Fair enough and understood. I found Hulu Plus and Netflix, with a Playon license (their plugins are fantastic) ended up covering 99% of what my family watches. Each situation is different and I imagine there are still some content providers fighting the streaming thing.
I removed my Directtv subscription 2 months ago and went with the following: Netflix +1 DVD = $10 Hulu Plus = $8 WD TV Live Plus = $75 x 2 (2 TV's) one time cost Playon = $80 one time license fee
I haven't looked back. My wife and kids love Playon and its ability to stream content out to the WD TV devices. We all use Netflix streaming on the WD Live's too. As soon as I finish my basement's home theater, I intend on getting a WD Live Hub as well. For a family with a wide variety of TV tastes, cutting the cord was a viable option now and no one misses the old Directtv.
It sounds like you have had a bad experience with Netflix. That's fair, many have. However, have you tried any of the other 5 that I mentioned? As for surround, I seem to recall that DTS has a licensing scheme that prevents many companies from using it outside of various disk players. Streaming has its flaws of course, but consider how far it has come in 2-3 years versus physical media. I own a large collection of Blu ray and DVD disks, but have since tried to cut back as I don't care to rebuy my movies every several years as a new format comes out. Now I rip or use streaming exclusively.
Streaming will be the death knell for movies on physical media. With Netflix, Amazon On Demand, Hulu Plus, Vudu, CinemaNow, Blockbuster on Demand, and so on, users can watch almost any title in HD with surround sound. Devices to aid in this are cheap and abundant ( Internet-connected TV's, Roku, WD TV, Boxee, etc.) Users who want copies can use a capture card as well to keep a copy on a NAS or external drive. With RAID arrays and cheap storage, it is just harder to justify burning movies to disk and maintaining those collections...much less purchasing new disks.
As some other posters mentioned, I too cut the satellite tv and went with an OTA antenna, Dlink Boxee, and WD TV Live. I haven't looked back and neither has the family. I even added Playon for good measure to stream anything neither device has. I have Hulu Plus and Netflix subscriptions for TV and movies. Overall, for a one time cost of 280 dollars, and monthly recurring costs of 17 dollars, I replaced my 80 dollars a month TV with a much better option. The Cable/Satellite companies really don't get it. They are going to be phased out of existence. I am much happier with TV over the internet and think it very viable upon my anecdotal evidence.
Actually, I think the deal had to do with the iPhone, just not how the article presented it. When AT&T's infrastructure struggled with the high demand of usage for bandwidth since the release of the iPhone, AT&T had to scale up in a hurry. TMobile has a large 4G infrastructure rolled out already, AT&T is working on it. I think that was probably the most important factor in deciding to purchase them.
I'll second your opinion on Equinix. The data centers I have frequented of theirs even have arcade machines in a breakroom. I rarely see places as well-managed or designed as theirs.
The article also mentions about 5000 titles of their 90000 title library will be free in this offer. Seems their entire collection will not be free for Prime customers. It's a shame, the movies I have watched on Amazon On Demand (they give away a lot of 5 dollar credits) were always worth it (quick buffering, no flakiness).
You can get Android tablets at $100...I would hardly call that expensive. However, like anything else, you get what you pay for too. This article only focuses on high end tablets...which just like any other product, will always be more expensive than their low end counterparts.
Utah Constitution requires that they have a balanced budget each year. That is why they are looking at proposed cuts...before they have to start borrowing. I suppose my original post was not quite right...Utah operates in the black as do other states. That is mandated by their respective laws. That doesn't mean they won't have to make cuts when revenues are down. That just means they will need a balanced budget and borrow their budgets every year.
Borders and Barnes and Noble sell epubs. That have Adobe's DRM attached...but it is easily stripped. You can also use Calibre to convert the epub to other formats.
I picked up a Dlink DNS-343 NAS with a quad bay for a few hundred. It works great....and then I burn photos to disk twice a year and store all the disks. I would definitely look into a Dlink or Netgear consumer nas for your photos.
The block is only relevant to the Vibrant. That sais, I had a Samsung Moment...had to wait 6 months to get Android 2.1 rolled to it and then they ceased support for it. I was more than happy to ditch my Moment for an LG phone last month. Samsung's phones are good, but they don't support them for very long. I bet the Intercept and Transform phones get 2.2 and never see another Android update.
Why is the assumption around the cloud such that people assume companies running cloud services are in much better shape than any other IT company? The datacenters and systems running the cloud services could also be suffering under the threat of this "maintenance debt".
Can you back up that claim? Look at who actually pays income tax...it is the rich. Who supplies the jobs? The rich. Who uses the public school system more, the firefighters, police, roads, utilities, naitonal parks, social security, food stamps, unemployment, medicare/medicaid? Definitely not the rich. Who uses pork more? Look at your local congressmen and see what "pork" they got. I guarantee you benefit from some of those earmarks.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do I sense a large number of Slashdot users hitting up eBay and Craigslist looking for number 5?
Football and hockey?
Have you looked here and here ? There is hope to cut the DTV...
Fair enough and understood. I found Hulu Plus and Netflix, with a Playon license (their plugins are fantastic) ended up covering 99% of what my family watches. Each situation is different and I imagine there are still some content providers fighting the streaming thing.
