# Great article comparing all the streaming options for cord cutters and folks thinking about it



## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

The article:

Best live TV streaming services for cord cutters

My thoughts:

What are cord cutters cheering about? This is an article FOR cord cutters and it makes all the services sound over priced and poor quality with loads of limitations.

For comparison, I have an HR54 + Preferred Xtra and pay $52/mo which will go up to $72/mo next month.

YouTube: $50 (same price as I'm paying now), missing History, forced to watch commercials if you don't watch your shows fast enough

Sling: Also close in price to what I pay now, missing locals, USA, only allows 1 stream, can't record certain shows. The review says the UI sucks

DirecTV Now: more money then what I pay now, missing Discovery, HGTV, History

PlayStation: also more money then what I pay now, missing History, MTV

Hulu: close in price, missing MTV, can't skip commercials in the $45 package, UI sucks

All of the services have a low max stream count unless you go Hulu and pay $15 for the unlimited.

Summary: All these limitations and gotchas&#8230; don't see why people are bragging about going from $200/mo on DirecTV to $70/mo or less on streaming. You aren't getting the same channels, same features or the same number of TVs and you're picking up a bunch of limitations.

Also, for sports fans and live channels, those are delayed by up to a minute. Imagine trading stock listening to a 1 minute delayed CNBC these days. You might as well just set fire to your money lol.

Also, in a lot of cases you lose 5.1 sound.

Apples and apples people .

EDIT: Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending DirecTV either. Service is way overpriced unless you are playing the promo game. But streaming isn't much better once you get down to it and in many cases, worse.


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## TDK1044 (Apr 8, 2010)

The industry is in transition. Right now, I'm taking the 'stay with D* satellite until there's a reason not to' position. In about 12 months, I'll look at available streaming options for the channels that we want. There should be lower prices for packages available, given that in the future a company like D* won't be supporting a lot of equipment at end users' homes, and they won't be rolling trucks for installation. It will be even more of a dog eat dog environment, so I'll look at AT&T TV plus other offerings in about a year from now.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

TDK1044 said:


> The industry is in transition. Right now, I'm taking the 'stay with D* satellite until there's a reason not to' position. In about 12 months, I'll look at available streaming options for the channels that we want. There should be lower prices for packages available, given that in the future a company like D* won't be supporting a lot of equipment at end users' homes, and they won't be rolling trucks for installation. It will be even more of a dog eat dog environment, so I'll look at AT&T TV plus other offerings in about a year from now.


It's really not. The streaming companies are trying to steal market share from traditional, so they are offering these super low prices. Not sure if you follow the stock market, but this past quarter has shown that Disney and Netflix are both "in trouble".

Netflix is losing all their licensed content and debt is rising. Disney is currently bleeding tons of cash standing up Disney+.

All the streaming companies are bleeding money. The current low prices aren't sustainable long term. They'll have to go up. Some of the services are already the same price or even more then DirecTV.

DirecTV still needs to roll trucks for dish installs in the majority of cases. While I technically could install my own dish, I'm not climbing up 20 to 30 ft on a ladder to do it. The inside stuff I can maintain myself.

That being said, DirecTV is also in trouble, losing subs. Point is, streaming isn't all its cracked up to be. At least not yet.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

I got recommended in another thread the site The Streamable which has a online interface for adding in the channels/programs you really want, then figuring out which online service meets your needs. There is also JustWatch which points you to which streaming service carries the program you like. How many channels are you really watching on a regular basis? At least you can try out a channel package for up to a 7 day trial period.



SledgeHammer said:


> Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending DirecTV either. Service is way overpriced unless you are playing the promo game.


AT&T/DirecTV and Dish are both passing along the increased carriage costs from the program providers who agree upon which tier of service the channel is carried. As I have pointed out time and time again, E$PN and the Regional $ports Networks are the most expensive channels in the non-premium tier on a per-subscriber basis.

Personally, when I moved to Texas, I thought I had left the DirecTV behind. I thought I could get by with Amazon Prime (paid annually), Netflix, Criterion Channel (paid annually), and Hulu (1 year promo subscription ending in November). I got my mother a 50" TCL Roku TV just to make things easier and installed those channels on there, along with some free steaming services such as PlutoTV. Two of the three TVs in my home have an antenna run to them. (My home office doesn't have an antenna). I even have a Plex Media server, and a good collection of both BluRays and DVDs. But, no, my mother has to have her precious Hallmark channel, and even threatened to get DirecTV reconnected. At least she is paying for the DirecTV Now service.



SledgeHammer said:


> Netflix is losing all their licensed content and debt is rising. Disney is currently bleeding tons of cash standing up Disney+.
> 
> All the streaming companies are bleeding money. The current low prices aren't sustainable long term. They'll have to go up. Some of the services are already the same price or even more then DirecTV.


It's all about the content. I'm operating under the assumption that most folks don't want to subscribe to 2-3 streaming services at a time. From my viewpoint, the Disney+ package is going to be a killer package for families, and is going to shake up the industry. But, also, some of the titles that are carried by Netflix will soon be on proprietary services.

Sigh.... I know that there are some Trekkers (myself included) who are balking at the CBS All-Access package. Now, the Orville is headed from broadcast television to Hulu. This is just painful for the wallet.


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

Interesting that "several" the streaming services don't have channels like A&E, HGTV, etc. Would be a non-starter for my family


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## bmcleod (May 13, 2006)

Not having the bandwidth to stream 4K (even HD streams can occasionally be problematic), I need the video pipe satellite provides, and DTV has a very good picture, also a little free 4K. Still we do stream HD Netflix and Prime regularly, and enjoy the extra content. I suppose if other streaming services were competitive and gave us the networks we want, I could take the DTV money and spend it on HughesNet or the like, and just use it for video streaming, hopefully including 4K. We could keep our Fixed Wireless ISP for its low latency and additional bandwidth on the home network. I’d have to buy a DVR too for OTA, TiVo I suppose. Anyone streaming 4K over a satellite ISP like HughesNet?

Edit: Post 200! Only took 13 years ... so chatty!


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## DirectMan (Jul 15, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> The article:
> 
> My thoughts:
> 
> YouTube: $50 (same price as I'm paying now), missing History, forced to watch commercials if you don't watch your shows fast enough


Can you please explain / expand if you don't watch shows fast enough forced to watch commercials.


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## Eddie501 (Nov 29, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> For comparison, I have an HR54 + Preferred Xtra and pay $52/mo which will go up to $72/mo next month.


Yes, but how much are you paying in fees? That's where the real difference lies between streaming & cable/satellite. Most people I know that still have traditional Pay TV can assume the fees are a little less that half of what the programming package itself costs. DirecTV seems to have about 3 fees alone to cover the boxes, HD, and to actually access it on a TV. With streaming $50 actually means your bill is $50 (plus tax).

I'm finding I have less & less patience for these commercial infested channels full of cheap garbage programming that make up these live TV bundles. I have a grandfathered DirecTV Now package simply because it's cheap & I can get HBO for $5. If it goes up one penny, I could easily do without.

What I could not do without are these commercial free services churning out great programming, often in 4k. I have no problem subscribing to as many services as needed to catch content that compels me. I could never go back to surfing through marathons of My 600 lb life & commercial riddled movies for $200/mo.


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## Hdhead (Jul 30, 2007)

As I mentioned in my other thread, now paying $70 monthly instead of $200 for basically the same channels plus a few bonus channels not on Directv. Could not be more satisfied with my decision saving me $1500+ yearly. My #1 criteria for any service has always been picture quality especially with the large TV’s we have today. I have a 65”, 75” and a 102” projector. PQ on the streaming services is far superior than what Directv provides with their dumbed down resolution. Getting better quality for less than half the cost. A no brainer for me.


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## glrush (Jun 29, 2002)

"Technological inertia" is a real thing, especially for us older folks who have had a product for awhile. I have had DirecTV since 1994, and have had their top package for most of that time. For me, DirecTV just works. I do have a Roku stick on most of my TV's and do use streaming services like Netflix, but they supplement DirecTV. I know I am a dying breed, but unless there is some really compelling reason to switch, I'll stay with them. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a DirecTV fanboy, certainly there are issues: the price increases are getting ridiculous, the latest and greatest DVR can't get local channels OTA (yet anyway), but there is no magic bullet out there for me. At least, not yet.


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

Disney+ is going to be a big draw for families.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

DirectMan said:


> Can you please explain / expand if you don't watch shows fast enough forced to watch commercials.


The article says YouTube swaps in VOD versions for recorded shows once they become available and you can't FF through VOD.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Eddie501 said:


> Yes, but how much are you paying in fees? That's where the real difference lies between streaming & cable/satellite. Most people I know that still have traditional Pay TV can assume the fees are a little less that half of what the programming package itself costs. DirecTV seems to have about 3 fees alone to cover the boxes, HD, and to actually access it on a TV. With streaming $50 actually means your bill is $50 (plus tax).
> 
> I'm finding I have less & less patience for these commercial infested channels full of cheap garbage programming that make up these live TV bundles. I have a grandfathered DirecTV Now package simply because it's cheap & I can get HBO for $5. If it goes up one penny, I could easily do without.
> 
> What I could not do without are these commercial free services churning out great programming, often in 4k. I have no problem subscribing to as many services as needed to catch content that compels me. I could never go back to surfing through marathons of My 600 lb life & commercial riddled movies for $200/mo.


My bill for HR54 + Preferred Xtra = $52.99 out the door counting EVERYTHING including taxes. It will go up to $72.99 out the door in the next month or two for at least another 8 or 9 months. And no, that's NOT new customer pricing. I've been a subscriber since 2002. That's promo / retention game pricing.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Hdhead said:


> As I mentioned in my other thread, now paying $70 monthly instead of $200 for basically the same channels plus a few bonus channels not on Directv. Could not be more satisfied with my decision saving me $1500+ yearly. My #1 criteria for any service has always been picture quality especially with the large TV's we have today. I have a 65", 75" and a 102" projector. PQ on the streaming services is far superior than what Directv provides with their dumbed down resolution. Getting better quality for less than half the cost. A no brainer for me.


And how many boxes did you have before? You mentioned you also had the PP too? What package did you have?


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

glrush said:


> "Technological inertia" is a real thing, especially for us older folks who have had a product for awhile. I have had DirecTV since 1994, and have had their top package for most of that time. For me, DirecTV just works. I do have a Roku stick on most of my TV's and do use streaming services like Netflix, but they supplement DirecTV. I know I am a dying breed, but unless there is some really compelling reason to switch, I'll stay with them.
> 
> Don't get me wrong, I'm not a DirecTV fanboy, certainly there are issues: the price increases are getting ridiculous, the latest and greatest DVR can't get local channels OTA (yet anyway), but there is no magic bullet out there for me. At least, not yet.


I'm in my early 40's and I'd go streaming if I could get everything I want for less then DirecTV. Truth is I can't because DirecTV is willing to play the promo game with me. So I encourage you all to keep moving to streaming so DirecTV will keep playing . I'll stay with them til the last sat falls out of the sky if they give me better pricing and better user experience then streaming.


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## TV_Guy (Nov 16, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> The article says YouTube swaps in VOD versions for recorded shows once they become available and you can't FF through VOD.


The article fails to mention that the swapping of VOD is limited to CBS owned channels. Anyone interested in streaming needs to avail themselves of free trials and see for themselves which OTT services work for them.


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## Hdhead (Jul 30, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> And how many boxes did you have before? You mentioned you also had the PP too? What package did you have?


7 boxes. Receiver fee: $42, HD $10, DVR $10, PP $8, Whole home, $3, taxes for all above $5 = $78 before any programming. Xtra package and HBO. Now have all the programming minus HBO and overall better functionality.


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## Hdhead (Jul 30, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> The article says YouTube swaps in VOD versions for recorded shows once they become available and you can't FF through VOD.


Not true, the only channel I have encountered that does this. The Crap Broadcasting Company CBS


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## TV_Guy (Nov 16, 2007)

Hdhead said:


> Not true, the only channel I have encountered that does this. The Crap Broadcasting Company CBS


I commented on this. It's limited to your local CBS affiliate, POP, and CBS Sports and anything else they own. Unfortunately this article takes a familiar path. Going out of their way to exaggerate deficiencies in YouTube TV while glossing over or not even mentioning downsides to Sling. You would think a 1 stream limit on their Orange channels would make it a non starter. Then there is 30 fps on many non-sports channels and an under-powered DVR as an add on. I'm sure it works for some people but it's important to analyze what Sling will cost you after adding packages and a DVR.


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## Hdhead (Jul 30, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> I'm in my early 40's and I'd go streaming if I could get everything I want for less then DirecTV. Truth is I can't because DirecTV is willing to play the promo game with me. So I encourage you all to keep moving to streaming so DirecTV will keep playing . I'll stay with them til the last sat falls out of the sky if they give me better pricing and better user experience then streaming.


Geostationary satellites will remain in orbit for 100,000 years.


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## AngryManMLS (Jan 30, 2014)

Mark Holtz said:


> Sigh.... I know that there are some Trekkers (myself included) who are balking at the CBS All-Access package. Now, the Orville is headed from broadcast television to Hulu. This is just painful for the wallet.


I've literally watched "Star Trek Discovery" for free just by waiting it out until each season is completed then binge watching. CBS has constantly handed out free month trials to me like it's candy so I've paid absolutely nothing to watch "Star Trek Discovery." Just need to learn how to play the CBS All Access game.


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## scottchez (Feb 4, 2003)

I tried all the cord cutting streaming providers. All of them. Some even twice.
In the end they all had channels were you just could not skip comercials as it forced you on to the ON demand version.
THIS IS WHY THEY ARE ALL CHEAPER.
The networks make money when you watch comercials.
I switched to Directv as a new customer and only pay $8 more a month that a streaming package with the same channels (top 180 channel package).
Now I can skip commercials and actually have time to watch more shows.

As a Bonus, even with my Fiber connection I never ever get buffering, they all seem to this issue maybe 4 times a month during prime time.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Hdhead said:


> 7 boxes. Receiver fee: $42, HD $10, DVR $10, PP $8, Whole home, $3, taxes for all above $5 = $78 before any programming. Xtra package and HBO. Now have all the programming minus HBO and overall better functionality.


Ok, so you are comparing apples to a pick up truck. Your functionality couldn't be more different.

7 boxes down to 2 simultaneous? If you dropped 5 boxes off, your DirecTV bill would drop -$40. You don't have the protection plan, so another -$8. You don't have WHDVR anymore either. Another -$3. So really, its $200 - $51 = $149 vs $70. Doesn't sound like you took advantage of the loyalty program either which could have easily knocked off another $40 or more. So then you end up with $109 vs. $70. And of top of all that, you don't have HBO anymore either! So now its $94 vs. $70.

So like I said in the other thread, you lost 2/3 of your functionality. When you compare apples to actual other apples, you're only saving $24/mo and that is assuming you *only* got $40 off from retention. You likely could have gotten closer to $60 AND free HBO. If you go with the most optimistic assumption, your DirecTV bill would have been LESS then your streaming bill and you would have actually RETAINED all your functionality and all your TVs.

Oh and btw, you also lost 5.1 sound on a lot of your channels.

Apples to apples my friend .


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Hdhead said:


> Geostationary satellites will remain in orbit for 100,000 years.


The average lifespan of a satellite is like 15 yrs. Some on the forums expect DirecTV to shut down its sat service in the 2030's assuming they don't get bought by someone who launces new satellites. Once they reach EOL, they are de-orbited and burn up in the atmosphere.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> Ok, so you are comparing apples to a pick up truck. Your functionality couldn't be more different.
> 
> 7 boxes down to 2 simultaneous? If you dropped 5 boxes off, your DirecTV bill would drop -$40. You don't have the protection plan, so another -$8. You don't have WHDVR anymore either. Another -$3. So really, its $200 - $51 = $149 vs $70. Doesn't sound like you took advantage of the loyalty program either which could have easily knocked off another $40 or more. So then you end up with $109 vs. $70. And of top of all that, you don't have HBO anymore either! So now its $94 vs. $70.
> 
> ...


PSVue includes up to 5 simultaneous streams. We have 7 TVs in our house. All but 2 of them are occasional use TVs. We don't often use them but when we do we just want to turn them on and use them.

Honestly it's all about exactly what channels you watch/need and how you consume entertainment. For us we didn't drop D until we realized we rarely turned it on anymore. In our case we lost zero and streaming was simply a better fit to the way we were already consuming entertainment. For some people, maybe even lots of people (although based on the number of people that are dropping traditional cable/sat services it seems to be more like the former), that won't be the case. For them traditional linear tv and the traditional cable/sat providers will continue to be the better option. For us it no longer was. We switched not to save money but to get an experience that more closely matched what we wanted. As an added bonus we saved a little over $70 per month. We were with D longer than most, before it was even called DirecTV when you had to buy all your equipment from the local "HiFi" store and install it all yourself.
If D still satisfies your requirements and you are happy with your choice, great, it's all good, different strokes for different folks and all that. What I find odd is why people insist on trying to tell others how they obviously must be loosing something, or they are ill informed, or making the wrong decision. Perhaps, just maybe, they are making exactly the right decision for them, which is different than the right decision for someone else.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

Hdhead said:


> Geostationary satellites will remain in orbit for 100,000 years.


How long a sat could stay in orbit is not the same as it's useful life. When it ceases to be useful it is purposely pushed out of geo sync and burns up in the atmosphere.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> PSVue includes up to 5 simultaneous streams. We have 7 TVs in our house. All but 2 of them are occasional use TVs. We don't often use them but when we do we just want to turn them on and use them.


Yeah, PSVue has 5 streams, but isn't it all 2.0 stereo? Doesn't have basic channels like History and Discovery? Although surprisingly they have DIY, Science and HGTV? Also missing a few locals and no support for OTA. Same price as what I'm paying for DirecTV though for a LOT LESS channels.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> how they obviously must be loosing something


He is losing a lot and making an invalid comparison. It's like saying you saved a bunch of money by switching to Geico when you also downsized your Ferrari to a Honda Civic . Truth be told, Geico is actually one of the more expensive insurance companies out there for what you get. Yes, we're talking about TV, but still a valid analogy . As the streaming services are typically less bang for the buck vs. traditional. Less bucks and less "stuff" isn't saving money (at least not to me). You can do the same on D by going to a lower package and cutting out the same frills.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> Yeah, PSVue has 5 streams, but isn't it all 2.0 stereo? Doesn't have basic channels like History and Discovery? Although surprisingly they have DIY, Science and HGTV? Also missing a few locals and no support for OTA. Same price as what I'm paying for DirecTV though for a LOT LESS channels.


Sounds like D is a good choice for you then. You seem strangely unable to grasp that what you need/want might not exactly be what someone else might need/want. The # of channels is entirely irrelevant for many people. The only thing that is relevant is whether a service has all the channels that someone wants/needs. But if you like a service to have LOTS of channels that's fine. Not everyone thinks the same way.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> He is losing a lot and making an invalid comparison. It's like saying you saved a bunch of money by switching to Geico when you also downsized your Ferrari to a Honda Civic . Truth be told, Geico is actually one of the more expensive insurance companies out there for what you get. Yes, we're talking about TV, but still a valid analogy . As the streaming services are typically less bang for the buck vs. traditional. Less bucks and less "stuff" isn't saving money (at least not to me). You can do the same on D by going to a lower package and cutting out the same frills.


Again, they are only "loosing" something if it is something that they use/want/need. I don't know about you but I try not to pay for stuff that I don't use/want/need...but that's just me.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> The average lifespan of a satellite is like 15 yrs. Some on the forums expect DirecTV to shut down its sat service in the 2030's assuming they don't get bought by someone who launces new satellites. Once they reach EOL, they are de-orbited and burn up in the atmosphere.


No, they don't de-orbit satellites in geosynchronous orbit. They are required to reserve a little fuel for one last burn after they retire to raise them a few hundreds miles into a "parking orbit", where they just sit.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

slice1900 said:


> No, they don't de-orbit satellites in geosynchronous orbit. They are required to reserve a little fuel for one last burn after they retire to raise them a few hundreds miles into a "parking orbit", where they just sit.


Interesting. Thanks for that tidbit. I thought they were treated the same as the LEO sats which, AFAIK, burn up in the atmosphere when they reach the end of their useful life.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> No, they don't de-orbit satellites in geosynchronous orbit. They are required to reserve a little fuel for one last burn after they retire to raise them a few hundreds miles into a "parking orbit", where they just sit.


D1R has been de-orbited.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

You can say what you want but people are clearly expressing their view on the subject thru their wallets -

U.S. Pay-TV Subscriber Losses More Than Triple To 1.5M In Q2 - Report - Deadline


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## MysteryMan (May 17, 2010)




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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> D1R has been de-orbited.


No, it is in a parking orbit: Technical details for satellite DIRECTV 1R

That perigee/apogee is a little under 400 miles above GSO.


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## Hdhead (Jul 30, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Ok, so you are comparing apples to a pick up truck. Your functionality couldn't be more different.
> 
> 7 boxes down to 2 simultaneous? If you dropped 5 boxes off, your DirecTV bill would drop -$40. You don't have the protection plan, so another -$8. You don't have WHDVR anymore either. Another -$3. So really, its $200 - $51 = $149 vs $70. Doesn't sound like you took advantage of the loyalty program either which could have easily knocked off another $40 or more. So then you end up with $109 vs. $70. And of top of all that, you don't have HBO anymore either! So now its $94 vs. $70.
> 
> ...


Weird math and strange assumptions. Your right don't need all that stuff now but needed it with Directv. You made my point exactly. Fanboys can be very close-minded.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> D1R has been de-orbited.


Goodbye, D1R --- Off to Russia


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## bjdotson (Feb 20, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> No, they don't de-orbit satellites in geosynchronous orbit. They are required to reserve a little fuel for one last burn after they retire to raise them a few hundreds miles into a "parking orbit", where they just sit.


Which is why there is approximately 5000 artificial satellites in orbit.


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## Kuclas (Aug 12, 2019)

I disagree with the OP. Directv satellite has a 10 second lag from live over the air sports. So what if you tube tv has a 45-60 second lag. U aren’t watching directv or even cable “live”

Philo ($20) plus YouTube tv ($50). Basically replaces equivalent of directv xtra and spectrum silver package. Streaming boxes are so cheap these days. The $50 initial investment pays in months for itself vs renting from cable or directv for years. 

The things directv satellite needs to get its act together is in home streaming app for tv 

Both xfinity and spectrum off in home apps to bypass extra receiver. It’s a pure money grub to keep charging $7 a month for each box. 

