# No Cable or Sat as base? Then streaming service is DOA says Cord Cutters



## 1948GG (Aug 4, 2007)

A few days back, yet another article on Cord Cutter News postulated the reason PSVue failed was the lack of a large subscriber base with cable or satellite to give it a leg up on content pricing; true for sure, but if it holds true in fact, then AT&T of all the live streamers should have the lowest prices and largest customer numbers as they have both cable and satellite subscribers, with Sling right behind with their Dish numbers. But who is marching to the top right now? YouTube TV and Hulu Live, neither of which has cable or satellite to give them the power to cut better deals. So what gives?

I say smart folks cutting good deals trump having millions of captive subscribers on dying platforms whose numbers dwindle daily. And I don't think anyone is going to give Sony any awards for their business sense over the past 2+ decades, as psvue joins a host of other products on the Sony junk heap.


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## NYDutch (Dec 28, 2013)

According to the Dish 3rd quarter results, Sling gained 214,000 subs while Dish lost 66,000 subs. That suggests to me there wasn't a lot of movement from the Dish base to Sling, with most of the gains coming from outside.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

There is a disconnect between the lowest cost to the provider and the lowest price to the customer. Much of it depends on the amount of loss the provider is willing to endure.


DISH satellite had 416k gross added customers in 3Q 2019 - the best gross adds since 3Q 2017 (402k) and every quarter until 4Q 2016. More people left than signed up, but the gross adds (a number DIRECTV no longer reports) is a decent number.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

James Long said:


> There is a disconnect between the lowest cost to the provider and the lowest price to the customer. Much of it depends on the amount of loss the provider is willing to endure.


My guess is that Google is in this for the long haul with YTTV. Whatever their losses are currently with YTTV it is probably a rounding error on their balance sheet. They are honestly pretty smart at monetizing the data they collect so I'm sure that factors into the equation for them as well.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

1948GG said:


> A few days back, yet another article on Cord Cutter News postulated the reason PSVue failed was the lack of a large subscriber base with cable or satellite to give it a leg up on content pricing; true for sure, but if it holds true in fact, then AT&T of all the live streamers should have the lowest prices and largest customer numbers as they have both cable and satellite subscribers, with Sling right behind with their Dish numbers. But who is marching to the top right now? YouTube TV and Hulu Live, neither of which has cable or satellite to give them the power to cut better deals. So what gives?
> 
> I say smart folks cutting good deals trump having millions of captive subscribers on dying platforms whose numbers dwindle daily. And I don't think anyone is going to give Sony any awards for their business sense over the past 2+ decades, as psvue joins a host of other products on the Sony junk heap.


PSVue didn't own content and wasn't tied to a studio or channel.....

You tube can loss lead for twenty years and not care cause they can sell info about you and make that back...

Hulu is owned by Disney and NBC. And previously other networks too. They can discount the product to themselves or lose money on the venture because at the end of the day they aren't actually losing money since it's coming back to them no matter how you slice it up.

Sling is truly the only one on its own that's been successful so far that I see. A couple others are wading in but we will see who's left in a few years.


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## espaeth (Oct 14, 2003)

1948GG said:


> A few days back, yet another article on Cord Cutter News postulated the reason PSVue failed was the lack of a large subscriber base with cable or satellite to give it a leg up on content pricing; ... But who is marching to the top right now? YouTube TV and Hulu Live, neither of which has cable or satellite to give them the power to cut better deals. So what gives?


YoutubeTV and Hulu Live are good examples of 2 different cost advantages.

Hulu, with majority ownership lying with Disney, can control its content costs. FOX, ESPN, ABC, and everything else in the Disney broadcasting family is a cost they can directly control. They can also drive mutually beneficial agreements with other content owners/distributors like Comcast/Universal and ATT/WarnerMedia. (Comcast gets favorable pricing on Disney properties as long as they don't jack up the pricing for Universal licensing in return) Hulu outsources all of their CDN distribution to third party companies though, so that is a cost they don't control as tightly.

YoutubeTV doesn't have the same control over content, although networks already have existing partnerships with regular Youtube to promote shows, movies, and other content. The cost advantage YoutubeTV has is that the CDN infrastructure necessary to run live TV already exists and is fully paid for by regular Youtube. The marginal cost to deliver YTTV in addition to standard Youtube video streams almost rounds to zero, and it gives them more opportunities to start to inject more advertisements from their well-established video ad marketplace.

