But ... who's gonna pay the cable newsers their subscriber fees if the cable companies have no subscribers?
But ... who's gonna pay the cable newsers their subscriber fees if the cable companies have no subscribers?
It’s not the internet. The change to digital screwed a bunch of people. It requires running new coax through most older houses. plus, cable keeps going up a few dollars every couple of months.
I’m hooked on Netflix; love watching old shows like Have Gun Will Travel, Route 66, Peter Gunn. Cable/satellite are dead unless they unbundle. Why pay for 256 channels of shopping shows and skank reality if you only watch Fox, football and financials?
If I could figure out how to get baseball games online, I would cancel too. MLB.com wants too much money to watch games on it’s site.
ping
I am seriously thinking of dropping cable. I can now access almost anything I want via an Apple Mac Mini computer hooked via HDMI to my TV. The graphics are tons better than cable, so I suspect I will drop cable soon. I was an early adopter of cell phones and have not had a land-line phone in seven years and I am perfectly satisfied.
Where to begin.
Might I suggest:
http://www.antennaweb.org/aw/welcome.aspx
Type in your address, and it will tell you what over-the-air channels are available in your area, and what type of antenna you will need. In my area, I get over 30 local stations, including ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox and others.
Occassionally you can find a USB TV tuner on Woot.com for $50 that turns your PC into DVD, so you can record games, shows and movies and then stream them across your home network.
Now, with Netflix, I get unlimited streaming of movies.
And, finally, with Hulu - I can get the various series I want to watch, when I want to watch them.
The Apple iTV module connects to your TV, and enables your TV to tie into your home network for the cost of $95.
So, tell me again why I should be paying Dishnetwork and/or Comcast cable $65/month for stuff I can get for nearly free?
My wife still wants to keep it, but I’d just as soon cancel: Nothing but trash. Simply freak show, degrading, poorly produced trash. I’d be all for keeping the service if I could just pay for maybe three to five channels of my choosing.
It’s like a flat rate buffet where 90% of the food tastes horrible, and another 8% is actually spoiled or toxic.
It’s become like airplane travel has become.
I spend more time streaming Netflix movies/tv programs than watching regular tv/cable.
Main reason: regular tv/cable has too many damn commercials and Netflix has ZERO.
There are not many ‘local’ channels accessible over-air or even in the ‘basic’ cable line-up. And I have cable internet, which is less expensive than area DSL or satellite or mobile. So, I have to keep cable and the cable requires a minimum of ‘basic’.
I do add the extended plus HD box, so my cable tv + internet is moderately expensive.
1. In hard economic times, cable is not a necessity, it is an expensive luxury;
2. The programming substandard on most channels.
3. Service is poor - and their attitude is worse. "We'll be there between 2 and 6, so take a half day off work and cool your heels - you're lucky we even deign to respond."
4. Internet alternatives such as Hulu, or watching shows on DVD provide alternative.
Newspapers, magazines, over-the-air TV, and now cable TV are feeling the effects of their empty words and programming coming back to haunt them.
American’s don’t want fluff anymore and it shows with the way they are voting with their wallets.
I’ve thought about canceling since everyone streams their shows a fe days after first airing anyways. But I really don’t want to go without Sox/Celtic/Bruins coverage, which is all local cable. If there was a way to get around that Id’ leap in a heartbeat.
I signed up for a "triple-play" discount deal when my wife and I moved into our apartment. It was running ~120 per month for Internet access (with the speed upgrade), phone service, and TV. The discounted year just ended, and we received notice that our bill was going up to ~150/month.
We realized that we watch TV on cable MAYBE once per week, and use the phone for faxing MAYBE once per month. All of our other media comes through our PlayStation 3 courtesy of Netflix and Hulu Plus. On top of that, the TV that we do watch is available on Hulu the next day.
It was a no-brainer. We canceled the TV and phone, and kept the internet. Bill came down to $65/month. If I really want a "landline" for faxing, I can get the lowest Vonage plan for $9.99/month.
The worst part of all this is that you can get the local cable company (Optimum Online/Cablevision) on the phone in < 10 mins for regular customer service, but to turn off the cable, you need to talk to someone in the "disconnect department," which has > 40 minute wait times. They must really be hurting.
The cable companies and telcos still own the pipes that make all internet and streaming services possible.
Notwithstanding, if you look at the earning reports of the cable companies this article exaggerates.
It counts that many users are dropping one service, the old analog, but it downplays that they are switching to digital and bundled services.
Could also be because of the economy.
Broadband is really all that you need now.
With broadband you have:
Free phone (Google Voice)
Access to usenet for TV and movies(180GB of use is 25.00 and gets you roughly 200 films or 400 one hr TV programs)
Netflix access
Free Republic :-)
Streaming of many TV channels.
I don’t know why it is taking so long for amateur production houses to get started streaming shows using P2P.
It would not be that difficult to create content people would be willing to watch for free. (News, reality, variety, comedy..etc) Using P2P to distribute means all that is needed to put out a show is a normal speed internet connection...You make $$$ by placing advertising in the video stream. I’d watch a daily 15-30 minute political commentary show created by some of the great folks here on FR! I’m sure many others would also, ads could support it once it had enough viewers.
IMHO it would be wise to migrate FR itself to a P2P platform. A simple website at the freerepublic.com address would serve to explain how to download the small P2P app and set it up and install it into your browser. Reliability could be better than it is now and costs would be minuscule compared to what it is now. It would also be very hard to shut down.
I canceled cable service recently. My reason: the programming is absolute crap. 50% reality TV straight up. And 95% of those shows suck. Most shows on TV have terrible writing and are not entertaining in the least.
News sucks. When CNN was new, it was brilliant. Any time of day or night you could turn on one of 2 CNN channels and get 24 hour news from around the world. What is TV news now? FOX News as maybe 1 hour of news, mostly political & US news, and 23 hours of commentary shows. If I want talk shows, I’ll listen to the radio. What I want from TV news shows is who, what, when, where and how, from the US & abroad.
TV news absolutely sucks.
So I get all my news from the internet and I subscribe to Netflix for entertainment. After watching re-runs of Moonlighting, the point is driven home just how FLAT RAW SUCKING BAD the writing is on cable TV. Seinfeld was the last really entertaining show on TV and I can’t even remember how long ago it wrapped up.
TV sucks. I wish the programming was good. I wish every show didn’t have at least one fag character. I wish every family show didn’t have a moron for a dad. I wish the writing was not so banal and stupid.
TV sucks. That is why I canceled. I was not getting close to my $70/mo worth. Netflix has been far, far better.
Cable companies have been losing...
Gee, whatever are we going to use as an example of how NOT to do customer service?