So $70 plus taxes replaces directv xtra package. 3 streams at one time. Unless u got a family of 6-7. It’s highly unlikely to use all 3 streams at one time. But a family of 6-7 who watches a lot of tv would need at least 4 directv receivers to be paid for each month as well thus adding to the cost.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

CTJon said:


> Interesting that "several" the streaming services don't have channels like A&E, HGTV, etc. Would be a non-starter for my family


NF has a bunch of A&E series and Hulu has some too.

Rich


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## grover517 (Sep 29, 2007)

I recently left D* after 22 years and was one of the 200.00+ to ~70.00 month group. 

We did so mainly due to the elimination of AT&T's policy of no longer allowing temporary address changes but other things like losing not 1 but 3 locals due to various disputes, AT&T won't replace my malfunctioning LCC then turned around and raised my pricing 20.00/month while refusing to credit me for local outages or anything else, this was the last straw. Besides, I am just tired of playing that game with them. There are other things that we have put up with for years that we now no longer have to do as well but suffice it to say, we just aren't going to pay for a service where we aren't getting what we are paying for, subsidizing things (like 4K) that we have no interest in, and having to constantly play pricing games just to get the privilege to watch what we want, how we want and when we want. 

We subscribed to Premier and had 6 receivers (2 for use in our RV). With no discounts or credits and the recent price increase, our bill was over 240.00/month.

Given that we already had a robust home AC mesh wireless/gig wired home network with Comcast Blast @ 150/10 (real speeds are higher and very reliable), great OTA coverage where we get over 40 OTA stations from three DMA's via our rooftop antenna array (helps alot with blackouts of certain events), Netflix, Amazon Prime and Vudu accounts as well as HBO included with our Comcast internet package, an OTA/streaming solution might have been easier for us to move to than others. But in reality, I have been preparing for this type of transition for quite a few years now, even before AT&T came along. AT&T, with their new policies and actions just pushed the time frame up a few years.

So after listing out the channels we "needed", we purchased 6 FireTV 4K sticks on sale for half off (150.00 total) and a FireTV Recast 4 tuner/1TB OTA DVR, also on sale for 100.00 off (179.00) to record our locals with. We then subscribed to both PS Vue "Core" and Philo to get all the "cable" channels we wanted (and then some) with minimal overlap for about 75.00/mo. Neither of us care about 4K, NFL ST (we watch college sports), etc. so with D*, I am sure at least some of our higher costs were also supporting those types of things as well as other channels/programs that we would never use. 

The result is that for watching a few more commercials on a small amount of cloud DVR programming (most we can still skip) and of course, on demand programming, (can still skip on OTA recorded content as well as most cloud DVR stuff).....

1. No more commitments or ETF's to worry about.
2. Wife can see the UI better than D*'s.
3. Saving approx. 150.00/month
4. Can stream OTA DVR recorded content and LIVE local channels from home to anywhere via the FireTV app.
5. Own our own equipment again.
6. Replacement/upgraded equipment easily available same day from everywhere.
7. Can move our setup, including ALL local programming easily between home and our seasonal site for free.
8. Better HD picture quality (wife even noticed which she NEVER does)
9. Commercial skip all OTA DVR content and most cloud DVR content (not on demand)
10. Easily modify/change programming at will to fit our needs with a much larger selection of packages via many providers
11. No overseas call center headaches
12. No more receiver, HD, DVR, Whole Home or regional sports network "fees".
13. No wires or "boxes" at each TV. DVR is hidden in the basement near the antenna feed entry point and sticks are out of sight behind the TV's
14. Voice command remote
15. No rain/snow fade
16. All 40+ locals and sub channels on all TV's instead of just what D* wanted to let us see with no extra antenna wiring to each location needed.

Oh, and as a thank you to my wife for her continued efforts to adjust, the first months savings allowed me to send her to the spa for the day! I just hope she doesn't expect that EVERY month! LOL

I will admit OTA/streaming may not be for everyone and requires you have the home infrastructure as well as being willing to adjust to a few new realities to get a desirable result. D* always was and continues to be a "premium" service with "premium" programming and if you want a "plug and play" solution, D* is probably still your best choice, especially if professional sports are a big part of your viewing. But for us and it seems, millions of others, OTA/Streaming is just a much better fit than what AT&T has turned D* into and cutting our monthly TV bill by 2/3 is a huge bonus.


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## wxman (Jun 7, 2010)

I am paying ~$105 for 1 HXX (no DVR) + Preferred XTRA. I cannot get more than $10/mo discount (which brings me down to that $105). Have been a customer since 2002. Not everyone can get 50% off.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

Kuclas said:


> I disagree with the OP. Directv satellite has a 10 second lag from live over the air sports. So what if you tube tv has a 45-60 second lag. U aren't watching directv or even cable "live"
> 
> Philo ($20) plus YouTube tv ($50). Basically replaces equivalent of directv xtra and spectrum silver package. Streaming boxes are so cheap these days. The $50 initial investment pays in months for itself vs renting from cable or directv for years.
> 
> ...


Welcome to DBSTalk!


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Hdhead said:


> Weird math and strange assumptions. Your right don't need all that stuff now but needed it with Directv. You made my point exactly. Fanboys can be very close-minded.


Weird math? Where? Can you still watch 7 simultaneous TVs? Nope. You didn't need the protection plan with DirecTV either. They usually replace boxes for free (at least they have for me). Do you still have 5.1 sound on all channels including locals? Nope. Do you still have WHDVR functionality? Nope. Do you still have HBO? Nope. Were you on the loyalty program? Doesn't sound like it.

I'm not a fan boy, I'd leave if there was something better... I was just pointing out that your so-called savings are all in your head since you don't have a lot of the stuff you did before. If you don't need it now, you could have made the same changes on DirecTV and dropped your bill to the same place you are now AND still have more channels including HBO plus 5.1 sound.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Eddie501 said:


> Yes, but how much are you paying in fees? That's where the real difference lies between streaming & cable/satellite. Most people I know that still have traditional Pay TV can assume the fees are a little less that half of what the programming package itself costs. DirecTV seems to have about 3 fees alone to cover the boxes, HD, and to actually access it on a TV. With streaming $50 actually means your bill is $50 (plus tax).
> 
> I'm finding I have less & less patience for these commercial infested channels full of cheap garbage programming that make up these live TV bundles. I have a grandfathered DirecTV Now package simply because it's cheap & I can get HBO for $5. If it goes up one penny, I could easily do without.
> 
> *What I could not do without are these commercial free services churning out great programming, often in 4k. I have no problem subscribing to as many services as needed to catch content that compels me. I could never go back to surfing through marathons of My 600 lb life & commercial riddled movies for $200/mo.*


Well said!

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> Sounds like D is a good choice for you then. You seem strangely unable to grasp that what you need/want might not exactly be what someone else might need/want. The # of channels is entirely irrelevant for many people. The only thing that is relevant is whether a service has all the channels that someone wants/needs. But if you like a service to have LOTS of channels that's fine. Not everyone thinks the same way.


Some of these folks just don't want to understand.

Rich


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

wxman said:


> I am paying ~$105 for 1 HXX (no DVR) + Preferred XTRA. I cannot get more than $10/mo discount (which brings me down to that $105). Have been a customer since 2002. Not everyone can get 50% off.


I have been a customer exactly the same length of time as you. Nov 2002. I have the HR54 + Preferred XTRA just like you. I think sticker on my setup is like $115 - $120 or so. I did have a HR24, but got the upgrade comp'ed minus $20 s&h. I have been getting promos from DirecTV for as long as I can remember. I don't have any relationship to anybody that works there or to the company in any way. I just call up and say "Hey, Dish and/or Cox is offering me this to jump ship, can you match it?" and every single time they say yes. The only time I had any trouble whatsoever was when my promo fell off in Feb 2019, then I had to play CSR roulette 5 times before I got the promo back lol. When another big promo fell off several months ago, I called in again expecting they would say no and I would cancel to go to Cox, but they were back to their friendly ways after a few bad quarters thanks to the cord cutters .


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> Some of these folks just don't want to understand.
> 
> Rich


Yes, we understand Rich. If you are going to say you are saving money, you need to compare equivalent or somewhat equivalent things. He could have made all those changes to his DirecTV setup too and saved a ton of money.

If your DirecTV bill was the same as your streaming bill, which would you pick?


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

grover517 said:


> I recently left D* after 22 years and was one of the 200.00+ to ~70.00 month group.
> 
> We did so mainly due to the elimination of AT&T's policy of no longer allowing temporary address changes but other things like losing not 1 but 3 locals due to various disputes, AT&T won't replace my malfunctioning LCC then turned around and raised my pricing 20.00/month while refusing to credit me for local outages or anything else, this was the last straw. Besides, I am just tired of playing that game with them. There are other things that we have put up with for years that we now no longer have to do as well but suffice it to say, we just aren't going to pay for a service where we aren't getting what we are paying for, subsidizing things (like 4K) that we have no interest in, and having to constantly play pricing games just to get the privilege to watch what we want, how we want and when we want.
> 
> ...


You have some valid points, but also the same invalid points as the other poster did. You now have the equivalent of the "Preferred Xtra" package minus a bunch of channels (yes, some of them garbage). If you would have dropped your package down to Preferred Xtra you could have saved quite a bit of money and gotten rid of the RSN. You also don't need boxes at each TV with DirecTV, there are other options. And one other point is that you can watch from your DVR anywhere as well. DirecTV put in a restriction recently that you have to be on the same network, but there is a workaround for that. And then of course you could have joined the loyalty program.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Yes, we understand Rich. If you are going to say you are saving money, you need to compare equivalent or somewhat equivalent things. He could have made all those changes to his DirecTV setup too and saved a ton of money.
> 
> If your DirecTV bill was the same as your streaming bill, which would you pick?


Our D* bill is a lot less than our streaming bill. I don't intend to pick one or the other. Not sure how many times I have to say this until it sinks in. What do you mean by "we understand"? Who's "we"?


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> I have been a customer exactly the same length of time as you. Nov 2002. I have the HR54 + Preferred XTRA just like you. I think sticker on my setup is like $115 - $120 or so. I did have a HR24, but got the upgrade comp'ed minus $20 s&h. I have been getting promos from DirecTV for as long as I can remember. I don't have any relationship to anybody that works there or to the company in any way. I just call up and say "Hey, Dish and/or Cox is offering me this to jump ship, can you match it?" and every single time they say yes. The only time I had any trouble whatsoever was when my promo fell off in Feb 2019, then I had to play CSR roulette 5 times before I got the promo back lol. When another big promo fell off several months ago, I called in again expecting they would say no and I would cancel to go to Cox, but they were back to their friendly ways after a few bad quarters thanks to the cord cutters .


Just got off the phone with them. I called to cancel my ST renewal. Before I called my bill was $145.42 per month without ST. After they gave me a Loyalty Discount, my new bill will be $76.48. (Still no ST, but that's okay with us.)

We have Choice and the Regional Sports Package.

@SledgeHammer - Thank you for putting this idea into my head!


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> Just got off the phone with them. I called to cancel my ST renewal. Before I called my bill was $145.42 per month without ST. After they gave me a Loyalty Discount, my new bill will be $76.48. (Still no ST, but that's okay with us.)
> 
> We have Choice and the Regional Sports Package.
> 
> @SledgeHammer - Thank you for putting this idea into my head!


50% off. NICE .


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> 50% off. NICE .


Yup! Was considering jumping ship to YTTV, but I'm standing pat for at least another year.


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## Hdhead (Jul 30, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> I have been a customer exactly the same length of time as you. Nov 2002. I have the HR54 + Preferred XTRA just like you. I think sticker on my setup is like $115 - $120 or so. I did have a HR24, but got the upgrade comp'ed minus $20 s&h. I have been getting promos from DirecTV for as long as I can remember. I don't have any relationship to anybody that works there or to the company in any way. I just call up and say "Hey, Dish and/or Cox is offering me this to jump ship, can you match it?" and every single time they say yes. The only time I had any trouble whatsoever was when my promo fell off in Feb 2019, then I had to play CSR roulette 5 times before I got the promo back lol. When another big promo fell off several months ago, I called in again expecting they would say no and I would cancel to go to Cox, but they were back to their friendly ways after a few bad quarters thanks to the cord cutters .


I played those CSR games for a few years to get discounts. Got old real fast calling every 6 months. Started feeling like the panhandlers I drive by each day on the interstate. Not my cup of tea.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Hdhead said:


> I played those CSR games for a few years to get discounts. Got old real fast calling every 6 months. Started feeling like the panhandlers I drive by each day on the interstate. Not my cup of tea.


Not any different from negotiating your salary, or with a contractor doing work on your house, or when you buy a car, etc. But I'll agree with you that a lot of people are too lazy and/or feel like they are begging and would rather quit lol. Most of the promos I get are good for 12 months.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

Hdhead said:


> I played those CSR games for a few years to get discounts. Got old real fast calling every 6 months. Started feeling like the panhandlers I drive by each day on the interstate. Not my cup of tea.


Well, it took me about 10 minutes total to save by my calculations about $82.73 per minute. And I'm good for another year, not 6 months. And I didn't have to put on a raggedy shirt or put dirt on my face.

I'm going to call what I just did negotiating, not panhandling.


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## crkeehn (Apr 23, 2002)

SledgeHammer said:


> The article says YouTube swaps in VOD versions for recorded shows once they become available and you can't FF through VOD.


The article is not totally correct on that one. With the exception of CBS, you are given the option of selecting either the DVR version or VOD version. When both are available, there will be a drop down menu underneath the program icon.

The C-net article is actually referring back to the early days of Youtube TV, when that was true. Customer complaints encouraged them to make the DVR versions more available.

CBS is the only outlier for that policy. CBS seems to march to their own drummer. I think that Ideally, CBS would like you to pay them to stream their programming, they seem to be releasing a fair amount of unique streaming only content.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Kuclas said:


> I disagree with the OP. Directv satellite has a 10 second lag from live over the air sports. So what if you tube tv has a 45-60 second lag. U aren't watching directv or even cable "live"


That's a huge difference though. If you are watching live sports and texting with someone at the game, a 10 second difference isn't a problem - if there's a touchdown and they text you by the time they type their text and send it and you read it, you'll have seen the same play. With a minute difference they might text you about a touchdown when the other team has the ball!

Not only friends at the game, just friends watching on cable/satellite will be spoilers for you with a 60-10=50 second delay.


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## DirectMan (Jul 15, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> Just got off the phone with them. I called to cancel my ST renewal. Before I called my bill was $145.42 per month without ST. After they gave me a Loyalty Discount, my new bill will be $76.48. (Still no ST, but that's okay with us.)
> 
> We have Choice and the Regional Sports Package.
> 
> @SledgeHammer - Thank you for putting this idea into my head!


What was the actual discount they applied to your account. I have a $45 discount per month good for a year with four boxes and Choice XTRA. In November I have to call back and renegotiate. Should I look for a higher discount say $60?


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> Yes, we understand Rich. If you are going to say you are saving money, you need to compare equivalent or somewhat equivalent things. He could have made all those changes to his DirecTV setup too and saved a ton of money.
> 
> If your DirecTV bill was the same as your streaming bill, which would you pick?


LOL...that's an easy one for me. A bit over two years ago when I finally ditched D after well over 20 years with them I had a balance on my account. I waited a few months but didn't get anything from them so I called. They tried everything they could to get me back. They offered all new equipment for free and got down to literally less than $20 per month. I thought the guy on the phone was actually gonna cry when I kept saying no thanks. So the answer for me is they could give me D service for free and I wouldn't go back. It has nothing to do with the money for me....and my wife and I are very lucky, we can afford pretty much anything, money is not an issue for us. But again, and I hate to sound like a broken record but it's an important point, that's just us. Everybody's situation is different and what's right for me is not right for other people.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> You have some valid points, but also the same invalid points as the other poster did. You now have the equivalent of the "Preferred Xtra" package minus a bunch of channels (yes, some of them garbage). If you would have dropped your package down to Preferred Xtra you could have saved quite a bit of money and gotten rid of the RSN. You also don't need boxes at each TV with DirecTV, there are other options. And one other point is that you can watch from your DVR anywhere as well. DirecTV put in a restriction recently that you have to be on the same network, but there is a workaround for that. And then of course you could have joined the loyalty program.


His points aren't "invalid", you just don't happen to agree with them. Just because you disagree doesn't make them invalid but that's apparently something you can't wrap your head around.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> His points aren't "invalid", you just don't happen to agree with them. Just because you disagree doesn't make them invalid but that's apparently something you can't wrap your head around.


You just don't get it Mark. Try read more carefully. I'm not talking about what is "right" for me or you or anybody else. You seem stuck on that.

I am talking about somebody saying that they saved hundreds of dollars going to streaming, but they also (I'd use the word 'lost' here, but you'd flip out if I did) "downgraded" their packages significantly and removed useless bells & whistles that they weren't using on DirecTV (i.e. protection plan).

Sorry to upset you so much and sorry to break it to you, but comparing 7 TVs + Premiere + PP vs PSVue straight up by the "headline numbers" is simply not a valid comparison. Read carefully now: MONEY WISE.

The other part you seem to not be able to wrap your head around is by adjusting their DirecTV packages to what they have now, they'd be in a similar price range. So, no, they aren't saving money by going to streaming, they are saving money by downgrading their packages.

In addition, saying he likes it better because he doesn't need a box at each TV is also flat out false. RVU anybody? Wow. Look Ma! No boxes! Just like saying you can't watch recorded content "anywhere" is also false.


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## TV_Guy (Nov 16, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> You just don't get it Mark. Try read more carefully. I'm not talking about what is "right" for me or you or anybody else. You seem stuck on that.
> 
> I am talking about somebody saying that they saved hundreds of dollars going to streaming, but they also (I'd use the word 'lost' here, but you'd flip out if I did) "downgraded" their packages significantly and removed useless bells & whistles that they weren't using on DirecTV.
> 
> ...


Comes down to perceived value. Some people that have never cut the cord probably place a lot of value in retaining their current channels regardless of whether they watch most of them. Could be not wanting to rock the boat with simultaneous channel changes and a platform change. I know when I was planning my cord cutting move in January I thought moving to the Directv Now packages was best to minimize channel loss. However after completing 1 month free trials of Sling and YouTube TV I had a different outlook. Directv Now in the meantime overhauled their packages to make them noncompetitive. In March I realized that the additional channels I lost were not important. In most cases I picked up channels that were an improvement to the ones that I lost.


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

Athlon646464 said:


> Yup! Was considering jumping ship to YTTV, but *I'm standing pat* for at least another year.


Looks like Dancing Pat to me.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

TV_Guy said:


> Comes down to perceived value. Some people that have never cut the cord probably place a lot of value in retaining their current channels regardless of whether they watch most of them. Could be not wanting to rock the boat with simultaneous channel changes and a platform change. I know when I was planning my cord cutting move in January I thought moving to the Directv Now packages was best to minimize channel loss. However after completing 1 month free trials of Sling and YouTube TV I had a different outlook. Directv Now in the meantime overhauled their packages to make them noncompetitive. In March I realized that the additional channels I lost were not important. In most cases I picked up channels that were an improvement to the ones that I lost.


I'm definitely not watching every channel in Preferred Xtra. A lot of them are crap. Majority of cord cutters cut because they think their cable bills are too high. "Perceived" value in the case I'm seeing on the forums more often then not is willing to downgrade packages on streaming, but not on DirecTV. THAT is not a fair comparison. Of course you'll save money then.

If you are switching to streaming because a palm reader told you to do it or whatever is different from cheering the "money savings".

I had a co-worker who signed up for DirecTV teaser prices and got Ultimate + 4K + Sunday Ticket, etc. then cried like a baby when the promos fell off and he saw the real price. He then claimed he saved a ton by switching to streaming. Yeah, duh... Ultimate has a bunch of premium channels and Sunday Ticket has always been a ripoff.


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## TV_Guy (Nov 16, 2007)

Downgrading unless you have Directv packages with movies that you don't watch usually isn't very practical. If you watch sports you will either lose your RSNs or other sports channels. YTTV has some channels (BBC World News, CBS Sports Network, FOX Sports 2, Golf Channel, Nat Geo WILD, NBA TV, Oxygen, Tennis Channel) which only appear in XTRA and above tiers of Directv.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> You just don't get it Mark. Try read more carefully. I'm not talking about what is "right" for me or you or anybody else. You seem stuck on that.
> 
> I am talking about somebody saying that they saved hundreds of dollars going to streaming, but they also (I'd use the word 'lost' here, but you'd flip out if I did) "downgraded" their packages significantly and removed useless bells & whistles that they weren't using on DirecTV (i.e. protection plan).
> 
> ...


Oh relax and don't get your panties in a bunch. If you actually had upset me you'd know it. You perceive value in all that D provides, he obviously doesn't, simple as that. Apparently lots of other people no longer see the value in what D is providing either which is why they are leaving in droves. But since this discussion seems to just be going in circles I'll leave you to it...


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

There does seem to be a few people who no longer subscribe to DIRECTV who spend a lot of time trying to convert others to streaming. Perhaps all of the proselytizing should be in the streaming forums on our site?


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> You just don't get it Mark. Try read more carefully. I'm not talking about what is "right" for me or you or anybody else. You seem stuck on that.
> 
> I am talking about somebody saying that they saved hundreds of dollars going to streaming, but they also (I'd use the word 'lost' here, but you'd flip out if I did) "downgraded" their packages significantly and removed useless bells & whistles that they weren't using on DirecTV (i.e. protection plan).
> 
> ...


Oh wait, I missed that last sentence...RVU...LOL! Did you ever actually try it, I'm guessing not. That piece of technology was so great it's now dead. AFAIK it's not even supported on any TVs made after 2017. But who knows, maybe he can grab a RVU capable TV on eBay...


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> Oh wait, I missed that last sentence...RVU...LOL! Did you ever actually try it, I'm guessing not. That piece of technology was so great it's now dead. AFAIK it's not even supported on any TVs made after 2017. But who knows, maybe he can grab a RVU capable TV on eBay...


Wow you are out of touch with reality. Time to step out of your retired plastic surgeon Malibu beach house with $50k/yr in property tax and join the rest of us. You think nobody has a TV older then 2017? 

Speaking of which, if somebody wants a 2017 TV, why don't they just come to your house and take YOURS since your TV is a 2017 model.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> There does seem to be a few people who no longer subscribe to DIRECTV who spend a lot of time trying to convert others to streaming. Perhaps all of the proselytizing should be in the streaming forums on our site?


