouped within a few months.
The time slot programming model of cable television is a technical vestige, and the sooner it is eliminated the better.
After the first time I watched an entire season of a show in the space of a single (and very lazy) weekend on a DVD years ago, I was unable to return to waiting for weekly installations. I now prefer to wait until a season is over, or even until a series has concluded entirely, before bothering to spend my time watching it.
Sometimes at the conclusion it will become clear that you shouldn't bother. For example I was waiting for LOST to end before watching it, but based on the non-plot-spoiler reviews I've read, I'm glad I didn't waste my time in the first place.
For quite a while now there has been more video entertainment than a single person could watch in one lifetime. If your primary reason is to be entertained --rather than to be able to discuss current entertainment at the office the way people do sports games-- you'll save time and money being selective about what you watch, as well as by not being in a hurry to catch the latest episode.
UVerse Internet + UVerse TV is more expensive than UVerse Internet + Hulu Premium + Netflix. That's all I really care about. Sure, you can get deals for UVerse TV and pay an "introductory" price for a year but at the end of that year, the introductory price goes away. You can't just call customer service and ask for the same deal. They'll tell you to piss up a rope and suck on it. You have to cancel your TV service and, like clockwork, a month later they'll send you a flyer to get "introductory pricing" for a year's service. It happened to me. It happened to a dozen of my friends. AT&T isn't customer friendly and their default stance in customer service is to call your bluff when you say you're canceling. I cancelled AT&T UVerse TV and I'm never going back. Why? Because now, I only watch what I want to watch instead of whatever's on.
why you pay a low flat rate for 6GB/hr they push at you but through the nose if you want to pick and choose yourself. I find it hard to believe they need bandwidth caps to manage the limits when every receiver is digital....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How do you price the convenience of on demand ?
Also how do you price the convenience of torrents ?
You cant exclude torrents, they are the major disruptor
> ...and took into account the fact that Internet service on its own is often pricier than it would be if bundled with cable TV."
I have to have internet anyway. The fact that I can get internet microscopically cheaper if I buy a bunch of services I don't use, isn't really a choice if I don't use the services.
And so, if I can get internet for $33 instead of $44 if I add $70 worth of TV services the great majority of which I do not watch, how the heck is this in any way a better deal?
Working it the other way. I have internet and a conventional TV antenna. What I can't get through these two mediums, I don't need to watch. There, fixed it for you.
To summarize: (1) Most of us are going to have internet anyway, so whether it can be bundled with cable is immaterial. (2) The great overwhelming majority of what I feel like watching is available either over the air (just like in the old days) or over the internet. (3) Whatever I can't watch via (2), I don't need to watch. (3a) It's JUST TV. It's not, like BREATHING. Talk to your kids; find out what drugs they're into this week, take the dog for a walk; find out what your neighborhood actually looks like, READ A BOOK.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I't's cheaper, better quality, and on demand. If I want to watch a show I can pay for a Netflix subscription or Amazon VOD and have immediate access in HD for a small fraction of what cable costs to provide me with shows I may or may not want when I may or may not want to watch them. Sure you could rent a DVR from your provider, but that costs as much or more than netflix, so meh... Cable is for the older generation.
People want what they want. That's the short of it. And when there are options which more closely offer what they want, the will go to it.
Meanwhile various "failing business models" want to continue masturbating while selling their customers' eyes and ears to people who buy commercial ad space.
Business used to be able giving the customer what he wants and prospering. But in the age of monopolies and very low competition, it's more about offering as little as possible while charging the most and selling your customers out to government and advertisers.
To cover the TV's in our house, and get the few channels we even cared about having cable for was running over $170 a month. Plus an additional $40 for internet access.
Dropped the cable. Now we spend $40 for Internet and around $20 a month for all the tv that interests us (We pick and choose between what's available on Netflix/Hulu), once in awhile we'll drop the $30 or whatever for a season of something on iTunes.
Even if we buy the seasons off iTunes of every show we watch we're -still- coming in less than cable. Plus we don't have commercials on most content (minus the Hulu content which is free, so who gives a crap if they show ads). More than worth the switch. The thing is, at the end of the day despite the options we'd picked for cable the vast majority of the time the TV was sitting on with no one actually watching. So what was the point? Now we watch exactly what we want, when we want, and aren't wasting energy or money on all the other crap.
