# Just left DirecTV and feel like I jumped ahead a decade...



## andygradel (Jul 25, 2013)

After spending the past 10 +/- years as a DirecTV customer, we finally made the decision to jump shift after getting fed-up with the worsening reliability. (Almost embarrassed to say that the fact we lost our signal on a clear day during the end of the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest was the last straw...)

Originally envisioned ourselves going with Sling, YouTubeTV or one of the other OTT services. But, after weighing spinning up my own DVR for locals and then discovering that all of the streaming services appear to only offer 2.1 (no 5.1 surround? really?), we added Comcast/Xfinity to our geeky requirements spreadsheet and were shocked that they came out on top. We're saving $40 month over our old, negotiated, DirecTV rate and what we were paying for standalone internet PLUS getting a ton more.

But, money aside, I can't believe how happy we've been since signing up last Sunday night. The "self install" kit showed up on Tuesday and it took me less than 10 minutes to swap things out. Didn't even have to call and speak with anyone to activate. 

What's really blown us away, though, is the hardware and overall experience. That is where I feel like we've been missing out for years with DirecTV. The "X1" platform is slick and the box flies. The recommended shows, on demand that actually works (DirecTV would buffer constantly) and the fact that we can get RedZone Channel as part of the sports pack instead of haggling to not have to pay $350 for Sunday Ticket are huge upgrades. Plus, our kids love the voice remote while I'm loving using Rokus with the Xfinity Stream app in 2 of our lesser-used rooms instead of paying $20 a month to rent boxes for them.

I'm only a few days in, but I honestly can't believe the experience gap between DirecTV and Xfinity. If AT&T doesn't have some huge rebrand/update to the platform waiting in the wings, as opposed to just shifting the current experience to streaming, I can't see how they'll be able to compete head-to-head with Xfinity a few years down the road, especially if they can't do it on price alone.

I was all in on DirecTV for years and years, but after less than a week with Xfinity, I honestly can't say why.


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## dtv757 (Jun 4, 2006)

I think att is working on an android tv GUI or new box 



I'm glad u use apps cause comcast is compressing picture down to 720p for all channels 

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

andygradel said:


> I'm only a few days in, but I honestly can't believe the experience gap between DirecTV and Xfinity. If AT&T doesn't have some huge rebrand/update to the platform waiting in the wings, as opposed to just shifting the current experience to streaming, I can't see how they'll be able to compete head-to-head with Xfinity a few years down the road, especially if they can't do it on price alone.


You're a perfect example of why AT&T is launching AT&T TV next month. They know that neither of their current cable TV platforms -- DirecTV satellite or Uverse TV -- is up to the task of competing in the 2020s. One of the main things they'll tout about AT&T TV is a customized 4K HDR Google Android TV box with a slick UI, access to lots of streaming apps (more than X1 has), and a voice remote with built-in Google Assistant. And they'll automatically include HBO in with every channel package, to be expanded to the new HBO Max streaming service instead of just regular HBO, when HBO Max launches early next year.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Comcast X1 is fine if you don't care about PQ. Unless you live somewhere they haven't fully upgraded the system yet, going to 3 Mbps CBR 720p for all HD channels is a huge step down in PQ from Directv, or even from Dish.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

andygradel said:


> After spending the past 10 +/- years as a DirecTV customer, we finally made the decision to jump shift after getting fed-up with the worsening reliability. (Almost embarrassed to say that the fact we lost our signal on a clear day during the end of the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest was the last straw...)
> 
> Originally envisioned ourselves going with Sling, YouTubeTV or one of the other OTT services. But, after weighing spinning up my own DVR for locals and then discovering that all of the streaming services appear to only offer 2.1 (no 5.1 surround? really?), we added Comcast/Xfinity to our geeky requirements spreadsheet and were shocked that they came out on top. We're saving $40 month over our old, negotiated, DirecTV rate and what we were paying for standalone internet PLUS getting a ton more.
> 
> ...


How does the PQ compare to what you were getting with D*?

Rich


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> You're a perfect example of why AT&T is launching AT&T TV next month. They know that neither of their current cable TV platforms -- DirecTV satellite or Uverse TV -- is up to the task of competing in the 2020s. One of the main things they'll tout about AT&T TV is a customized 4K HDR Google Android TV box with a slick UI, access to lots of streaming apps (more than X1 has), and a voice remote with built-in Google Assistant. And they'll automatically include HBO in with every channel package, to be expanded to the new HBO Max streaming service instead of just regular HBO, when HBO Max launches early next year.


I'll see what the packages cover, but I don't really care how slick the UI is if the channels I want aren't there. For me, today, it would be more expensive / major hassle to put together a streaming only plan that gets all my channels. History, NatGeo, Discovery, Science, DIY, HGTV, etc. don't seem to be all that popular for streaming packages.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

SledgeHammer said:


> I'll see what the packages cover, but I don't really care how slick the UI is if the channels I want aren't there. For me, today, it would be more expensive / major hassle to put together a streaming only plan that gets all my channels. History, NatGeo, Discovery, Science, DIY, HGTV, etc. don't seem to be all that popular for streaming packages.


Well, yeah. I completely agree. Since you brought it up, I'll repost here my SWAG (scientific wild-a$$ guess) as to what the channel packages will look like for AT&T TV.

Three base packages: Select, Plus and Max, priced at $30, $50 and $70 per month (or $10 less your total bill if bundled with AT&T Fiber/Internet). All three packages will automatically include the new HBO Max on-demand streaming service (when it launches in early 2020), plus live channels for HBO, HBO Family, HBO Latino, and (probably) Cinemax. Bundling discounts will also be offered when AT&T TV is combined with certain AT&T Wireless plans.

*AT&T TV - Select* will include the 35+ channels currently in AT&T Watch TV. This package does not contain locals or all-sports channels. But at some point (perhaps not at launch), AT&T will offer a network-based OTA TV tuner (much like Sling TV's AirTV 2 black box) that can stream your free local OTA channels into the AT&T TV user interface, whether on the AT&T TV box or in the AT&T TV app (when used at home and connected to the same wifi network as the OTA tuner).

*AT&T TV - Plus* will contain all of the channels, including locals, that are currently part of the Plus package on DirecTV Now. In addition, it will also have A&E, History, Lifetime, AMC and BBCAmerica.

*AT&T TV - Max* will contain all of the channels, including locals and regional sports networks (RSNs), that are currently part of the Max package on DirecTV Now. In addition, it will also have A&E, History, Lifetime, AMC, BBCAmerica as well as Viceland and IFC. In addition, Max subscribers will get to choose one add-on Extra pack at no additional charge. (Besides RSNs, Viceland and IFC, the other cable channels that will be in Max but not in Plus are sports channels Big Ten Network, CBS Sports Network, ESPN News, ESPN U, FS2, Golf, Longhorn Network, MSG, MSG+, Olympic Channel, SEC Network, YES, and entertainment channels CMT, TV Land, and Paramount Network.)

Nearly all of the local affiliates for ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox in the top 100 largest TV markets (and many in the next 100) will be available in the Plus and Max packages when AT&T TV launches nationwide this fall. Many Telemundo, CW and My Network TV affiliates will also be included around the country. I also believe that PBS channels, whether in the form of live local stations or a live national feed or some hybrid of the two, will also be included in AT&T TV this year.

There will be 4 different Extra packs, priced $5-7 each, that optionally can be added to any of the three base packages. (Your first Extra pack is free if you have the Max base package.)

*Discovery Extra Pack *(featuring all of the channels owned by Discovery)
Discovery
HGTV
Food Network
Investigation Discovery
Animal Planet
OWN
TLC
Travel
Cooking
DIY (to become Magnolia in 2020)
MotorTrend
Science
Discovery Family
Discovery Life
Destination America
American Heroes Channel
Great American Country

*Sports Extra Pack*
MLB Network
NBA TV
NHL Network
ESPN Goal Line
ESPN Bases Loaded
ESPN Buzzer Beater
ESPN Classic
Altitude Sports
Tennis Channel
Stadium Plus 1
Outdoor Channel
Sportsman Channel
World Fishing Network
Ride TV
TVG

*Entertainment Extra Pack*
Sundance TV
We TV
Hallmark Movies & Mysteries
Hallmark Drama
OWN
AXS TV
HD Net Movies
MGM HD
Lifetime Movies
Pop
Logo
MTV Live
MTV2
MTV Classic
Reelz
TV One
Fusion
Game Show Network

*Family Extra Pack*
Hallmark Movies & Mysteries
Hallmark Drama
OWN
Nicktoons
Teen Nick
Baby First
The Weather Channel
Game Show Network
UPtv
FYI
Crime & Investigation
Justice Central
Outdoor Channel
World Fishing Network
Sportsman Channel
RFD-TV
Cowboy Channel
Ride TV

As mentioned above, AT&T's own HBO and Cinemax will automatically be included in every AT&T TV plan. Showtime, Starz and Epix will each be available as a la carte add-ons to any base package. Spanish-language and International packages, as currently offered in DirecTV Now, will also be available as part of AT&T TV.

All packages will come with 20 hours of TrueCloud DVR, which can be expanded to 120 hours for an extra $10/mo. Packages allow 2 simultaneous streams but up to 2 additional streams can be purchased for an extra $5/mo each.

Select live and on-demand content in 4K and 4K HDR will be streamed in those formats, as available, for no additional charge (assuming your network connection supports the increased bandwidth necessary for those advanced picture formats).

Customers *may* be required to take and activate the AT&T TV box (i.e. Osprey C71 Android TV streaming box) on their account but there will be an AT&T TV app for all popular devices that allow customers to watch at home or out-of-home on their own devices.

SO...if all that above turns out to be right (unlikely, but we'll see), you'd be looking at $50 for Plus, another $7 for the Discovery Extra Pack, and another $10 for the upgraded cloud DVR (which I assume you'd want). So that would be $67/mo, which would include HBO as well as the upcoming HBO Max expanded on-demand service, plus all your major locals, plus 4K HDR on select content. If you have AT&T home internet, the price to add that TV package to your bill would go down to $57/mo. Not bad, IMO.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

Not looking forward to the Gaines taking over the DIY channel. Not a fan of them. I doubt they will keep any of the existing DIY content.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> SO...if all that above turns out to be right (unlikely, but we'll see), you'd be looking at $50 for Plus, another $7 for the Discovery Extra Pack, and another $10 for the upgraded cloud DVR (which I assume you'd want). So that would be $67/mo, which would include HBO as well as the upcoming HBO Max expanded on-demand service, plus all your major locals, plus 4K HDR on select content. If you have AT&T home internet, the price to add that TV package to your bill would go down to $57/mo. Not bad, IMO.


Based on your SWAG, I also came up with $67/mo. It wasn't clear if you meant 2 simultaneous streams for viewing or 2 simultaneous streams for recording? Or would you be able to do unlimited simultaneous recordings?

I definitely wouldn't do AT&T internet since at my address they only go up to 100Mbps for like $55/mo I think while I get 1Gbps on Cox + Phone for $109/mo.

And that's assuming they don't have any dumb limitations like poor DVR like controls, trick play, etc. Or restrictions on bypassing ads, etc.

Right now I have a HR54 + Preferred Xtra and I pay $53. And that'll go up to $73 in Sept. $67 - $70 vs. $73 is a wash in my book. My bill has been in that range for YEARS, so my promos keep getting re-upped. If the gravy train shuts down, I'll explore my options, but for saving a few bucks and hearing all the bad about DTVNOW... well...


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## JoeTheDragon (Jul 21, 2008)

slice1900 said:


> Comcast X1 is fine if you don't care about PQ. Unless you live somewhere they haven't fully upgraded the system yet, going to 3 Mbps CBR 720p for all HD channels is a huge step down in PQ from Directv, or even from Dish.


and they have less HD channels then Directv.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

SledgeHammer said:


> Based on your SWAG, I also came up with $67/mo. It wasn't clear if you meant 2 simultaneous streams for viewing or 2 simultaneous streams for recording? Or would you be able to do unlimited simultaneous recordings?


I'm basing a lot of my projections on where things currently stand with DirecTV Now, and then applying some basic logic looking around at how major competitors work (Comcast Xfinity TV, DISH, Sling TV, YouTube TV), plus existing channel categorizations on DirecTV satellite.

Anyhow, DTV Now has always allowed 2 simultaneous steams (of live, previously recorded or VOD material) on any supported device, in or out of home. I predict that AT&T TV will do the same. As for recording, that's all done in the cloud. You can record as many things simultaneously as you like. One guy using DTV Now posted that he tried recording more and more simultaneous channels until he got up to 18 and lost interest in further testing. But it always worked.



SledgeHammer said:


> I definitely wouldn't do AT&T internet since at my address they only go up to 100Mbps for like $55/mo I think while I get 1Gbps on Cox + Phone for $109/mo.


Yeah, I guess it just depends on what your speed needs are. In most areas, including where I live, AT&T Fiber's standard price for symmetrical 100/100 Mbps internet is $50/mo, gateway (modem/router) included (and you have to use it, although you can put it into some kind of bridge/DMZ mode if you insist on using your own router). 100 Mbps is more than enough speed for me. That's honestly enough to stream 4K HDR on 5 screens simultaneously (and that's one more screen than I own).