Lol... indeed James. Mr. Retired Plastic Surgeon who buys a new $5000 TV every year does seem to spend a lot of time on the DirecTV forums when he doesn't even have it anymore.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> Lol... indeed James. Mr. Retired Plastic Surgeon who buys a new $5000 TV every year does seem to spend a lot of time on the DirecTV forums when he doesn't even have it anymore.


Good one, I wish! I don't have the one tv I did have that supported RVU anymore. It was actually an older (2012) Samsung that I gave to my Daughter and Son-in-law when I upgraded that set to a 2017 LG OLED65B7A...and yeah that one is sweet.... I did try out RVU on that Samsung, it was not very good. None of the other sets in my house ever had RVU support either because they were too old and not "smart" tvs or the manufacturer simply wasn't one that had RVU (it was a pretty short list). So I guess the idea was that if you wanted to use RVU so you didn't have a box at every tv you actually did have to be a retired plastic surgeon so you could afford to replace all your tvs with ones that had RVU support...


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> Lol... indeed James. Mr. Retired Plastic Surgeon who buys a new $5000 TV every year does seem to spend a lot of time on the DirecTV forums when he doesn't even have it anymore.


A psychologist would say people who stick around forums for a product they no longer use trying to convince others to make the decision they made obviously have a need to see others make the same decision so they can feel better about the decision they made.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> Good one, I wish! I don't have the one tv I did have that supported RVU anymore. It was actually an older (2012) Samsung that I gave to my Daughter and Son-in-law when I upgraded that set to a *2018 LG OLED65B7A*...and yeah that one is sweet.... I did try out RVU on that Samsung, it was not very good. None of the other sets in my house ever had RVU support either because they were too old and not "smart" tvs or the manufacturer simply wasn't one that had RVU (it was a pretty short list). So I guess the idea was that if you wanted to use RVU so you didn't have a box at every tv you actually did have to be a retired plastic surgeon so you could afford to replace all your tvs with ones that had RVU support...


Or you might want to know what you actually own... the B7A is a 2017 model.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> A psychologist would say people who stick around forums for a product they no longer use trying to convince others to make the decision they made obviously have a need to see others make the same decision so they can feel better about the decision they made.


LOL .

Choice-supportive bias - Wikipedia


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> it was not very good.


I never said it was good, I said saying you can't have a boxless setup was false. Personally, I like to let my TVs CPU do TV type stuff rather then waste its time doing computationally expensive decryption stuff. Same way you buy a discrete video card rather then using the one on the mobo even if you don't play games for no other reason then letting the CPU do CPU stuff instead of rendering video.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

DirectMan said:


> What was the actual discount they applied to your account. I have a $45 discount per month good for a year with four boxes and Choice XTRA. In November I have to call back and renegotiate. Should I look for a higher discount say $60?


My bill went from $145.42 to $76.48 (taxes included on both). I have the itemized old bill printed out, but I don't have an itemized new one so I don't know exactly what they did yet. I didn't change anything, and there's nothing on my current bill that is equal or totals the difference of $68.94.

I believe part of it is the same $45 loyalty discount, however.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> I never said it was good, I said saying you can't have a boxless setup was false. Personally, I like to let my TVs CPU do TV type stuff rather then waste its time doing computationally expensive decryption stuff. Same way you buy a discrete video card rather then using the one on the mobo even if you don't play games for no other reason then letting the CPU do CPU stuff instead of rendering video.


Agreed. I don't run apps on my TVs. I use streaming devices to run apps. Modern streaming devices are small, unobtrusive (FireTV Stick 4ks are slightly bigger than a pack of gum), and use very little power so I don't mind having them connected to my TVs.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> LOL .
> 
> Choice-supportive bias - Wikipedia


I personally like to keep abreast of developments across the technology spectrum. I also enjoy intelligent discussion which does occur here, occasionally...LOL. I follow/participate in many online forums. This is just one of them.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> Or you might want to know what you actually own... the B7A is a 2017 model.


Touche!...finger check on my part. That will teach me to post after midnight. Post corrected.


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## grover517 (Sep 29, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> You have some valid points, but also the same invalid points as the other poster did. You now have the equivalent of the "Preferred Xtra" package minus a bunch of channels (yes, some of them garbage). If you would have dropped your package down to Preferred Xtra you could have saved quite a bit of money and gotten rid of the RSN.


Not a complete "equivalent". There were a couple channels (one of the Hallmark channels) that weren't available in the lower packages and I still wanted to keep my FS Detroit, ESPN's, CBSSN, BTN, NBCSN, FS1/2, which PS Vue provides with no extra fees or packages and as I mentioned, we already had access to HBO thru our internet package and we would have to pay extra to get that back. And besides, even if it had all the channels we wanted, it would have mitigated the cost difference a bit but by how much without discounts, which AT&T says I am not eligible for and we are still paying fee upon fee for things we now get for free.



> You also don't need boxes at each TV with DirecTV, there are other options.


Such as? I am not aware of any options that allow full functionality of the service at each TV that also don't require a "tuner" from somewhere else, like a mini using a tuner from the Genie. That doesn't work for us since many times we record 3 and 4 things at once on the Genie while watching TV live on a couple TV's in the house. Between the Recast OTA DVR and it's 4 tuner/2 stream capabilities as well as not one but two cloud DVR's between PS Vue and Philo that have no limits on how many we can record at once, we haven't had one single conflict or issue yet in watching and recording what we want to. The only thing we see different is that we can't keep recordings for more than a month, which we never do anyway and so far, are able to skip commercials in everything we record both on the Recast DVR and both cloud DVR's. The ONLY time we have to watch commercials is if we are watching live or on demand, which isn't often.



> And one other point is that you can watch from your DVR anywhere as well. DirecTV put in a restriction recently that you have to be on the same network, but there is a workaround for that.


Another workaround for a "premium" service? Does it ever end?

Truthfully, I just got tired of paying for a premium service only to have to constantly "work around" stuff. From rain/snow fade, to losing programming to disputes, to worrying about if I can get a discount to keep prices reasonable, to loss of our ability to take our service with us in our RV for free, to having to now deal with the overseas call centers, to billing errors that they can't seem to fix, to paying fee upon fee, to paying for locals we don't currently have, to now discovering just how many OTA channels we now get for free, to finding out we could do a lot more for a LOT less AND without all the workarounds, we just got tired of it. And it's not just the hassle and effort required but all the additional costs out of my pocket to do many of those "work around's" that is just becoming too much.

We loved our D* service for over 20 years, but in the past year or two, it just became an even bigger hassle than it had ever been yet we were still paying a premium price for what we now consider a sub par service that you constantly have to tweak and work around. Like I stated earlier, if you value 4K, NFL ST (or other premium exclusives), Dolby 5.1 or the other "premium" types of things like that D* offers, then D* is a good choice and I totally understand why many, like yourself, still value them. But for many others like us, all we want is something that gives us the channels we want, at a reasonable price, without a bunch of fees, conditions and contracts, and be able to watch what we want, where we want, when we want, but most importantly, not constantly have to "work around" things so it can do what you need it to do. We have all the "important" stuff we wanted such as Whole Home, HD, DVR, own our equipment, can take it with us anywhere or stream EVERYTHING from home to anywhere, no boxes, no fees, no commitments, and no AT&T.



> And then of course you could have joined the loyalty program.


And yet cost us even more than we already were paying for what? The ability to upgrade our equipment every few years without a new commitment or cost or worse yet, paying for something I may not even need? With AT&T announcing their winding down of the sat service in 10 years or so, how much "new" equipment do you really think there will be coming now? The HS17 setup is already a non starter for us so anything new coming out is not going to be any different. If anything, it will be even more centralized than it already is.

The irony of all this is that if AT&T had just done three things differently, we would still be "working around" all the other stuff and stuck around. If they hadn't taken away the ability of changing our service address twice a year, replaced my malfunctioning LCC and offered us even the smallest of discounts for a year due to our 22 years of loyalty and/or because we have now lost 3 locals to disputes, we wouldn't have left. So in a twisted way, I have to actually thank AT&T for being the company they are.

We now have a solution that works, does what we want and need, removes ALL of the previous work around's and even gives us additional flexibility and programming we NEVER had with D*, at 1/3 the cost and the only NEW "work around" we have is learning the new UI, which after only a month of use, we are already comfortable with and actually like better than D*'s.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

grover517 said:


> which AT&T says I am not eligible for and we are still paying fee upon fee for things we now get for free.


I as well as many others have been milking the discounts for YEARS.



grover517 said:


> Such as? I am not aware of any options that allow full functionality of the service at each TV that also don't require a "tuner" from somewhere else


I mentioned RVU. Mark did mention you'd have to have a TV that supports it which apparently they stopped in 2017. Not saying its a good solution, but its there. The minis are also pretty small and can be hidden behind your TV.



grover517 said:


> Another workaround for a "premium" service? Does it ever end?


Yes, for some reason people are willing to make allowances for all the workarounds you need for streaming, but not for DirecTV .



grover517 said:


> Truthfully, I just got tired of paying for a premium service only to have to constantly "work around" stuff.


Ah, but now you'll have to deal with a lot of other things like forced ads and other things the content providers are trying to see how far they can push on streaming .



grover517 said:


> reasonable, to loss of our ability to take our service with us in our RV for free, to having to now deal with the overseas call centers, to billing errors that they can't seem to fix, to paying fee upon fee, to paying for locals we don't currently have, to now discovering just how many OTA channels we now get for free, to finding out we could do a lot more for a LOT less AND without all the workarounds, we just got tired of it.


The workaround I mentioned is to VPN into your network. Yup. Super exhausting . You can add in all your locals with an AM21 or a LCC (if you don't mind the bugs LOL, I went back to the AM21).



grover517 said:


> We loved our D* service for over 20 years, but in the past year or two, it just became an even bigger hassle than it had ever been yet we were still paying a premium price for what we now consider a sub par service that you constantly have to tweak and work around. Like I stated earlier, if you value 4K, NFL ST (or other premium exclusives), Dolby 5.1 or the other "premium" types of things like that D* offers, then D* is a good choice and I totally understand why many, like yourself, still value them. But for many others like us, all we want is something that gives us the channels we want, at a reasonable price, without a bunch of fees, conditions and contracts, and be able to watch what we want, where we want, when we want, but most importantly, not constantly have to "work around" things so it can do what you need it to do. We have all the "important" stuff we wanted such as Whole Home, HD, DVR, own our equipment, can take it with us anywhere or stream EVERYTHING from home to anywhere, no boxes, no fees, no commitments, and no AT&T.


Like others, it sounds like you are willing to make accommodations and workarounds on streaming that you weren't willing to do on DirecTV.



grover517 said:


> The HS17 setup is already a non starter for us so anything


I'll agree with you that the HS17 sucks. Now THATS a valid point .



grover517 said:


> even the smallest of discounts for a year due to our 22 years of loyalty and/or because we have now lost 3 locals to disputes, we wouldn't have left. So in a twisted way, I have to actually thank AT&T for being the company they are.


I'm paying 50% off sticker and Athlon just reported that he called up loyalty and easily got 50% off as well. So not sure what your issue was with that. I haven't paid sticker in at least the past 10+ yrs.


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## grover517 (Sep 29, 2007)

James Long said:


> There does seem to be a few people who no longer subscribe to DIRECTV who spend a lot of time trying to convert others to streaming. Perhaps all of the proselytizing should be in the streaming forums on our site?


Hey James,

I for one am not trying to convert anyone to streaming over more traditional services like D*. I am simply comparing other provider options" to D*. With the means to deliver programming becoming more and more blurred as traditional cable and sat providers like D* also move to IP/streaming based solutions, how can we not also blur the lines as well.


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## Barry in Conyers (Jan 14, 2008)

Looks like the blue kool-aid has fermented again.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

grover517 said:


> Hey James,
> 
> I for one am not trying to convert anyone to streaming over more traditional services like D*. I am simply comparing other provider options" to D*. With the means to deliver programming becoming more and more blurred as traditional cable and sat providers like D* also move to IP/streaming based solutions, how can we not also blur the lines as well.


If DirecTVs IP based solution behaves more like traditional then I'd consider it. DirecTV Now has been a complete flop, so T fell on their faces with that one.

Also have to consider that a lot of folks have data caps. Cox has a 1TB cap unless you want to pay an extra $50/mo for example. We'll see if they "come around" as more people go streaming.

To quote a completely different Mark, "reports of traditionals death have been greatly exaggerated (as of today)".

There are 187M cable subscribers in the US alone which dwarfs what Netflix has world wide. I wouldn't consider Netflix a competitor to traditional. The services we're talking about in this thread are closer.

But matter of fact, the teaser prices the streaming services are offering today to eat into market share aren't really sustainable.

Disney isn't going to be around much longer if they keep Disney+ at $6/mo.

Other thing that will harm streaming long term is the fragmentation. While you do have aggregator devices like a Roku, as the market gets more fragmented, obviously the brands are going to slap their coats of paint on their UIs.

Disney's will be all pink and have sprinkles and rainbows while EPSN will have 300lb linebackers with dreadlocks and face tattoos and CBS will slap their current highest rated show as the face, etc.

Lot of people will prefer a unified interface vs. learning 20 different interfaces and paying 20 different bills.

Data caps also need to go away.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

I am glad those that switched to streaming come back here and voice their opinions. You can't have too much info. I'm considering moving to streaming once my contract is up but I still have a year left so there is no rush. I'll see what becomes of the streaming AT&T TV in the meantime.

I am one of "those people" with 7 TV's and the Premium package. My bill runs $250 per month not including NFL ST or MLBEI. Right now I have a $50 per month discount that rolls off 8/22 which takes that down to $200 per month. I called yesterday about discounts. The lady was very nice but told me they cannot give a discount to me while my account still has the $50 discount. I have to call back on 8/23. She also said they have no deals for Sunday Ticket at this time. I know both are lies because there have been plenty of people posting in these forums that they got their discount extended before their old one expired and people have been getting some deals on Sunday Ticket. She did offer to give me a discount if I got AT&T internet bundled with my D* account. If I look up my address on the AT&T website it tells me AT&T internet is not even available where I live but she assured me it was so I asked what the speed is for their service here. 10/1 mbps for around $40 per month. LOL I currently have 200/10 mbps with Spectrum for $65.99 per month so no thanks on that offer.

Now about those 7 TV's. Do we watch 7 TV's at once. Never. At the max 3 at the same time. But what I do need is the 13 tuners to record everything the whole household wants to watch at a later time. With the streaming DVR on YTTV you have 3 concurrent connections but recording shows does not take up any streams. Yeah I know about the CBS DVR issue but that isn't a big issue as I have the commercial free CBS All Access anyway and I watch CBS shows with that right now anyway instead of the D* DVR as I don't have to FF through any commercials because they aren't there to have to FF through. LOL

We switched to the Premium package a couple of years ago because i wanted to add HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, and Encore channels and the cheapest way to switch was to move to the Premium package. I'm pretty much caught up on everything I wanted to see from those premiums so I may cut my package back to something cheaper soon once I figure out what the must have channels are for everyone. But in a year when my contract is out I will definitely explore other options. So to those who switched thanks for the info you provide.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Personally, I like hearing the various options and comparisons made to each other Directv (and/or Dish). There are definitely some here who are almost zealots in their disdain for IP based delivery.

I'm guessing those that are, don't have teens....because whether they like it or not, those teens are not watching linear TV.....and linear TV is dying a slow death.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

mjwagner said:


> Again, they are only "loosing" something if it is something that they use/want/need. I don't know about you but I try not to pay for stuff that I don't use/want/need...but that's just me.


Accept he also explained how he could have changed his system to get the pricing very close and chose to just say it's more expensive. He was overpaying by choice of not reconfiguring his system.

To me, there is an easy way to remove most receiver fess for anyone anymore. Get rid of all receivers you don't watch regularly, and replace them with a streaming box. Almost all the channels can be streamed anymore, so why bother paying for a receiver that sits in a guest room or second den if you don't watch it much. Obviously that's not going to work for everyone, but for anyone who is going streaming I see no reason that solution won't work for them.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

With modern satellite subscriptions including streaming one can get the best of both worlds. A dedicated delivery system with multi-room viewing for the primary TVs plus streaming access (authenticated with satellite subscriber credentials) for other devices.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

TV_Guy said:


> Downgrading unless you have Directv packages with movies that you don't watch usually isn't very practical. If you watch sports you will either lose your RSNs or other sports channels. YTTV has some channels (BBC World News, CBS Sports Network, FOX Sports 2, Golf Channel, Nat Geo WILD, NBA TV, Oxygen, Tennis Channel) which only appear in XTRA and above tiers of Directv.


Wait a second. If it's not practical to downgrade and lose the rsns, then streaming isn't practical either because they don't have the rsns either, that I have seen. And I know no one has the lakers channel so as far as I am concerned no one has them. (Haven't seen the fox ones either though, yet that might change in the next couple years) That's kind of his point, if you don't need it then you can downgrade and get similar to going streaming.

Now if you are going streaming because you prefer the interface that's different. But unless you are doing Netflix or amazon prime, you lose a lot on the live tv streamers vs DIRECTV from a DVR standpoint, unless you agree to watch by their rules. Now if your viewing habits fit their rules then you are ok, if not, your screwed and again theirs becomes worthless. I don't watch things within 30 days always.

I could easily go streaming with prime and Netflix and HBO go only and be happy. But until I can get my rsns and other channels that carry my teams streaming to, and see it for less than DIRECTV, there's no point.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

raott said:


> Personally, I like hearing the various options and comparisons made to each other Directv (and/or Dish). There are definitely some here who are almost zealots in their disdain for IP based delivery.
> 
> I'm guessing those that are, don't have teens....because whether they like it or not, those teens are not watching linear TV.....and linear TV is dying a slow death.


I am a techie, but people have to realize that the teaser prices are to steal customers, not long term. When I signed up for DirecTV in 2002, I had a pretty similar setup to what I have now. One TV and a similar package. Only thing that's been added since then is HD obviously, I had a DVR then too. The bill has gone from $35/mo (not even kidding here, that's how much it cost back then) to $115/mo now. You really think streaming is going to stay, as people are quoting, "$70/mo"? They have to pay license fees just like DirecTV does. At some point I expect they'll start monetizing the number of streams more, as some are already doing. And of course, they'll crack down on account sharing at some point.

One point to make about teens... nobody cares what teens want or do because teens don't pay the bills. Mom & dad do.

Teens didn't watch linear TV 10 - 20 yrs ago either. They were out with their friends, partying, etc.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> Wait a second. If it's not practical to downgrade and lose the rsns, then streaming isn't practical either because they don't have the rsns either, that I have seen. And I know no one has the lakers channel so as far as I am concerned no one has them. (Haven't seen the fox ones either though, yet that might change in the next couple years) That's kind of his point, if you don't need it then you can downgrade and get similar to going streaming.
> 
> Now if you are going streaming because you prefer the interface that's different. But unless you are doing Netflix or amazon prime, you lose a lot on the live tv streamers vs DIRECTV from a DVR standpoint, unless you agree to watch by their rules. Now if your viewing habits fit their rules then you are ok, if not, your screwed and again theirs becomes worthless. I don't watch things within 30 days always.
> 
> I could easily go streaming with prime and Netflix and HBO go only and be happy. But until I can get my rsns and other channels that carry my teams streaming to, and see it for less than DIRECTV, there's no point.


Yup. If you like sports, then streaming probably isn't for you today. ESPN+ from what I hear is mostly obscure stuff like Mongolian Midget Lawn Darts and stuff like that. Just going off the forums on that one... I couldn't tell you from personal experience. I just read on here that ESPN+ doesn't even stream the majors, etc.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

SledgeHammer said:


> Wow you are out of touch with reality. Time to step out of your retired plastic surgeon Malibu beach house with $50k/yr in property tax and join the rest of us. You think nobody has a TV older then 2017?
> 
> Speaking of which, if somebody wants a 2017 TV, why don't they just come to your house and take YOURS since your TV is a 2017 model.


He's not really. RVU is no longer supported going forward. It did suck for a lot of people. With that said I set up my moms tv with RVU ages ago and I don't get calls complaining about it, so it's awesome on some tvs. Sadly not many it seems though.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> ESPN+ from what I hear is mostly obscure stuff like Mongolian Midget Lawn Darts


My wife likes to watch the championship every year. I don't see the point of it.


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## TV_Guy (Nov 16, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> Wait a second. If it's not practical to downgrade and lose the rsns, then streaming isn't practical either because they don't have the rsns either, that I have seen. And I know no one has the lakers channel so as far as I am concerned no one has them. (Haven't seen the fox ones either though, yet that might change in the next couple years) That's kind of his point, if you don't need it then you can downgrade and get similar to going streaming.
> 
> Now if you are going streaming because you prefer the interface that's different. But unless you are doing Netflix or amazon prime, you lose a lot on the live tv streamers vs DIRECTV from a DVR standpoint, unless you agree to watch by their rules. Now if your viewing habits fit their rules then you are ok, if not, your screwed and again theirs becomes worthless. I don't watch things within 30 days always.
> 
> I could easily go streaming with prime and Netflix and HBO go only and be happy. But until I can get my rsns and other channels that carry my teams streaming to, and see it for less than DIRECTV, there's no point.


YTTV and 3 other OTT providers carry the Fox Sports RSNs in LA. Other cities like NY which has 4 RSNs have only Fubo and the $70 Directv Now package if you want the 2 MSG channels along with SNY and YES. SNY and YES are available on 3 other OTT services in NY. Anyone that wants RSNs just needs to consult one of the many sites which have comprehensive channel lists of each OTT service. One of the better sites is thestreamable.com


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## mstenbrg (Oct 2, 2006)

inkahauts said:


> Wait a second. If it's not practical to downgrade and lose the rsns, then streaming isn't practical either because they don't have the rsns either, that I have seen. And I know no one has the lakers channel so as far as I am concerned no one has them. (Haven't seen the fox ones either though, yet that might change in the next couple years) That's kind of his point, if you don't need it then you can downgrade and get similar to going streaming.
> 
> Now if you are going streaming because you prefer the interface that's different. But unless you are doing Netflix or amazon prime, you lose a lot on the live tv streamers vs DIRECTV from a DVR standpoint, unless you agree to watch by their rules. Now if your viewing habits fit their rules then you are ok, if not, your screwed and again theirs becomes worthless. I don't watch things within 30 days always.
> 
> I could easily go streaming with prime and Netflix and HBO go only and be happy. But until I can get my rsns and other channels that carry my teams streaming to, and see it for less than DIRECTV, there's no point.