What channels are those? I had a tough time coming up with channels that can't be streamed.
I'll join in...my tipping point was beginning of this year...Netflix + Hulu Plus subscriber.
I removed my Directtv subscription 2 months ago and went with the following:
Netflix +1 DVD = $10
Hulu Plus = $8
WD TV Live Plus = $75 x 2 (2 TV's) one time cost
Playon = $80 one time license fee
I haven't looked back. My wife and kids love Playon and its ability to stream content out to the WD TV devices. We all use Netflix streaming on the WD Live's too. As soon as I finish my basement's home theater, I intend on getting a WD Live Hub as well. For a family with a wide variety of TV tastes, cutting the cord was a viable option now and no one misses the old Directtv.
It sounds like you have had a bad experience with Netflix. That's fair, many have. However, have you tried any of the other 5 that I mentioned? As for surround, I seem to recall that DTS has a licensing scheme that prevents many companies from using it outside of various disk players. Streaming has its flaws of course, but consider how far it has come in 2-3 years versus physical media. I own a large collection of Blu ray and DVD disks, but have since tried to cut back as I don't care to rebuy my movies every several years as a new format comes out. Now I rip or use streaming exclusively.
Streaming will be the death knell for movies on physical media. With Netflix, Amazon On Demand, Hulu Plus, Vudu, CinemaNow, Blockbuster on Demand, and so on, users can watch almost any title in HD with surround sound. Devices to aid in this are cheap and abundant ( Internet-connected TV's, Roku, WD TV, Boxee, etc.) Users who want copies can use a capture card as well to keep a copy on a NAS or external drive. With RAID arrays and cheap storage, it is just harder to justify burning movies to disk and maintaining those collections...much less purchasing new disks.
Have you looked at Hulu Plus for your wife? That was the route I went for my wife and it worked out well.
As some other posters mentioned, I too cut the satellite tv and went with an OTA antenna, Dlink Boxee, and WD TV Live. I haven't looked back and neither has the family. I even added Playon for good measure to stream anything neither device has. I have Hulu Plus and Netflix subscriptions for TV and movies. Overall, for a one time cost of 280 dollars, and monthly recurring costs of 17 dollars, I replaced my 80 dollars a month TV with a much better option. The Cable/Satellite companies really don't get it. They are going to be phased out of existence. I am much happier with TV over the internet and think it very viable upon my anecdotal evidence.
Do you mean the yellow bricked router connected to the path of malware, trojans, and viruses oh my?
Actually, I think the deal had to do with the iPhone, just not how the article presented it. When AT&T's infrastructure struggled with the high demand of usage for bandwidth since the release of the iPhone, AT&T had to scale up in a hurry. TMobile has a large 4G infrastructure rolled out already, AT&T is working on it. I think that was probably the most important factor in deciding to purchase them.
I'll second your opinion on Equinix. The data centers I have frequented of theirs even have arcade machines in a breakroom. I rarely see places as well-managed or designed as theirs.
Maybe they were holding it wrong?
The article also mentions about 5000 titles of their 90000 title library will be free in this offer. Seems their entire collection will not be free for Prime customers. It's a shame, the movies I have watched on Amazon On Demand (they give away a lot of 5 dollar credits) were always worth it (quick buffering, no flakiness).
You can get Android tablets at $100...I would hardly call that expensive. However, like anything else, you get what you pay for too. This article only focuses on high end tablets...which just like any other product, will always be more expensive than their low end counterparts.
Utah Constitution requires that they have a balanced budget each year. That is why they are looking at proposed cuts...before they have to start borrowing. I suppose my original post was not quite right...Utah operates in the black as do other states. That is mandated by their respective laws. That doesn't mean they won't have to make cuts when revenues are down. That just means they will need a balanced budget and borrow their budgets every year.
Borders and Barnes and Noble sell epubs. That have Adobe's DRM attached...but it is easily stripped. You can also use Calibre to convert the epub to other formats.
Utah runs with no deficit as well. There are 4 or 5 states who run in the black. Perhaps the other states should see how they run things?
I picked up a Dlink DNS-343 NAS with a quad bay for a few hundred. It works great....and then I burn photos to disk twice a year and store all the disks. I would definitely look into a Dlink or Netgear consumer nas for your photos.
The block is only relevant to the Vibrant. That sais, I had a Samsung Moment...had to wait 6 months to get Android 2.1 rolled to it and then they ceased support for it. I was more than happy to ditch my Moment for an LG phone last month. Samsung's phones are good, but they don't support them for very long. I bet the Intercept and Transform phones get 2.2 and never see another Android update.
Why is the assumption around the cloud such that people assume companies running cloud services are in much better shape than any other IT company? The datacenters and systems running the cloud services could also be suffering under the threat of this "maintenance debt".
Can you back up that claim? Look at who actually pays income tax...it is the rich. Who supplies the jobs? The rich. Who uses the public school system more, the firefighters, police, roads, utilities, naitonal parks, social security, food stamps, unemployment, medicare/medicaid? Definitely not the rich.
Who uses pork more? Look at your local congressmen and see what "pork" they got. I guarantee you benefit from some of those earmarks.
I will defer to another posting of mine.
Wait until the American Secret Systems Handling And Transport group at CIA hears about this.