Broadband $35/month
Netflix $14/month
Ability to watch my shows without commercials.... priceless
-- QED
But you can get anything you want, even foreign or obscure material, by torrent easier than you can get Finding Nemo. So the bottom line is content providers suck at giving people what they want when they want it. Until they stop sucking or get disintermediated, there will not be a convenient and legal way to get content.
Of course if you want a legal sword constantly hanging over your head. Not to mention it still can be a crap shoot finding a good torrent not to mention the torrent itself if your tastes tend towards the obscure.
if i pay $40 a month for cable and there are only 5 shows i watch per week, i'm paying $40 for those 5 shows.
but i want internet too...+$30/mo = $70/mo
if i pay $40 a month for internet, i get my 5 shows plus email, web...everything on the internet.
it is cheaper because our society has reached a point where we 'have to have' internet anyway. if we can get our shows on it, it's more bang for the buck.
People, no ads in the streaming services is the answer to why it works, even if it is a bit more pricier.
The pirate bay is free.
free / not free.
Easy choice.
And no commercials at all.
Wrong? Sure sure. Whatever you say gramps.
for popular shows you can get them the same day they broadcast maybe an hour shifted, for less popular shows its maybe 24 hours
you have a selection of every movie ever made which very few exceptions (haven't found ginseng king yet http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0122088/ if anyone has drop a link in a reply please) -- occasionally foreign movies take a while to get a copy without hard subs but that is only a problem if you have seen every damn thing in english already
you get hd content way before it is released to dvd or blu ray or any streaming service, and you OWN what you download instead of placing yourself in the absurd position of RENTING bits, what is amazon going to run out of 1s and 0s so they need you to give yours back?
--------
as for the "moral" aspect you really can't make me care about denying some pinky ring wearing executive a small percentage of his next hooker and blow session or trivially decreasing the ROI on some hedge fund balance sheet
the people who actually create works got their money before the work is in the can and the vast majority don't see another dime on distribution -- but im willing to listen, if someone comes up with a way for me to pay actual creative people and not parasitic investors then I'm all ears
Who wrote this Comcast? We cut the cord about 6 months ago. We get Netflix and Hulu. With Hulu my wife watches t.v. shows with Netflix I watch all sorts of movies. I have been enjoying it and my kids too they have been watching all sorts of kid shows(although I have my reservations about some of them). I have a budget 8MB/s dsl connection and I run my phone over the internet too which is part of the bundle with Verizon for DSL + phone works great we pay 54 dollars a month for both. Thanks Verizon for saving us from Comcast! Tried to go even cheaper with MagicJack which is more of a curse and they should be class action sued ...their crooks. When FIOS is available I will setup my own Astrisk server and just pay for the internet connection. I am a heavy internet user so I might even use it to host my own Web server and Exchange server cutting the cost of my blog hosting service there by dropping it down to just paying for internet and getting the better deal at the same time. If only Verizon would offer a block of five static IP addresses with their home FIOS service for a European price of 5 dollars a month.
I hear the cable companies are trying to kill Netflix and Hulu (Not sure if this is true but Netflix is in trouble and Hulu is going to require that you have a cable or fios connection to use their service.) If this is the case I will have to find something else I or just cut the cord with t.v. all together...Hell the kids would probably be better off without it anyways with all the crap that is on the shows that one has to constantly discuss with the kids about why it's really "not appropriate".
sickbeard & sabnzb
Doesn't anyone here watch sports? That's the only reason I pay for TV, and the only thing I watch on TV.
Some of us don't have much of a choice about our internet connection, and if you get your net from cable, you probably have to pay extra for it if you don't get TV through the cable company too.