That is not correct, depending on your maket YouTubeTV has your local RSN along with all of the sports channels (ESPN, NBCSports, etc.)


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

TV_Guy said:


> YTTV and 3 other OTT providers carry the Fox Sports RSNs in LA. Other cities like NY which has 4 RSNs have only Fubo and the $70 Directv Now package if you want the 2 MSG channels along with SNY and YES. SNY and YES are available on 3 other OTT services in NY. Anyone that wants RSNs just needs to consult one of the many sites which have comprehensive channel lists of each OTT service. One of the better sites is thestreamable.com


They don't have the Lakers or Dodgers. And I don't think they have the Pac-12 either do they? Means they carry less than half of our RSNs. But for me, again, no Lakers no point. And they have to have tnt and espn now too anymore.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> They don't have the Lakers or Dodgers. And I don't think they have the Pac-12 either do they? Means they carry less than half of our RSNs. But for me, again, no Lakers no point. And they have to have tnt and espn now too anymore.


If you were going streaming, wouldn't you want an OTA antenna to get all locals instead of doing them through streaming? Then you need an OTA DVR though.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

No offense, but do you even know what is offered in the way of sports on the various streaming platforms? And ESPN+ isn't "mostly obscure sports".

Honestly, I think everyone gets the point from your hundreds of anti-streaming posts. You'll have DirecTV until the last satellite comes crashing into the atmosphere in a fireball.



SledgeHammer said:


> Yup. If you like sports, then streaming probably isn't for you today. ESPN+ from what I hear is mostly obscure stuff like Mongolian Midget Lawn Darts and stuff like that. Just going off the forums on that one... I couldn't tell you from personal experience. I just read on here that ESPN+ doesn't even stream the majors, etc.


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## TV_Guy (Nov 16, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> If you were going streaming, wouldn't you want an OTA antenna to get all locals instead of doing them through streaming? Then you need an OTA DVR though.


Pac 12 is on Fubo and Sling. TNT and ESPN are on most OTT services. Anyone going the Sling route needs OTA due to limited OTA offerings on Sling. Dodgers are a Spectrum only deal. The sports part of cord cutting is probably the one that requires the most planning. One possibility for some fans is to rotate OTT services based on the sports season.


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## grover517 (Sep 29, 2007)

The discussion about what features, advantages, detriments, and everything different between various services is great but regardless of which you choose or don't choose, there is still going to be dissenters for whatever you or I think is the best way to go. The great thing is that with online providers now available along side the more traditional ones, it makes tailoring your service to your needs easier than ever. There are always going to be compromises no matter what you subscribe to and I don't see that changing.

So I don't try to convince anyone that streaming is the way to go. As a matter of fact, I try to dissuade quite a few because they just aren't ready and I foresee them being disappointed. Nor have I ever as a 20+ year subscriber of D* recommended them either as the best solution without first understanding what a particular person was looking for in a provider because you should never really pay for more than you really need. The grass isn't always greener on the other side, but at least in this instance and particularly for us, it is!

As a 40+ year mainframe computer tech with backgrounds in numerous facets of that industry including networking of all kinds, I have been preparing for this transition for a while now. Add to that the fact that we already had Netflix, HBO, Amazon Prime and Vudu as well as a rooftop 3 antenna array that gets everything up to about 60 miles from us for years now (was originally a backup for rain/snow fade) and it was the next logical step to "cut the cord". After a few weeks of research on what would work best, a simple 300.00 investment and a couple hours of my time setting it all up and we were off to the races! I wasn't planning on doing this for a while yet since I wanted things to mature a bit more and consolidations settle down a bit more before we did but AT&T just forced my hand.

When they eliminated the one single feature of D* we valued the most this past spring (temporary address changes), that is what prompted me to even begin to investigate the notion of leaving so soon. And then the AT&T I have known and dealt with for 40 years (land lines, ATT WorldNet dial up, ATT DSL), yet again couldn't help themselves. They piled on by refusing to replace my malfunctioning LCC, refused to offer us any compensation for the lost channels or any other types of credits and then turned around and raised our rates 20.00 a month. Guess the OTT providers aren't the only ones that need large rate increases to stay afloat!?!? I look at this no differently than if D* were to lose NFL ST, turned off 4k as too expensive or some other reason, or took away the things that meant the most to you and why you continue to stay with D*. There is no right or wrong answer, it is what it is.

Anyway, I am not saying it won't change yet again, but the changes happening at D* now just don't make it a good fit for us any longer at ANY price and the OTT setup we now have is so far proving to be the porridge that is "just right" FOR US. 

Que the big bad wolves that say we made a mistake! LOL


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

raott said:


> No offense, but do you even know what is offered in the way of sports on the various streaming platforms? And ESPN+ isn't "mostly obscure sports".
> 
> Honestly, I think everyone gets the point from your hundreds of anti-streaming posts. You'll have DirecTV until the last satellite comes crashing into the atmosphere in a fireball.


I already stated that I don't watch sports and I was going off what I read on the forums and if you do a simple google search, you'll find:

*ESPN+ will* not *include* streaming of *ESPN*, ESPN2, ESPNews or *ESPN* Classic, or the sports broadcast on those channels - like live *NFL*, NBA, MLB and college games

So while I don't watch sports, I do know that most people watch NFL, NBA, MLB and college games. What else is there? Mongolian Midget Lawn Darts? Community College Field Hockey?

As I've also stated, I'm not anti streaming or pro DirecTV. I said (repeatedly) that streaming has many limitations and that people are willing to sacrifice things on streaming that for some reason they aren't willing to sacrifice on DirecTV. If they did, their bills would look a lot different.

I also don't like that streaming requires signing up for a bunch of different providers, using a different interface for each of them and not having the unified experience I have now. Not to mention giving up 5.1 audio. What's the point of even having a home theater if you don't have at least 5.1 audio?

And according to Slice, the last satellite won't come crashing into the atmosphere any time soon. And I still expect them to merge with Dish at some point, but that's just me.

Besides, as is "common knowledge", the majority of cord cutters cut over the cost... why would I cut DirecTV over the cost to go streaming? I'd pay more on streaming then I do for DirecTV and it doesn't have the above limitations.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

ESPN+ Stream Live Sports
"ESPN+ features a selection of live games from MLB, MLS, Serie A, FA Cup, EFL and NHL. Get in on the action with Live UFC Fight Nights, 30+ Top Rank Boxing cards, Grand Slam tennis from Wimbledon, US Open and Australian Open. Plus access to your favorite college sports like football, basketball, lacrosse, and more."

Most satellite and cable customers should start with a vMVPD if they are planning on going OTT. Comparing the smaller services with a full service MVPD is not a fair comparison. One could complain that they can't get football on Netflix ... but replacing an MVPD is not the purpose of Netflix. There are other services that do compete. Find one of those.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

James Long said:


> ESPN+ Stream Live Sports
> "ESPN+ features a selection of live games from MLB, MLS, Serie A, FA Cup, EFL and NHL. Get in on the action with Live UFC Fight Nights, 30+ Top Rank Boxing cards, Grand Slam tennis from Wimbledon, US Open and Australian Open. Plus access to your favorite college sports like football, basketball, lacrosse, and more."
> 
> Most satellite and cable customers should start with a vMVPD if they are planning on going OTT. Comparing the smaller services with a full service MVPD is not a fair comparison. One could complain that they can't get football on Netflix ... but replacing an MVPD is not the purpose of Netflix. There are other services that do compete. Find one of those.


They aren't putting the high value stuff on there though, that's reserved for ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU.

Like the "college football" they mention. They are group of 5 and FCS schools, the only power 5 on ESPN+ will be one football game a year (against a G5/FCS team no doubt) for the Big 12. Not including the two major teams in the Big 12, Texas and Oklahoma. Just the "little 8".

So if you are a fan of West Virginia and have to see ALL their games, next year you'll need to subscribe to ESPN+ to see one of their 12. The one that the rest of the country won't care about at all.

No doubt it is a similar story for their other sports. It is basically stuff that used to be relegated to ESPN3, not the stuff everyone wants to see. That's what you get on ESPN+. If you are a sports fan, you will NEED something that carries ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU. That means a subscription to an MVPD, either cable/satellite or a streaming MVPD like Sling or Youtube TV or whatever.

ESPN is not going to put that high value content on streaming now or in the foreseeable future, because doing so would destroy their revenue.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> ...Not to mention giving up 5.1 audio. What's the point of even having a home theater if you don't have at least 5.1 audio?...


I get your point but I don't use my home theater for stuff that I watch on PSVue anyway, like news and a few shows my wife watches. I use it for shows we stream thru NetFlix, Prime, or movies we may occasionally rent on VUDU or iTunes. Most of the NetFlix and Prime shows are 4k HDR many with ATMOS. I don't remember the last movie we rented on VUDU that wasn't 4k HDR with ATMOS, and for $5.99 rather than the $10.99 that D for some reason still charges.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> I get your point but I don't use my home theater for stuff that I watch on PSVue anyway, like news and a few shows my wife watches. I use it for shows we stream thru NetFlix, Prime, or movies we may occasionally rent on VUDU or iTunes. Most of the NetFlix and Prime shows are 4k HDR many with ATMOS. I don't remember the last movie we rented on VUDU that wasn't 4k HDR with ATMOS, and for $5.99 rather than the $10.99 that D for some reason still charges.


Now THAT is a valid point . DirecTV PPV & VOD is a huge rip off. I never touch the stuff. I seriously don't get who is still paying $15/hr for the adult channels?


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

SledgeHammer said:


> Now THAT is a valid point . DirecTV PPV & VOD is a huge rip off. I never touch the stuff. I seriously don't get who is still paying $15/hr for the adult channels?


LOL...that one makes me laugh as well!


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> They aren't putting the high value stuff on there though, that's reserved for ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU.


The point is ESPN+ is more than "Mongolian Lawn Darts" ... exaggerating to the point of making derogatory comments about the content does no one any good. (Just like when people make it sound like satellite has rain fade every day of the year. There are days when rain fade happens. There are days when a streamed event is so popular that the servers can't keep up. Speak the truth without exaggeration.)

Pac-12 Network could also be described as limited content that nobody needs - and usually is by people who don't have that channel set available via their provider.


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## DirectMan (Jul 15, 2007)

This is an article that describes how some internet subscribers are exceeding 1T per month and are subject to additional fees. Streamers may start to experience this additional fee that does not exist in satellite delivery.

Netflix's biggest bingers get hit with higher internet costs


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Like the "college football" they mention. They are group of 5 and FCS schools, the only power 5 on ESPN+ will be one football game a year (against a G5/FCS team no doubt) for the Big 12. Not including the two major teams in the Big 12, Texas and Oklahoma. Just the "little 8".


Not being a sports fan, I understood about 5 words in that paragraph lol.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

DirectMan said:


> This is an article that describes how some internet subscribers are exceeding 1T per month and are subject to additional fees. Streamers may start to experience this additional fee that does not exist in satellite delivery.
> 
> Netflix's biggest bingers get hit with higher internet costs


Yup. Cox is $50 EXTRA for unlimited. Or I think they have a "every 10GB over plan" too.


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

DirectMan said:


> This is an article that describes how some internet subscribers are exceeding 1T per month and are subject to additional fees. Streamers may start to experience this additional fee that does not exist in satellite delivery.
> 
> Netflix's biggest bingers get hit with higher internet costs





SledgeHammer said:


> Yup. Cox is $50 EXTRA for unlimited. Or I think they have a "every 10GB over plan" too.


And this is one reason I won't go totally streaming yet.

This makes me wonder why the local cable company's that offer HSI don't offer a TV streaming app option for those that don't want to pay high rental fees on equipment. I think Spectrum has an option that lets your stream channels with an app to Apple TV's and Roku. I would think a streaming option would at least get them some extra revenue.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

DirectMan said:


> This is an article that describes how some internet subscribers are exceeding 1T per month and are subject to additional fees. Streamers may start to experience this additional fee that does not exist in satellite delivery.
> 
> Netflix's biggest bingers get hit with higher internet costs


Data usage is definitely a consideration if your ISP has data limits (some do, some don't). While mine does not, over the past several years that we have been 100% streaming I have checked our usage occasionally. My router provides daily, weekly, monthly usage stats. As a point of reverence, over the past two + years that we have been 100% streaming we only went over 500gb in any one month twice. We have never gone over 700gb in any one month. Is our usage "average"...heck if I know so YMMV.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Exactly. Not to mention UFC and MLS. Yet there is a poster, who is not a sports fan, who doesn't have ESPN+, throwing opinions out there on exactly that subject, in order to support the anti-streaming vitriol.

We get it, streaming isn't for him/her. It's a great choice for others.



James Long said:


> The point is ESPN+ is more than "Mongolian Lawn Darts" ... exaggerating to the point of making derogatory comments about the content does no one any good. (Just like when people make it sound like satellite has rain fade every day of the year. There are days when rain fade happens. There are days when a streamed event is so popular that the servers can't keep up. Speak the truth without exaggeration.)
> 
> Pac-12 Network could also be described as limited content that nobody needs - and usually is by people who don't have that channel set available via their provider.


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## grover517 (Sep 29, 2007)

DirectMan said:


> This is an article that describes how some internet subscribers are exceeding 1T per month and are subject to additional fees. Streamers may start to experience this additional fee that does not exist in satellite delivery.
> 
> Netflix's biggest bingers get hit with higher internet costs


Another article stating reasons for not going OTT that is easily avoided if due diligence was done BEFORE they cut the cord. It's similar to those that post questions on other forums or social media where they think that by simply paying for a "stick" somehow now gets them all this "free tv" such as ESPN, Comedy Central, etc. Unfortunately, there are still way to many people out there that think that way or tend to side in that just because something is cheaper, that is the best way to go.

We have Comcast internet with the 1 GB cap. If you go over, you can either let it default to an extra 10.00 for every 50 GB you go over your cap or just opt into the 50.00 a month for no caps and you can add and remove that charge each month if you want. You also get two free "courtesy months" a year where you can go over with no extra charge which also helps a bit if you regularly come close but don't always go over. Data caps or extra fees were something I investigated extensively as well as knowing that a good part of our viewing still is from OTA sources that uses no data at all so caps are a non issue for us. Our highest month so far was about 700 GB and that was with the wife and I binge watching a lot more than we ever have before since there wasn't much on OTA TV during the summer.

We waded in gradually by first having both D* and our OTT/OTA setup in place for 30 days side by side just so the wife could feel comfortable in jumping back to D* if she ever felt like it. I was surprised that it only happened once in that first month when the remote was malfunctioning after I went to bed and she didn't want to wake me up. The issue was quickly resolved the next morning. Then we suspended D* for another month just to simulate a 100 percent OTT/OTA setup and find out how many times we had the itch to go back as well as try to gauge average data usage which neither became an issue. Then and only then did we finally cancel our D* service. Again, doing things the right way instead of just jumping off the cliff THEN asking for a parachute on the way down is not the way to make this kind of switch. It should involve a lot of up front planning and coordination for those that are used to the traditional services like D*, Comcast, etc. and understand that the grass isn't always greener, especially if you don't plan things up front.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

I did my due diligence with streaming services. Tried practically all of them and was always disappointed. The problems were not earth shattering, but just irritating enough for me to remain on cable. Because of bundling, even in the 3rd year of a ‘deal’, my TV with nearly every channel they have, including the 4 Premiums is costing me $85 more than just the internet alone.
While I could save some money going to streaming and doing the provider dance between services to allow me to binge watch things, it would be at best about $20/month less. Personally, $20 as a convenience fee is well worth it to me. And those cost savings don’t include Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime which I already subscribe to.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


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## glrush (Jun 29, 2002)

One of the things I am interested in seeing is how the new HBO Max streaming service factors in to this discussion. What I mean by that is HBO, at least for me, is an add-on to my DirecTV service. Depending on the cost and what is available, I may drop HBO on DirecTV and go with the streamer. Maybe they will give you a break on the cost if you are a subscriber already but I am certainly considering dropping HBO on DirecTV and going with the streaming version depending on the specifics. Like many who have posted, I am not looking at streaming to replace DirecTV, but rather enhance it.


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## lipcrkr (Apr 27, 2012)

I was a DTV customer and more recently Spectrum cable subscriber. A couple of months ago i cut the cable cord (i still have Spectrum Internet). I was paying $180+change per month ($92+$60/Internet+$30 in fees). I had the Silver package. But they eliminated many channels but increased the monthly rate.
I said enough and returned my cable box. I'm now a 100% streamer.

I now have YTTV+Starz/Encore for $58.99. Plus i installed Pluto, Crackle, IMDb, Tubi, and Vudo free of charge. I get a ton of movies and TV shows. My YTTV is 1080/60, which looks great on my 4K TV. My home theater setup is TV, PC, A/V receiver, 5.1 speakers, Modem, Router, and my Sammy Phone. I also watch some 4K shows on other streamed services at no charge. With a click of a button i can switch over to the Internet for e-mail etc.

I will never go back to Sat/Cable, too may fees, fees, fees. In fact, i may consider droping Starz which will make YTTV cost just $50 because i get most of the movies/TV shows on other services which again, are free.


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## grover517 (Sep 29, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> I did my due diligence with streaming services. Tried practically all of them and was always disappointed. The problems were not earth shattering, but just irritating enough for me to remain on cable. Because of bundling, even in the 3rd year of a 'deal', my TV with nearly every channel they have, including the 4 Premiums is costing me $85 more than just the internet alone.
> While I could save some money going to streaming and doing the provider dance between services to allow me to binge watch things, it would be at best about $20/month less. Personally, $20 as a convenience fee is well worth it to me. And those cost savings don't include Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime which I already subscribe to.


That's great! That's my whole point in a nutshell. Everyone needs to find what works best for their individual situations.

For us, we also had other services along with D* such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, Vudu and HBO Go thru our internet service which only complimented our existing OTT/OTA setup and made it even easier to not only justify leaving but made the process less disruptive as well.

We prefer to watch linear TV vs. binging (we are old farts), and what we put together in an OTA/OTT solution still allows us to do that within one unified UI just like D* offers. 2 week channel guide includes all our OTT "live" services as well as over 40 OTA stations. We record OTA on our Recast via the FireTV UI and/or channel guide just like we did with D* and use the cloud DVR's for everything else. Since we were already were used to "jumping" around between D* and the aforementioned services apps anyway, adding a cloud DVR to the mix was an easy adjustment to make as well.

I'll stop here but suffice it to say, everyone needs to find what works best for them at the price they feel the service is worth. In our case, D* couldn't offer us what we needed to stay and we found an alternative that works just as well for us.

I am glad you found what works best for you.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Saw this little tidbit:

Unfortunately for Netflix, paying out those licensing fees has been great for the service's enduring popularity⁠-according to the Wall Street Journal, non-original programming makes up for 72% of Netflix's total streaming minutes. Despite all of its award-winning, original programming in this era of "golden age" television, a significant amount of Netflix's streaming has been dedicated to feeding viewers the kind of comfort-food viewing that's about to be taken off the menu.

With 72% of Netflix's minutes taken away... yikes...


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

That's why I've been saying for several years that Netflix will suffer heavily when the competition takes away all their licensed content. I saw somewhere the news about Friends was announced that Friends alone accounted for 7% of their streaming minutes!

I'm sure the Office is a good chunk too. If it had ended five years ago Big Bang Theory would have gone to Netflix, where it would have accounted for a lot of viewership.

Before long people won't subscribe to Netflix 12 months out of the year, not when there are a half dozen streaming services that have things they will want to see. They'll sign up for a while and binge whatever Netflix has they want to see, then drop it and move on. Disney is likely to be the winner simply because parents of small children will keep Disney year round because when your little girl wants to watch Frozen for the 33rd time you can't say "sorry honey you have to wait until next month". Then they have so much stuff between Disney, Pixar, Fox, Marvel, Star Wars, and all that ABC/Fox TV back catalog.


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## glrush (Jun 29, 2002)

There are still some details missing on the Disney + service. For example, the number of concurrent streams, whether you can "share" your account with another family member, etc, 4K plans, etc. I am certainly interested and Disney has an unbeatably library of programming, especially for kids, but it will be interesting to see if there are additional charges for more streams and 4K.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Disney is likely to be the winner simply because parents of small children will keep Disney year round because when your little girl wants to watch Frozen for the 33rd time you can't say "sorry honey you have to wait until next month". Then they have so much stuff between Disney, Pixar, Fox, Marvel, Star Wars, and all that ABC/Fox TV back catalog.


From the Disney/Marvel/Star Wars fanboys / fangirls I've met, I think they'll just own the UltraHD 4K Special Italian Leather Bound Collectors Edition Steelbook physical media.

For the less sophisticated, get an el cheapo bluray player at target and buy the Frozen BluRay.


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

The problem, as I see it, a few years from now we will have to subscribe to 4 or 5 streaming services to get what we used to get from "cable" and maybe 1. Plus you'll probably pay a lot more for internet service. Oh well that is life. I'll spend a lot of time also looking for what I want to watch - 
Time will tell


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## espaeth (Oct 14, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> If your DirecTV bill was the same as your streaming bill, which would you pick?


I don't want to speak for Rich, but I said this in another thread: I'd pick streaming.

I can get all the channels I want to watch using the Entertainment pack in Atlanta. For sports I only watch hockey, and since the Thrashers left town there are no local blackouts on Center Ice. So with the ATT Unlimited plan $25 loyalty discount (and free HBO), I had been paying $75.99 before taxes. ($45 Entertainment, $10 HD fee, $10 DVR fee, $3 whole home, $7 2nd receiver fee)

Since March I've been running YoutubeTV and Philo. That costs me $50/mo + $16/mo, so it's in the same pricing ballpark. The funny thing is, since we added these services we've only switched back to the DIRECTV input to watch Last Week Tonight, and only because it gets delayed a day on HBO Go. For almost everything we watch, the video quality is substantially better on streaming. Not only that, we are able to use 2 additional TVs in the house for occasional viewing as well. I also picked up a Roku stick and we've used that to have full quality steaming access to our DVR on hotel TVs when we've been traveling. The biggest gain has been in the WAF - with profiles on YoutubeTV and Philo, now her favorites and recordings stay separate from mine. On YoutubeTV you can customize the channel order in the guide, so her channel order is completely different from mine.