I'm currently on Comcast standalone broadband with a tier that regularly tests at 71/6 and I never have any problems with streaming 4K HDR. I also work from home and regularly send/receive, upload/download fairly fat files. It's fine. I'm only paying $30/mo for this first year, then it goes to $40 next year, then up to the regular $70, at which point, I'll likely just switch to AT&T Fiber (or probably their reseller, Toast.net -- all their plans are uncapped). I honestly don't know what folks do with 1 Gbps of download speed. I'll always take extra speed at no additional cost but, honestly, for me, anything over 50 Mbps downstream is gravy.

One thing to note is that if you have any speed tier under 1 Gbps with AT&T, there's a 1 TB data cap. (Cox puts a 1 TB cap on all their speed tiers, even their 1 Gbps tier, I think.) But if you add DTV Now to any AT&T Fiber/Internet plan, they waive the data cap. Guarantee you they do the same thing for AT&T TV.

If you need home phone, you might want to look into Ooma, which I put my parents on years ago. It's worked well for them. The Ooma Telo box is regularly $80 and comes with free basic nationwide phone service for the life of it. You just have to pay taxes and the 911 fee every month. For my parents, that comes out to about $5/mo. If you need advanced features (including call blocking/screening), they have their Premiere plan for an extra $10/mo.

So if you went with AT&T TV (based on my SWAG numbers) + 100 Mbps AT&T Internet (no data cap) + Ooma Premiere service phone, you'd be looking at a monthly grand total of about $122.



SledgeHammer said:


> And that's assuming they don't have any dumb limitations like poor DVR like controls, trick play, etc. Or restrictions on bypassing ads, etc.


DTV Now calls their cloud DVR "True Cloud DVR," which I think is to underscore that it doesn't put bogus restrictions on you. It never replaces a recording with a VOD version and it never keeps you from FF or rewinding, including through ads. You can start watching a show you're recording while it's still recording. I imagine that the DVR trick play controls aren't quite as good as you get on a local DVR like the Genie or TiVo but will good enough for most folks.



SledgeHammer said:


> Right now I have a HR54 + Preferred Xtra and I pay $53. And that'll go up to $73 in Sept. $67 - $70 vs. $73 is a wash in my book. My bill has been in that range for YEARS, so my promos keep getting re-upped. If the gravy train shuts down, I'll explore my options, but for saving a few bucks and hearing all the bad about DTVNOW... well...


That's fair, although if HBO interests you, or the much expanded HBO Max, then you should consider that you'd be getting all that content for free with AT&T TV. HBO would cost you an extra $18 on DTV satellite. Also, if you do any streaming -- Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, Hulu, etc. -- you might want to consider that you can't do any of that on your HR54. Also, I don't think the HR54 by itself can provide 4K or 4K HDR, can it? I think you also need a C61 in conjunction with it. The AT&T TV box will support 4K HDR by itself. It will also have the Google Assistant built in for voice search, channel and app selection, playback controls, answers to general questions, home automation control, etc.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> Yeah, I guess it just depends on what your speed needs are. In most areas, including where I live, AT&T Fiber's standard price for symmetrical 100/100 Mbps internet is $50/mo, gateway (modem/router) included (and you have to use it, although you can put it into some kind of bridge/DMZ mode if you insist on using your own router). 100 Mbps is more than enough speed for me. That's honestly enough to stream 4K HDR on 5 screens simultaneously (and that's one more screen than I own).


T at my address is 100Mbps / $50 over phone lines I assume. It's fiber to the hub. Plus a 1TB cap.

I was on a 150Mbps (175Mbps oc) on Cox + phone for around low $80ish I think + 1TB cap. I'm currently on a promo rate with them for 1Gbps + phone for $109 + 1TB cap. Kinda seemed like a no brainer. Last month I noticed they had an even better promo 1Gbps + unlimited for like $65ish, so I called and complained and tried to renegotiate my price down. I did get comp'ed the unlimited (which is $50/mo extra lol).



NashGuy said:


> I'm currently on Comcast standalone broadband with a tier that regularly tests at 71/6 and I never have any problems with streaming 4K HDR. I also work from home and regularly send/receive, upload/download fairly fat files. It's fine. I'm only paying $30/mo for this first year, then it goes to $40 next year, then up to the regular $70, at which point, I'll likely just switch to AT&T Fiber (or probably their reseller, Toast.net -- all their plans are uncapped). I honestly don't know what folks do with 1 Gbps of download speed. I'll always take extra speed at no additional cost but, honestly, for me, anything over 50 Mbps downstream is gravy.


I don't get 1Gbps, more like 900Mbps - 925Mbps, as that's what you'll get in the real world with 1Gbps ethernet due to the overhead. The only test I've found that's even remotely accurate at these speeds is Google Fiber speedtest. Ookla can't test that high seems to crap out at a few hundred Mbps.

I don't work from home regularly, but I do need to RDP in once in a while off hours. So I mostly download fat files. If you assume an average file size of 5GB, you're talking 8 mins vs. < 1 min theoretical, but of course, Cox seems to do traffic shaping, so its more like 15 mins or so vs. a few hours. If you get a really big download, its more like 14GB.



NashGuy said:


> That's fair, although if HBO interests you, or the much expanded HBO Max, then you should consider that you'd be getting all that content for free with AT&T TV. HBO would cost you an extra $18 on DTV satellite. Also, if you do any streaming -- Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube, Hulu, etc. -- you might want to consider that you can't do any of that on your HR54. Also, I don't think the HR54 by itself can provide 4K or 4K HDR, can it? I think you also need a C61 in conjunction with it. The AT&T TV box will support 4K HDR by itself. It will also have the Google Assistant built in for voice search, channel and app selection, playback controls, answers to general questions, home automation control, etc.


Correct. HR54 requires a client to do 4K. There isn't any 4K content on DirecTV that interests me at this time. I'll re-evaluate if that changes. I avoided getting the HS17 because it was headless and requires 2 boxes for my one TV, so if the new box can do 4K HDR directly, that would be more interesting (if there was content).

I also have my eye on TMobile TV if the DTV promo gravy train dries up.

My parents are considering switching to streaming since they are on Spectrum in a one horse town (as in one provider only) and the package they are on now should seriously be illegal. I have preferred xtra + 1Gbps + phone and they are paying about the same for Spectrum with like 25 channels or less + 100Mbps + phone. I keep telling them to switch to Dish/DirecTV/Streaming, but they still have the internet issue to contend with. I might use them to evaluate streaming options if they pull the trigger, but my dad tends to "research stuff" for years, so who knows when that'll happen. They're on 1080P plasma with wireless N now, so the big upgrade will be a complete gut of everything (tv, avr, hdmi cables, 4k player, etc). Even my mom gets annoyed at his endless research lol... when they were painting the house, my dad researched for about a year whether it was a good idea to paint the stucco lol.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

andygradel said:


> After spending the past 10 +/- years as a DirecTV customer, we finally made the decision to jump shift after getting fed-up with the worsening reliability. (Almost embarrassed to say that the fact we lost our signal on a clear day during the end of the Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest was the last straw...)
> 
> Originally envisioned ourselves going with Sling, YouTubeTV or one of the other OTT services. But, after weighing spinning up my own DVR for locals and then discovering that all of the streaming services appear to only offer 2.1 (no 5.1 surround? really?), we added Comcast/Xfinity to our geeky requirements spreadsheet and were shocked that they came out on top. We're saving $40 month over our old, negotiated, DirecTV rate and what we were paying for standalone internet PLUS getting a ton more.
> 
> ...


For reference, what model DVR and other equipment from DIRECTV did you have?


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## ronkeith (Jan 25, 2012)

I am glad Xfinity is working out for you but when I tried them the picture quality on my 65 inch LG OLED TV was very bad with Xfinity. I am blown away at the picture quality of Directv in my humble opinion no one else can compare with Directv when it comes to overall picture.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

ronkeith said:


> I am glad Xfinity is working out for you but when I tried them the picture quality on my 65 inch LG OLED TV was very bad with Xfinity. I am blown away at the picture quality of Directv in my humble opinion no one else can compare with Directv when it comes to overall picture.


Buy an Apple TV box or a Fire TV device and stream NF and AP content. You will see better PQ than D* puts out. Lots of 4K content on those sites.

Rich


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

ronkeith said:


> in my humble opinion no one else can compare with Directv when it comes to overall picture.


Streaming is going to have much better PQ then DirecTV. If you are talking about traditional providers, currently Google Fiber has the best picture quality.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Streaming is going to have much better PQ then DirecTV. If you are talking about traditional providers, currently Google Fiber has the best picture quality.


I thought I saw an article recently that there PQ fell off a cliff in the last few years


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## ghostdog (Jul 6, 2007)

compnurd said:


> I thought I saw an article recently that there PQ fell off a cliff in the last few years


DIRECTV picture quality is excellent.....,


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

ghostdog said:


> DIRECTV picture quality is excellent.....,


Was referring to Google Fiber


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

SledgeHammer said:


> Streaming is going to have much better PQ then DirecTV. If you are talking about traditional providers, currently Google Fiber has the best picture quality.


As others above have noted, Comcast's HD PQ blows chunks. DirecTV satellite's HD PQ was the best I'd ever seen on live cable TV until I tried DirecTV Now on my Apple TV 4K last year. It was even better. Wish I could say how it stacks up to Google Fiber TV, but I've never laid eyes on it, even though they've been here in Nashville for awhile now.


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## janthony6 (Nov 17, 2014)

I cut directv when they wouldn’t renegotiate my price after my 2 year. 

I tried streaming services and use fiber 1000/1000 - picture quality for the most part sucked and streams were always behind live by a lot. Occasionally there would be buffering or certain channels being down at bad times.

Back to directv. Makes me appreciate how good the picture quality is. Especially the 4K channels.


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

I've tried a few streaming channels including Amazon Prime on a Roku 4. Picture quality is ok vs DirecTV but trick-play of any kind sucks. It may be just this particular model of box but lip-sync is terrible.

I'm also completely unimpressed by the programming libraries available. Amazon Prime - almost everything is ancient junk. Vudu PPV never has anything that DirecTV doesn't have and no $ advantage. Netflix... ancient junk. Haven't tried Hulu. Not to say that DirecTV programming is anything special. I've been slowly cutting back on pay movie channels as they are 99% old crap too. If it weren't for a few original series on HBO and SHO they'd be gone.

Basically my wife and I feel that "TV" (to include streaming and movies) has overall been of declining quality/value for years. Even movies now are basically a series of retreads. Doesn't seem to matter what the source or delivery mechanism.

Considering that streaming 1) can't provide any better programming overall, 2) trick-play sucks, 3) lip-sync sucks, and 4) sometimes interferes with other internet activity... I'm completely unimpressed/not sold. Sure, it will probably save money and if that is a tradeoff people are willing to take then I certainly have no issue with it.

BTW, I hold ZERO hope for AT&T/DirecTV Streaming to change my views in any way.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

unixguru said:


> I've tried a few streaming channels including Amazon Prime on a Roku 4. Picture quality is ok vs DirecTV but trick-play of any kind sucks. It may be just this particular model of box but lip-sync is terrible.
> 
> I'm also completely unimpressed by the programming libraries available. Amazon Prime - almost everything is ancient junk. Vudu PPV never has anything that DirecTV doesn't have and no $ advantage. Netflix... ancient junk. Haven't tried Hulu. Not to say that DirecTV programming is anything special. I've been slowly cutting back on pay movie channels as they are 99% old crap too. If it weren't for a few original series on HBO and SHO they'd be gone.
> 
> ...


I've had every iteration of 4K Rokus and I returned every one of them very quickly. If they were giving them away I would not take one. You might want to try an Apple TV streaming box. You will not have those problems. You didn't mention Netflix in your post, you might want to give that streaming video service a try. I've been streaming for years and I spend most of my time on NF. Never see a lack of programming that interests me.

Yeah, no streamer is gonna do trick play like D*'s remotes do. But you don't have to have a remote in your hands constantly when you stream. I get the trick play thing for sports, no streamer can match D* for sports.

Rich


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## paranoia (Jun 13, 2014)

I totally disagree with you ,I have used apple tv, fire stick , and roku, and I still have all of them, and I use a roku on all my tv's ,it has the best interface and easy to use, and I get a great pc, but everyone is entitled to there own opinion .


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

For my official *22,000*th post, but probably not my last, I will also stand for the *Roku*'s. I, too, have used every iteration of the device and have been _extremely_ satisfied -- so much so that I have not felt any need or desire to try other streamers.

To the OP's point about *Comcast*, I switched from Dish to Comcast's X1 technology almost 10 years ago when I bought a new house and have not looked back. I find X1 to be superior in every way, but most importantly, it perfectly suits my lifestyle and personal preferences. With a near 99.99% uptime record, I cannot remember the last time my Comcast cable service was interrupted. It has even kept working during a t-storm when my power went out (I have UPS). I cannot say anything negative about the Comcast service (except maybe the cost which can be a tad pricey).


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

Nick said:


> my *22,000*th post


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

Nick said:


> I cannot say anything negative about the Comcast service (except maybe the cost which can be a tad pricey).