The only thing I liked on Cable was Mythbusters, some stuff on History Channel, Tech TV (when Leo was on), some stuff on Discover,and Robert Osbourne. Tech TV became gamer-ville, 90% of anything decent on History Channel is now the higher tier, anything halfway decent is moved to a higher tier, anything Robert Osbourne TCB or TBM whatever, in a few years shows up on a $1.99 DVD on ebay, and sorry for Mythbusters. Give me some firecrackers to replace the explosions on Mythbusters, and sorry, Kari Bryon is hot but not worth $50 a month for one show.
I can live without. There is a lot of fun stuff on youtube, tedtalks, etc. Cable and MPIAA etc haven't learned that the best way to stop piracy is to make offer cheap (Ebay $1.99 DVD) and easy no-hassle methods to experience it.
Cable fails miserably on both.
Unfortunately, we are moving to a large underclass. 30% of us have no health insurance, how many cannot afford cable, retirement fund, vacations, etc.
I dropped Comcast because they had consistent problems with keeping all the channels available, with outages that lasted for months. Their tech support was no help, the cost kept going up, and the quality of local channels was iffy once they went fully digital and were compressing poor quality local feeds (had to switch to the antenna for those). No cable technician ever had an answer for these issues that matched what prior technicians had said, and all they knew was the usual "wiggle wires and cycle the power" stuff. Not to mention Comcast hires some serious weird looking thugs for techs that would show up late and case the place while leering at my wife and daughter. Fuck that. I don't need comments about my house or how pretty my family is, just do your fucking job.
Compare this to streaming, which always works. Period. I pay for services I receive, and even if Comcast is cheaper than watching video through the internet, I'm actually receiving a service. Using Comcast meant paying for error screens that never went away and unhelpful lazy techs. It was complete bullshit and I totally understand why so many people are eager to drop Comcast.
If you read people's complains about Comcast, it's the same thing. Shitty intermittent service with outages that come and go, combined with terrible inept support. What's the point of paying every month for something you can't use consistently? I've had like two 24-hour DSL outages in two years, compared to literally years of consistent spotty service from Comcast. I can handle that.
I haven't priced it out, but all I know is that I can WATCH television and ENJOY it whenever I see fit. You'll never get that with Comcast. They monopolized the deregulated cable industry, bought out and drove out all competitors, and as typically the sole source of cable TV in many parts of America they can sit back and do a terrible fucking job because there are no alternatives, or at least there weren't until streaming and cheap satellite TV came long. How's that market policing itself thing working out? Oh yeah, it isn't.
Fuck Comcast.
is A cheaper than B ? well it depends...
Didn't they teach you in journalism school not to lead your articles with yes or no questions? Or did you drop out and start your courageous new life as a /. submitter before that?
how do I watch the olypics ?
You would have cable even if you didn't have cable TV or Netflix, so those prices are irrelevant.
Not JUST the price.
I got rid of cable TV because I wasn't watching any of the crap they were offering, so yes, it has been cheaper.
I left my parent's basement 10 years ago. Throughout my extended college years and following professional years, I lived in a single room without a tele or cable.
I mainly survived by streaming things over the internet, which was the most economical option. I thought of subscribing cable many times in between; but the related monthly cost and the initial investment -- AKA giant-flat-screen-TV -- was too big for my student stipend.
I am not a soap-opera, series-drama kind of guy. I mostly watch documentaries (especially BBC ones). Since the invent of youtube, and especially in recent years; web is full of useful educational documentaries. Google's very own video search is a great way of finding them out.
On-and-off, I go down to the local pub to catch the Formula 1 and Footy action, which is a far better way of enjoying sport than sitting on a couch alone and watching with a bag of crisps & soda.
If the BBC opens up its great iPlayer service to the world, I will be subscribing that. This might require me to upgrade the broadband plan, but I think it is worth every penny!
People still watch traditional TV ... with all those ads?
XBMC
This strange comment at the bottom of the message is illogical.
Don't forget Netflix can have up to 5 or 6 devices tied to it. I am streaming it, a couple family members are streaming it, and a friend streams it as well. All of us are setup with broadband, OTA, my netflix account ($20/m, I like the two dvds at a time). Collectively, we are saving even more now since the cost of netflix is split four ways.
Fuck that! I demand a house hippo!
I'm not much of a sports fan myself. I'll watch an occasional baseball game or football game on one of the local digital OTA channels* but that's about it.