We scaled back to the Family Pack, which is now costing us $36/mo. The plan was to just get Center Ice to watch hockey there because some nights NHL.tv has issues. We just had a hail storm roll through the other week, and now I have to replace the roof. It's at the point now where I'm seriously considering not re-mounting the dish on the roof again.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

espaeth said:


> I don't want to speak for Rich, but I said this in another thread: I'd pick streaming.


Appreciate that, I do. Yeah, we have a high monthly for D* and our streaming monthly is just a tad more. I've always considered television a luxury and I can live with the cost of both D* and streaming. Of course, I could lower the streaming bill by dropping a lot of the streaming sites but the convenience of jumping from one app to another is...luxurious. Only luxury item I have. I don't drink or drug, my gambling is not out of control and my bets are small. No bills to speak of. No mortgage. No money problems. Why shouldn't we indulge ourselves?

Which would I drop if I absolutely had to? D*. Streaming, to me, is what I always wanted. I like to binge series, been doing that since sometime in the early '90s. Binging just makes more sense to me than watching one episode at a time. Just my opinion.

Rich


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

espaeth said:


> So with the ATT Unlimited plan $25 loyalty discount (and free HBO), I had been paying $75.99 before taxes. ($45 Entertainment, $10 HD fee, $10 DVR fee, $3 whole home, $7 2nd receiver fee)


And that shows why you should *never* use AT&T's supposed "bundle deals". That's a bundle deal btw, not a loyalty discount. You're paying considerably more then I am for Preferred Xtra which is a much higher package. Same price on the other stuff except for the 2nd receiver fee, but even if I had a 2nd one, I'd still be paying a lot less then you through the actual loyalty program. I won't even get started on AT&Ts cell phone pricing. Ridiculously expensive compared to everybody else. I switched to TMobile a long time ago.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> Appreciate that, I do. Yeah, we have a high monthly for D* and our streaming monthly is just a tad more. I've always considered television a luxury and I can live with the cost of both D* and streaming. Of course, I could lower the streaming bill by dropping a lot of the streaming sites but the convenience of jumping from one app to another is...luxurious. Only luxury item I have. I don't drink or drug, my gambling is not out of control and my bets are small. No bills to speak of. No mortgage. No money problems. Why shouldn't we indulge ourselves?
> 
> Which would I drop if I absolutely had to? D*. Streaming, to me, is what I always wanted. I like to binge series, been doing that since sometime in the early '90s. Binging just makes more sense to me than watching one episode at a time. Just my opinion.
> 
> Rich


Lol... to me its more convenient to have everything unified in a single UI and all integrated and working together, but that's just me.

As for binging... hmm... I did that when I discovered 24 and Prison Break a few years ago. Prison Break sucked after season 2, but 24 was so addictive for the 204 *1 HOUR* episodes and the 2 hour movie that I couldn't put it down. Binging on 206 hours is a lot of work and afterwards my brain was mush. Also binged on Casa De Papel and a few other shows. I find when I binge, I get bored towards the end and rush through the episodes just to be done with it and don't enjoy them as much.

Granted, I could have gone faster then 8 years on 24, but doing that much in a month, I definitely killed a few brain cells doing that... haha.


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## espaeth (Oct 14, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> You're paying considerably more then I am for Preferred Xtra which is a much higher package.


Preferred Xtra doesn't have NBCSN, which is a "must have" channel for us. Entertainment is the lowest package that still has that channel, but doesn't tag on the extra $9/mo RSN fee.

Technically YTTV + Philo costs less than my discounted Entertainment package bill, but it also gained channels like Smithsonian (only available through the $4.99/mo "Movies Xtra" pack), DIY, and Science channel.

Cost isn't the biggest factor though. The UI of both Philo and YTTV on the AppleTV4k box is multiple orders of magnitude faster than the navigation on any HRxx box. DVR navigation has thumbnails so you can quickly and easily search your way past commercial breaks. Combine that will functional voice search, and the ability to use an iPad/iPhone as a keyboard for text input, and the experience is vastly superior.

The ultimate winning factor for streaming today was the reason I signed up for DirecTV over a decade ago: picture quality. I have 2 TVs with DirecTV boxes and AppleTVs, so I've done A/B comparisons on each of them. One TV has the HR44, the other has a C51 client. There are nights where DirecTV's dynamic compression absolutely destroys the picture quality.

I posted these examples last April; this was the final thing that pushed me to streaming.

DirecTV:

__
https://flic.kr/p/8
YoutubeTV:

__
https://flic.kr/p/3

These are both the camera on my phone pointed at the TV, so there is inherent loss in the image there. The thing to note is look at how jaggy the text of the time clock is on the DirecTV image. The compression that game was also crazy - it tried to blend the white jerseys of the Leafs players with the white surface of the ice, so it just turned into moving blobs of MPEG compression artifact goo at times.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

espaeth said:


> DVR navigation has thumbnails so you can quickly and easily search your way past commercial breaks. Combine that will functional voice search, and the ability to use an iPad/iPhone as a keyboard for text input, and the experience is vastly superior.


Just my experience, but...

I FFx3 on my HR54 through commercials and nail it every time. I don't see what's hard about it, unless you don't pay attention . I almost never have to go back because I FF'ed too far. Maybe like 1 in a 200 times I overshoot.

Speech is a gimmick. I have no accent and it understands me fine. I've had it since the iPhone 4S, in my car, on my TV remote and I just never use it... it's faster to type stuff in. My parents tried it and it never understands them.

Sorry, but I've got better things to do then constantly having to unlock my phone to use it as a remote.

Your screen grabs are great... Imo they both suck ... but since you didn't compare apples and apples (same frame) and zoomed in (do you really paste your face 1" from the screen in normal viewing?), I'll leave that to you. I don't watch sports, so for the content I watch on DirecTV, it's great. Anyways, there's going to be artifacts in DirecTV and streaming. Going by your screen grabs at face value, yeah, I'll give it to the streaming, but none of the DirecTV channels I watch look that bad.


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## espaeth (Oct 14, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> Speech is a gimmick.


For a lot of use cases, I actually agree. Where it is incredibly useful, however, is watching hockey games from the DVR and catching up to live. Once the period is over, just a simple voice command of "skip forward 18 minutes" and boom, I'm right at the start of the next period. Is this feature essential? No. Is it nice? Absolutely.



SledgeHammer said:


> but since you didn't compare apples and apples (same frame) and zoomed in (do you really paste your face 1" from the screen in normal viewing?)


While it's not the same frame, the only thing that changes on the score bug is the time and occasionally the score next to the teams. On the DTV video the NHL in the middle of the shield got completely compressed away. You don't have to line that up frame by frame to compare -- it's the same video quality throughout the entire period. The picture is closer than my normal watch distance, but the artifacts were clearly visible from a standard viewing position for a 65" TV.

In fairness, not everything had the same quality discrepancy; NBCSN seemed to be worse off than other channels. In our case it's one of the channels that gets a good chunk of screen time, especially in the April - June time frame.

It sounds like DIRECTV works great for you, and that's perfectly fine. I only commented to highlight that this statement actually cuts both ways.


SledgeHammer said:


> You aren't getting the same channels, same features or the same number of TVs and you're picking up a bunch of limitations.


Compared to a similarly priced service with DIRECTV, with YTTV+Philo I'm gaining channels that I at least occasionally watch (Smithsonian, Olympic channel, Science, DIY, etc), I'm gaining features (profiles, better mobile apps, sports highlights auto-indexed in DVR recordings), and for the channels I watch there is a net improvement in video quality. I also added the ability to view DVRed shows from 2 additional TVs in the house that were restricted to just TV Everywhere apps before. (they don't get enough use to warrant another $7/mo box)

All that said, streaming doesn't have to be a 1-for-1 replacement of DIRECTV. Most of the appeal of streaming is that it introduces something very important to the TV market: choice.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

espaeth said:


> (Smithsonian, Olympic channel, Science, DIY, etc)


I dunno what it is about those channels. I watch Science, DIY, HGTV, History and those channels seem to not be considered "basic cable" they're always in some extra package. Even when I was looking at Cox, I would have had to get a special extra pack. A lot of the streaming packages I looked at are missing one or more. I'm amazed Preferred Xtra has everything except Smithsonian.

I wasn't disagreeing with you btw , I was just saying I wouldn't pay an extra penny or switch "just for speech".

DirecTV is actually cheap for additional boxes. My parents are on TW and a 2nd box there is $17/mo.

If you have a lot of TVs then streaming is going to be cheaper, but the person has to go in understanding they aren't going to be able to use all of them at the same time like they do now. Either cuz their internet isn't fast enough, the wifi isn't fast enough or the service doesn't allow that many concurrent streams.

At some point, the way streaming is going, you're going to need like 20 providers to get all the channels with each selling 2 or 3 lol of the ones they own.

Plus, I also believe the prices will ramp up to match traditional as well. Surveys say most cord cutters do it for the savings... so...


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

You won't have to worry about DIY soon as it is going away in the near future.


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

b4pjoe said:


> You won't have to worry about DIY soon as it is going away in the near future.


Source?


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

What Will Happen to DIY Network Shows When It Becomes Chip and Joanna Gaines's New Channel?

Chip and Joanna Gaines' TV Network to Replace DIY Network on Discovery

Maybe more of a 'rename' than going away?

EDIT: 'Re-Branding'


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> What Will Happen to DIY Network Shows When It Becomes Chip and Joanna Gaines's New Channel?
> 
> Chip and Joanna Gaines' TV Network to Replace DIY Network on Discovery
> 
> ...


They'll probably cancel a lot of the shows. Right now I think I just watch The Vanilla Ice Project and Pool Kings. And Pool Kings I kind of skim through rather then watch.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> They'll probably cancel a lot of the shows. Right now I think I just watch The Vanilla Ice Project and Pool Kings. And Pool Kings I kind of skim through rather then watch.


I don't watch either - is Pool Kings about maintaining your pool? If so, I follow the advice here religiously. It's saved me lot's of money for sure - hundreds each season. Read the 'Pool School' section (easy quick read), download their app and get the recommended test kit (TF-100) - best investment I've ever made. (We have a 16x32 in ground.)

Home - Trouble Free Pool

The only reason I ever go to the pool store any more is for liquid chlorine (5 gal. blue container), and I do that there only to retain a relationship in case I need them for a repair that's over my pay-grade.


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

Pool Kings is a show about building new pools in people’s backyards.

I’ve always said there’s too many channels nowadays and that some of them could consolidate into one channel. 
The DIY HGTV Network
The Cooking Food Channel
The Discovery Learning History and Science Channel
The VH1 MTV Network

The list goes on and on........


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> I don't watch either - is Pool Kings about maintaining your pool?


No, it's about building over the top pools in "normal peoples" backyards.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

SledgeHammer said:


> They'll probably cancel a lot of the shows. Right now I think I just watch The Vanilla Ice Project and Pool Kings. And Pool Kings I kind of skim through rather then watch.


Vanilla Ice would probably be the least likely to be on the Gaines network.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

TheRatPatrol said:


> Pool Kings is a show about building new pools in people's backyards.
> 
> I've always said there's too many channels nowadays and that some of them could consolidate into one channel.
> The DIY HGTV Network
> ...


Interesting. I'm in the process of installing a pool and a hot tub in a section of our property that we've never been able to use because of the slope. Lots of excavating and the cost of the pool and hot tub has become incidental. Walls and patios are more expensive than I thought they'd be.

Rich


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

I think I know what is going to drive me to cord cutting - political ads. Here in Maine we are already seeing ads for / against candidates. In the next 6 months there probably won't be anything else. I don't care what candidate I don't want to see political ads and the quantity we see.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

CTJon said:


> I think I know what is going to drive me to cord cutting - political ads. Here in Maine we are already seeing ads for / against candidates. In the next 6 months there probably won't be anything else. I don't care what candidate I don't want to see political ads and the quantity we see.


That's what a DVR is for. I almost never see ads, and I live in Iowa where we probably get 5x the political ads you see anywhere else other than New Hampshire and South Carolina.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> Interesting. I'm in the process of installing a pool and a hot tub in a section of our property that we've never been able to use because of the slope. Lots of excavating and the cost of the pool and hot tub has become incidental. Walls and patios are more expensive than I thought they'd be.
> 
> Rich


You should watch Pool Kings. You might get some ideas. They've built amazing pools on lots with 45 degree slopes.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

SledgeHammer said:


> Lol... to me its more convenient to have everything unified in a single UI and all integrated and working together, but that's just me.
> 
> As for binging... hmm... I did that when I discovered 24 and Prison Break a few years ago. Prison Break sucked after season 2, but 24 was so addictive for the 204 *1 HOUR* episodes and the 2 hour movie that I couldn't put it down. Binging on 206 hours is a lot of work and afterwards my brain was mush. Also binged on Casa De Papel and a few other shows. I find when I binge, I get bored towards the end and rush through the episodes just to be done with it and don't enjoy them as much.
> 
> Granted, I could have gone faster then 8 years on 24, but doing that much in a month, I definitely killed a few brain cells doing that... haha.


Unified? Siri on Apple TV. It works fantastic for me and makes life super simple. Find whatever and it lists it and let's me play it from whatever app has it available. Faster than you'll ever search for something on DIRECTV.

And it's extremely useful in the car and for adding to lists while doing something like cooking or what have you.

It's way more than a gimmick if you actually stick with using it for a while you'll soon find it simple and second nature. And for those it doesn't understand they need to use it more and teach it their voice to have it work right. It really does get better over time shockingly.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

inkahauts said:


> Unified? Siri on Apple TV. *It works fantastic for me and makes life super simple.* Find whatever and it lists it and let's me play it from whatever app has it available. Faster than you'll ever search for something on DIRECTV.
> 
> And it's extremely useful in the car and for adding to lists while doing something like cooking or what have you.
> 
> It's way more than a gimmick if you actually stick with using it for a while you'll soon find it simple and second nature. And for those it doesn't understand they need to use it more and teach it their voice to have it work right. It really does get better over time shockingly.


Voice control just makes all aspects of TV watching simpler, but it seems to make folks think it complicates the experience. One of these days someone at Apple is gonna get an Echo Cube and once he sees what you can do with that...well, I'd like to have an ATV that has voice controls that mimic what the Cube has. I have spent hours watching content on my Cubes and never had to pick up a remote. There's not much you can't do with voice controls and a Cube. I'd like to see a Cube/ATV hybrid. That would be awesome!

Rich


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## B. Shoe (Apr 3, 2008)

As someone is who is diving head first into streaming-only after five years with my current satellite provider, I look at it as simply another system to learn. Over time, I learned all the ins and outs of navigating and using my satellite system. With a little bit of patience, I'll learn how to whip back and forth between apps, shows, channels, etc, as quickly as possible on my Apple TV box. Will it be easier to bounce back and forth between a couple of college football games on YouTube TV? Maybe, maybe not. How quickly can I change apps? Who knows. But I'll figure it all out and become as swift as possible with it.

It's fun to learn new things.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

On AppleTV the TV app makes it much simpler for many of the streaming services though not all. Pick a show and it either runs in the app itself or starts the needed app and runs the show there. Not quite as smooth as linear tv imo, but pretty darned close.

Voice control for me is just a non-starter. The only time I use voice is for searches. And even sometimes that doesn’t find everything on the Tivo. I’ve had no few times where voice search didn’t produce the right results but typing in a search did. Irritating!!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


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## B. Shoe (Apr 3, 2008)

lparsons21 said:


> On AppleTV the TV app makes it much simpler for many of the streaming services though not all. Pick a show and it either runs in the app itself or starts the needed app and runs the show there. Not quite as smooth as linear tv imo, but pretty darned close.
> 
> Voice control for me is just a non-starter. The only time I use voice is for searches. And even sometimes that doesn't find everything on the Tivo. I've had no few times where voice search didn't produce the right results but typing in a search did. Irritating!!
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


Agreed, it's not as smooth, overall. But I'm quickly getting used to it. I've started to gather up my favorite streaming apps into order of preference, added my favorite five at the top of the Apple TV page, and I'll continue to keep using voice searches/commands until I figure out the nuances and tricks to getting it right.


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> That's what a DVR is for. I almost never see ads, and I live in Iowa where we probably get 5x the political ads you see anywhere else other than New Hampshire and South Carolina.


I also watch very little live but news and sports and driving me crazy already


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

B. Shoe said:


> As someone is who is diving head first into streaming-only after five years with my current satellite provider, I look at it as simply another system to learn. Over time, I learned all the ins and outs of navigating and using my satellite system. With a little bit of patience, I'll learn how to whip back and forth between apps, shows, channels, etc, as quickly as possible on my Apple TV box. Will it be easier to bounce back and forth between a couple of college football games on YouTube TV? Maybe, maybe not. How quickly can I change apps? Who knows. But I'll figure it all out and become as swift as possible with it.
> 
> It's fun to learn new things.


Watching multiple games is where D* stands out. I can't figure out how to that as easily with the ATVs and if you can't do it with them I kinda doubt there's a better alternative. Changing apps takes a few steps but you get used to it. Have patience, you'll get it. Oh, BTW, you just made my "intelligent" list.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> On AppleTV the TV app makes it much simpler for many of the streaming services though not all. Pick a show and it either runs in the app itself or starts the needed app and runs the show there. Not quite as smooth as linear tv imo, but pretty darned close.
> 
> Voice control for me is just a non-starter. The only time I use voice is for searches. And even sometimes that doesn't find everything on the Tivo. I've had no few times where voice search didn't produce the right results but typing in a search did. Irritating!!
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


Even the ATVs can't navigate thru Hulu very well. That's one app that has problems. But it seems to be improving.

Have you tried using voice commands on the ATV? I have no problems there. For searches, I mean. Always seems to get me where I want to be.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

B. Shoe said:


> Agreed, it's not as smooth, overall. But I'm quickly getting used to it. I've started to gather up my favorite streaming apps into order of preference, added my favorite five at the top of the Apple TV page, and I'll continue to keep using voice searches/commands until I figure out the nuances and tricks to getting it right.


The ATVs have more of a learning curve than any streamer I've used and once you figure everything out it gets pretty simple. Lots of stuff to learn in the ATV's menus. Gotta remember, you're using a very powerful box there, damn near an iPad.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

CTJon said:


> I also watch very little live but news and sports and driving me crazy already


Gonna get even crazier over the next year.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> Even the ATVs can't navigate thru Hulu very well. That's one app that has problems. But it seems to be improving.
> 
> Have you tried using voice commands on the ATV? I have no problems there. For searches, I mean. Always seems to get me where I want to be.
> 
> Rich


Yeah, voice search on the ATV seems very solid. On my Tivo it works but just often enough it doesn't do as good a search as typing the search in.

One of the biggest reasons I don't use voice much is that I almost always use my Logitech Elite remote.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

One thing about the ATV and the Amazon Cube that always bugged me is that there is no clock. Finally it dawned on me to just use the voice remote and ask it what time it was. Works perfect.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

b4pjoe said:


> One thing about the ATV and the Amazon Cube that always bugged me is that there is no clock. Finally it dawned on me to just use the voice remote and ask it what time it was. Works perfect.


There is a clock on the ATVs. Take a good look at the Progress Bar.

Rich


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

Rich said:


> Watching multiple games is where D* stands out. I can't figure out how to that as easily with the ATVs and if you can't do it with them I kinda doubt there's a better alternative. Changing apps takes a few steps but you get used to it. Have patience, you'll get it. Oh, BTW, you just made my "intelligent" list.
> 
> Rich


The ATV NFLST app lets you watch 4 games at once.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

Rich said:


> There is a clock on the ATVs. Take a good look at the Progress Bar.
> 
> Rich


I'll admit...that is one place I never looked for it.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

Rich said:


> Voice control just makes all aspects of TV watching simpler, but it seems to make folks think it complicates the experience. One of these days someone at Apple is gonna get an Echo Cube and once he sees what you can do with that...well, I'd like to have an ATV that has voice controls that mimic what the Cube has. I have spent hours watching content on my Cubes and never had to pick up a remote. There's not much you can't do with voice controls and a Cube. I'd like to see a Cube/ATV hybrid. That would be awesome!
> 
> Rich


IMO their are definitely some things that are more easily done with voice...search, some text inputs, several others. But honestly, other things I can do with one or two pushes of a button...volume up/down, FF/REW, switch from my FireTV Stick 4k that I'm currently watching to my Shield...I'll do that with one click of a button before you can say "Alexa blah, blah, blah..." LOL.


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

TheRatPatrol said:


> The ATV NFLST app lets you watch 4 games at once.


I bought and use my ATV 4k for two things, PSVue multiview (split the screen into 4 panes to watch 4 different channels...great for sports) and NetFlix ATMOS support. For everything else I use my FireTV Stick 4k's or my Shields.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

CTJon said:


> I also watch very little live but news and sports and driving me crazy already


Your mistake is watching ANYTHING live. When I watch the evening news for example I change the channel in advance, and start watching about 15 minutes after it starts. That way I can jump through commercials. I don't bother recording it, if I miss it I miss it no big deal it isn't like the old days when the evening news was your only source until the morning paper the next day.

When I watch sports I record the stuff I really want to watch, and watch in 15 minute bursts. I not only skip commercials, I FF between plays, during timeouts and reviews, etc. When I catch up to 'live' then I watch something else for a bit - usually movies, if you watch other sports at the same time and get ahead of what you're watching then you risk "spoilers"  If I'm watching games I'm less invested in then I sometimes am watching games on all four live tuners - that's quite easy to do with football if you are skipping commercials, timeouts, and FFing between plays. Not sure how easy this would be to do with Genie, but it is easy on my Tivo.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

TheRatPatrol said:


> The ATV NFLST app lets you watch 4 games at once.


I know. Doesn't fit in the way I want to watch the NFL. MLB has a similar option and I've tried it and don't use it. I'd rather watch baseball/football games in the way I'm used to. Just my opinions. Just the way I want to do it. Not proselytizing.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

b4pjoe said:


> I'll admit...that is one place I never looked for it.


Not only a clock, it also tells you how much time is left on a program and when it will be over. Don't use Fire TV devices very much but I wouldn't be surprised if they have something similar.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

mjwagner said:


> IMO their are definitely some things that are more easily done with voice...search, some text inputs, several others. But honestly, other things I can do with one or two pushes of a button...volume up/down, FF/REW, switch from my FireTV Stick 4k that I'm currently watching to my Shield...I'll do that with one click of a button before you can say "Alexa blah, blah, blah..." LOL.


