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Netflix Has More American Subscribers Than Cable TV (engadget.com)
According to Leichtman Research estimates from the first quarter of 2017, there are more Netflix subscribers in the U.S. (50.85 million) than there are customers for major cable TV networks (48.61 million). While it doesn't mean Netflix is bigger than TV because it doesn't account for the 33.19 million satellite viewers, it represents a huge milestone for a streaming service that had half as many users just 5 years ago. Engadget reports: The shift in power comes in part through Netflix's ever-greater reliance on originals. There's enough high-quality material that it can compete with more established networks. However, it's also getting a boost from the decline of conventional TV. Those traditional sources lost 760,000 subscribers in the first quarter of the year versus 120,000 a year earlier. Leichtman believes a combination of cord cutters and reduced marketing toward cost-conscious viewers is to blame. Cable giants might not be in dire straits, but they're clearly focusing on their most lucrative customers as others jump ship for the internet.
Surprise...Nabors
here's how we do it: one guy has the cable-TV account and password for online viewing. he "sells" or "rents" his ever-changing log-on information as needed. game the system once, and you're done.
You can get C-SPAN on the internet.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Not surprising since Cable TV providers keep raising prices (TWC just raised my prices again) and more people are leaving it. I hope there's a mass exodus one of these days. I'd LOVE to see cable providers all die off.
they all have local blackouts
Direct TV Now and Sling have local baseball games for some markets and will have the NFL. And they had the NBA playoffs and finals
>"Cable giants might not be in dire straits, but they're clearly focusing on their most lucrative customers as others jump ship for the internet."
"Focusing on"? How? By holding on to more and more useless channels? By raising prices continuously? By offering only deceptive "introductory" pricing models? By constantly fighting and making life difficult for TiVo and other third-party box owners? If this is their "focus", they are doing to be in dire straits before they know it.
They don't necessarily have to stream to compete (because DVRs can provide an excellent experience), but one thing they need to do soon is to offer a pay-for-each-channel-wanted model and allow customers to customize what they want to watch. I am BEYOND SICK of paying for crap I don't want and subsidizing others' channels. Sports is perfect example. I bet a HUGE portion of my cable TV bill is poured into sports, something I have ZERO interest in, but yet comprises probably 30 or more channels. Now throw out all religious channels, infomercial channels, game show channels, non-English channels, and reality TV channels. I bet I am now up to about 85%.
Oh, and when they do offer streaming, it is just the same crap content on their existing channels, but with the bonus of being only in stereo not Dolby 5.1, with a crappy low-bandwidth picture, and often forced commercials. All with silly time limits, a poor interface, and sometimes flaky as hell.
Focus, indeed.
That cable networks are not going to respond to this situation by offering better value for the money! Monopolies never do.
Cable TV prices have been increasing at four times the rate of inflation for years. Forcing people to buy bundles of channels instead of a la carte offerings for less money, etc., etc.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Of course, cable companies jerk around customers by charging them arbitrary fees for things they don't want. But aside from that, many of us hate having to watch 20 minutes of commercials an hour, for programming we supposedly paid a subscription to get. Netflix--so far--has stayed away from advertisements within the shows you watch. As long as they keep that up, they have MY money!
What percentage of American households can even get cable? Now, what percentage can get Netflix? Yep, it's higher. When you add to that just how lame Cable is...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Of course! If would be weird if Netflix had any cable TV at all.
It doesn't have to be like this. All we need to do is make sure we keep talking.
I want to watch live sports. How can I still do that while cord cutting?
Reappraise your need to watch live sports. They are feeding off your tribal instincts.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I think the direction cable/satellite companies are going to go, is bundled a la carte. Telecoms make tons of money from bundling (TV/internet/phone) already, and the idea will be pitched to consumers as 'build your own bundle', and pitched to executives as 'giving customers more opportunity to give us their money.' Essentially, instead of tiers (basic cable, expanded cable, ultimate) with multiple over-the-top channels (HBO, Showtime etc.) you pay for individually, there will be small bundles of channels that you can pick and choose from, with no base tiers.