Anyhow, I've got a couple of Rokus and I've poked around the Channel Store to see what's available. The sports section has major league baseball, the NBA, the NHL, and others. The notes for the MLB channel state that the games it offers live are in HD. Don't know about the others.
So far as I know, the NFL still insists on only allowing access to streaming content through their own website, so that one isn't easily available. To my disappointment, the streaming live Olympics coverage from NBC is only accessible if you've got a cable or satellite TV subscription. Clearly, there are a few sports sources out there that don't quite get it yet. :-) Still, there are opportunities to watch streaming sports out there that look pretty decent.
* Side note: An interesting geek project if you have some patience is to build your own small fractal tv antenna for less than $50. I built a couple based upon the increased fractal layout that the article's author links to in the comments. They work pretty well. I'm pulling in several more channels with those than I could see through my Dish Network subscription.
Cutting the cord for the TV by using the cord for the internet? How long will it take for the media companies to lower the brive for TV and jack up the price for internet?
What's scare are places like hulu and a few others, that, as they gain a market share, move to the same model. Tends to happen when they feel they have enough customers to be mostly immune from the backlash effects.
Right now I'm paying $1,080 a year for video service from Cox. Not very happy about it either.
I can buy a Roku box for $100, sign up for Hulu+ for $96 a year, Amazon Prime for $60 a year, and Netflix runs $180 a year. Add it all up and first year is $436. Second year is $336. So compare $1,080 to $336 and that's a saving of $744! So yeah, I'm cutting the cord.
If everybody's watching the same thing, such as ESPN's Monday Night Football or MSNBC's Olympic coverage or Victoria the artist/clown on TLC's Four Houses, the cable company can just multicast it.
It's the only TV you can watch where the outcome is not known in advance.
I guess some of the debate is about whether one should sit and watch sports or actually participate in them. One can play Go or Chess online, and golf and bowling have large participant followings. As for team sports, you may be able to find a local amateur league.
that would make sense if most isp consumers were ./ readers who can and will shift their usage to off-peak.
Does one really have to be a member of Slashdot's geek demographic to use software that can schedule a download overnight? Windows, for instance, already processes operating system updates in the wee hours. Ideally, one would purchase a video from iTunes and have the computer download the file overnight, or queue up some movies in Netflix and have them download overnight to watch the next day. If a major ISP were to implement an overnight off-peak period, you can bet that at least one popular VOD service would build and advertise such a "Watch Tomorrow" feature. Or is it solely the fault of Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal, and Warner that Netflix doesn't support caching an entire movie off-peak?
Defeats the purpose of the caps which is to protect their TV product
Unless the cable companies want to keep a friendly relationship with national competition regulators.
$50 a month for 30/4 mbit/s cable without cap (charter)
$22 a month for netflix streaming + 2 blurays at a time
$0 for all the major networks in HD (OTA) with streaming to all PC's in the house and show recording/playback via PC (sunk cost) (one time fee $100 for HDhome run)
$0 for HULU, Comedy Central etc. via web sites
$0 for local and long distance telephone (Google talk.voice via a Obi box) ($50 one time hardware fee).
$124 a month (inc taxes and fees) for 4 cell phones on T-mobile (3 with unlimited data (2gb then throttled) , text, calls / 1 with 500 minutes and unlimited texts)
+ $17 a month for a new Google nexus phones every 2 years.
I can't even begin to describe the stupidity of locking your content to a mere 5% of the world's population, but that's precisely what these media companies do.
Before Internet video on demand, distribution of video in different markets was the responsibility of companies that specialized in localization services for each market, such as dubbing/subtitling to the market's language, censoring cultural references to which the market's median parent would object, negotiating with the market's incumbent providers, and the like. The media companies still have to honor multi-year exclusive distribution contracts for these services that were signed years before Internet video on demand became a possibility.
That's not a bug. It's a feature.
The hell we are. My kids get to watch a couple of movies a week in our home theater. Other than that, they read, they build things, they learn things, they swim, they traipse about in the woods and fields, they bike, they mess with our microscope, telescope, chemistry set, on our electronics bench, then we play board games (chess, scrabble, go), we go caving, rock collecting, two out of three paint, the other sculpts and blows glass, and one of the girls is fairly advanced in martial arts.