I do use the remotes in the normal manner most of the time. But, suppose you had a handicap that kept you from using a remote in the normal manner. When I saw what Cube could do, handicapped folks were my first thought, not "blah, blah, blah".

Not a big fan of the Fire TV devices but I can tell you this: I can walk into any room I have a TV set and a Cube in and just say, "Alexa, turn on the TV.", and the TV and ATV and AVR come on and I'm all set. Can you do that with Shield? Or do you have to find the remote first?

Rich


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## mjwagner (Oct 8, 2005)

Rich said:


> I do use the remotes in the normal manner most of the time. But, suppose you had a handicap that kept you from using a remote in the normal manner. When I saw what Cube could do, handicapped folks were my first thought, not "blah, blah, blah".
> 
> Not a big fan of the Fire TV devices but I can tell you this: I can walk into any room I have a TV set and a Cube in and just say, "Alexa, turn on the TV.", and the TV and ATV and AVR come on and I'm all set. Can you do that with Shield? Or do you have to find the remote first?
> 
> Rich


Agreed, folks with handicaps are a completely different use case. Certainly in that case voice command technology is a great solution.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

Rich said:


> I can walk into any room I have a TV set and a Cube in and just say, "Alexa, turn on the TV.", and the TV and ATV and AVR come on and I'm all set. Can you do that with Shield? Or do you have to find the remote first?


I can do that with my Harmony Hub based remote (Elite). If I ask what's her name to turn on the TV, she turns on my TV, C61K and AVR, setting it's input to the port I have the C61K connected to. If I ask her to turn on my ATV, she will set the input on my AVR to the ATV. (I switch devices using my AVR - I don't have them connected to different ports on the TV.)

When using DIRECTV, Alexa will change channels for as us well using the DIRECTV skill. The Harmony skill does everything else.

I haven't tried talking to my ATV yet, though. Things you have said make we want to try that, for sure. I'll be putting that little remote on my coffee table today...


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> I can walk into any room I have a TV set and a Cube in and just say, "Alexa, turn on the TV.", and the TV and ATV and AVR come on and I'm all set. Can you do that with Shield? Or do you have to find the remote first?


I use the rectangular remote and not the peanut one. I also have HDMI control with all my devices. It's one button on the remote to turn on the TV, DVR and AVR and one button to turn them off. I'm pretty sure I can do that a lot faster then going through Alexa . It takes you 1 - 3 seconds to say it, maybe another second or two for Alexa to process it and another second or two for her to turn on the TV? So all in all, from the second you start talking to watching, it's about 5+ seconds? Takes me less then a second to press a single button on the remote. I don't even need to look at it, just pick it up and tactile memory the button.

My sisters husband orders pizza through Alexa. I watched him do it a few times. Seems like it would be easier to hop on line or use the pizza app.

A use case for speech might be while you're drive and you need voice to call somebody.

Voice seems very inefficient for anything on the TV for the various times I've tried it. Remember, when you're typing, you rarely need to type the whole thing as it'll auto complete and you maybe need to type 5 characters or less to get to what you want.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

@SledgeHammer - We have an Echo in both our kitchen and family room. As we walk into the family room from the kitchen, very often we'll tell her to turn on the TV and tune to a specific channel. It all happens before we sit down. We may never even touch the remote while watching TV.

When I tell her to turn off the TV, she does so of course, but then also checks to see if it's after sunset and lights our way back though the kitchen and upstairs to the bedroom, turning off the lights behind us as we go.

That may sound like overkill, but it's handy if we are carting stuff in our hands while leaving the family room (we eat in there sometimes while a game is on).


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> I can do that with my Harmony Hub based remote (Elite). If I ask what's her name to turn on the TV, she turns on my TV, C61K and AVR, setting it's input to the port I have the C61K connected to. If I ask her to turn on my ATV, she will set the input on my AVR to the ATV. (I switch devices using my AVR - I don't have them connected to different ports on the TV.)
> 
> When using DIRECTV, Alexa will change channels for as us well using the DIRECTV skill. The Harmony skill does everything else.
> 
> I haven't tried talking to my ATV yet, though. Things you have said make we want to try that, for sure. I'll be putting that little remote on my coffee table today...


Actually, for voice commands, you can't beat an Echo Cube. Of course that means you have to enter the Amazon environment to get all the goodies from the Cube. The PQ in that environment is a touch below what you get with an ATV. That's my main reason for sticking with the ATVs. In short, the voice commands are very limited on the ATVs and on the Cubes you can do a whole lot of stuff using just your voice. I'm not exaggerating when I talk about the Cubes. That's why I think a streamer that could do all the things an ATV can do combined with what the Cubes can do would be a superb device. A honey of a hybrid...I hope someone at Apple realizes this.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> @SledgeHammer - We have an Echo in both our kitchen and family room. As we walk into the family room from the kitchen, very often we'll tell her to turn on the TV and tune to a specific channel. It all happens before we sit down. We may never even touch the remote while watching TV.
> 
> When I tell her to turn off the TV, she does so of course, but then also checks to see if it's after sunset and lights our way back though the kitchen and upstairs to the bedroom, turning off the lights behind us as we go.
> 
> That may sound like overkill, but it's handy if we are carting stuff in our hands while leaving the family room (we eat in there sometimes while a game is on).


So glad to see I'm not alone. Gets lonely out here at times. I'd stick you on my new "intelligent" list for this post...but I had you on it already.

Rich


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## B. Shoe (Apr 3, 2008)

I'm figuring out the voice commands on the ATV box pretty quickly. Switching apps, powering down...it's not hard. That’s in comparison to remotes, personal butlers to turn off your set for you, etc. My larger challenge, regarding the Apple TV 4K box, is re-calibrating my television (TV model is in my signature) to handle the different frame rates.

With my satellite provider, one HDMI port set for my satellite box (set for 60p frames, and 1080i/720p programs), and the other HDMI port set strictly for for my Blu-Ray player (24p frames, 1080p movies). The box appears to be trying to upgrade everything to 1080p (ex., FOX broadcasts in 720p, and I think ESPN does, also). I've started to inquire on a couple of other boards that focus more on A/V gear and calibration to get some more in-depth answers.

In the grand scheme of things, I'm nitpicking. But I'd like to find a happy medium that works to cover everything.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

Rich said:


> So glad to see I'm not alone. Gets lonely out here at times. I'd stick you on my new "intelligent" list for this post...but I had you on it already.
> 
> Rich


You've made my weekend! Been trying for that list for a long time!


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

b4pjoe said:


> One thing about the ATV and the Amazon Cube that always bugged me is that there is no clock. Finally it dawned on me to just use the voice remote and ask it what time it was. Works perfect.


BTW, the clock on the Progress Bar is the same on every channel the ATVs have, not just NF. It's a feature of the ATVs.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

B. Shoe said:


> I'm figuring out the voice commands on the ATV box pretty quickly. Switching apps, powering down...it's not hard. That's in comparison to remotes, personal butlers to turn off your set for you, etc. My larger challenge, regarding the Apple TV 4K box, is re-calibrating my television (TV model is in my signature) to handle the different frame rates.
> 
> With my satellite provider, one HDMI port set for my satellite box (set for 60p frames, and 1080i/720p programs), and the other HDMI port set strictly for for my Blu-Ray player (24p frames, 1080p movies). The box appears to be trying to upgrade everything to 1080p (ex., FOX broadcasts in 720p, and I think ESPN does, also). I've started to inquire on a couple of other boards that focus more on A/V gear and calibration to get some more in-depth answers.
> 
> In the grand scheme of things, I'm nitpicking. But I'd like to find a happy medium that works to cover everything.


Just looked at your sig. You'd get a lot more out of that ATV 4K box if you upgraded your plasma to a 4K TV set. It's a big step up and it's not really all that expensive. All those frame problems would go away.

Rich


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

Rich said:


> BTW, the clock on the Progress Bar is the same on every channel the ATVs have, not just NF. It's a feature of the ATVs.
> 
> Rich


Just checked. My ATV 4K has no clock on the progress bar. It shows how much of the show has been watched and how much is left to watch but there is no clock.


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

b4pjoe said:


> Just checked. My ATV 4K has no clock on the progress bar. It shows how much of the show has been watched and how much is left to watch but there is no clock.


If you tap it a second time the clock will display.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

TheRatPatrol said:


> If you tap it a second time the clock will display.


Nope. Doesn't work. There is no clock there. TVos 12.4.

Whoops....there it is with the 2nd tap. Wasn't paying close enough attention at first.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> Gets lonely out here at times.


I think that should tell you something Rich . Most people would find it easier to press a single button on the remote then mess around with voice. You're also discounting all the people that have accents where it doesn't work too well or those that don't even speak English. I didn't even have to program the remote. All HDMI control. I did have to program it to control my AVR volume, but that's it. On a day to day basis, I only need the DirecTV remote.

Lights that track you around and automated lighting scenes? Come on now. That's just a party trick. I was just talking with somebody about smart appliances yesterday. Washers, dryers, fridge, etc. All party tricks that aren't really useful long term. The smart washer & dryer, all they do is let you monitor the cycles from your phone. Neat? I guess... am I really going to do that very often? Probably not. The smart fridge at least has some more practical features. That I would rate as less of a party trick, but is it useful to the point of spending an extra $2K or more EXTRA on the fridge? Probably not.

Where I *do* spend my money on gadgets and tech is where I see a better ROI. Instead of slow, overpriced SATA SSDs I invest in NVME m.2 SSDs that are 7x faster because I'll use that every day. Same thing with an OLED TV and a higher end AVR that has key features like higher quality room eq, more power, etc. and a WiFi6 router, etc. More practical.

We get you like streaming... but its definitely not playing out like you are implying where in a couple of years all the traditional services will be out of business. As a matter of fact, if you paid attention last month, Netflix is starting to lose customers too. Raising prices when all your popular content is going away? Probably not a smart idea. They are also ending most of their popular in house shows. The majority of the movies coming to Netflix are pretty bad. Did you watch Point Blank? You think that was good? Or The Teacher? Did you think that was good? I sure hope so, because that's going to be the typical Netflix content going forward. There is a reason that Netflix stock has dropped about -$90/share since then. You may also have noticed that the two most popular shows on Netflix are Friends and The Office. Both not Netflix shows and both going away soon. The WSJ reported that 70% of watched hours on Netflix is licensed content. All of which is going way soon.

I've also noticed a recent trend where cord cutters are starting to complain about having to pay for "yet another streaming service" to get all their content. That's going to become a much bigger issue over the next year as a lot of content owners are rolling out their own standalone services and yet more content will be going away from Netflix and you'll need to pay for "yet another streaming service".

Speaking of streaming services... I have a 2016 LG OLED... so far 2 streaming providers have recently dropped support for it. I read they also dropped support for older streaming devices. On a 3 yr old TV... lol...


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

b4pjoe said:


> Nope. Doesn't work. There is no clock there. TVos 12.4.
> 
> Whoops....there it is with the 2nd tap. Wasn't paying close enough attention at first.


You will see the same thing on every app on the ATVs.

Rich


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> I think that should tell you something Rich . Most people would find it easier to press a single button on the remote then mess around with voice. You're also discounting all the people that have accents where it doesn't work too well or those that don't even speak English. I didn't even have to program the remote. All HDMI control. I did have to program it to control my AVR volume, but that's it. On a day to day basis, I only need the DirecTV remote.
> 
> Lights that track you around and automated lighting scenes? Come on now. That's just a party trick. I was just talking with somebody about smart appliances yesterday. Washers, dryers, fridge, etc. All party tricks that aren't really useful long term. The smart washer & dryer, all they do is let you monitor the cycles from your phone. Neat? I guess... am I really going to do that very often? Probably not. The smart fridge at least has some more practical features. That I would rate as less of a party trick, but is it useful to the point of spending an extra $2K or more EXTRA on the fridge? Probably not.
> 
> ...


I agree with your views on smart appliances. But 'party trick'? One thing that never happens any more here is a light left on because someone forgets to turn it off. Granted, it didn't happen very often, but it used to happen.

I don't have my 'watch TV' scene set up as just a trick. We keep two lights on while watching TV at night. They are in each corner of our family room on the same wall as our wall mounted TV. (2 40 watt equivalent LED's)

The room is 22' x 24', and those lights are not on wall switches, nor can they be unless I bring in an electrician. We never ever walk to each to turn them on or off. The exit to the room is in the wall that is to the left of the TV and behind us when watching TV - basically in the left rear corner of the room (to the kitchen). Next to that exit are three smart switches that control - 2 high hats that illuminate the fireplace area, a light in the ceiling fan and the fan itself.

When I turn off the TV if after sunset, the 2 high hats come on (so we can see our way out of the room), and then the 2 LED's that are on shut off, the fan if on shuts off, the fan light if on shuts off and then one set of kitchen counter lights illuminates at 40% so we have some light in the kitchen when we walk into it. The 2 high hats in the family room will automatically turn off in 3 minutes, but most of the time we turn them off manually as we exit the room. One thing for sure is they are never left on.

I haven't mentioned that none of these lights are set to 100% in my scenes. We can ask Alexa to set them at 100%, but that's rare.

To get from the kitchen to our bedroom we walk through our foyer and then upstairs, through a hallway up there and then into the bedroom. I have a scene we call 'nightwalk' that illuminates that pathway, also to 40% brightness. Unless our hands are full, we'll turn those lights off as we go - but even with kids staying with us they are never left on because they are programmed to turn off in 2 minutes with that scene.

Yes, we could do all of this by walking to each switch (did that for years, of course), but we use our voice 95% of the time now. Again, not because it's cool or cute, but because we're used to it and it's very convenient for us.

I could talk to you about all of the lights and associated switches in our kitchen, but that would seem like over kill to you lol. We have two sets of counter lights (two separated counter areas), two sets of high hats over those counter areas, track lighting over a breakfast bar and a light in a small hallway leading to a pantry. They can all be controlled by voice when cooking (including brightness levels) and your hands are greasy. All of those lights are set to come on at 60% if you use a switch or with voice - voice or double tapping the switch can bring them to 100%.

I see it as saving on my electric bill every month, and not a party trick at all. Most of all we find it to be very convenient.

I'm a 'gadget guy', and do find it 'cool' as well. My wife on the other hand is the total opposite of me when it comes to gadgets. She doesn't want to know how any of it works when I program a new scene somewhere - not interested at all. She does use the scenes with her voice, however, all the time. So, she does like the convenience, just not the 'how'. If I removed our smart home stuff she would not be a happy camper at all now that she's used to it.

Just my 2 cents.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

The voices on TV do not wake up my wife or keep her awake. My voice does wake her up. Voice control is a non-starter in my house. Even when she is awake she keeps asking "what did you say" when I am using voice control. If I talk she expects me to be talking to her.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

James Long said:


> The voices on TV do not wake up my wife or keep her awake. My voice does wake her up. Voice control is a non-starter in my house. Even when she is awake she keeps asking "what did you say" when I am using voice control. If I talk she expects me to be talking to her.


Funny stuff. From my point of view, my wife rarely hears me say anything...


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> I agree with your views on smart appliances. But 'party trick'? One thing that never happens any more here is a light left on because someone forgets to turn it off. Granted, it didn't happen very often, but it used to happen.
> 
> I don't have my 'watch TV' scene set up as just a trick. We keep two lights on while watching TV at night. They are in each corner of our family room on the same wall as our wall mounted TV. (2 40 watt equivalent LED's)
> 
> ...


The smart fridge has some features that are beyond "party tricks". A co-worker has one and he said it has the capability to "auto-generate" grocery lists, but he doesn't really use that feature because its a "lot of work" to use. If they came down in price I might get one if I was in the market, but not for what they cost now.

All the smart lights and smart switches are pretty expensive? Have you re-couped the money you invested in the parts and labor to switch everything out in terms of savings on your electric bill? I live in So Cal and lights are turned off in my house, so the major electric expense is from the A/C.

In regards to turning stuff on/off with the TV, if you can't do HDMI control, the nicer AVRs have a 12v trigger that can do a lot of stuff. Like you can control a power strip with it or stuff like that.

I am seeing in the newer houses in my area, they have some of the smart light stuff built in from the builder. I wouldn't tear it out in that case , but I'm not sure how far I'd go in customizing scenes, etc. I wouldn't go retro fitting it into my current house for sure. I did swap out the standard outlets and switches for Decora's, but that was for looks. Man, what a pain. Swapping the wires isn't a big deal, but leveling them out and getting the proper reveal, you have to mess with them quite a bit. If you just slop them in and whatever with random reveals and unleveled, what's the point, they don't look that nice in that case lol. Supposedly now they have the screwless wall plates that auto level and auto reveal them. They didn't have that when I did the upgrade, so it was basically paint sticks and a utility knife to cut off tiny little shims.

You must have a lot more lights in your house then I do. Going up the stairs is a 3 way switch at the bottom and one at the top. The 3 way decora switches are illuminated. I don't think I've ever had an issue with a light being too bright and I wanted it lower. Typically during the day I watch TV with the lights off and get enough light in through the French doors. At night I don't have any lights on when watching TV.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> The smart fridge has some features that are beyond "party tricks". A co-worker has one and he said it has the capability to "auto-generate" grocery lists, but he doesn't really use that feature because its a "lot of work" to use. If they came down in price I might get one if I was in the market, but not for what they cost now.
> 
> All the smart lights and smart switches are pretty expensive? Have you re-couped the money you invested in the parts and labor to switch everything out in terms of savings on your electric bill? I live in So Cal and lights are turned off in my house, so the major electric expense is from the A/C.
> 
> ...


Don't really know if I've recouped the cost. I've added our smart switches and plugs over about a 15 year period, though. so the cost has been really spread out. (Started with X-10 stuff.) I'm primarily using Insteon products, with a few TP-Link smart plugs here and there where you can't see them (they cost less). I buy the stuff on Prime Day or Black Friday. Smarthome.com has 2 for one sales about two times a year also.

So, my cost has been spread out over a long time. My wife likes the look of the Insteon smart dimmers (mostly all she cares about), so it's easy to get her to agree to adding one to the house. I've probably saved more because we've switched over to LED everywhere than because we've automated a lot of our lighting.

I use an ISY hub to control everything - and Alexa can talk to the ISY. I could also use HDMI control at the home theater, but the ISY/Harmony/Alexa links work fine for us.

Bottom line is, yes, I suppose we're paying extra for the convenience, but don't we do that with a lot of stuff lol?

EDIT: I self install the stuff, so no labor cost at all.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Athlon646464 said:


> Funny stuff. From my point of view, my wife rarely hears me say anything...


There is a difference between hearing and listening.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> I agree with your views on smart appliances. But 'party trick'? One thing that never happens any more here is a light left on because someone forgets to turn it off. Granted, it didn't happen very often, but it used to happen.
> 
> I don't have my 'watch TV' scene set up as just a trick. We keep two lights on while watching TV at night. They are in each corner of our family room on the same wall as our wall mounted TV. (2 40 watt equivalent LED's)
> 
> ...


We decided to go to all LEDs a couple years ago. Still find the odd incandescent bulb from time to time but we are almost fully LED now. The savings are very noticeable, the monthly bill dropped a lot. We have lights in the house that we never turn off. No more stumbling around in the dark. Echo devices all thru the home control the lights, rarely have to use wall switches. Don't care what the initial cost was, the result is worth every penny. The touch screen thermostat that used to have fingerprints on it constantly is no longer dirty, most commands are made by voice on the Echos. I believe in making life as simple as possible. Can't say enough good things about the Echos, devices I mocked a few years ago because I didn't understand what they can do.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> We decided to go to all LEDs a couple years ago. Still find the odd incandescent bulb from time to time but we are almost fully LED now. The savings are very noticeable, the monthly bill dropped a lot. We have lights in the house that we never turn off. No more stumbling around in the dark. Echo devices all thru the home control the lights, rarely have to use wall switches. Don't care what the initial cost was, the result is worth every penny. The touch screen thermostat that used to have fingerprints on it constantly is no longer dirty, most commands are made by voice on the Echos. I believe in making life as simple as possible. Can't say enough good things about the Echos, devices I mocked a few years ago because I didn't understand what they can do.
> 
> Rich


I'm almost all LED now too, the major exception is in the ceiling fans since even though they use old style bulbs, I seldom turn on their lights. My bedroom, kitchen and front room have can lights that are all LED, controlled with Lutron Caseta WiFi dimmers. The other 2 bedrooms are lit with ceiling fans but are seldom used.

I control the lighting with either Google or Siri as all my stuff is compatible with both. I have Echo devices that I got for free with other things and don't really use them much at all.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> The savings are very noticeable, the monthly bill dropped a lot. We have lights in the house that we never turn off.


Do you mind if we ask how much your bill dropped by? And is that SPECIFICALLY from the switch to LED or because you made other additional changes?

Why would you leave lights on 24x7? Unless you are growing something... hahaha .


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## Mark Holtz (Mar 23, 2002)

When I moved into my home in Texas, I replaced practically all the bulbs with LED equivalents. Now, I'm closing in on the contract to replace all the windows in my home, followed by the heating & air system.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Do you mind if we ask how much your bill dropped by? And is that SPECIFICALLY from the switch to LED or because you made other additional changes?
> 
> Why would you leave lights on 24x7? Unless you are growing something... hahaha .


I check my usage each month compared to the same usage the same month from previous years. Because rates change, just checking the 'bill' will not give you a clear picture.

I can say my usage today (each month) is never more than it was before I switched to LED's along with my smart devices. On average it's down between 5% and 15%. It's hard to know exactly how to factor in the weather because of our A/C usage, but even this year so far our usage is down - and it seems like it's a much warmer year than last year.

Also - I didn't move to LED's all in one day - we did it room by room over about a 6 month period.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> I'm almost all LED now too, the major exception is in the ceiling fans since even though they use old style bulbs, I seldom turn on their lights. My bedroom, kitchen and front room have can lights that are all LED, controlled with Lutron Caseta WiFi dimmers. The other 2 bedrooms are lit with ceiling fans but are seldom used.
> 
> I control the lighting with either Google or Siri as all my stuff is compatible with both. I have Echo devices that I got for free with other things and don't really use them much at all.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


Can't comment on Siri. Other than using it on my ATVs (I guess that's Siri). Google's answer to the Echos is a lot "smarter" than the Echos but it seems like the Echos do a lot more. I do have on Google Home. Don't use it much. Another YMMV thing, Lloyd.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Mark Holtz said:


> When I moved into my home in Texas, I replaced practically all the bulbs with LED equivalents. Now, I'm closing in on the contract to replace all the windows in my home, followed by the heating & air system.