But it's still probably a bit cheaper to bundle both TV service and internet service from Comcast than paying separately for internet from them plus DirecTV from AT&T, isn't it?


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

NashGuy said:


> But it's still probably a bit cheaper to bundle both TV service and internet service from Comcast than paying separately for internet from them plus DirecTV from AT&T, isn't it?


Not for me. I still do better with separate DISH and Xfinity Internet only. While there sre apparent discounts when bundling, I got a discount on unbundled internet.


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## janthony6 (Nov 17, 2014)

I almost signed up for Cox but they use older boxes than Comcast for their x1, don’t do 4K, and their quality is pretty damn low.

Also they sent me a flier for $39 a month. When I went to sign up, it was $20 for a dvr per month, plus 10 for each additional tv. Then you have to pay 12 just to get channels like Disney and an additional 20 a month to get sports channels including RedZone. Hbo and showtime were a 3 month low rate for like 10 plus 5. 

They really charge a lot and rack things up fast. I never liked that they still have channel 2 as standard def and you have to go to 1002 to watch HD. Who watches SD anymore?

Directv just wins - the bit rate is much higher, more channels, free hbo since I have att wireless, 3 months free premiums (all), all 4K boxes, integrates perfectly in my smart home, free Sunday ticket max, no cost for the dvr, free first receiver and 7/mo for each additional.

Total bill is under $80 for 12 months. After that it’s $124.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

paranoia said:


> I totally disagree with you ,I have used apple tv, fire stick , and roku, and I still have all of them, and I use a roku on all my tv's ,it has the best interface and easy to use, and I get a great pc, but everyone is entitled to there own opinion .


Every time I get up the nerve to make that statement this happens. Of course people are happy with the Rokus. That was just my opinion based on buying every higher priced 4K Roku device. As usual, YMMV.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Nick said:


> For my official *22,000*th post, but probably not my last, I will also stand for the *Roku*'s. I, too, have used every iteration of the device and have been _extremely_ satisfied -- so much so that I have not felt any need or desire to try other streamers.
> 
> To the OP's point about *Comcast*, I switched from Dish to Comcast's X1 technology almost 10 years ago when I bought a new house and have not looked back. I find X1 to be superior in every way, but most importantly, it perfectly suits my lifestyle and personal preferences. With a near 99.99% uptime record, I cannot remember the last time my Comcast cable service was interrupted. It has even kept working during a t-storm when my power went out (I have UPS). I cannot say anything negative about the Comcast service (except maybe the cost which can be a tad pricey).


We don't seem to do the post count thing anymore. Congrats, Nick! We ought to revive that thread.

Rich


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

Rich said:


> Every time I get up the nerve to make that statement this happens. Of course people are happy with the Rokus. That was just my opinion based on buying every higher priced 4K Roku device. As usual, YMMV.




I wish I understood how the same product can produce such vastly varying results. Every time I bother to research the lip-sync problem with Roku 4 I find many people having the same problem. Picture quality is acceptable but the lip-sync problem is not. I've had the Roku for a few years and no software update has changed it. I moved ~6 months ago and have completely different internet provider, not that that would have anything to do with it. It must be related to the specific Roku "channel" (aka app on Roku) we use - Amazon Prime. We use it because we get it for free due to Prime membership. Come to think of it, we had CBS All Access for a few months and it was better in that regard.

The thing that grinds me the most is that they could solve the trick-play issues entirely with a box that has local storage (I ranted about this on this forum years ago). Record the program just as if it was a satellite feed. Sure, will be a more expensive box but then it certainly could be a higher-end upgrade that people pay for if they want it. That would start to get interesting.

I think part of the problem with Roku is that its essentially a platform for "apps" supplied by their partners. For example, Vudu and Amazon Prime have absolutely nothing in common as far as appearance. Only the very basics of operation ("Select", "Play", "Pause", etc) are similar purely by convention. Of course trick-play is highly constrained by the lack of local storage that all apps suffer. I haven't tried an Apple TV (yet) but I assume things are very different there - knowing Apple I imagine *they* write only one interface and everybody else just provides the right bit stream. That could partially explain why they are better.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

unixguru said:


> I haven't tried an Apple TV (yet) but I assume things are very different there - knowing Apple I imagine *they* write only one interface and everybody else just provides the right bit stream. That could partially explain why they are better.


Nope - the apps, for the most part, appear to look and operate the same. (I have a Roku, Firestick and an Apple TV 4k.) The Netflix interface is much, much better than the Prime interface (my opinion), but the interface itself is the same on all of my devices.

The difference, at least for me, is PQ - definitely better on my OLED TV with the Apple device. The menu system on it, along with the new TV app is excellent, rivaling the Roku - which is saying something.

As for the speed while in the 'main' menu interface on each device, about the same, but 'feels' snappier on the Apple (but not a big deal). Streams start quicker on the Apple, however, and there is never any buffering. (All three of my devices are connected with ethernet - no wifi while watching TV for me.)

It's the 'fit and finish' of the Apple device that just looks and feels better while using it.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

unixguru said:


> I wish I understood how the same product can produce such vastly varying results. Every time I bother to research the lip-sync problem with Roku 4 I find many people having the same problem. Picture quality is acceptable but the lip-sync problem is not. I've had the Roku for a few years and no software update has changed it. I moved ~6 months ago and have completely different internet provider, not that that would have anything to do with it. It must be related to the specific Roku "channel" (aka app on Roku) we use - Amazon Prime. We use it because we get it for free due to Prime membership. Come to think of it, we had CBS All Access for a few months and it was better in that regard.
> 
> The thing that grinds me the most is that they could solve the trick-play issues entirely with a box that has local storage (I ranted about this on this forum years ago). Record the program just as if it was a satellite feed. Sure, will be a more expensive box but then it certainly could be a higher-end upgrade that people pay for if they want it. That would start to get interesting.
> 
> I think part of the problem with Roku is that its essentially a platform for "apps" supplied by their partners. For example, Vudu and Amazon Prime have absolutely nothing in common as far as appearance. Only the very basics of operation ("Select", "Play", "Pause", etc) are similar purely by convention. Of course trick-play is highly constrained by the lack of local storage that all apps suffer. I haven't tried an Apple TV (yet) but I assume things are very different there - knowing Apple I imagine *they* write only one interface and everybody else just provides the right bit stream. That could partially explain why they are better.


I'm picky about picture quality and I saw a better picture on my ATVs and my Fire TV devices (the Fire TVs are a step below the ATVs I think) than I did on the most expensive Rokus. Never saw that difference until Roku came out with the 4K boxes. The lip sync problem I didn't see but I didn't have the Rokus very long. I don't find it odd that Apple makes what I think is the best streamer out there, they do everything well. An ATV is an iPad without a screen, they are that powerful. I doubt you'd see the lip sync problem with an ATV or a Fire TV device. Best bang for your buck when it comes to streamers? Fire TV devices. ATVs seem to put people off because...well, they are a bit more complicated than the rest of the streamers. Takes a bit of time to get used to them. And they are expensive. Wonderful, but expensive. We have six of them in the house and a bunch of Fire TV boxes that we rarely use. Don't take my word, do yourself a favor and try one for a couple weeks, you'll see.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> Nope - the apps, for the most part, appear to look and operate the same. (I have a Roku, Firestick and an Apple TV 4k.) The Netflix interface is much, much better than the Prime interface (my opinion), but the interface itself is the same on all of my devices.
> 
> *The difference, at least for me, is PQ - definitely better on my OLED TV with the Apple device.* The menu system on it, along with the new TV app is excellent, rivaling the Roku - which is saying something.
> 
> ...


Exactly. And you are clearly able to compare them.

Rich


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

One more tidbit on the Apple TV...

iOS 13 on the ATV will have an associated app on your phone that will listen to your sound system while you are seated in your favorite viewing chair and streaming with the ATV. 

Your phone and the ATV will then talk to each other to correct any lip-syncing issues by making adjustments on the ATV. Sounds (pun intended) very cool.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> One more tidbit on the Apple TV...
> 
> iOS 13 on the ATV will have an associated app on your phone that will listen to your sound system while you are seated in your favorite viewing chair and streaming with the ATV.
> 
> Your phone and the ATV will then talk to each other to correct any lip-syncing issues by making adjustments on the ATV. Sounds (pun intended) very cool.


Didn't know that. What app does that?

Rich


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

Rich said:


> Didn't know that. What app does that?
> 
> Rich


Not out yet unless you want to risk the beta (not sure it's in that yet either). It's planned for iOS 13 - due in September.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

I'm running the iOS 13 beta on my phone, but I'm not going to put it on my ATV - I'm okay with the bugs on my phone so I can see the new stuff coming out, but my wife can be VERY dangerous if something goes wrong while watching TV .

The very first thing I learned here a long time ago was the meaning of the WAF.

Check this out:

iOS 13's Wireless Audio Sync Uses iPhone Mic to Eliminate Lip Sync Error on Apple TV


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> Nope - the apps, for the most part, appear to look and operate the same. (I have a Roku, Firestick and an Apple TV 4k.) The Netflix interface is much, much better than the Prime interface (my opinion), but the interface itself is the same on all of my devices.




Oh that is bloody disappointing.


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> One more tidbit on the Apple TV...
> 
> iOS 13 on the ATV will have an associated app on your phone that will listen to your sound system while you are seated in your favorite viewing chair and streaming with the ATV.
> 
> Your phone and the ATV will then talk to each other to correct any lip-syncing issues by making adjustments on the ATV. Sounds (pun intended) very cool.


THAT is impressive. Always appreciate people/companies that solve problems rather than make excuses.


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

Rich said:


> Don't take my word, do yourself a favor and try one for a couple weeks, you'll see.
> Rich


Advice taken & appreciated. I'll add that to my toy wishlist.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

Athlon646464 said:


> One more tidbit on the Apple TV...
> 
> iOS 13 on the ATV will have an associated app on your phone that will listen to your sound system while you are seated in your favorite viewing chair and streaming with the ATV.
> 
> Your phone and the ATV will then talk to each other to correct any lip-syncing issues by making adjustments on the ATV. Sounds (pun intended) very cool.


Now that's a cool feature, as it would correct mismatch at the source instead of just avoiding it on their end. Everyone else is busy making apps/devices to listen to you so they can sell stuff, Apple is using the ability to make things work better.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

James Long said:


> Not for me. I still do better with separate DISH and Xfinity Internet only. While there sre apparent discounts when bundling, I got a discount on unbundled internet.


Yeah, I did too. If you keep an eye on their specials and sign up at just the right time, you can get a good deal on standalone Comcast internet for the first year, maybe two. I'm paying $30/mo the first year, then $40/mo the next, for 60/5 speeds. But then they go up to the regular price.

My parents have had standalone Comcast internet plus DISH for TV for years. Have tried to get Comcast to budge on the price of internet repeatedly but after it rose to the standard price, the only way they'll offer them any kind of discount is to add other services.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

Athlon646464 said:


> Nope - the apps, for the most part, appear to look and operate the same. (I have a Roku, Firestick and an Apple TV 4k.) The Netflix interface is much, much better than the Prime interface (my opinion), but the interface itself is the same on all of my devices.


Well, yes and no. Apple has a preferred set of playback controls, both in terms of how buttons work on the remote but also how the playback timeline appears and works on-screen, and the vast majority of popular apps (about everything except YouTube and, I assume, YouTube TV) adopts the Apple standard. Those apps also adopt Apple's preferred slide-down-from-the-top panel for additional info and settings.

So when you go from one app to another on Apple TV, there's a LOT more consistency in the user experience than when you go from one to another on Roku. Not even close, IMO. It may sound like a little thing but it's one of those details that makes the Apple TV so much nicer to use.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

unixguru said:


> Advice taken & appreciated. I'll add that to my toy wishlist.


I'd suggest trying Netflix exclusively for a month or two. Takes a bit of time to understand NF. I know just opening the app can be overwhelming to folks that are just getting started. There's so much good content on NF that...well, I spend most of my time on that site. Took me years to figure out how much better streaming is than cable or sat and I didn't expect that to happen. One day it dawned on me that I was streaming so much that D* had become unused for the most part. Wasn't for sports I'd drop D* today without any qualms. Try Netflix with an open mind. I think you'll see what I mean. In the context of streaming Netflix is truly the "gateway" drug. I think.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> Well, yes and no. Apple has a preferred set of playback controls, both in terms of how buttons work on the remote but also how the playback timeline appears and works on-screen, and the vast majority of popular apps (about everything except YouTube and, I assume, YouTube TV) adopts the Apple standard. Those apps also adopt Apple's preferred slide-down-from-the-top panel for additional info and settings.
> 
> So when you go from one app to another on Apple TV, there's a LOT more consistency in the user experience than when you go from one to another on Roku. Not even close, IMO. It may sound like a little thing but it's one of those details that makes the Apple TV so much nicer to use.


The ATVs are a pleasure to use, no doubt about that.

Rich


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## BrendanJ (Dec 22, 2018)

If Xfinity provided the same sports programming as Directv does it would be a no brainer to go quad play or triple play as it would save a bundle with 1gbit internet, phone, and a Flex box. Although 1 HD channel for MLB EI and NBA League Pass is unacceptable and also a deal breaker.