Sony Entertainment had to source the content without being in a position to strike reciprocity agreements, and they outsourced 100% of their content distribution to 3rd party companies so they had no control over those costs.


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## wmb (Dec 18, 2008)

espaeth said:


> Hulu outsources all of their CDN distribution to third party companies though, so that is a cost they don't control as tightly.


Maybe it's not as tightly controlled internally, but it's likely to cost less to outsource than to do internally. I'm sure Disney has looked into both costs and profitably of running their own CDN.

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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> My guess is that Google is in this for the long haul with YTTV. Whatever their losses are currently with YTTV it is probably a rounding error on their balance sheet. They are honestly pretty smart at monetizing the data they collect so I'm sure that factors into the equation for them as well.


Google always impresses me.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> PSVue didn't own content and wasn't tied to a studio or channel.....
> 
> You tube can loss lead for twenty years and not care cause they can sell info about you and make that back...
> 
> ...


The people I know that have actually cut the cord because of financial constraints all seem to use Sling. Sadie's other grandmother had to drop cable simply because she couldn't afford it. Got Sling and loves it.

Rich


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## eletric chicken (Dec 28, 2019)

James Long said:


> There is a disconnect between the lowest cost to the provider and the lowest price to the customer. Much of it depends on the amount of loss the provider is willing to endure.
> 
> DISH satellite had 416k gross added customers in 3Q 2019 - the best gross adds since 3Q 2017 (402k) and every quarter until 4Q 2016. More people left than signed up, but the gross adds (a number DIRECTV no longer reports) is a decent number.


AT&T loses another 1.2 million TV subscribers as DirecTV keeps tanking


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> The people I know that have actually cut the cord because of financial constraints all seem to use Sling. Sadie's other grandmother had to drop cable simply because she couldn't afford it. Got Sling and loves it.
> 
> Rich


Sling's biggest fault is no locals at all IMO. Other than that it is cheap and has a good selection of channels. I used Sling Blue and found it had all 9 of the cable channels I wanted.

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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> Sling's biggest fault is no locals at all IMO. Other than that it is cheap and has a good selection of channels. I used Sling Blue and found it had all 9 of the cable channels I wanted.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


Never heard that about the locals. Is that a regional thing? I'll have to ask Sadie when she comes back.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> Never heard that about the locals. Is that a regional thing? I'll have to ask Sadie when she comes back.
> 
> Rich


Not regional, SlingTV just doesn't do broadcast channels. Keeps the cost down quite a bit doing so.

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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> Not regional, SlingTV just doesn't do broadcast channels. Keeps the cost down quite a bit doing so.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


Didn't know that. Always thought it was a straight cable replacement service.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> Didn't know that. Always thought it was a straight cable replacement service.
> 
> Rich


Actually it is a nice few skinny bundle service, none including locals. Dish has even allowed for no locals with their satellite subscriptions these days. Good move on their part IMO since it allows those that can get OTA without paying for it and allows for a reduced rate if you choose to do so.

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## WestDC (Feb 9, 2008)

Rich said:


> Didn't know that. Always thought it was a straight cable replacement service.
> 
> Rich


You can read about the locals here

Live TV Streaming | Sling TV


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> Actually it is a nice few skinny bundle service, none including locals. Dish has even allowed for no locals with their satellite subscriptions these days. Good move on their part IMO since it allows those that can get OTA without paying for it and allows for a reduced rate if you choose to do so.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


That actually seems rational. Good for Dish. Wish they had YES.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> That actually seems rational. Good for Dish. Wish they had YES.
> 
> Rich


LOL! You and your sports!!

If I tune into either a baseball game or the golf channel I always ensure the recliner is fully reclined so I can get a good nap! Used to be just golf that was so slow, but these days baseball and football are right there too!

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## WestDC (Feb 9, 2008)

lparsons21 said:


> LOL! You and your sports!!
> 
> If I tune into either a baseball game or the golf channel I always ensure the recliner is fully reclined so I can get a good nap! Used to be just golf that was so slow, but these days baseball and football are right there too!
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


Yeah I Gave up on Baseball in the 1980's and Since the DVR was created -I only watch Football games Recorded & FF thru everything and can watch the entire game as played in 1 hour 

For the Super bowl -I will record the 4K Game and I am recording the SB HD game as Backup -Just in case -However the Thursday Night 4K Football Games did very well  SO I'll be watching it at 10 pm instead of 6:30 -For me FF-Skipping Half time is a real blessing