So, there'll likely be a bundle that contains local channels, another that contains a few channels owned by Time Warner, another that contains a few channels owned by Disney, a bundle with a few sports channels, bundles with a few related themes (movie channel/hbo/showtime bundle). It'll be mixed-up enough from how it currently works that it can be advertised as 'pay for the channels you care about, and not the ones you do not', while the price is structured so that people actually pay more to get what they currently get. Few people will notice, thinking "I can just cut out this and this to save money", the additional control obscuring the price hike. Some streaming services like Sling already do something similar, but I think it will be made more granular, and be more heavily advertised. Cordcutters who really only want that one channel are able to do that for potentially less money than Netflix; the cable company will likely even subsidize your bill a little, on the expectation that having you as a customer means you might expand your lineup later, rather than letting you leave and be someone else's customer instead. I expect this will cause a big enough shakeup in the industry that everyone will see it coming years before it happens, and all the telecoms will get onboard at the same time. Thus, there will be rumors coming from industry analysts long before this drops.
But I'll be surprised if this happens any earlier than "too late to stave off irrelevance."
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
There goes the accusation that people are sharing accounts
https://slashdot.org/story/326...
Twinstiq, game news
Well there is your problem, a T1 is 1.554 Mbps and thst is before ip overhead. nor exactly ideal for video straming, well you culd probably squize 360p30 down thst line, but doyhou realy want to?
Amazing how the cable companies screwed it up, huh?
They were perfectly placed to profit from the dotcom boom and later; everyone was obsessed with Yahoo-esque approaches of "being the portal to the interwebz" and/or the browser "wars", (something that continues to this day, except that Google has pretty much won everywhere in search, with Chrome(ium) and on mobile with Android etc.)
Yet all this time the cable (and phone) guys owned the last mile into your house, with TV and Internet along with it.
With a bit of vision but - above all - accepting that they would have to cannibalize their existing offer, they could have used the massive subsidies they received to build out a great network, with good, fast service and compelling original content.
What did they do? Sit on their fat-ass, rent-seeking business model, ripping people off with poor, expensive service and bundles of advert-laden crap channels. Good riddance.
They are feeding off your tribal instincts.
In contrast to every other thing on TV in what way, exactly?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
They are feeding off your tribal instincts.
In contrast to every other thing on TV in what way, exactly?
Well many shows don't invite you to pick a side and split the protagonists into two sides with clearly distinguished colors and iconography to make it simple.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I haven't had cable TV for over 10 years, and the last time I had satellite service was when it was free for me (DirecTV) some 15 years ago. I have a lot of friends and coworkers that ditched cable/satellite TV, but admittedly I'm only looking at a pool of people who work in the same industry as me, make a similar income, are of a similar age, and live in the same region as me.
The big thing that keeps a few is access to their favorite sports team. I have more than one friend who has cable TV because they are Giants fans. And last year it was really difficult for me to stream of the greatest Cubs game in history. I certainly miss out on things occasionally.
All that said, I think I agree with you that Netflix, on its own, isn't a replacement. but combine a few different streaming services and it starts to cover the kinds of things that I would normally have wanted to get out of a cable service. Hulu, Amazon, and many others are out there and each offers slightly different services that compliment each other.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Well many shows don't invite you to pick a side and split the protagonists into two sides with clearly distinguished colors and iconography to make it simple.
Are you sure you're not watching Cops?
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Netflix works at 1.5mbps (throttle on T-mobile for unlimited video, not sure about a T1).
It is standard definition, but it handles it far better than youtube in my experience (it [netflix] does a good job of finding the bandwidth, streaming at a slightly lower quality until there's a decent buffer, and then using most of the bandwidth if needed).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Well many shows don't invite you to pick a side and split the protagonists into two sides with clearly distinguished colors and iconography to make it simple.
Are you sure you're not watching Cops?
Very sure. I mostly listen to music.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Reappraise your need to watch live sports. They are feeding off your tribal instincts.
I don't watch much live sports, but I still think the only reasonable response to this is "fuck off you sanctimonious prick". ;)
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
A full T1? Wow. That used to be considered fast back in the olden days.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Internet is absolutely on its way, isn't it? http://williamreview.com/im-vi...
http://williamreview.com/