The Flex is basically the X1 box over internet with a voice remote and it's faster than my smart tvs or rokus. For some strange reason they also turn on moca when you add a Flex box.

The customer service with Xfinity has improved to the point where it's not a hassle to call them anymore, the same can't be said for Directv(minus just skipping straight to Retention), AT&T, Centurylink, or Verizon during the day(late at night more experienced reps seem to work).

Outages are more frequent than Century Link DSL and past experience with the X! DVR with mini boxes didn't lend itself to much confidence in its TV product. Outages that can't be fixed with a reset or cleaning of the dish during freak snow storms have been zero with Directv over 15 years the same can't be said for the 7 months with Xfinity internet/phone or the years I had with an X1 system at a 2nd residence.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

BrendanJ said:


> If Xfinity provided the same sports programming as Directv does it would be a no brainer to go quad play or triple play as it would save a bundle with 1gbit internet, phone, and a Flex box. Although 1 HD channel for MLB EI and NBA League Pass is unacceptable and also a deal breaker.
> 
> The Flex is basically the X1 box over internet with a voice remote and it's faster than my smart tvs or rokus. For some strange reason they also turn on moca when you add a Flex box.
> 
> ...


If you have CenturyLink DSL and don't mind it, hold on a few more months. I bet you a dollar that before long, CenturyLink will be bundling the forthcoming AT&T TV streaming cable TV service instead of DirecTV satellite. We'll have to see what the channel packages and pricing looks like on AT&T TV but the CEO has already publicly referred to it as their "satellite replacement product," so it won't be skimpy in terms of offering a big range of channels for those who wish to pay for them. The thin-client set-top box that will come with AT&T TV (powered by Google's Android TV) looks pretty nice too.


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## BrendanJ (Dec 22, 2018)

We left Centurylink couldn't stand 20down/2 up garbage internet anymore, with their customer service closed on the weekends too because, why not. If Prism Fiber to home ever had a chance to come down from CO, which I don't think it does, then I'd go back. Just going to stick with the same grandfathered Premier package at about choice extra price, that we've had for 15 years.

Also the landline phone, went from about $45 with taxes to $10 with taxes through Xfinity, so can't really complain about that either.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

BrendanJ said:


> We left Centurylink couldn't stand 20down/2 up garbage internet anymore, with their customer service closed on the weekends too because, why not.
> 
> Also the landline phone, went from about $45 with taxes to $10 with taxes through Xfinity, so can't really complain about that either.


Yep, can't blame you for dumping that. I don't think CenturyLink is all that interested in their residential business. They're just not investing enough in the network in enough places to be competitive with cable.


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## Phil T (Mar 25, 2002)

Nick said:


> For my official *22,000*th post, but probably not my last, I will also stand for the *Roku*'s. I, too, have used every iteration of the device and have been _extremely_ satisfied -- so much so that I have not felt any need or desire to try other streamers.
> 
> To the OP's point about *Comcast*, I switched from Dish to Comcast's X1 technology almost 10 years ago when I bought a new house and have not looked back. I find X1 to be superior in every way, but most importantly, it perfectly suits my lifestyle and personal preferences. With a near 99.99% uptime record, I cannot remember the last time my Comcast cable service was interrupted. It has even kept working during a t-storm when my power went out (I have UPS). I cannot say anything negative about the Comcast service (except maybe the cost which can be a tad pricey).


Congratulations Nick! I have enjoyed reading your posts over the years.

I am coming up on two years with Comcast TV and don't have anything bad to say about them. Dish was great years ago but got too pricy. DirecTV was great but AT&T ended that quickly. I have gotten older and want reliability. Comcast has provided that for me with both TV and internet. I went the TiVo route and couldn't be happier. I also own my modem and router so I try and minimize what fees I pay them. I don't have to worry about lnb's SWiM switches, rain fade and all the additional hardware associated with satellite. I also have a ROKU, Apple TV and a antenna so if I decide to dump Comcast TV, I am in a good position to do so.


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## dtv757 (Jun 4, 2006)

NashGuy said:


> Yep, can't blame you for dumping that. I don't think CenturyLink is all that interested in their residential business. They're just not investing enough in the network in enough places to be competitive with cable.


Crazy that it seems all telcos have given up on residential service ,

I wish the telcos would expand FTTH again that way they would own the broadband market share and not the cable cos

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## raott (Nov 23, 2005)

Other than the remote (which I'm not crazy on) it's one product Apple really got right. Maybe it's because I have an older model Roku in my other room, but there is no comparison between the two.



Rich said:


> The ATVs are a pleasure to use, no doubt about that.
> 
> Rich


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

raott said:


> Other than the remote (which I'm not crazy on) it's one product Apple really got right. Maybe it's because I have an older model Roku in my other room, but there is no comparison between the two.


I have one of the Harmony remotes that uses their Hub - works great with the ATV. I don't like the ATV remote either.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

dtv757 said:


> Crazy that it seems all telcos have given up on residential service ,
> 
> I wish the telcos would expand FTTH again that way they would own the broadband market share and not the cable cos
> 
> Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


That will never happen. FTTH is too expensive to deploy in existing construction. There will NEVER be another hardwired deployment on the scale of phone lines / cable, etc of any kind. Just too costly to tear up streets, yards, driveways, walls, wire up homes, etc. It will be some wireless technology like 5G or Starlink.


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## Microphone (Jan 30, 2007)

BrendanJ said:


> If Xfinity provided the same sports programming as Directv does it would be a no brainer to go quad play or triple play as it would save a bundle with 1gbit internet, phone, and a Flex box. Although 1 HD channel for MLB EI and NBA League Pass is unacceptable and also a deal breaker.


Unless I missed it earlier in this thread, Xfinity has NHL, MLB and NBA ALL in HD but in a beta mode where you can't record, but you can pause, rewind and fast forward.

I switched almost 4 months ago and have been wanting to do a review of my own. Had Directv for 24 years and thought I'd never get over switching. Took 3 weeks to acclimate. Love the way they neighborhood their channel, the X1 has a ton of cool features my Genie didn't, there are tradeoffs though and and if my picture quality was an A with Directv it's an A- with Comcast. Excellent. And I haven't had to run for cover from my wife from the many major storms we've had when the picture would go out at the best time with a show or sporting event. Yes my dish was aligned correctly. Lot to be said for the reliability.

And I saved a ton of money.

Then there was the switch to Xfinity mobile where I saved a bundle too.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

raott said:


> Other than the remote (which I'm not crazy on) it's one product Apple really got right. Maybe it's because I have an older model Roku in my other room, but there is no comparison between the two.


The remote could be better, I think you could say that about any remote, tho. I had the newest Rokus when they came out in the 4K versions and I had the chance to compare them to my ATVs and FTVs. For PQ, the Rokus were behind the FTVs and the FTVs don't put out as good a picture as the ATVs do. That was enough for me. I tried those Rokus with using them in mind. I had always had a good experience with the Rokus before 4K hit and I was disappointed in the new Rokus. The first one I got was that monster with the large fan in it. That was an awful box. Then they came out the next year (or season) with a model without a fan and I tried that. That was when the comparisons started. First the most expensive, then the next two in line, then I gave up.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> I have one of the Harmony remotes that uses their Hub - works great with the ATV. I don't like the ATV remote either.


Huh. Just another YMMV moment. I've had the Harmony remotes, still have one, nobody uses it. I like dedicated remotes. I've gotten used to the ATV remote, it's a bit more complicated than it looks at first glance and it takes a bit of time to get used to it. You could say the same thing about the Apple TV box, that took a bit of time to get used to. All this new stuff takes time to get used to.

Rich


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

Love the ATV...hate the remote.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

b4pjoe said:


> Love the ATV...hate the remote.


YMMV.

Rich


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

b4pjoe said:


> Love the ATV...hate the remote.


When I started using the ATV4K, I just programmed my trusty ol' Harmony 650 universal remote to control it and it worked pretty well. My older Pioneer A/V receiver didn't support HDMI-CEC and so I still needed a universal remote to easily switch between inputs and make everything "just work". But as I got used to the Apple remote, I found that -- despite some annoying accidental up/down swipes -- I actually really preferred it over the Harmony for operating the ATV4K. Scrolling/scrubbing is just so much faster. Plus I use the Siri voice all the time for "What'd he say?" which jumps back about 15 sec and turns on captions just for that bit as it replays.

So of course I sold my old receiver and bought a new better Yamaha with HDMI-CEC support. So I just click the Apple remote and everything wakes up/turns on to the correct input. I rarely watch anything other than on the ATV4K (I even route live and recorded OTA TV into apps on it) but when I do occasionally put in a Bluray disc, I just use the dedicated remote that came with the player.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

dtv757 said:


> Crazy that it seems all telcos have given up on residential service ,
> 
> I wish the telcos would expand FTTH again that way they would own the broadband market share and not the cable cos


Well, AT&T has gotten serious about expanding FTTH in the past couple of years. They grew it a lot, upgrading homes (like mine) that were formerly FTTN, as well as some homes that had only ever had regular DSL or (like my parents), not even that. I think AT&T FTTN is now available at about 14 million addresses. But they HAD to do the vast majority of that build-out to satisfy a condition the government placed on them for the DTV satellite acquisition a few years ago. So that's at least one good thing that came out of that deal, ha.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> Well, AT&T has gotten serious about expanding FTTH in the past couple of years. They grew it a lot, upgrading homes (like mine) that were formerly FTTN, as well as some homes that had only ever had regular DSL or (like my parents), not even that. I think AT&T FTTN is now available at about 14 million addresses. But they HAD to do the vast majority of that build-out to satisfy a condition the government placed on them for the DTV satellite acquisition a few years ago. So that's at least one good thing that came out of that deal, ha.


My city, which is considered "wealthy" since its a high tech hub similar to silicon valley has AT&T Fiber, but only in newer construction. The rest is Cox DOCSIS 3.1. A few areas have Google Fiber as well. The City wanted Google to come in and build the entire city out, but GF went belly up before we had the chance.... or decided to "re-think" the install process since it was too costly and time consuming. At my house, I can only get 100Mbps from T on phone lines... for $55/mo.


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## b4pjoe (Nov 20, 2010)

NashGuy said:


> When I started using the ATV4K, I just programmed my trusty ol' Harmony 650 universal remote to control it and it worked pretty well. My older Pioneer A/V receiver didn't support HDMI-CEC and so I still needed a universal remote to easily switch between inputs and make everything "just work". But as I got used to the Apple remote, I found that -- despite some annoying accidental up/down swipes -- I actually really preferred it over the Harmony for operating the ATV4K. Scrolling/scrubbing is just so much faster. Plus I use the Siri voice all the time for "What'd he say?" which jumps back about 15 sec and turns on captions just for that bit as it replays.
> 
> So of course I sold my old receiver and bought a new better Yamaha with HDMI-CEC support. So I just click the Apple remote and everything wakes up/turns on to the correct input. I rarely watch anything other than on the ATV4K (I even route live and recorded OTA TV into apps on it) but when I do occasionally put in a Bluray disc, I just use the dedicated remote that came with the player.


The scrolling with the touch pad is my biggest issue. I have tendonitis in my right hand, thumb and wrist. Clicking a remote button isn't too bad but scrolling is a bit difficult. If I want to scroll down one row I either go none or 12. Same for left and right.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

NashGuy said:


> Well, AT&T has gotten serious about expanding FTTH in the past couple of years. They grew it a lot, upgrading homes (like mine) that were formerly FTTN, as well as some homes that had only ever had regular DSL or (like my parents), not even that. I think AT&T FTTN is now available at about 14 million addresses. But they HAD to do the vast majority of that build-out to satisfy a condition the government placed on them for the DTV satellite acquisition a few years ago. So that's at least one good thing that came out of that deal, ha.


Google gave up their fiber ambitions when they found it was too expensive. Verizon basically halted all new FIOS builds, like you say AT&T is only doing it because they committed to doing a certain number (and no doubt picked the areas it would cost them the least to do) and Centurylink hasn't deployed little or no new fiber for like five years.

Basically the only ones doing FTTH are small local/regional companies who can tailor their buildout to the needs of the area they operate, rather than trying to make a one-size-fits-all approach work in areas with above and below ground wiring, different soil types, different densities, different zoning codes and so forth. There's a local operator who has a few cities in Iowa that's moving into the city I live, and the area they say they are doing their initial build is the part of the city I live in. So I'm hoping I can trade my 50/25 Centurylink VDSL2 for fiber within the next year or so.

It may not be fast, but Centurylink has been rock solid for me. I could probably count the number of outages in the past decade longer than a minute or two on one hand.

Personally I think FTTH is a waste, they could run fiber down the streets and use G.fast to deliver a gigabit to the home, that way they don't need to dig up yards and can use the existing phone wiring. I guess even that is too expensive for telco beancounters though. That's the one thing I'm concerned about if I can get fiber - I've got huge oak trees everywhere so trenching would be a big problem. Hoping they can run fiber on the pole my phone/cable/power comes in, but I've heard they aren't doing that in the other cities.


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> That will never happen. FTTH is too expensive to deploy in existing construction. There will NEVER be another hardwired deployment on the scale of phone lines / cable, etc of any kind. Just too costly to tear up streets, yards, driveways, walls, wire up homes, etc. It will be some wireless technology like 5G or Starlink.