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> LOL! You and your sports!!
> 
> If I tune into either a baseball game or the golf channel I always ensure the recliner is fully reclined so I can get a good nap! Used to be just golf that was so slow, but these days baseball and football are right there too!
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


That's what makes the HRs so great for watching sports. With remote securely in hand you skip thru the commercials and all the talk and only watch the plays. Hard to fall asleep when you're that busy. Baseball games have far too many things going on that aren't related to the action. Football games on an HR are even shorter.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

WestDC said:


> Yeah I Gave up on Baseball in the 1980's and Since the DVR was created -I only watch Football games Recorded & FF thru everything and can watch the entire game as played in 1 hour
> 
> For the Super bowl -I will record the 4K Game and I am recording the SB HD game as Backup -Just in case -However the Thursday Night 4K Football Games did very well  SO I'll be watching it at 10 pm instead of 6:30 -For me FF-Skipping Half time is a real blessing


Hard for me to believe anybody with a DVR suffers thru a whole game.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> That's what makes the HRs so great for watching sports. With remote securely in hand you skip thru the commercials and all the talk and only watch the plays. Hard to fall asleep when you're that busy. Baseball games have far too many things going on that aren't related to the action. Football games on an HR are even shorter.
> 
> Rich


Why would I want to do that and ruin a perfectly good nap? 

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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> Why would I want to do that and ruin a perfectly good nap?
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


I hear that.

Rich


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## Andrew Sullivan (Dec 7, 2017)

The obvious reason not to DVR is because the game is already over. Do you want to go see a movie if somebody tells you how it ends. Sports is one of the few things that needs to be watched live, unless you're not a fan of either team and really do not care who wins.


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

lparsons21 said:


> LOL! You and your sports!!


Hey now!


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

Andrew Sullivan said:


> The obvious reason not to DVR is because the game is already over. Do you want to go see a movie if somebody tells you how it ends. Sports is one of the few things that needs to be watched live, unless you're not a fan of either team and really do not care who wins.


Nope... I prefer to watch most sports recorded. I know how to not see the score before I watch the game. Often I'm starting to view it before it's over if the time is right.


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## Andrew Sullivan (Dec 7, 2017)

When you watch the game certainly makes a big difference. Like the next day could make it more difficult. For most games I will check the score to see if the game is worthwhile watching. 35-18 is a no.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Andrew Sullivan said:


> The obvious reason not to DVR is because the game is already over. Do you want to go see a movie if somebody tells you how it ends. Sports is one of the few things that needs to be watched live, unless you're not a fan of either team and really do not care who wins.


Simple solution, just avoid everybody! Hermits to the rescue!! 

Yeah, watching much later is not really all that good in many cases.

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## Andrew Sullivan (Dec 7, 2017)

Here's the question. Should I watch the game OTA, with the FOX app on my TV or the app on my Shield? Will they all be in 4K?


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## espaeth (Oct 14, 2003)

Andrew Sullivan said:


> Here's the question. Should I watch the game OTA, with the FOX app on my TV or the app on my Shield? Will they all be in 4K?


OTA will be 720p60.

The FOX App will be 1080p upscaled to 4k, but only on the following devices:

FireTV
AppleTV
Roku

FOX Support link with details is here.

If you don't have one of those 3 platforms, you can still stream it via the app on other platforms, but it will be at 720p60.

OTA will be the closest to live. Depending on how loaded things get, I expect the FOX stream to be 70-120 second behind live by the time things ramp up.


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## Andrew Sullivan (Dec 7, 2017)

Ok I have a Shield and a Firestick. Are you saying that only the Firestick will be capable of getting the 4K broadcast?


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## espaeth (Oct 14, 2003)

Andrew Sullivan said:


> Ok I have a Shield and a Firestick. Are you saying that only the Firestick will be capable of getting the 4K broadcast?


The Shield won't, the Firestick might as long as it meets the requirements defined in the support link above.


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## NYDutch (Dec 28, 2013)

Andrew Sullivan said:


> When you watch the game certainly makes a big difference. Like the next day could make it more difficult. For most games I will check the score to see if the game is worthwhile watching. 35-18 is a no.


I think we've all seen games at one time or another where the final score is not a good indicator of how competitive the game was.