We just replaced most of our windows. I got a lot of wild estimates from $20,000 to $4,000. Took the lowest bid. The high bid was from a guy that wanted to install Anderson windows. Might be the best window on the planet but I don't see a $16,000 difference in quality. My next door neighbor just got an estimate for $34,000 for the same job. Both homes are very similar. Wild estimates. Be careful.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> I check my usage each month compared to the same usage the same month from previous years. Because rates change, just checking the 'bill' will not give you a clear picture.
> 
> I can say my usage today (each month) is never more than it was before I switched to LED's along with my smart devices. On average it's down between 5% and 15%. It's hard to know exactly how to factor in the weather because of our A/C usage, but even this year so far our usage is down - and it seems like it's a much warmer year than last year.
> 
> Also - I didn't move to LED's all in one day - we did it room by room over about a 6 month period.


We are on a plan that estimates our usage over a year. Used to be just about right but when we made the major changes, new HVAC unit and LEDs...well, the estimate for the first year we could document fully came in way too high and we didn't have to pay for the last 3 months. Thinking about solar power now. Trying to work up the courage to put solar panel on our new roof. Don't like roof penetrations.

Did someone actually ask you if you bought all those LEDs at once? That would take a lot of planning, never mind the money.

Rich


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

Rich said:


> We are on a plan that estimates our usage over a year. Used to be just about right but when we made the major changes, new HVAC unit and LEDs...well, the estimate for the first year we could document fully came in way too high and we didn't have to pay for the last 3 months. Thinking about solar power now. Trying to work up the courage to put solar panel on our new roof. Don't like roof penetrations.
> 
> Did someone actually ask you if you bought all those LEDs at once? That would take a lot of planning, never mind the money.
> 
> Rich


No, I mentioned that in relation to how hard it is to know how much we are saving. I know we are, it's just difficult to quantify it. And yes, when we decided to do that, we spread it out over time to budget the expense. I suppose doing it room by room made it easier to find the right bulbs as well.

I would love to do solar, but we're not sure we'll be here long enough for the payback. If this was 30 years ago, and if they had today's technology then, we would have done it already.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> No, I mentioned that in relation to how hard it is to know how much we are saving. I know we are, it's just difficult to quantify it. And yes, when we decided to do that, we spread it out over time to budget the expense. I suppose doing it room by room made it easier to find the right bulbs as well.
> 
> I would love to do solar, but we're not sure we'll be here long enough for the payback. If this was 30 years ago, and if they had today's technology then, we would have done it already.


I suppose I could go back in our records (wife's an accountant) and tell you how much our bill differed from the estimate, but that would take a lot of work. And I'm lazy.

I've upgraded our electrical system over the years. Added a generator a few years ago and solar power has always interested me. We just put an 8'x8' hot tub in our back yard and we're gonna put in the pool which will be heated next month. Wife asked me last night how all that's gonna affect our power bill. Might have to get solar panels. Not worried about the payback, it just sounds interesting and I finally have an excuse.

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> We just replaced most of our windows. I got a lot of wild estimates from $20,000 to $4,000. Took the lowest bid. The high bid was from a guy that wanted to install Anderson windows. Might be the best window on the planet but I don't see a $16,000 difference in quality. My next door neighbor just got an estimate for $34,000 for the same job. Both homes are very similar. Wild estimates. Be careful.
> 
> Rich


While the quotes for new windows at my old house weren't that widely separated, I sure learned a lot about 'advertised' price and what the real price would be. Windows World was advertising $129 each installed all over the place, so I called them. After adding in 'show up fee', cleanup fee, fee for removing some windows for some bogus reason it ended up that they would cost about $500 each installed. They didn't get the job!


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> While the quotes for new windows at my old house weren't that widely separated, I sure learned a lot about 'advertised' price and what the real price would be. Windows World was advertising $129 each installed all over the place, so I called them. After adding in 'show up fee', cleanup fee, fee for removing some windows for some bogus reason it ended up that they would cost about $500 each installed. They didn't get the job!


My window replacement came in at $400 a window. Had I put in Anderson windows the cost would have been ~$1,800 a window. Yeah, I get it, Anderson windows must be great. But the cost! Think of this, if my neighbor went for the $34,000 estimate that would be $3,090 a window! Heart stopping.

Rich


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Rich said:


> I've upgraded our electrical system over the years. Added a generator a few years ago and solar power has always interested me. We just put an 8'x8' hot tub in our back yard and we're gonna put in the pool which will be heated next month. Wife asked me last night how all that's gonna affect our power bill. Might have to get solar panels. Not worried about the payback, it just sounds interesting and I finally have an excuse.


Friend of mine has a pool, and solar heating panels on a south facing hillside next to it (a fluid flows through them which transfers the heat to the pool) There's an automatic cover on it that covers it at dusk and opens it mid morning, to hold in the heat overnight. It is warm enough to swim in early April though late October (in Iowa) and it costs her nothing to heat beyond the cost of the heating panels.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Friend of mine has a pool, and solar heating panels on a south facing hillside next to it (a fluid flows through them which transfers the heat to the pool) There's an automatic cover on it that covers it at dusk and opens it mid morning, to hold in the heat overnight. It is warm enough to swim in early April though late October (in Iowa) and it costs her nothing to heat beyond the cost of the heating panels.


Lots of ways to heat pools inexpensively. All you really need is some imagination, a garden hose and a circulating pump. I have a gas line going to my generator and I'm gonna tap off that to feed the pool's heater. Used to have a pool on the other side of the house, heated that in several ways, want to do it properly this time, doesn't cost all that much. But, if I were to go solar...I gotta give that some thought. Good suggestion, thanks.

Rich


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## glrush (Jun 29, 2002)

Limited Disney deal drops the price of Disney+ to less than $4 per month


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## Kuclas (Aug 12, 2019)

I’m still on the fence to go back to directv satellite vs keeping spectrum (silver package) vs philo plus YouTube tv 

The reality Is the cost are all relatively the same when you include the internet cost

This is what I’m looking at 
1. Spectrum silver ($70 plus 1 hd dvr ($15) plus bogus $12 local channels fees plus bogus extra taxes) equals $95 price locked for 2 years plus 400mpbs internet ($40) total cost including taxes is $138 (no data cap)

2. Att fiber internet standalone (no data cap 1000 mpbs) $70 first year plus YouTube tv ($50) plus $20 philo (my wife wants lifetime movie channel (philo) and bravo/oxygen (YouTube tv). Plus Florida bogus 12% communications taxes. Equals $78 for YouTube tv plus philo. Plus $70 for internet. Total cost $148

3. Directv satellite xtra package (includes oxygen/lifetime movie network) $70 plus 3 receivers ($14 extra). So $84 plus bogus taxes regional sports fee ($8-9) plus other bogus taxes including Florida communications 12% tax . Comes out to $109. Plus 1000mpbs ($70-$10 bundle discount). Total cost is $169 with taxes (New customer pricing). $450 gift cards. Adjusted for gift cards $132 a month (months 1-12). Months 13-24 price goes up to like $175-180/months (tv and internet)

So really no where to hide. Prices roughly the same unless we truly cut the cord. And no sports for me. No women’s channels for my wife. I have amazon fire tv recast which works pretty well and getting better since I got it in December 2018 when it first came out. But my wife doesn’t like the recast even with the philo integration (tried test trial 7 days) We have 5 fire 4K tv boxes/4K sticks. Also have 3 Apple TV 4K. I love my gadgets. 

I’ve been trying spectrum for last 21 days. Have 9 days left in 30 day money back policy. Spectrum is ok. Apple TV spectrum app can get blurry and it’s known problem during high demand times. (I switch to standalone app for same channel) on Apple TV and standalone app is not blurry. So it’s the spectrum tv app. Not my internet. I got steady 300-400mpbs linksys WiFi velop mesh (6 of them in the house hard wired Ethernet). So the blurry pics on spectrum app from time to time is not due to internet. 

I’m inclined to stick with spectrum at this time. No contract anyways. 

But YouTube Tv plus philo May be in the plans soon. I used my brother YouTube tv account and it loads channels quick much quicker than spectrum tv app on Apple TV. But my wife wants integrated channels and doesn’t want to navigate philo plus YouTube tv. Happy wife happy life.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Kuclas said:


> I'm still on the fence to go back to directv satellite vs keeping spectrum (silver package) vs philo plus YouTube tv
> 
> The reality Is the cost are all relatively the same when you include the internet cost
> 
> ...


Have you tried the "secret" Preferred Xtra package? It's pretty much Xtra, but you get rid of the RSN fee (you lose a sports channel, but you care as much about sports as I do, it seems ). It's not available online, you have to call in, but it'll save you the $8 or $9.

Florida has 12% tax on Sat? Yikes... BFD though since you don't have state income tax lol... I'd take that deal.

If you don't mind playing the loyalty program game once a year, you can generally renew the promos when they fall off. Sounds like that would be the cheapest option for you. But some folks on here don't want to be bothered with calling in once a year, so YMMV...


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## Kuclas (Aug 12, 2019)

SledgeHammer said:


> Have you tried the "secret" Preferred Xtra package? It's pretty much Xtra, but you get rid of the RSN fee (you lose a sports channel, but you care as much about sports as I do, it seems ). It's not available online, you have to call in, but it'll save you the $8 or $9.
> 
> Florida has 12% tax on Sat? Yikes... BFD though since you don't have state income tax lol... I'd take that deal.
> 
> If you don't mind playing the loyalty program game once a year, you can generally renew the promos when they fall off. Sounds like that would be the cheapest option for you. But some folks on here don't want to be bothered with calling in once a year, so YMMV...


I did try to play the loyalty game. My directv choice (grandfathered with lifetime movie network my wife wants that's now on xtra package) was $72 a month (I had att wireless $25 video loyalty credit plus $40 12 month credit ended August 6 2019). I called directv and all they offered was $5 off. So my bill with Internet would have gone up to $160/month with att fiber 1000mpbs ($70-$20 credit)

So I canceled it and directv never called back. So I returned the directv boxes one week later.


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## riprecked (Oct 11, 2009)

I’ve tried all the services and YouTube TV was my choice. PQ is excellent and the interface is great. Works on tons of devices. 

Yes - the CBS/CW recordings insert commercials that you cannot get around. My answer has been to stop watching them since there is so much quality stuff on other channels and streaming services. 

Had DirectTV since the beginning and do not miss it at all.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

riprecked said:


> I've tried all the services and YouTube TV was my choice. PQ is excellent and the interface is great. Works on tons of devices.
> 
> Yes - the CBS/CW recordings insert commercials that you cannot get around. My answer has been to stop watching them since there is so much quality stuff on other channels and streaming services.
> 
> Had DirectTV since the beginning and do not miss it at all.


Yeah, that's great except YouTube is missing a lot of channels: PBS, A&E, BET, DIY, History, Lifetime, MTV, Science, TVLand, VH1 and possibly others. Plus like you said, you get forced to watch ads on CBS.


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## espaeth (Oct 14, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> Yeah, that's great except YouTube is missing a lot of channels: PBS, A&E, BET, DIY, History, Lifetime, MTV, Science, TVLand, VH1 and possibly others.


With the exception of PBS (which is coming to Youtube TV this fall), you can pick up all of those channels for $20/mo with Philo if you want to have them. With PBS if you make a tax deductible $60/year donation you get Passport access, and can watch from the PBS catalog commercial free on demand.

Yeah, it's not all one service, but the flexibility exists to pick up the content you want. The other advantage is no contracts, so it doesn't cost you any more than a month of service (in most cases) if you decide to change course. For example, right now Dish & Sling have a dispute with FOX Sports RSNs. If you just signed up for Dish in June 2019, you have to pay a hefty cancellation fee to change services before June 2021. With Sling, if you decided your RSN was a channel you must have, the worst you're out is the remainder of a month of service, and you can freely sign up with any of the other live streaming providers that currently carry the channel.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

espaeth said:


> With the exception of PBS (which is coming to Youtube TV this fall), you can pick up all of those channels for $20/mo with Philo if you want to have them. With PBS if you make a tax deductible $60/year donation you get Passport access, and can watch from the PBS catalog commercial free on demand.
> 
> Yeah, it's not all one service, but the flexibility exists to pick up the content you want. The other advantage is no contracts, so it doesn't cost you any more than a month of service (in most cases) if you decide to change course. For example, right now Dish & Sling have a dispute with FOX Sports RSNs. If you just signed up for Dish in June 2019, you have to pay a hefty cancellation fee to change services before June 2021. With Sling, if you decided your RSN was a channel you must have, the worst you're out is the remainder of a month of service, and you can freely sign up with any of the other live streaming providers that currently carry the channel.


Well said!

Rich


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

I think, unfortunately, we are going to see more stations pull out of these bundles and sell themselves (or bundled with co-owned channels). I wonder how soon NBC, ABC, etc will start having shows only on their packages as CBS has done. How many ESPN stuff will be moved to ESPN+.
I really don't want to have 10 packages to watch we we can now.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

espaeth said:


> With the exception of PBS (which is coming to Youtube TV this fall), you can pick up all of those channels for $20/mo with Philo if you want to have them. With PBS if you make a tax deductible $60/year donation you get Passport access, and can watch from the PBS catalog commercial free on demand.
> 
> Yeah, it's not all one service, but the flexibility exists to pick up the content you want. The other advantage is no contracts, so it doesn't cost you any more than a month of service (in most cases) if you decide to change course. For example, right now Dish & Sling have a dispute with FOX Sports RSNs. If you just signed up for Dish in June 2019, you have to pay a hefty cancellation fee to change services before June 2021. With Sling, if you decided your RSN was a channel you must have, the worst you're out is the remainder of a month of service, and you can freely sign up with any of the other live streaming providers that currently carry the channel.


Ok, so I need YouTube for $50/mo and Philio for $20/mo + $5/mo for PBS (and I'll just assume I didn't miss any other channels). The $5 I guess goes away when/if YouTube gets PBS = $75/mo now. Why wouldn't I just keep DirecTV at that price? I'm paying LESS then that for Preferred Xtra + HR54. Plus I don't have to worry about going over the Cox 1TB data cap.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

CTJon said:


> I think, unfortunately, we are going to see more stations pull out of these bundles and sell themselves (or bundled with co-owned channels). I wonder how soon NBC, ABC, etc will start having shows only on their packages as CBS has done. How many ESPN stuff will be moved to ESPN+.
> I really don't want to have 10 packages to watch we we can now.


Well said!

Poor .


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

CTJon said:


> I think, unfortunately, we are going to see more stations pull out of these bundles and sell themselves (or bundled with co-owned channels). I wonder how soon NBC, ABC, etc will start having shows only on their packages as CBS has done. How many ESPN stuff will be moved to ESPN+.
> I really don't want to have 10 packages to watch we we can now.


YASS! Yet another streaming service. CBS has done it, ESPN has done it. Disney has done it. HBO has done it. WB has done it. More to follow. In a few years, you'll pretty much be buying 2 or 3 channels at a time.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> YASS! Yet another streaming service. CBS has done it, ESPN has done it. Disney has done it. HBO has done it. WB has done it. More to follow. In a few years, you'll pretty much be buying 2 or 3 channels at a time.


People kept saying they wanted "ala carte". When they get it, they might be sorry!


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

slice1900 said:


> People kept saying they wanted "ala carte". When they get it, they might be sorry!


That has been said for a very long time. The 'packages' came about because of that very reason.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> People kept saying they wanted "ala carte". When they get it, they might be sorry!


If you watch a few channels here and there, "ala carte" might be good. If you watch 10 - 20 channels or more, probably not because the chance of a package existing with your 10 - 20 channels is virtually nil.

The situation today is "ala carte" in that you need multiple providers to get everything you want. At first glance, I need YouTube + Philo + PBS. Then throw in Netflix if I want my Z Rated Third World movies like Calibre and Amazon Prime if I want free shipping + classic TV. Oh and since YouTube forces ads on CBS, I'll need YASS for that since I refuse to watch ads. Then I'll also need a OTA DVR to get my local sub channels.


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## espaeth (Oct 14, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> Ok, so I need YouTube for $50/mo and Philio for $20/mo + $5/mo for PBS (and I'll just assume I didn't miss any other channels). The $5 I guess goes away when/if YouTube gets PBS = $75/mo now. Why wouldn't I just keep DirecTV at that price? I'm paying LESS then that for Preferred Xtra + HR54.


Preferred Xtra isn't the same content though. YoutubeTV has ESPN, NBCSN, CBS SportsNet, Golf channel, Tennis channel, MLB Network, FS1, FS2, your regional sports network, etc.

You're right that adding additional services to get channels can bump the costs, but it's the same thing with DIRECTV - the only difference is giving all your money to a single entity instead of a few different services. (you also don't have to carry all services every month, if you don't watch all the channels year-round)

*Want Viacom, A&E, and Discovery/Scripps?* DIRECTV Select gets you many of those (no Science channel, Travel channel)
*Need ESPN, NBCSN, FS1?* Now you have to upgrade to the Entertainment pack
*Need your RSN?* Now you have to upgrade to Choice, and pay the ridiculous RSN fee.
*Want Science Channel, CBS Sports Network, Destination America, FS2, Olympic channel?* Now you have to upgrade to Xtra

If you want the Smithsonian channel, you have to pay the extra $5/mo for the "Movies Xtra" pack

Plus you have the initial drag of $17+ in equipment fees starting with a HD non-DVR system and going up from there.

The $50 for YoutubeTV + $20 for Philo gets you 95% of what's in Xtra and parts of the Movies Xtra pack, and isn't saddled with additional RSN fees, HD fees, DVR fees, receiver fees, etc.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

espaeth said:


> Preferred Xtra isn't the same content though. YoutubeTV has ESPN, NBCSN, CBS SportsNet, Golf channel, Tennis channel, MLB Network, FS1, FS2, your regional sports network, etc.
> 
> You're right that adding additional services to get channels can bump the costs, but it's the same thing with DIRECTV - the only difference is giving all your money to a single entity instead of a few different services. (you also don't have to carry all services every month, if you don't watch all the channels year-round)
> 
> ...


I got Preferred Xtra because I have < 0 interest in sports and like other non-sports fans, I wasn't happy about paying $8/mo for sports fans. There are a few shows I like on Smithsonian, but not enough to pay $5/mo for it. Like I said, $50 + $20 + $5 (for PBS, not Smithsonian) is more then I am paying *out the door* for Preferred Xtra + HR54. No connection to DirecTV whatsoever. The 50% discount is strictly through the loyalty program. Preferred Xtra has no RSN fee, and I'm on legacy pricing which is $10 HD + $10 DVR + $3 WHDVR and first DVR is free. Plus its one provider vs. 3 or 4, one bill every month and it has a single, unified interface. On top of that, no streaming provider delivers the local subchannels which is again, all integrated into one box and one UI and one guide.

I've tried Netflix and Amazon Prime and ran out of stuff to watch on the 1 month trials. Now that Netflix is losing all its content (last report had 70+% of the viewed stuff as licensed content), it's pretty much going to be worthless. They seem to be mostly focused on foreign movies now which tend to be terrible. The US made stuff isn't a whole lot better. I watched The Teacher and from the description it was made out to be some bad a$$ teacher kicks bullies a$$ type movie ala The Substitute. In reality it was a super tame knock off where the teacher didn't do much of anything. The Substitute was an Oscar winner compared to The Teacher. On my AP trial, I resorted to re-watching Burn Notice (great show!) because any decent movie on AP is PPV.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

slice1900 said:


> People kept saying they wanted "ala carte". When they get it, they might be sorry!


New technology but the same concept ... "pay for only the channels I want" turns in to pay more for the same content - or lose content paying more per channel for what one wants. The true cord cutters will do OK ... but the cord swappers may end up wishing for the good old days of package TV.



lparsons21 said:


> That has been said for a very long time. The 'packages' came about because of that very reason.


Packages serve the industry, but subscribers get a benefit. Content providers have been able to create new channels knowing that they will be able to deliver them to millions of homes. They may only get 10c per subscriber, but it is enough to sustain the channel.

Without the millions of guaranteed subscribers it is more difficult to launch a financially successful channel. One ends up with lower quality (cheaper) content or more commercials (or both). Or a higher price for those who choose to subscribe.


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Every channel I watch is on Hulu Live TV.....most people don't need/watch every single channel.....I sure as heck don't watch MTV.

$44....no monthly equipment fees and a huge selection of on demand. DirecTv is getting ready to lose a 22 year customer.



SledgeHammer said:


> Yeah, that's great except YouTube is missing a lot of channels: PBS, A&E, BET, DIY, History, Lifetime, MTV, Science, TVLand, VH1 and possibly others. Plus like you said, you get forced to watch ads on CBS.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

raott said:


> Every channel I watch is on Hulu Live TV.....most people don't need/watch every single channel.....I sure as heck don't watch MTV.
> 
> $44....no monthly equipment fees and a huge selection of on demand. DirecTv is getting ready to lose a 22 year customer.


The channels I listed are channels I watch. I do only watch one show on MTV though lol.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> New technology but the same concept ... "pay for only the channels I want" turns in to pay more for the same content - or lose content paying more per channel for what one wants. The true cord cutters will do OK ... but the cord swappers may end up wishing for the good old days of package TV.


Exactly. Multiple providers, multiple bills, multiple user interfaces, multiple tech support. Plus you have to buy streaming devices. They are swapping one cord for 10.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

SledgeHammer said:


> Exactly. Multiple providers, multiple bills, multiple user interfaces, multiple tech support. Plus you have to buy streaming devices. They are swapping one cord for 10.


Yep, that's the downside of streaming. It takes managing the various subscriptions a part of your viewing pleasure! 
I'm using an AppleTV and the TV app on it as much as possible because it gives a bit of unity though not all services are supported yet. Notably Netflix and Sling in my case. Need to test to see if some of the free ad supported streamers are as their UIs are a real mess!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Ok, so again, it's not for you. Personally, I'd simply move on from the discussion if it is something I had no interest in.



SledgeHammer said:


> The channels I listed are channels I watch. I do only watch one show on MTV though lol.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

raott said:


> Ok, so again, it's not for you. Personally, I'd simply move on from the discussion if it is something I had no interest in.


As should the folks who cancelled their DirecTV service, yet still find the need to hang out on a satellite forum trying to convince themselves and others that they made the right decision . Time to head over to streamingtalk.com?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Uhhh...