Never might be a bit strong. Unlikely maybe. They don't tear up anything anymore - electric/gas for my new build was 400+ feet of horizontal boring.

My new home is about 10 miles out from the edge of Minneapolis/St Paul metro. Before we built the DSL (CenturyLink) here was ~1.5mb! Only because of a gov grant was the trunk upgraded to fiber (by horizontal boring) and DSL went up to 20mb max (paired). We have another vendor with FTTH about 2 miles away that is selling gb. They have zero interest in extending unless somebody else pays for it.

It's quite right to say that it is expensive to run new utilities. And all internet providers have decided that they are not going to invest anything, especially since the government sometimes comes along and pays for it. (Essentially they are relying on the community to install the infrastructure and then they profit off it with a monopoly.)

My problem with assuming "never" is that things weren't that different for electricity, phone, gas, cable, ... so I think it is possible for the government to eventually consider internet critical enough for that kind of expansion. (As a side, while I hope that happens I don't want the utility owning the infrastructure nor having a monopoly; this isn't like electricity or phone or gas where all possible providers are "the same").

As far as I'm concerned, Starlink is an unproven pipe dream. I assume it will be better than current satellite but that isn't saying much. It won't be able to compete in terms of capacity. Given the amount of streaming going on these days that should pretty much ensure that it isn't that good.

5G is another pipe dream. There is going to be a lot of it - in the high-density cities - where there is already existing high bandwidth/capacity options. Where I'm at we have poor LTE so I don't expect to see 5G for a LONG time.

Least anyone think I'm in the boondocks, I'm right on that threshold with poor service near much better service. If I'm not getting upgraded then there is no hope for the vast majority of the nation.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

unixguru said:


> Never might be a bit strong. Unlikely maybe. They don't tear up anything anymore - electric/gas for my new build was 400+ feet of horizontal boring.
> 
> My new home is about 10 miles out from the edge of Minneapolis/St Paul metro. Before we built the DSL (CenturyLink) here was ~1.5mb! Only because of a gov grant was the trunk upgraded to fiber (by horizontal boring) and DSL went up to 20mb max (paired). We have another vendor with FTTH about 2 miles away that is selling gb. They have zero interest in extending unless somebody else pays for it.
> 
> ...


Utilities were built out when everything was cheaper too. Labor, especially and not quickly. More like over a century. If you do that with tech, it'll be obsolete before you finish. Starlink is supposed to resolve the latency issue. Supposedly it will scale to 1Gbps. 5G will come to the population centers first. Starlink sounds a lot like the Tesla, one of Elons pipe dreams that he fails to deliver on. 5G will probably be financed by device makers, chip makers, etc. I.e. I have the iPhone 6. What has any phone manufacturer done since then to make me buy a new phone? Nothing. The games and apps mostly suck. They need something new to sell phones. Plus for people that don't have access to DOCSIS 3.1 or FTTH, 5G is probably the cheapest way to get it there.

My parents live in a city with 45k population and they only have access to 5Mbps through AT&T lol. Spectrum gets them more over cable.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

slice1900 said:


> Personally I think FTTH is a waste, they could run fiber down the streets and use G.fast to deliver a gigabit to the home, that way they don't need to dig up yards and can use the existing phone wiring. I guess even that is too expensive for telco beancounters though. That's the one thing I'm concerned about if I can get fiber - I've got huge oak trees everywhere so trenching would be a big problem. Hoping they can run fiber on the pole my phone/cable/power comes in, but I've heard they aren't doing that in the other cities.


I think the more likely scenario is to run fiber down a limited set of streets in the neighborhood and then use some form of wireless to connect to receivers at each house (mounted in a facing window, under the soffit, or on the roof). Could use some form of millimeter wave, which can still deliver very high speeds (faster than G.fast, and without the need to keep using the decrepit copper lines) even without direct line of sight.

Or in the case of AT&T's AirGig (if that becomes a commercial reality), perhaps they could simply extend the path of the wireless IP signal from the main powerline along the road right up the powerline connecting to the house. Although maybe just using some kind of small-cell mmwave blaster on the utility pole for that last hop to the house would be cheaper to deploy, allowing user self-installs.


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## compnurd (Apr 23, 2007)

My cable company Armstrong which covers parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, New York, West Virginia, and Kentucky just currently started there 10 year plan to replace all coax with FTTH. They started earlier this year in one of the larger towns in the Pittsburgh area they cover

They have been preparing by prewiring all new construction or any line replacements with a coax/fiber cable to make the flip when ready


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

compnurd said:


> My cable company Armstrong which covers parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, New York, West Virginia, and Kentucky just currently started there 10 year plan to replace all coax with FTTH. They started earlier this year in one of the larger towns in the Pittsburgh area they cover
> 
> They have been preparing by prewiring all new construction or any line replacements with a coax/fiber cable to make the flip when ready


Yeah, the *very* long-term evolution of cable companies (which all run hybrid fiber/coax --HFC-- networks now) is probably to eventually go full FTTH, maybe in the late 2020s or early 2030s. But there's still a LOT of mileage to get out of future improvements to DOCSIS broadband on HFC. By investing in incremental network upgrades, HFC can get to symmetrical 10 Gbps speeds next decade.

But a few cable companies are just saying, screw it, let's go straight to FTTH now. Altice is probably the biggest, upgrading the former CableVision network in the greater NYC area to FTTH now. Hadn't heard that Armstrong was doing the same. Good for them.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

NashGuy said:


> I think the more likely scenario is to run fiber down a limited set of streets in the neighborhood and then use some form of wireless to connect to receivers at each house (mounted in a facing window, under the soffit, or on the roof). Could use some form of millimeter wave, which can still deliver very high speeds (faster than G.fast, and without the need to keep using the decrepit copper lines) even without direct line of sight.
> 
> Or in the case of AT&T's AirGig (if that becomes a commercial reality), perhaps they could simply extend the path of the wireless IP signal from the main powerline along the road right up the powerline connecting to the house. Although maybe just using some kind of small-cell mmwave blaster on the utility pole for that last hop to the house would be cheaper to deploy, allowing user self-installs.


Wireless doesn't go through trees and except for neighborhoods less than a few decades old many have too many trees for that to be feasible at mmwave frequencies. Maybe they could use a midband frequency at low power.

If the house has aerial powerlines they could use the existing copper with G.fast. It does a gigabit, nobody needs more than that for a house today or in the foreseeable future. AT&T may not want to support the existing copper, but supporting copper from the pole to the NID is cheap and easy. Heck, pass ownership of it to the homeowner, and make them pay for fixing it if a storm takes down the line.


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## andygradel (Jul 25, 2013)

Rich said:


> How does the PQ compare to what you were getting with D*?
> 
> Rich


Good question. It's definitely softer on a couple linear channels and there are some channels which are surprisingly not available in HD (DIY?), but I've been surprised by how much _more_ my wife and kids are actually using Xfinity over DirecTV.

My kids rarely go to the actual channel. Instead, everything for them is on-demand, where the picture quality looks perfect. Same with my wife. I'd say at least half of her non-Netflix TV time is now Xfinity on-demand. Our DirecTV on-demand rarely worked well.

Makes me wonder how much linear PQ will really matter for the bulk of users in the next couple years.


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## andygradel (Jul 25, 2013)

JoeTheDragon said:


> and they have less HD channels then Directv.


Yeah, but it's also about whether they have the channels you're actually going to watch. When we sat down and put our "required" and "optional" channels into a list, there really is a core of 10-15 total that we watch.

Heck, for my kids (11 and 8), their list of "required" channels is probably down to Disney Channel and CBS, for when we watch Survivor. Everything else for them is YouTube, Netflix and on-demand.


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## andygradel (Jul 25, 2013)

Microphone said:


> And I haven't had to run for cover from my wife from the many major storms we've had when the picture would go out at the best time with a show or sporting event. Yes my dish was aligned correctly. Lot to be said for the reliability.


This definitely made me laugh and is so true. Every TV problem in the household somehow has become _my_ problem.

Now, if I could just get my Harmony tweaked perfectly where it'd do my TV, amp, Xfinity box and switch the amp to the proper input consistently on the first button press, life would be amazing... hah...


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## andygradel (Jul 25, 2013)

inkahauts said:


> For reference, what model DVR and other equipment from DIRECTV did you have?


Good question. We had a Genie DVR (HR44-500) and three H25-700s.


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Utilities were built out when everything was cheaper too. Labor, especially and not quickly. More like over a century. If you do that with tech, it'll be obsolete before you finish. Starlink is supposed to resolve the latency issue. Supposedly it will scale to 1Gbps. 5G will come to the population centers first. Starlink sounds a lot like the Tesla, one of Elons pipe dreams that he fails to deliver on. 5G will probably be financed by device makers, chip makers, etc. I.e. I have the iPhone 6. What has any phone manufacturer done since then to make me buy a new phone? Nothing. The games and apps mostly suck. They need something new to sell phones. Plus for people that don't have access to DOCSIS 3.1 or FTTH, 5G is probably the cheapest way to get it there.


The only reason we upgraded our iPhone 6s(s) to XRs was because we weren't going to replace the battery for the 3rd time! Like computers I'm of the opinion that phones have basically plateaued for hardware features and I'm fine with that. LTE bandwidth is just fine for us, we don't need 5G. While apps could always get better I don't see anything radical coming, certainly nothing that demands a hardware upgrade. While vendors obviously want us to be on a constant year or bi-yearly upgrade cycle there comes a point at which it just isn't necessary. In my mind this applies to D* as well. Keeping my fingers tightly crossed here... we're fine with our HR44 setup. Don't like a few minor things (software) but overall it "just works". It has taken a long time to get to this level of stability and I'm sure AT&T will soon be F'ing it up.

Utilities of the past were built out with a whole lot of trenching or pole digging. Crews were usually 6+ people. It was fairly slow going. Today utilities can be done with horizontal boring. This goes fast in comparison with much less footprint above ground. Maybe 2-3 people on a crew. Compared with adjusted costs I'm fairly certain it's a lot less. Fiber is the most future-proof tech we have. Massive bandwidth/capacity. And they never run just one strand; always a bundle of which very little is used leaving huge amounts of dark fiber for future (essentially free). Probably is/can be put in a sleeve (flex conduit) so major upgrades won't require boring.

What little I know about 5G is that it takes a lot more towers due to shorter range and it doesn't go through trees. Towers aren't cheap. And guess what, 5G towers need *backhaul*. *Fiber* backhaul. So the difference is the "last mile". Sure, radio waves are cheaper than boring. But many places have lots of trees so there isn't even an option. 5G rollout is going to be just like everything else - driven by subscriber density.

Starlink will definitely improve latency. And no doubt a few streams in the demo phase will go fast. Its still a very constrained technology. This is exactly the same problem with D* having hundreds of 4K channels. Technically it might be possible but at enormous cost. This also falls under the right technology for the area. Fiber and coax for high and moderate density. 5G for lower density - maybe OR mobile high density. Starlink for least density. And don't expect Starlink or 5G to stream 4K to every home.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

andygradel said:


> Good question. It's definitely softer on a couple linear channels and there are some channels which are surprisingly not available in HD (DIY?), but I've been surprised by how much _more_ my wife and kids are actually using Xfinity over DirecTV.
> 
> My kids rarely go to the actual channel. Instead, everything for them is on-demand, where the picture quality looks perfect. Same with my wife. I'd say at least half of her non-Netflix TV time is now Xfinity on-demand. Our DirecTV on-demand rarely worked well.
> 
> Makes me wonder how much linear PQ will really matter for the bulk of users in the next couple years.


Seems like your kids and your wife have found a better way to watch TV. Smart.

Rich


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

slice1900 said:


> Wireless doesn't go through trees and except for neighborhoods less than a few decades old many have too many trees for that to be feasible at mmwave frequencies. Maybe they could use a midband frequency at low power.


With modern beamforming tech, I don't think trees or other line-of-sight obstacles are _that_ challenging, particularly at close distances (e.g. 2-3 blocks from the house).

New Solution Manipulates mmWave Signals

Even back when AT&T was testing mmwave 5G a year or so ago, they reported impressive results when the transmitter and receiver were on opposite sides of a large building completely blocking line-of-sight.



slice1900 said:


> If the house has aerial powerlines they could use the existing copper with G.fast. It does a gigabit, nobody needs more than that for a house today or in the foreseeable future. AT&T may not want to support the existing copper, but supporting copper from the pole to the NID is cheap and easy. Heck, pass ownership of it to the homeowner, and make them pay for fixing it if a storm takes down the line.


Didn't realize G.fast had developed to support speeds as fast a 1 Gig. I agree, virtually no residential customers need speeds faster than that. (Heck, I don't even know what people do with a gig.) But I do wonder about the cost of deploying the fiber-to-G.fast interfaces on all those utility poles, just so that the copper can be used from the pole to the house. I'm almost certain it would make more financial sense to just rip out that copper line to the house and go full FTTH.

The system I'm imagining would be more like Uverse, which is to say FTTN, except instead of using copper from the node to the home, it would use 5G or some kind of fast, robust-enough wireless transmission. Fiber-fed hub with wireless spokes.