Brother, we don't have *time* for TV. You can raise your kids any way you like, but if TV is a major component of your kids day, maybe you should think about what that gains them -- or maybe I should say, what it costs them.
$40/mo. for 36mbps internet. $0 in streaming cost. Total amount saved: $150/mo. and I still get to watch the shows that I want, when I want. If you want to do it legally Hulu has a subscription for like $10 a month or something and a lot of networks air their shows for free on their website. Legally I don't pay a dime to watch what I want. Suck it comcast!
An underlying problem to be aware of is that many people paying for cable TV programming... have cable provided ISPs. These are (of course) the very same providers that feed most of this group's TV programming (bundling).
Caps and increased prices over the past few years are early steps for cable providers to pickup this market shift. They're not stupid, they don't want to lose their middleman leech-sucking role. As more people 'cut the cable,' internet service prices and pricing models (tiered services, just like cable TV) will inevitably increase (from cable providers) while caps relative to monthly transfer demands will decrease. This is how cable networks will transition, even if network neutrality becomes a reality. If cable transfer caps do increase [b]relative to average demand and without added cost over time[/b], I'll take back every single word.
Sure, competition from non-cable based ISPs should drive these prices down to be competitive. The problem is, how many in the US have other ISPs as a feasible option, especially if you live in a rural location (live in a large metropolitan area, no problem!)? ...but let's face it, fiber and DSL can't handle the geographic penetration as cheaply as cable. Satellite has low transfer caps, high cost, high latency, etc. Cellular networks... yea right.
Until another technology outside the local cable service monopolies exists (usually, you can't even choose between different cable providers in an area...), they'll smile, rename services, and shift fees around to compensate for the old programming model.
One can decline an unconscionable contract by simply not buying the product, especially if the product is a luxury such as fiction on television.
The time slot programming model of cable television is a technical vestige
Doesn't multicast make the "time slot programming model" apply to IPTV as well? That's similar to what SDV channels on some cable TV systems use.
rather than to be able to discuss current entertainment at the office the way people do sports games
I agree with what you say about people who can tolerate a time delay. But can you think of a good way for such people to join in office socialization?
I have to have internet anyway.
Do you also "have to have" a smartphone? If so, you could just get the necessities of the Internet over that. Or what am I missing?
If you work from home, then I understand how wired Internet access at home is a necessity to you. But I imagine that people like you who work from home are not the majority.
Purely considering the monetary cost overlooks the VERY significant reduction in the number of commercials I have to endure. Vastly more importantly, even, is the fact that my two kids (ages 5 and 3) can watch the cartoons they like (Spongebab, Avatar, Yo Gabba Gabba, etc.) without a SINGLE commercial. We happened to watch a single episode of "The Legend of Korra" on a television, commercials intact, and it is ABSURD by comparison. If you are a parent and have young kids, TVoIP is a freaking BOON -- my kids don't pester me to buy stupid toys / breakfast cereals, nor do they get exposed to all of the bizarre socialization that occurs in ads (particularly w/r/t gender roles and what is acceptable behaviors).
The few commercials that are included with Hulu+ (which we do not use) are far more acceptable than the garbage on cable; for one, I very rarely EVER see political campaign ads (HUGE plus), almost never see annoying breakfast cereal or toy ads (another plus). The downside is that I'm reducing the market effectiveness for local businesses to advertise...but then again, shouldn't they be moving to internet advertisements too?
Also: "assuming you're going to do things legally" is kind of a loaded assumption. If I consume a show over Bit Torrent because the studio is being stupid and not televising their show that week, where I *would* happily watch the show on their website with ad-support -- *should* this be illegal? If I watch an episode of "The Mentalist" on one of the many streaming websites out there, because the shows producers / studio are idiotically not licensing the rights to broadcast it online -- *should* that be illegal? Remember, it was once completely legal to own humans as property and is still legal in several states to marry (and thus have sexy time with) a young teenager -- legality doesn't always equate with good sense.