Welcome to the digital bit stream.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

James Long said:


> Uhhh...
> 
> 
> 
> ...




*General DISH™ Discussion*
Discussion of Dish Network™ products and services including general discussion about receivers, programming and software updates,
*Discussions:

20,895
Messages:

294,342*
DIRECTV General Discussion
*General discussion related to DIRECTV.
Discussions:

50,411
Messages:

1,069,862*
Sub-Forums: 5

And then we have:

*Internet Streaming Services*
Forum for discussion of streaming service content providers.
Discussions:
736
Messages:
5,251

Granted, ISS is much newer, but the Cable forum has been around for a long time and its pretty much a ghost town over there . As is the ISS forum.

Most people think DBS stands for something else .


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## grover517 (Sep 29, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> *General DISH™ Discussion*
> Discussion of Dish Network™ products and services including general discussion about receivers, programming and software updates,
> *Discussions:
> 
> ...


Then maybe the OP should have opened this discussion in the other section instead of within the D* discussions? Oh wait........ ;-)


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> I'm using an AppleTV and the TV app on it as much as possible because it gives a bit of unity though not all services are supported yet. Notably Netflix and Sling in my case. Need to test to see if some of the free ad supported streamers are as their UIs are a real mess!


Don't think Netflix will show up there any time soon as Apple and Netflix don't like each other.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

grover517 said:


> Then maybe the OP should have opened this discussion in the other section instead of within the D* discussions? Oh wait........ ;-)


Why? The article was intended to show that streaming is overrated and has a bunch of gotchas and costs more and is more hassle and you end up getting less .


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

SledgeHammer said:


> Why? The article was intended to show that streaming is overrated and has a bunch of gotchas and costs more and is more hassle and you end up getting less .


And I've been saying for quite awhile that the only way to save any significant money with streaming is to get less. In my current experiment here's what the financials really look like.

Current setup - Cable
$197 now for all their channels w/internet & Premiums
$250 approximately for that at full retail
$150 if I take out Premiums and extra packs

Streaming - 
$100 for internet+$30 Sling Blue = $130 which includes the OTA
If I added Premiums = $45, making the total $175. Note that this config would still have vastly less channels than cable many of which I would watch on some occasions.

Non financial considerations. No matter how I look at it, cable/sat is vastly easier to deal with. Nice guide, great DVR and a single point of usage vice streamings using different apps, all with their own UI's and would take at least 2 boxes to do it. Tivo OTA or something similar and a streaming box.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


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## TV_Guy (Nov 16, 2007)

_Streaming - 
$100 for internet+$30 Sling Blue = $130 which includes the OTA
If I added Premiums = $45, making the total $175. Note that this config would still have vastly less channels than cable many of which I would watch on some occasions.
_

So you have no internet now since you have cable? And if you were to start streaming you would have to add internet for an additional $100?


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

TV_Guy said:


> _Streaming -
> $100 for internet+$30 Sling Blue = $130 which includes the OTA
> If I added Premiums = $45, making the total $175. Note that this config would still have vastly less channels than cable many of which I would watch on some occasions.
> _
> ...


No, I have internet now that is part of my cableTV bundle. But to make a fair comparison between cost of cable+internet vs streaming+internet the internet cost has to be in there too.
IOW, cable+internet w/no premiums = $150 as noted
Streaming+internet w/no premiums = $130 as noted.

While streaming turns out $20/month cheaper now, it doesn't include anywhere near the number channels I would watch and is not nearly as convenient to use/record.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


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## TV_Guy (Nov 16, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> And I've been saying for quite awhile that the only way to save any significant money with streaming is to get less. In my current experiment here's what the financials really look like.
> 
> Current setup - Cable
> $197 now for all their channels w/internet & Premiums
> ...





lparsons21 said:


> No, I have internet now that is part of my cableTV bundle. But to make a fair comparison between cost of cable+internet vs streaming+internet the internet cost has to be in there too.
> IOW, cable+internet w/no premiums = $150 as noted
> Streaming+internet w/no premiums = $130 as noted.
> 
> ...


Your expensive ($100) internet is the reason you don't see a larger savings from streaming. From reading responses here it's obvious that internet pricing is all over the place. If cable is your only source for internet and they charge $100 for a speed required for streaming, then you probably are not a good candidate for streaming until cheaper internet become available to you.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

TV_Guy said:


> Your expensive ($100) internet is the reason you don't see a larger savings from streaming. From reading responses here it's obvious that internet pricing is all over the place. If cable is your only source for internet and they charge $100 for a speed required for streaming, then you probably are not a good candidate for streaming until cheaper internet become available to you.


I don't follow your logic. Cable portion could be $50/month now, streaming would be $30. Same $20 difference regardless of if you count the internet in or not.
For the speed I'm getting, $100 isn't on the horrible side of pricing (200/20). But I don't sub at that level for the speed but because of the way they do their data caps. Cable isn't my only way to get internet, but it is one of the 2 ways to get enough speed to stream. For that same $100 I could get 20/2 from Wisper Internet with no data caps too. Now that I'm finished watching as much as possible in 4K I might be able to cut the internet bill down a bit. I'll know by the end of my experiment where I stand on worst case data use.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


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## TV_Guy (Nov 16, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> I don't follow your logic. Cable portion could be $50/month now, streaming would be $30. Same $20 difference regardless of if you count the internet in or not.
> For the speed I'm getting, $100 isn't on the horrible side of pricing (200/20). But I don't sub at that level for the speed but because of the way they do their data caps. Cable isn't my only way to get internet, but it is one of the 2 ways to get enough speed to stream. For that same $100 I could get 20/2 from Wisper Internet with no data caps too. Now that I'm finished watching as much as possible in 4K I might be able to cut the internet bill down a bit. I'll know by the end of my experiment where I stand on worst case data use.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


I see that your options are limited in terms of pricing. Don't know if you are renting the cable modem or router. I bought my own modem for a $10 savings per month. If you don't need a modem that includes phone service they sell for about $75.


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

TV_Guy said:


> I see that your options are limited in terms of pricing. Don't know if you are renting the cable modem or router. I bought my own modem for a $10 savings per month. If you don't need a modem that includes phone service they sell for about $75.


Yep, got my own modem and router a long time ago. I live in a fairly rural part of the country in a town of about 12K that is one of the bigger towns in the area.

Cable phone service is not ever needed these days IMO. Who doesn't have a cell phone. Of course the cable company keeps trying to sell me on the idea, even offering a free year of it. Then it jumps to $49/month!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> I don't follow your logic. Cable portion could be $50/month now, streaming would be $30. Same $20 difference regardless of if you count the internet in or not.
> For the speed I'm getting, $100 isn't on the horrible side of pricing (200/20). But I don't sub at that level for the speed but because of the way they do their data caps. Cable isn't my only way to get internet, but it is one of the 2 ways to get enough speed to stream. For that same $100 I could get 20/2 from Wisper Internet with no data caps too. Now that I'm finished watching as much as possible in 4K I might be able to cut the internet bill down a bit. I'll know by the end of my experiment where I stand on worst case data use.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


*TV_Guy* has a good point about Internet pricing being all over the place. I get 300/35 with no data caps for...I think it's either $79 or $89 a month, will check the next bill...just checked, $98 a month. I keep reading 25 down is enough to stream 4K content but I gotta wonder about that. I have no way of trying that.

In any event, the only way I can see to save money is to have one streaming video service active at a time. We're not tethered to linear TV anymore and one streamer at a time would be sufficient. Without counting the cost of Internet service my bill would be the cost of that single streamer. That is doable...for someone who really wants to save some money and still enjoy TV.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> Yep, got my own modem and router a long time ago. I live in a fairly rural part of the country in a town of about 12K that is one of the bigger towns in the area.
> 
> Cable phone service is not ever needed these days IMO. *Who doesn't have a cell phone?* Of course the cable company keeps trying to sell me on the idea, even offering a free year of it. Then it jumps to $49/month!
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


Interesting question. Might make an interesting thread...give me a moment...here it is: Who Doesn't Have A Cell Phone?

Rich


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## lparsons21 (Mar 4, 2006)

Rich said:


> *TV_Guy* has a good point about Internet pricing being all over the place. I get 300/35 with no data caps for...I think it's either $79 or $89 a month, will check the next bill...just checked, $98 a month. I keep reading 25 down is enough to stream 4K content but I gotta wonder about that. I have no way of trying that.
> 
> In any event, the only way I can see to save money is to have one streaming video service active at a time. We're not tethered to linear TV anymore and one streamer at a time would be sufficient. Without counting the cost of Internet service my bill would be the cost of that single streamer. That is doable...for someone who really wants to save some money and still enjoy TV.
> 
> Rich


25 down will work fine for one 4K stream. I confirmed that quite awhile back when I had that level of service at my old house.
If I went to streaming, and during this testing, only one streaming service is used that wouldn't be subscribed to regardless. But just having one streaming service subscription at a time just wouldn't work for me. I can't imagine a month with only Netflix for example and that would hold true for any of them IMO. Yes, you could save considerable money but you lose so much.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


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## grover517 (Sep 29, 2007)

Rich said:


> *TV_Guy* has a good point about Internet pricing being all over the place.
> Rich


That was also a biggie for me. I have a special pricing deal that I have had now for about 4 years from Xfinity. For a measly 64.00/month, I get 150/10 Blast, Basic Streampix AND HBO included! I own my own modem and AC router so no extras there either and my hardware is MUCH more "streaming friendly" in regards to being able to prioritize my data within my network than most can with rented/leased modems/routers from their ISP's.

At least for me, going OTT was almost a no brainer. I was paying duplicate for a lot of stuff while still with D* and getting rid of not only that redundant programming (locals, HBO, etc) as well as all those extra "fees" for HD, DVR, RSN's, etc. is where my savings really piled up. Not everyone has the types of advantages I had when I switched.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

TV_Guy said:


> _Streaming -
> $100 for internet+$30 Sling Blue = $130 which includes the OTA
> If I added Premiums = $45, making the total $175. Note that this config would still have vastly less channels than cable many of which I would watch on some occasions.
> _
> ...


I have 1Gbps internet with Cox, but it has a 1TB cap. Getting rid of the cap costs $50/month . People with caps should have concerns if they plan on streaming a lot. Likewise people with slow connections would need to upgrade or may not even be able to if that's all they can get in their area. Upgrading the internet might also mean upgrading their router if they have an N.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> I can't imagine a month with only Netflix for example and that would hold true for any of them IMO. Yes, you could save considerable money but you lose so much.


When they had content, maybe... now that they are losing all the licensed content, not so much... and wall street is punishing shareholders for Hastings arrogance.


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## TV_Guy (Nov 16, 2007)

I have a special pricing deal also for about $43 for 100/25. Most likely due to competition with Fios. Switching from Directv was straightforward in terms of internet since I already had adequate bandwidth so I did not need to touch it. In terms of programming YTTV is a good fit since I mainly watch news and sports. Occasionally watch a movie on Vudu or Fandango or watch some of the free streaming services. The ability to connect a third set was a big plus with YTTV. Would have needed an HDMI splitter or a 2 year commitment to add a third tv. Also would have needed a $60 monthly Directv credit to equalize the pricing.


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## CTJon (Feb 5, 2007)

The other issue for me is- OK normally I watch these shows on these channels - then a new show or series is announced on a channel I currently don't have. So then in standard TV stuff I have to upgrade a package - with streaming I might have to add a totally new streaming source. I don't think we can win in the current age and I think it will get worse if all these streaming sources are successful. However, we will lose with all the stress we are feeling


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

lparsons21 said:


> 25 down will work fine for one 4K stream. I confirmed that quite awhile back when I had that level of service at my old house.
> If I went to streaming, and during this testing, only one streaming service is used that wouldn't be subscribed to regardless. But just having one streaming service subscription at a time just wouldn't work for me. I can't imagine a month with only Netflix for example and that would hold true for any of them IMO. Yes, you could save considerable money but you lose so much.
> 
> Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro


When I hit a site like NF or Hulu I tend to stay on that site til I run out of stuff I want to see. I can stay on sites for months. I don't think I'd go the one sub at a time thing either, was just saying it was doable.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

grover517 said:


> That was also a biggie for me. I have a special pricing deal that I have had now for about 4 years from Xfinity. For a measly 64.00/month, I get 150/10 Blast, Basic Streampix AND HBO included! I own my own modem and AC router so no extras there either and my hardware is MUCH more "streaming friendly" in regards to being able to prioritize my data within my network than most can with rented/leased modems/routers from their ISP's.
> 
> *At least for me, going OTT was almost a no brainer. I was paying duplicate for a lot of stuff while still with D* and getting rid of not only that redundant programming (locals, HBO, etc) as well as all those extra "fees" for HD, DVR, RSN's, etc. is where my savings really piled up. Not everyone has the types of advantages I had when I switched.*


That's what happened to me about 3 years ago. Suddenly I stopped using D* for just about everything. Sadly, I have to keep D*. Just can't see a way out. YTTV is starting to interest me, all the good things I'm reading about has kinda grabbed me. I'd only lose WPIX and about 20 Yankees games...seems like a bit more than "only" tho.

Rich


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

I'll second that a steady speed of 25k down is recommended by most for streaming 4k.


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## TV_Guy (Nov 16, 2007)

Rich said:


> That's what happened to me about 3 years ago. Suddenly I stopped using D* for just about everything. Sadly, I have to keep D*. Just can't see a way out. YTTV is starting to interest me, all the good things I'm reading about has kinda grabbed me. I'd only lose WPIX and about 20 Yankees games...seems like a bit more than "only" tho.
> 
> Rich


Looks like a resale of WPIX to Scripps is pending. Not sure that it will lead to carriage on YTTV. Unless you have physical obstructions to the Empire State Building an OTA antenna designed for VHF and a DVR should do the trick. Compared to D* pricing it should pay for itself in less than 6 months. Also gets you subchannels and insulates you from OTA channel disputes which are inevitable. Locast would be another option for $5 a month but no DVR capability.


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## Kuclas (Aug 12, 2019)

My most important thing is a happy wife

I canceled my combo directv Choice (with grandfather lifetime movie network that now only xtra package with 3 receivers hr44 dvr 1tb cause Bill was gonna up to $112 (had also grandfathered $25 off indefinitely video loyalty credit) plus $50 for 1000mpbs promo (promo expires January $80-10 bundle -$20 12 month credit )

Went to spectrum ($138 total) $40 internet (400mpbs) plus spectrum silver (has hbo and showtime) (1 dvr box ). I thought I could save $20 a month by using spectrum app for streaming on my 3 Apple TV boxes 

Well the spectrum experiment is ending! The dvr box works fine. It’s the spectrum streaming app that sucks. Tried to watch us open on spectrum streaming app and got blurry images half the time. Either spectrum can’t handle the traffic load or the app sucks. Not acceptable. My wife had been complaining for a couple of weeks with the app. It’s inconsistent images. Again this morning. At 10am. She tried to watch her lifetime movies. Grainy images 10% of the time on the app. Unacceptable. It’s not the internet. I got solid 300-400mpbs on the mesh WiFi’s velop with router Ethernet connected to Apple TV as well. The espn stand alone app streamed perfectly last night while the spectrum app struggled with the us open tennis match. 

So I called att up and got the 1000mpbs fiber internet getting reinstalled tomorrow. For $70/month plus $100 visa gift card. No data cap on 1000mpbs. But I won’t go back to directv. I used my brother YouTube tv app and it’s solid. Plus we used philo test a few months ago. 

So I will pay the $70 for YouTube tv and philo plus $70 for att internet (no taxes on att internet fiber). 12% Florida communication taxes on 

So I will paying roughly $148 for internet and tv. 

Similar to direct choice ($112 plus $50 1000mpbs) I would have been paying with the price increase. Directv did offer me $5 off a month to stay. So it would have been $157/month total with 3 boxes Including taxes 

My wife just wants something to work. 

All my hassle and in the end I’m just gonna to save around $10. Lol. I think YouTube tv plus philo will work especially with cloud dvr 

We don’t stream more than 2 at a time anyways

The 800 pounds for me really was I love my att fiber I just hated to lose the fiber servhxe. Rock solid and don’t have to share with neighbors cable connections. Though spectrum Internet was solid the 28 days I have used it so far.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> I'll second that a steady speed of 25k down is recommended by most for streaming 4k.


That's something I'd like to test but I don't know how to do that...what I mean is how do I get down from 300 to 25? Suggestions?

Rich


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

Rich said:


> That's something I'd like to test but I don't know how to do that...what I mean is how do I get down from 300 to 25? Suggestions?
> 
> Rich


Above my paygrade lol. Never tried to 'lower' my speed.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

Rich said:


> That's something I'd like to test but I don't know how to do that...what I mean is how do I get down from 300 to 25? Suggestions?
> 
> Rich


From this:










to this?


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

TV_Guy said:


> Looks like a resale of WPIX to Scripps is pending. Not sure that it will lead to carriage on YTTV. Unless you have physical obstructions to the Empire State Building an OTA antenna designed for VHF and a DVR should do the trick. Compared to D* pricing it should pay for itself in less than 6 months. Also gets you subchannels and insulates you from OTA channel disputes which are inevitable. Locast would be another option for $5 a month but no DVR capability.


Yup, looked at those options and really don't want to go back to antennas again. Buying a DVR would be interesting but no matter what I can do, the easiest thing I can do is stick with D* for sports. Fortunately, my wife isn't as invested is streaming as I am and she's not complaining about the D* bill. Appreciate the suggestions, thanks.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> Above my paygrade lol. Never tried to 'lower' my speed.


Yeah, I can lower voltage but download speed defeats me.

Rich


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> That's something I'd like to test but I don't know how to do that...what I mean is how do I get down from 300 to 25? Suggestions?
> 
> Rich


Your router should have throttle controls. Could be called something like bandwidth management, etc.


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## Kuclas (Aug 12, 2019)

SledgeHammer said:


> Your router should have throttle controls. Could be called something like bandwidth management, etc.


Agree most modern routers u can divert speeds towards different devices to slow down ur speed.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Some routers support something called QoS or quality of service, which would let you restrict the download or upload speeds. But the interface for it on a consumer router may leave a lot to be desired. If you were running DD-WRT on your router I could tell you how to do it...

Whether 25 Mbps is enough depends on how much bandwidth the "4K" you are watching requires. Services that do canned streaming (i.e. non live) like Netflix can compress better than "live" streaming that vMVPDs do. If you watch one of those FS1 football games on a streaming service, 25 Mbps isn't going to be enough unless they are trimming the quality compared to what Directv is sending out via satellite.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Some routers support something called QoS or quality of service, which would let you restrict the download or upload speeds. But the interface for it on a consumer router may leave a lot to be desired. If you were running DD-WRT on your router I could tell you how to do it...
> 
> Whether 25 Mbps is enough depends on how much bandwidth the "4K" you are watching requires. Services that do canned streaming (i.e. non live) like Netflix can compress better than "live" streaming that vMVPDs do. If you watch one of those FS1 football games on a streaming service, 25 Mbps isn't going to be enough unless they are trimming the quality compared to what Directv is sending out via satellite.


I'm not interested enough to play with my routers. In the example you give about FS1 and 4K football games, how much would you actually need?

Rich


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## espaeth (Oct 14, 2003)

Despite its name, streaming isn't really a "stream" of packets. Your player is downloading a bunch of 2-10 second video clips and playing them back in a continuous / gapless manner. That's why online live streams have a lag behind broadcast live streams - your player downloads a bunch of chunks of video to fill the buffer so it has content to play, and then it goes to fetch another batch of clips to follow that up.

Your "stream" of video really ends up looking like this:









For 4k video, the average bitrate for the Women's World Cup coverage was around 30mbps when aggregating the data out to 60 second intervals. (ie, what a standard router utilization graph would display) When I was looking at the real time (per second) download stats, the individual window downloads were actually hitting 200-250mbps.

Each time your player downloads a collection of incremental video segments, it measures the download performance. Based on the observed download rate, it selects the appropriate resolution/bitrate video feed to fetch from the upstream source. Most streaming providers adjust these algorithms to be conservative and favor continuous playback over highest bitrate (ie, if you're marginally close to a threshold, it's going to err on the side of caution and ramp down).

While a 30mbps connection would technically support the FOX Live 4k streams, I think it would take several minutes for the player to "trust" the bandwidth to actually ramp up to 4k, if it ever makes it to that resolution at all. With no margin to work with, there would be too much risk in maintaining fluid playback.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

espaeth said:


> Despite its name, streaming isn't really a "stream" of packets. Your player is downloading a bunch of 2-10 second video clips and playing them back in a continuous / gapless manner. That's why online live streams have a lag behind broadcast live streams - your player downloads a bunch of chunks of video to fill the buffer so it has content to play, and then it goes to fetch another batch of clips to follow that up.
> 
> Your "stream" of video really ends up looking like this:
> 
> ...


I could be mistaken, but its my understanding that for streaming "pre-prepared" videos they use TCP, but for live they use UDP.


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## espaeth (Oct 14, 2003)

SledgeHammer said:


> I could be mistaken, but its my understanding that for streaming "pre-prepared" videos they use TCP, but for live they use UDP.


Nope. TCP all across the board, including all the major live platforms (Vue, YoutubeTV, Sling, ATT whatever). The only variance is some providers are still doing HTTP because the content itself is encrypted, but some providers like Youtube are wrapping everything in TLS/HTTPS.

The segments are all produced centrally, then pushed to a CDN where the small video segment files get replicated out to all of the servers in the CDN fleet. A fair number of steaming problems are when that replication process falls behind. (this is why services like Netflix tend to have fewer issues, because they can pre-position the content well in advance of demand)

If you open up developer tools in a browser like Chrome, whether it's Netflix or YoutubeTV, you can see it's all a crap-ton of HTTP GET requests.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

espaeth said:


> Despite its name, streaming isn't really a "stream" of packets. Your player is downloading a bunch of 2-10 second video clips and playing them back in a continuous / gapless manner. That's why online live streams have a lag behind broadcast live streams - your player downloads a bunch of chunks of video to fill the buffer so it has content to play, and then it goes to fetch another batch of clips to follow that up.
> 
> Your "stream" of video really ends up looking like this:
> 
> ...


You see that peaky behavior because you have a fast link. If you had say 40 Mbps it would be a lot more steady because it can't burst at 200 Mbps. If Fox's peak is around 35-40 Mbps you'd probably want a 50 Mbps link to be safe, especially if you had someone else browsing the web or whatever while you were watching.


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