If Starry ever begins serving single-family home neighborhoods, as they say they will, this will be their network model. Actually, it's already their network model but they're only serving MDUs so far. Their fiber-fed Starry Beam transmitters beam a mmwave signal (without the need for line-of-sight) to Starry Point receivers perched atop MDUs, then the signal is distributed throughout the building somehow (coax, copper and/or ethernet) to the Starry Routers in each unit that blast out personal wifi. The mmwave wireless signal between Beam and Point can carry over 5 Gbps. They were pretty clever in getting the costs down by partnering with a wifi chip vendor to use a standard 802.11ax (i.e. WiFi 6) chip and modifying it for use with higher frequency, higher bandwidth mmwave signals (37-40 GHz) to put in the Starry Point receivers. The spectrum they use is a mix of shared, unlicensed and licensed.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

unixguru said:


> The only reason we upgraded our iPhone 6s(s) to XRs was because we weren't going to replace the battery for the 3rd time!


I had to replace the battery once in my 6. For some reason it swelled and pushed the screen out. Been fine since and its been many years now. And I do exactly what they tell you not too &#8230; I generally keep it plugged in when I'm at home. I don't let it run the battery down in most cases.



unixguru said:


> Like computers I'm of the opinion that phones have basically plateaued for hardware features and I'm fine with that.


My old computer, I built in 2009. I built a new one last year in 2018. CPU faster and more cores, but not a game changer. Went from 8GB -> 32GB. Also not a game changer. Went from a 1TB SATAIII 7200rpm hard drive to a Samsung 970 PRO 1TB. That was a game changer. Also got a faster video card, but since I don't play games, also not a game changer (no pun intended). New PC has some new connectivity things like USB 3.1 Gen 2, but I really use that stuff. So yeah, pretty much just the SSD. Pretty much the main thing I see after the upgrade is everything is much faster. Windows took 2 mins, now its a few seconds. Visual Studio took a few mins, now its also a few seconds.



unixguru said:


> LTE bandwidth is just fine for us, we don't need 5G. While apps could always get better I don't see anything radical coming, certainly nothing that demands a hardware upgrade.


Agreed. Mobile apps mostly suck. I pretty much just watch YouTube during my workouts and use the stock quotes app.



unixguru said:


> While vendors obviously want us to be on a constant year or bi-yearly upgrade cycle there comes a point at which it just isn't necessary. In my mind this applies to D* as well. Keeping my fingers tightly crossed here... we're fine with our HR44 setup. Don't like a few minor things (software) but overall it "just works". It has taken a long time to get to this level of stability and I'm sure AT&T will soon be F'ing it up.


I was on a HR24, but it got to the point where it was taking 30 seconds to respond to a button press, so I had to get a HR54.



unixguru said:


> Utilities of the past were built out with a whole lot of trenching or pole digging. Crews were usually 6+ people. It was fairly slow going. Today utilities can be done with horizontal boring. This goes fast in comparison with much less footprint above ground. Maybe 2-3 people on a crew. Compared with adjusted costs I'm fairly certain it's a lot less. Fiber is the most future-proof tech we have. Massive bandwidth/capacity. And they never run just one strand; always a bundle of which very little is used leaving huge amounts of dark fiber for future (essentially free). Probably is/can be put in a sleeve (flex conduit) so major upgrades won't require boring.


My city is relatively new (my house was built in 2002) and we have utility trenches (I think). Still AT&T only puts fiber in new construction. The rest of us only get up to 100Mbps over phone lines. I have 1Gbps with Cox.



unixguru said:


> Starlink will definitely improve latency. And no doubt a few streams in the demo phase will go fast. Its still a very constrained technology. This is exactly the same problem with D* having hundreds of 4K channels. Technically it might be possible but at enormous cost. This also falls under the right technology for the area. Fiber and coax for high and moderate density. 5G for lower density - maybe OR mobile high density. Starlink for least density. And don't expect Starlink or 5G to stream 4K to every home.


4K streaming is about 15Mbps. So not a whole lot of bandwidth needed. DirecTV has bandwidth for more 4K channels, there just aren't any. Someone on here mentioned that until affiliates can deliver 4K through ATSC 3.1, there won't be 4K channels. Then again, seems like the future for 4K delivery is streaming. Then again #2, streaming is becoming so fragmented that its going to end up costing more in the long term. Back to good ol' cable .


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> Heck, I don't even know what people do with a gig.


If you have a few people streaming 4K plus a kid playing an online game, you might.

I don't have any of that, so I just use it for downloading big files in a reasonable amount of time. Last I night I downloaded about 8GB and it took about 30 mins at 4MB/s avg. On my old 175Mbps service it would have taken 4 - 5 hours. Before you ask, obviously 175Mbps can do more then 4MB/s , but download speeds don't really work like that and Cox seems to do throttling and traffic shaping. Fastest I've seen on my 1Gbps service was about 17MB/s on a single download. But I can do multiples of those at the same time if I have to.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

SledgeHammer said:


> If you have a few people streaming 4K plus a kid playing an online game, you might.
> 
> I don't have any of that, so I just use it for downloading big files in a reasonable amount of time. Last I night I downloaded about 8GB and it took about 30 mins at 4MB/s avg. On my old 175Mbps service it would have taken 4 - 5 hours. Before you ask, obviously 175Mbps can do more then 4MB/s , but download speeds don't really work like that and Cox seems to do throttling and traffic shaping. Fastest I've seen on my 1Gbps service was about 17MB/s on a single download. But I can do multiples of those at the same time if I have to.


Do you have 40 screens in your home capable of displaying 4K HDR? And do you use all 40 at the same time? Because *that's* what 1 Gbps can do. If, OTOH, you're a normal family that might only stream 4K HDR on, say, 4 screens simultaneously, well, you're fine at 100 Mbps.

Yes, downloads (not streaming) are where faster connections really shine but, as you demonstrate, your "1 Gbps" connection on cable isn't the same thing as 1 Gbps on FTTH like AT&T Fiber or Google Fiber. I don't do lots of super-big downloads (nothing beyond app/OS updates, really) but, if I did, I'd be fine with just starting it before going to bed and having it ready in the morning.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> 4K streaming is about 15Mbps. So not a whole lot of bandwidth needed. DirecTV has bandwidth for more 4K channels, there just aren't any. Someone on here mentioned that until affiliates can deliver 4K through ATSC 3.1, there won't be 4K channels. Then again, seems like the future for 4K delivery is streaming. Then again #2, streaming is becoming so fragmented that its going to end up costing more in the long term. Back to good ol' cable .


4K streaming is more like double that. You're thinking of precompressed stuff like Netflix - compressing in real time isn't nearly as efficient so 15 Mbps for live 4K would probably be a pretty disappointing experience.

Though considering the number of 4K channels we're likely to see it could use 100 Mbps and Directv would still have excess capacity...


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> Do you have 40 screens in your home capable of displaying 4K HDR? And do you use all 40 at the same time? Because *that's* what 1 Gbps can do. If, OTOH, you're a normal family that might only stream 4K HDR on, say, 4 screens simultaneously, well, you're fine at 100 Mbps.


Nope, I don't do that. Rich had like 16 I think at some point lol. If you're a *serious* gamer playing online games, you'd want 1Gbps to reduce latency. Heck, gamers pay a premium for Killer based routers just to try to eke out a few extra fps.



NashGuy said:


> Yes, downloads (not streaming) are where faster connections really shine but, as you demonstrate, your "1 Gbps" connection on cable isn't the same thing as 1 Gbps on FTTH like AT&T Fiber or Google Fiber. I don't do lots of super-big downloads (nothing beyond app/OS updates, really) but, if I did, I'd be fine with just starting it before going to bed and having it ready in the morning.


I think you misunderstood me (or me, your response). I have 1 Gbps service with Cox and its DOCSIS 3.1. It's 1 Gbps down and 35Mbps up, but I don't care about upload speeds at this time. If I run a speed test on it, it varies wildly based on the site. Speedtest.net varies from 100Mbps - 300Mbps. That site is not too reliable once you get above 300Mbps. I've found that the Google Fiber speed test works the best for 1 Gbps (you can use it off their network). On there, I usually test at 875Mbps to 925Mbps. That's *about* the max you're going to get on 1 Gbps ethernet no matter what tech you're using for internet. "1 Gbps" is the theoretical bandwidth of the lowest layer in the network model which is the physical layer. There are 5 additional layers before you get to the application layer (so 7 layers total). If you have a really good connection and a really good router with a really good chipset and a really good network port on your PC, you *might* get another 25Mbps to 50Mbps on top of that. There is a new ethernet standard coming that'll be able to deliver 5Gbps at the physical layer, so that could give you a full 1Gbps at the app layer.

What I meant is, the download speed is effected by:

1) The source (not many sources are going to let you download at 1 Gbps whether they have the bandwidth or not)
2) Cox (and all other ISPs) shape and throttle traffic they don't want you to do -- streaming and downloading are two of them.

So what you really end up getting is a PERCENTAGE of your bandwidth to do the stuff you want to do.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> If you have a few people streaming 4K plus a kid playing an online game, you might.
> 
> I don't have any of that, so I just use it for downloading big files in a reasonable amount of time. Last I night I downloaded about 8GB and it took about 30 mins at 4MB/s avg. On my old 175Mbps service it would have taken 4 - 5 hours. Before you ask, obviously 175Mbps can do more then 4MB/s , but download speeds don't really work like that and Cox seems to do throttling and traffic shaping. Fastest I've seen on my 1Gbps service was about 17MB/s on a single download. But I can do multiples of those at the same time if I have to.


Download speed for huge files is mostly irrelevant, because you aren't sitting there waiting on it you are doing other stuff while it happens in the background.

There aren't any use cases for gigabit to the home, and none on the horizon. Justifying it requires hand waving about future 3D VR immersive stuff. A gigabit is nice to have, but it doesn't enable you to do anything TODAY you couldn't do with a couple hundred Mbps.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> Nope, I don't do that. Rich had like 16 I think at some point lol. If you're a *serious* gamer playing online games, you'd want 1Gbps to reduce latency. Heck, gamers pay a premium for Killer based routers just to try to eke out a few extra fps.


There's nothing inherently lower latency about gigabit. A a standard 1500 byte TCP/IP packet requires a little over 10 microseconds to send at 1 Gbps or 100 microseconds at 100 Mbps. Some gamers might pay to shave 180 microseconds (round trip) latency, but in the same way audiophiles will spend $1000 on a power cord.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Download speed for huge files is mostly irrelevant, because you aren't sitting there waiting on it you are doing other stuff while it happens in the background.


True, I don't need to watch it download and I can do other stuff in the meantime... but I look at this way:

1) I can turn my PC off at night and when I'm at work, so there is a bit of cost savings there rather then leaving it on for 3 days to download a file.
2) If its going to take a day to download a file, you kind of have to commit to it... when it takes 20 minutes, I don't have to have that much commitment. I could just be like "oh that file sucks... DELETE" .

But yeah, it's a convenience thing. No argument there.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> There's nothing inherently lower latency about gigabit. A a standard 1500 byte TCP/IP packet requires a little over 10 microseconds to send at 1 Gbps or 100 microseconds at 100 Mbps. Some gamers might pay to shave 180 microseconds (round trip) latency, but in the same way audiophiles will spend $1000 on a power cord.


Yeah, I did specifically say "serious gamer". Like if you are competitive. I worked with a 20 yr old kid and he wasn't competitive or anything, but he cared about all that stuff. Got a Killer router, super high speed gaming monitor, upgraded his video card and drivers regularly, did a bunch of system tweaks, etc. to give him an edge over other players. I think at some point I asked him how all that time and money affected his FPS at the end of the day and I think he said something super lower like 3 - 5, but he claimed it made a big difference in shooters.


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> My old computer, I built in 2009. I built a new one last year in 2018. CPU faster and more cores, but not a game changer. Went from 8GB -> 32GB. Also not a game changer. Went from a 1TB SATAIII 7200rpm hard drive to a Samsung 970 PRO 1TB. That was a game changer. Also got a faster video card, but since I don't play games, also not a game changer (no pun intended). New PC has some new connectivity things like USB 3.1 Gen 2, but I really use that stuff. So yeah, pretty much just the SSD. Pretty much the main thing I see after the upgrade is everything is much faster. Windows took 2 mins, now its a few seconds. Visual Studio took a few mins, now its also a few seconds.



Spinning rust to solid state was a revolutionary change and conveniently something that is a standalone upgrade to most things.

I have a 2012 Mac Pro. Its the single 6-core 3.33Ghz Xeon. Other than a lot more cores the newest stuff isn't really much faster. Since I'm not trying to edit 4K video there is no need for more cores. Long ago I upgraded to all SSD and 32GB. Added a USB 3 hub. I had to upgrade graphics card last year to run the latest MacOS. Of course Apple foolishly abandoned all that upgradability with the 2013-2019 Mac Pro trash cans. And sales were down substantially because of it. Finally a new one coming out in a couple of months that went back to the old design basically. Not that anyone but professionals will be able to afford it. Unfortunately I'll have the same problem that many will have - no reason at all to replace *except* Apple is dropping support for it in the next OS release.