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## wmb (Dec 18, 2008)

Rich said:


> That's what makes the HRs so great for watching sports. With remote securely in hand you skip thru the commercials and all the talk and only watch the plays. Hard to fall asleep when you're that busy. Baseball games have far too many things going on that aren't related to the action. Football games on an HR are even shorter.
> 
> Rich


I remember the short cuts with Sunday Ticket. They were great, but you had to wait until Tuesday for them to be available.



Andrew Sullivan said:


> unless you're not a fan of either team and really do not care who wins.


Why watch sports you aren't a fan of?

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## wmb (Dec 18, 2008)

From a customer standpoint, what is the factor differentiating YTTV from (or other cable replacement streaming services) DirecTV, Dish, or cable? Is it just price? Is that enough?

To me, the long term question is what does the future look like? What's the use case for live TV? We don't need to own physical media. Content on demand. How is it monetized? What are the consumer issues?


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## espaeth (Oct 14, 2003)

wmb said:


> From a customer standpoint, what is the factor differentiating YTTV from (or other cable replacement streaming services) DirecTV, Dish, or cable? Is it just price? Is that enough?


YTTV in particular:


Unlimited recording. No timers to worry about, better scheduling of recordings. (Record all airings of specific teams, major sports leagues auto extend recordings, etc)
Watch anywhere on a wide array of devices. Watch on all the TVs at my house without having to pay for a receiver at each TV. It's great being able to have my DVR when I travel, watching on my iPad when working out in the garage, or checking in on a game while sitting in an airport.
DVR navigation has thumbnails, and voice control on most platforms. For hockey intermissions I can just say "skip forward 18 minutes" instead of hitting skip multiple times. If I want to skip forward (or back), I get a thumbnail to navigate through my position in the video.
Better video quality than DirecTV on channels I watch (NBCSN in particular)
The home screen immediately shows what I want to watch the majority of the time. For instance, when our local hockey team is playing, when I launch YTTV it will be right on the home screen and I'm one click away no matter if the game is on NBC, NBCSN, or FOX Sports North.

It's also removed our need to switch inputs on our TVs. Want to watch Netflix, Hulu, NHL.tv, Amazon Prime Video, HBO, Apple TV+? It's all just different apps on the input we're already on.

I've posted this before, for all the benefits we see, I'd have YTTV even if it cost more than the DTV service I just cancelled. With DTV, whenever I was working late I'd have to remember to pull up the DIRECTV app and set a recording if it was a game night. Now I don't have to think about it, all the games just record and I don't have to think about it because I don't have a DVR to manage. With profiles, everybody can record as much as they want and I don't have to care about space filling up.


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## Andrew Sullivan (Dec 7, 2017)

wmb said:


> I remember the short cuts with Sunday Ticket. They were great, but you had to wait until Tuesday for them to be available.
> 
> Why watch sports you aren't a fan of?
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


I am a football fan and I have my favorite teams but that doesnt mean I don't want to watch Michigan vs Ohio Stats or Alabama vs Auburn or Notre Dame vs Southern Cal. I watch because I expect a high quality competitive game. That doesnt mean I must care who wins. I'm always a fan of the sport but not necessarily of the two teams playing.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Andrew Sullivan said:


> When you watch the game certainly makes a big difference. Like the next day could make it more difficult. For most games I will check the score to see if the game is worthwhile watching. 35-18 is a no.


I can't remember the last time I watched a sporting event after knowing the score (probably the Olympics two years ago?).
When I have something recorded I usually try to avoid spoilers (including non-sporting events).


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

Hosted a Super Bowl party. Used the Fox Sports app on my FireTV Stick 4ks. Even though it was 1080 upscaled to 4k HLG/HDR the picture quality was excellent. Performance was flawless. Thanks Fox!


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## VaJim (Jul 27, 2006)

lparsons21 said:


> Not regional, SlingTV just doesn't do broadcast channels. Keeps the cost down quite a bit doing so.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


SlingTV maynot 'broadcast' locals, however they do provide a way to bring your locals into their programming streams, as long as you don't mind putting up a antenna. For us this was a selling point for my wife who was not going to change TV inputs just to watch locals. With SlingTV everything is on one screen. If you connect a external hard drive you can record your locals as well. We put the antenna in the living room, did a scan, got 32 channels.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

VaJim said:


> SlingTV maynot 'broadcast' locals, however they do provide a way to bring your locals into their programming streams, as long as you don't mind putting up a antenna. For us this was a selling point for my wife who was not going to change TV inputs just to watch locals. With SlingTV everything is on one screen. If you connect a external hard drive you can record your locals as well. We put the antenna in the living room, did a scan, got 32 channels.


