Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
...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.
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.
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**
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
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
Broadband $35/month
Netflix $14/month
Ability to watch my shows without commercials.... priceless
-- QED