Of course phones have no upgradability. They will do the same to obsolete them through software upgrades.

Will be interesting to see what D* does. Seems to me that new hardware models have essentially stopped flowing. As have software improvements. Pretty much the same state as phones.

On the Starlink what I was trying to say is that how fast it can push bits to a single subscriber turns into a much bigger problem when its millions of subscribers. Its like every D* customer having their own spot beam!


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

SledgeHammer said:


> Yeah, I did specifically say "serious gamer". Like if you are competitive. I worked with a 20 yr old kid and he wasn't competitive or anything, but he cared about all that stuff. Got a Killer router, super high speed gaming monitor, upgraded his video card and drivers regularly, did a bunch of system tweaks, etc. to give him an edge over other players. I think at some point I asked him how all that time and money affected his FPS at the end of the day and I think he said something super lower like 3 - 5, but he claimed it made a big difference in shooters.


They do the same kind of thing on Wall Street for automated trading. Going so far as to rent space in a building right beside (or even in) an internet exchange (backbone hub). Fractions of a millisecond matter to some things.


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## unixguru (Jul 9, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> There's nothing inherently lower latency about gigabit. A a standard 1500 byte TCP/IP packet requires a little over 10 microseconds to send at 1 Gbps or 100 microseconds at 100 Mbps. Some gamers might pay to shave 180 microseconds (round trip) latency, but in the same way audiophiles will spend $1000 on a power cord.


Gigabit is mostly a marketing tool. Agree that it is unnecessary in a home - today. But it really doesn't cost much more. The FTTH provider near me offers 50, 100, 150, 500, 1000. The incremental cost to upgrade diminishes rapidly per mb. It's all the same infrastructure, they're just throttling. I would think the total number of bytes per month would be more relevant to their planning and profits. Would be interesting to know what their backbone connection(s) are. 100 gbit? Multiple?

I just read that Alaska will be connecting to the rest of the US with a 100 terabit fiber. Yet Alaska has a total population of under 1 million and a density of 1.26 per sq mi. Obviously the technology exists and isn't irrationally expensive. The stuff being put in the ground for FTTH is going to be capable of moving to much faster than gbit.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

unixguru said:


> I have a 2012 Mac Pro. Its the single 6-core 3.33Ghz Xeon. Other than a lot more cores the newest stuff isn't really much faster. Since I'm not trying to edit 4K video there is no need for more cores. Long ago I upgraded to all SSD and 32GB. Added a USB 3 hub. I had to upgrade graphics card last year to run the latest MacOS. Of course Apple foolishly abandoned all that upgradability with the 2013-2019 Mac Pro trash cans. And sales were down substantially because of it. Finally a new one coming out in a couple of months that went back to the old design basically. Not that anyone but professionals will be able to afford it. Unfortunately I'll have the same problem that many will have - no reason at all to replace *except* Apple is dropping support for it in the next OS release.


Yup. Nothing really new. That's why I kept my PC for 10 yrs. Hopefully Intel will deliver something cool with 10nm. If that ever gets here. Might finally break the 5Ghz barrier.



unixguru said:


> On the Starlink what I was trying to say is that how fast it can push bits to a single subscriber turns into a much bigger problem when its millions of subscribers. Its like every D* customer having their own spot beam!


OAM looks like a promising solution to that .


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> True, I don't need to watch it download and I can do other stuff in the meantime... but I look at this way:
> 
> 1) I can turn my PC off at night and when I'm at work, so there is a bit of cost savings there rather then leaving it on for 3 days to download a file.
> 2) If its going to take a day to download a file, you kind of have to commit to it... when it takes 20 minutes, I don't have to have that much commitment. I could just be like "oh that file sucks... DELETE" .
> ...


Three days to download a file? I'm arguing you don't need a gigabit, not that you don't need half a megabit


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Three days to download a file? I'm arguing you don't need a gigabit, not that you don't need half a megabit


Lol, that was a 40GB file on my old 175Mbps speed.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> Lol, that was a 40GB file on my old 175Mbps speed.


Then you weren't getting even a fraction of the 175 Mbps you were paying for. That's an entirely separate issue.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Then you weren't getting even a fraction of the 175 Mbps you were paying for. That's an entirely separate issue.


That's what I said above. 1) you have to have a source that can deliver 1 Gbps 2) you're still going to get throttled by your ISP

ISPs throttle by %, not absolute throughput.

Regardless, that was a slow source. My 1 Gbps wouldn't have helped in that particular case since the source was delivering below what I've observed to be Cox's throttle.

Anyways, the 175Mbps was $79/mo and the 1Gbps was $99/mo, so not a whole lot more money for the much faster speed. It kinda sux&#8230; Cox has a new promo on the 1Gbps where its much cheaper now, but I can't get that price. Tried a few times.

I wonder if I could cancel the service and open under a different name to get the new customer pricing? .


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

SledgeHammer said:


> That's what I said above. 1) you have to have a source that can deliver 1 Gbps 2) you're still going to get throttled by your ISP
> 
> ISPs throttle by %, not absolute throughput.


I could be wrong but my hunch is that cable broadband providers, due to both their popularity (i.e. number of users on the same node) as well as the nature of their DOCSIS networks, do more throttling/shaping to their 1 Gbps tiers than do FTTH providers like AT&T Fiber, Verizon FiOS, and Google Fiber. Could be wrong, though.

As for gaming, setting aside download speeds, FTTH is still typically better than cable, because FTTH tends to have lower latency and jitter.
Is a fiber connection really better than cable for gaming? | PC Gamer

Of course, one could enjoy the superior latency and jitter of AT&T Fiber and Google Fiber even on their symmetrical 100 Mbps tier, because latency and jitter are network characteristics that are the same across all speed tiers. Both AT&T and Google charge a standard $50/mo for their 100/100 plan, equipment included.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

unixguru said:


> They do the same kind of thing on Wall Street for automated trading. Going so far as to rent space in a building right beside (or even in) an internet exchange (backbone hub). Fractions of a millisecond matter to some things.


Yes. And those traders will be a key market targeted by OneWeb and perhaps other low-earth orbit broadband providers. They'll charge BIG bucks to give them an IP path that cuts through space around the world at the speed of light to go directly between NYC and London (or any other two major trading centers). Milliseconds matter.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

NashGuy said:


> I could be wrong but my hunch is that cable broadband providers, due to both their popularity (i.e. number of users on the same node) as well as the nature of their DOCSIS networks, do more throttling/shaping to their 1 Gbps tiers than do FTTH providers like AT&T Fiber, Verizon FiOS, and Google Fiber. Could be wrong, though.


The way cable works everyone on the node shares the DOCSIS bandwidth (i.e. it is broadcast based in both directions) so if all your neighbors are doing stuff you are going to be impacted. DSL and fiber have unshared bandwidth between the node and the home, thus aren't affected by their neighbors (unless the fiber from the ISP to the node is oversubscribed, but that's no different than cable internet in that regard)

DOCSIS 3.x downstream uses 192 MHz frequency blocks, located 'above' the frequencies used for TV channels (typically starting at 700 or 800 MHz) and four of them allows for about 10 Gbps total downstream bandwidth for everyone on the node. If you have a couple hundred homes on a node and most people are doing lower bandwidth stuff like surfing the web or streaming one or two programs then there's enough capacity for a few people to get their full 1 gigabit when downloading.

But if a lot of people are downloading at once, or people start streaming multiple channels of live 4K, then it won't work so well - they'll have to start splitting the nodes into smaller pieces to allow it work properly. There isn't much room for further speed increases for DOCSIS without going to 2 GHz and beyond on the coax, which as we know from satellite tends to shorten the range the coax can carry it. Maybe they can build a switch of sorts into the node so every home has essentially a private 10 Gbps connection to the node, I imagine that would be more expensive than splitting nodes though.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

slice1900 said:


> The way cable works everyone on the node shares the DOCSIS bandwidth (i.e. it is broadcast based in both directions) so if all your neighbors are doing stuff you are going to be impacted. DSL and fiber have unshared bandwidth between the node and the home, thus aren't affected by their neighbors (unless the fiber from the ISP to the node is oversubscribed, but that's no different than cable internet in that regard)


Yep, that's consistent with what I thought.



slice1900 said:


> DOCSIS 3.x downstream uses 192 MHz frequency blocks, located 'above' the frequencies used for TV channels (typically starting at 700 or 800 MHz) and four of them allows for about 10 Gbps total downstream bandwidth for everyone on the node. If you have a couple hundred homes on a node and most people are doing lower bandwidth stuff like surfing the web or streaming one or two programs then there's enough capacity for a few people to get their full 1 gigabit when downloading.
> 
> But if a lot of people are downloading at once, or people start streaming multiple channels of live 4K, then it won't work so well - they'll have to start splitting the nodes into smaller pieces to allow it work properly. There isn't much room for further speed increases for DOCSIS without going to 2 GHz and beyond on the coax, which as we know from satellite tends to shorten the range the coax can carry it. Maybe they can build a switch of sorts into the node so every home has essentially a private 10 Gbps connection to the node, I imagine that would be more expensive than splitting nodes though.


Yeah. Roadmap for DOCSIS includes lots of stuff, including smaller nodes, pushing fiber deeper, expanding the frequency range used (in part by eliminating some or all of the bandwidth used by QAM TV), etc. The emerging set of stuff that CableLabs is calling DOCSIS 4.0 will be pretty impressive. But it'll never beat FTTH.


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## dminches (Oct 1, 2006)

For me, what separates DirecTV from the competition is the vast sports offering. If AT&T eliminates a lot of the sports content in their new packages they are going to lose a lot of subscribers. I live with all the hardware issues and satellite glitches because they carry so much content.


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## dtv757 (Jun 4, 2006)

dminches said:


> For me, what separates DirecTV from the competition is the vast sports offering. If AT&T eliminates a lot of the sports content in their new packages they are going to lose a lot of subscribers. I live with all the hardware issues and satellite glitches because they carry so much content.


Sports programming , 4K and customer service ! All reasons I choose D*

Now if only more folks had access to FTTH

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

dtv757 said:


> and *customer service* ! All reasons I choose D*


Umm... really? Maybe 10+ yrs ago...


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

dminches said:


> For me, what separates DirecTV from the competition is the vast sports offering. If AT&T eliminates a lot of the sports content in their new packages they are going to lose a lot of subscribers. I live with all the hardware issues and satellite glitches because they carry so much content.


They need to offer some good packages without sports to prevent cord cutting. Sports is close to half the cost of a typical package these days, which is why non sports fans have been cutting the cord as sports keeps driving up their bill more and more every year.

They aren't going to drop sports, but need to give better options for those who don't want to pay for sports if they want to keep them as subscribers.


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## dminches (Oct 1, 2006)

slice1900 said:


> They need to offer some good packages without sports to prevent cord cutting. Sports is close to half the cost of a typical package these days, which is why non sports fans have been cutting the cord as sports keeps driving up their bill more and more every year.
> 
> They aren't going to drop sports, but need to give better options for those who don't want to pay for sports if they want to keep them as subscribers.


It is going to be a tall order to keep people who are not interested in sports. There is so much competition out there and I don't see how DirecTV has any advantage for non-sports offerings. The streaming services are better than DirecTV for other content. I rarely watch content on DirecTV which is available on my Apple TV.


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## dtv757 (Jun 4, 2006)

SledgeHammer said:


> Umm... really? Maybe 10+ yrs ago...


Now lol

I called a few months ago got 100 off for 12 months and movie channels free for 12 months

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> They need to offer some good packages without sports to prevent cord cutting. Sports is close to half the cost of a typical package these days, which is why non sports fans have been cutting the cord as sports keeps driving up their bill more and more every year.
> 
> They aren't going to drop sports, but need to give better options for those who don't want to pay for sports if they want to keep them as subscribers.


They do / did. I was more steamed then anybody when they introduced RSNs since I have < 0 interest in sports. On a scale of 1 to 10, my interest is at -∞ .

They intro'ed a package called Preferred Xtra that did away with the RSN and I saved about $8/mo on my bill. I *believe*, but could be wrong that they no longer sell that package and that you have to go down all the way to the granny package to get rid of the RSN.

Today, there isn't really a way for me to get my TV via streaming. I watch locals, some basic cable channels (History, USA, TBS, Science, DIY, HGTV, PBS, Discovery, NatGeo and maybe a few others) + mostly theatrical movies and maybe a few indy / straight to video movies.

&#8230; thus the use case for my 1 Gbps ISP .


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

dminches said:


> It is going to be a tall order to keep people who are not interested in sports. There is so much competition out there and I don't see how DirecTV has any advantage for non-sports offerings. The streaming services are better than DirecTV for other content. I rarely watch content on DirecTV which is available on my Apple TV.


If non-sports people (which I am one of them) watch similar content to my post above (which I'd say most do), then traditional cable / sat is probably your best bet.

Amazon Prime is good if you want a good selection of classic TV

Disney+ will be good if you want Disney, Pixar or Fox content

Netflix -- not really sure what Netflix is good for anymore... I made a great return on stock, but now that they are losing all licensed content, you aren't going to find much watchable stuff on there. At least I didn't. As Slice once mentioned, at this point, you could probably sub one or two months a year to Netflix and watch everything you watch and then cancel til next year. I couldn't even find enough content to fill a month. Other posters on here like Rich have said he can always find something to watch, so YMMV there.