Yeah, AirTV is a nice integrated solution. Unfortunately for me my preferred streaming box is AppleTV and it doesn't do that.

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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Low cost, High Quality, Large channel selection. You're not going to get all three.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Andrew Sullivan said:


> The obvious reason not to DVR is because the game is already over. Do you want to go see a movie if somebody tells you how it ends. Sports is one of the few things that needs to be watched live, unless you're not a fan of either team and really do not care who wins.


Really? I think recording a game and watching it with an hour buffer is a better way to do it. Or watch multiple games on multiple DVRs with no buffer. Either way works well. I can't imagine suffering thru a whole live game.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> Nope... I prefer to watch most sports recorded. I know how to not see the score before I watch the game. Often I'm starting to view it before it's over if the time is right.


Another paradigm to deal with, someone who actually wants to suffer...

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> Hosted a Super Bowl party. Used the Fox Sports app on my FireTV Stick 4ks. Even though it was 1080 upscaled to 4k HLG/HDR the picture quality was excellent. Performance was flawless. Thanks Fox!


The picture we got from Fox on D* was outstanding. Goes to show you what they can do if they want to. Games on Fox usually mean I'm gonna be annoyed by the PQ, that didn't happen yesterday.

Rich


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

Rich said:


> The picture we got from Fox on D* was outstanding. Goes to show you what they can do if they want to. Games on Fox usually mean I'm gonna be annoyed by the PQ, that didn't happen yesterday.
> 
> Rich


Regular season games on Fox (even OTA) were awful in terms of PQ. The last TNF game on the Fox Sports app, 1080 upscaled to 4k HLG/HDR was very good, like the SB. Clearly Fox has the ability to do it.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

Rich said:


> Really? I think recording a game and watching it with an hour buffer is a better way to do it. Or watch multiple games on multiple DVRs with no buffer. Either way works well. I can't imagine suffering thru a whole live game.
> 
> Rich


I kind of like watching baseball live. I like to listen to the play by play and analysis. I could do without the 5 minutes of commercials every half inning plus commercials for every pitching change, replay review, and any other reason they find for a commercial. NFL ST bugs me sometimes where there could be 8 games going on ST plus 2 on the network channels and they all happen to run commercials at the same time.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

James Long said:


> Low cost, High Quality, Large channel selection. You're not going to get all three.


Yep, very true. It is all about priorities. You could do streaming with lots of shows to watch without subscribing to a single pay streaming service as long as your not worried about current seasons, sports or other things, and can tolerate ads.

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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

Well, I struggled a bit to watch the game. I only get Fox from Dish and we had a storm, thateven on Sunday morning wasn't forecast as possible after 1pm Pacific Time. As I've noted elsewhere, I need my dishes raised and a third one. Can't seem to get any response. And so I couldn't get Fox in HD.

Fortunately our daughter was visiting who is a rabid 49ers fan and who has AT&T Uverse which app we added to our Fire TV Cube only to discover that the restrictions on licensing through the app when not streaming through her AT&T internet allows only the NBC local affiliate. But...

Her package has Fox sports so using the Fox Sports app we got a crystal clear picture. Good game though we lost.

All of which brings me to the subject of this thread as expressed in these posts:



1948GG said:


> A few days back, yet another article on Cord Cutter News postulated the reason PSVue failed was the lack of a large subscriber base with cable or satellite to give it a leg up on content pricing; true for sure, but if it holds true in fact, then AT&T of all the live streamers should have the lowest prices and largest customer numbers as they have both cable and satellite subscribers, with Sling right behind with their Dish numbers. But who is marching to the top right now? YouTube TV and Hulu Live, neither of which has cable or satellite to give them the power to cut better deals. So what gives?





wmb said:


> From a customer standpoint, what is the factor differentiating YTTV from (or other cable replacement streaming services) DirecTV, Dish, or cable? Is it just price? Is that enough?
> 
> To me, the long term question is what does the future look like? What's the use case for live TV? We don't need to own physical media. Content on demand. How is it monetized? What are the consumer issues?


The very problem that I faced Sunday reflects the differences between service provided by DirecTV, Dish, or cable TV. They are not just content providers but signal providers. They have equipment and operating costs related to the satellite service or cable service delivering the content from wherever into your home.

Streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, YTTV, Hulu, etc., whether you watch live TV or on-demand content, have no such direct costs. And while they have some costs getting their content onto the internet, the fact is you and I are paying for internet service.

As I've noted here in other threads, I would incur costs for the internet even if there were no streaming video services. In fact I did before there were streaming video services.

And so, for our home we stream:

Hulu at $11.99 per month give us on-demand most ABC, Fox, and NBC broadcast programming and some cable channel programming (with FX being added soon),along with other originals, all without commercials;
CBS All Access at $9.99 , gives us CBS broadcast programming, along with other originals, all without commercials, plus our local CBS channel streaming live;

PhiloTV at $20.00 per month gives us live sreaming with recording/commercial skipping capability to almost all the cable channels of any interest to us.
That's $42.00 a month for what is essentially a satellite/cable TV package equivalent. But if you were to throw in the $80 cost of our internet service, suddenly you have a number that looks like a satellite or cable service package - $122.00

Of course, I can't throw in the internet cost because I would have it without that streaming.

Then, I do have AcornTV, Netflix, HBO, and Amazon Prime. Plus I give PBS $5 a month. And I occasionally add a few months of Showtime or Britbox or....

The truth is the economics of all this is going to change as I contemplate the impacts of Apple TV+, Disney Plus, Peacock, HBO Max, and any other ad-free service possibility.

The problem is I feel like its 1914 and I've acquired my Ford Model T ultimately to replace my horse and buggy. But most roads still need to be improved to be able to drive my car on. I know I won't be going back to the horse, but it is still a whole new experience.

The sad thing is, I "paused" my Dish account only to have PG&E turn the power off a little over a month later which turned off Comcast's system - no Xfinity internet and no streaming TV. So I "unpaused" Dish so we could get live news coverage and some TV shows. But I really should shut it off....


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## wmb (Dec 18, 2008)

phrelin said:


> The problem is I feel like its 1914 and I've acquired my Ford Model T ultimately to replace my horse and buggy. But most roads still need to be improved to be able to drive my car on. I know I won't be going back to the horse, but it is still a whole new experience.


That's about when the horse populations peaked in the United States. It dropped about 1/3 in the next 10 years, and by half by about 1940.

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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

wmb said:


> That's about when the horse populations peaked in the United States. It dropped about 1/3 in the next 10 years, and by half by about 1940.


Yes, I picked 1914 because it was a time when automobiles and trucks started getting serious use in the cities like New York City. The New York Auto Show that year in Grand Central Palace was consolidated into one building with 78 gas cars, 6 electric cars and 14 motorcycle were on display. But autos were replacing horses in urban centers as can be seen in this picture of NYC:










While the parallel is not perfect, streaming is pretty rapidly replacing cable TV in urban areas. My dad was raised in the East Saint Louis area and by the time he was an adult in the late 1920's owning a car, not a horse, was the norm. Outside the cities, folks still had horses and roads were still not all auto friendly.

I see traditional TV as the horse with the cable companies providing the stables, hay, etc., for a fee. These kinds of transitions take a couple of decades.

Netflix, the "Ford Motor Company" of streaming, began internet streaming in 2007. We know that within a decade most homes were doing some streaming and the make and model of streamers had multiplied. And by the end of another decade, 2027 "they" will have shot almost all the horses, so to speak.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> Regular season games on Fox (even OTA) were awful in terms of PQ. The last TNF game on the Fox Sports app, 1080 upscaled to 4k HLG/HDR was very good, like the SB. Clearly Fox has the ability to do it.


The PQ we got on our local was so good...well, we were watching the game and I finally looked at what channel we had on. Shocked to see it was Fox. A season long problem all of a sudden looks great. Yeah, they can certainly do it when they have a good reason to do it.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

b4pjoe said:


> I kind of like watching baseball live. I like to listen to the play by play and analysis. I could do without the 5 minutes of commercials every half inning plus commercials for every pitching change, replay review, and any other reason they find for a commercial. NFL ST bugs me sometimes where there could be 8 games going on ST plus 2 on the network channels and they all happen to run commercials at the same time.


I usually watch the Mets and Yankee games at the same time. Have to use the DVRs to do that. I'll do just about anything to avoid commercials.

The NFL is different. I can record every game on a given Sunday and watch them all day long. Just watch the first quarter of any game and then pick another game and watch the first quarter. Do that all day long and it makes for a pretty good day.

Just another YMMV thing, everybody has their own way of watching sports.

Rich


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