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

dminches said:


> For me, what separates DirecTV from the competition is the vast sports offering. If AT&T eliminates a lot of the sports content in their new packages they are going to lose a lot of subscribers. I live with all the hardware issues and satellite glitches because they carry so much content.


Same here.



slice1900 said:


> They need to offer some good packages without sports to prevent cord cutting. Sports is close to half the cost of a typical package these days, which is why non sports fans have been cutting the cord as sports keeps driving up their bill more and more every year.
> 
> They aren't going to drop sports, but need to give better options for those who don't want to pay for sports if they want to keep them as subscribers.


What about those of us that want nothing but sports, how a sports only package that doesn't have all the other stuff? I


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## mnassour (Apr 23, 2002)

Can someone please give me a link to an AT&T TV FAQ? I've been away for a LONG time and would like to get back up to speed.

thanks!


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

dminches said:


> For me, what separates DirecTV from the competition is the vast sports offering. If AT&T eliminates a lot of the sports content in their new packages they are going to lose a lot of subscribers. I live with all the hardware issues and satellite glitches because they carry so much content.





slice1900 said:


> They need to offer some good packages without sports to prevent cord cutting. Sports is close to half the cost of a typical package these days, which is why non sports fans have been cutting the cord as sports keeps driving up their bill more and more every year.
> 
> They aren't going to drop sports, but need to give better options for those who don't want to pay for sports if they want to keep them as subscribers.


Yeah, you're both right. I've spelled out in detail in multiple places my predictions for what the new channel packages to be introduced this fall on both AT&T TV and DirecTV will look like but I'll summarize here:


*Select*: a low-cost package with no locals and no all-sports channels (nothing owned by Disney/ABC, CBS, Comcast/NBC or Fox). But subscribers will have the option to use an AT&T OTA tuner to integrate free locals, with local DVR capability.
*Plus*: a package of the most popular stuff: major locals, the biggest entertainment and news channels and the biggest sports channels (ESPN, ESPN 2, FS1, NBCSN)
*Max*: a package with everything Plus has, but also RSNs, several second-string sports channels (FS2, Golf, SEC Network, CBS Sports Network, etc.), and a sprinkling of additional second-tier entertainment channels (Paramount Network, TV Land, etc.)
*Extra Packs*: optional add-on packages of channels ($5-10 each) that aren't included in either Plus or Max and which can be added to any base package. One would be a Sports Extra with stuff like MLB Network, NBA TV, NHL Network, ESPN Goal Line/Bases Loaded/Buzzer Beater, etc. Another would be some kind of Family (or Heartland) Extra (additional Hallmark channels, UPtv, Game Show Network, etc.). Another would be an Entertainment (or Hollywood) Extra (Sundance TV, Lifetime Movies, Reelz, etc.).
If I'm right, it'll be a very, very smart system that AT&T has constructed. Plus will be the mainstream package for the average consumer who watches some sports but isn't a hard-core fan. Most sports geeks will have to pay more by stepping up to Max and/or add the Sports Extra Pack. But for those on a tight budget and/or who don't care about sports at all, Select will give them a decent variety of stuff to watch (especially if they can supply their own locals via OTA antenna).

And all the packages will include HBO at launch, to be replaced by the much more expansive HBO Max next spring.

When these skinny streaming cable TV services like Sling TV and PS Vue started popping up, I predicted that the long-term evolution would be that those services and traditional cable TV would becoming increasingly like each other, eventually meeting in the middle and becoming indistinguishable. That's what AT&T TV will be.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

mnassour said:


> Can someone please give me a link to an AT&T TV FAQ? I've been away for a LONG time and would like to get back up to speed.
> 
> thanks!


It hasn't been officially announced yet. AT&T leaders have been dropping hints about it for over a year now and a couple of internal company screenshots with details leaked out a couple weeks ago confirming the name. At this point, there's a lot of conjecture and speculation (mostly by me, ha) but not a lot of solid facts. We do know that it's going to be delivered mainly using the OTT cloud-based streaming video platform developed for and currently used by DirecTV Now. We also know that it will feature a streaming set-top box that AT&T has designed in conjunction with Google (powered by Android TV) that has been in beta test by select DirecTV Now subscribers for the past 7-8 months.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

SledgeHammer said:


> If non-sports people (which I am one of them) watch similar content to my post above (which I'd say most do), then traditional cable / sat is probably your best bet.
> 
> Amazon Prime is good if you want a good selection of classic TV
> 
> ...


Yeah, it's going to be fascinating to watch what happens with Netflix. Will they just gradually cool off and settle in as one of a handful of leading direct-to-consumer services in the next couple years? Or will they take a hard fall and become the MySpace of streaming TV?

I think my plan for 2020 will be to keep HBO Max and basic Hulu (both ad-free) all year, and then subscribe to a third service that will rotate between Showtime, Netflix and Prime Video (about 4 months of each). Well, actually, I also want to try Apple TV+ and I'm hoping that Apple gives it away for free the first year to Apple TV owners. We'll see. If not, I'll have to look at the price and decide how to slot it into the mix. I like the occasional Pixar film but, with no kids, have no plans to subscribe to Disney+.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

TheRatPatrol said:


> Same here.
> 
> What about those of us that want nothing but sports, how a sports only package that doesn't have all the other stuff? I


That sports package would be great for me. For me, that's all D* is good for these days. They will never do that, of course.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> Yeah, it's going to be fascinating to watch what happens with Netflix. Will they just gradually cool off and settle in as one of a handful of leading direct-to-consumer services in the next couple years? Or will they take a hard fall and become the MySpace of streaming TV?


I think NF will adapt to whatever happens. NF reminds me of Amazon in many ways. Wildly successful and plenty of haters. Why folks don't get NF is beyond me. Would be interesting to see what folks that put NF down constantly actually watch. I know going to NF for the first time is kinda overwhelming and it's easier to stick with what you know but there is so much good content on NF it boggles the mind.

Rich


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

Rich said:


> I think NF will adapt to whatever happens. NF reminds me of Amazon in many ways. Wildly successful and plenty of haters. Why folks don't get NF is beyond me. Would be interesting to see what folks that put NF down constantly actually watch. I know going to NF for the first time is kinda overwhelming and it's easier to stick with what you know but there is so much good content on NF it boggles the mind.
> 
> Rich


There's *some* great content -- Stranger Things! The Crown! -- but, for my tastes, I've found more series that I've really liked and stuck with on both HBO and Showtime than on Netflix over the past few years. But now, that's just my tastes as a college-educated Gen-Xer. I think Netflix is really strong for those under age 30.

There are a couple of quotes that are illustrative of my points. The first is when one of the head guys at Netflix said years ago that "we're betting that we can become HBO faster than HBO can become us." And it was clear that when Netflix launched their line of Originals, the strategy was to do high-quality "prestige TV," with series like House of Cards and OITNB. Those shows would've been right at home on HBO and Showtime.

The second quote is one I came across in a great article in the NYTimes recently, "The Great Race to Rule Streaming TV". In it, a former Netflix employee talks about the mentality that existed when he landed at the company a few years ago, saying that he didn't get the sense at that point that Netflix wanted to be the next HBO but rather that they wanted to _replace the entire cable dial_.

Which, TBH, completely validates my perception of what's happened with Netflix's Originals strategy. It morphed from doing a few series really well to being a video sausage factory that cranks out a deluge of stuff aimed at all demographics and tastes, most of it mediocre, a bit of it very good. Netflix has become like cable basic, but without sports, live news, or ads. Why did I ditch cable/satellite TV years ago for streaming? Because I cared about stuff on the premium networks (which were suddenly also standalone streaming services too), plus some stuff on the broadcast nets, but didn't care so much about wading through the wasteland of reality shows, reruns, and sub-par scripted originals on basic cable channels.

The head of AT&T recently said that he didn't think Netflix really had a brand, while HBO does have a brand, as do other WarnerMedia properties, which would anchor and help launch the upcoming HBO Max competitor to Netflix. And, frankly, I think he's right. What IS Netflix's brand? "We do ad-free streaming video?" Sorry, that's not differentiated enough when umpteen others do the same thing.

You know how Sears used to be the basic one-size-fits-all American department store? Worked great for a long time, until retail began specializing into narrower segments targeted at different demographics, tastes, budgets. Netflix is to direct-to-consumer subscription streaming video what Sears was to American retail several decades ago. And we know what happened to Sears.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> I think my plan for 2020 will be to keep HBO Max and basic Hulu (both ad-free) all year


Basic Hulu is ad free?


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

Athlon646464 said:


> Basic Hulu is ad free?


I say "basic Hulu" to mean their original on-demand service (without the bundle of live cable channels included). You can get that basic Hulu service two ways: with limited ads for $6/mo or ad-free for $12/mo. I do the latter.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> There's *some* great content -- Stranger Things! The Crown! -- but, for my tastes, I've found more series that I've really liked and stuck with on both HBO and Showtime than on Netflix over the past few years. But now, that's just my tastes as a college-educated Gen-Xer. I think Netflix is really strong for those under age 30.


My wife and I like the British crime dramas a lot - and we haven't seen 30 in a long time. :sunglasses: 'Happy Valley' was terrific, and we're in the middle of 'Marcella' right now. 'The Fall' was also terrific.

'The Crown' is very good.


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## Athlon646464 (Feb 23, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> I say "basic Hulu" to mean their original on-demand service (without the bundle of live cable channels included). You can get that basic Hulu service two ways: with limited ads for $6/mo or ad-free for $12/mo. I do the latter.


I see - I call the $6 one the basic Hulu plan.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

Athlon646464 said:


> My wife and I like the British crime dramas a lot - and we haven't seen 30 in a long time. :sunglasses: 'Happy Valley' was terrific, and we're in the middle of 'Marcella' right now. 'The Fall' was also terrific.
> 
> 'The Crown' is very good.


Yeah, I've watched a bit of foreign TV here and there -- thought Deutschland 83 and 86 (Hulu) were great. Not caught too much of the Brit stuff on Netflix, other than those wonderful BBCNature docs like Planet Earth, Blue Planet, etc. Of course, those are leaving Netflix to become part of the new Discovery on-demand service launching early next year (it's a joint venture between Discovery and BBC). That's, of course, why Netflix rolled out their Planet Earth copy-cat series Our Planet (which is doing quite well for them, apparently).

I suspect we'll see fewer and fewer of those British scripted shows you like on Netflix too going forward. Some will get clawed back for inclusion on Britbox and/or Acorn TV. But, of course, Netflix will be devoting a big slice of their Originals budget for foreign-produced content, including stuff made in the UK by Brits (along with a growing amount of non-English-language Originals as Netflix tries to grow in India, Brazil, Eastern Europe, etc.).


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

I think Netflix has a brand of sorts -- it's called '*Netflix and chill*'. No one ever said '*HBO and chill*'. If I could have only one content provider, it would be Netflix.


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

Rich said:


> That sports package would be great for me. For me, that's all D* is good for these days. They will never do that, of course.
> 
> Rich


Well Fubo started out that way but then they started adding all the others. I don't know but something needs to give in the future with sports.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

NashGuy said:


> There's *some* great content -- Stranger Things! The Crown! -- but, for my tastes, I've found more series that I've really liked and stuck with on both HBO and Showtime than on Netflix over the past few years. But now, that's just my tastes as a college-educated Gen-Xer. I think Netflix is really strong for those under age 30.


I'm a tad older than 30 and I never seem to run out of stuff to watch on NF. Just started _Stranger Things_ last night and was hooked very quickly. I'd list all the shows I've really enjoyed on NF but that would take far too much time. You left out _Marco Polo_ and _Bloodline, _two series that I thought were superb. You keep bringing up HBO, who owns HBO these days? Isn't that AT&T? Aren't they the folks that have truly screwed up D*? Have to wonder what will happen to the truly great lineup of series that HBO has produced in the past. From reading what the CEO of AT&T said about HBO I think we should be worried.

I get your point, this is just another subjective argument and, of course, YMMV.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> Basic Hulu is ad free?


I don't think so. Add to that, Hulu has PQ that I try to avoid. And Hulu is a real PITA to navigate thru. We do pay for the ad-free version. I can't imagine putting up with commercials I can't click thru.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> My wife and I like the British crime dramas a lot - and we haven't seen 30 in a long time. :sunglasses: 'Happy Valley' was terrific, and we're in the middle of 'Marcella' right now. 'The Fall' was also terrific.
> 
> 'The Crown' is very good.


I/we keep trying to watch _The Fall_ and it never seems to grab us. I like most content from the UK. And Canada, New Zealand and Australia, of course. Actually, the content from Australia is what got me hooked on streaming. _The Crown_ is a magnificent series, I think. All this speculation about NF and streaming is interesting but I don't see many folks that are really into streaming here.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Athlon646464 said:


> I see - I call the $6 one the basic Hulu plan.


And, once more, you are correct.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Nick said:


> I think Netflix has a brand of sorts -- it's called '*Netflix and chill*'. No one ever said '*HBO and chill*'. If I could have only one content provider, it would be Netflix.


We keep several streaming video services active at all times. We've seen everything on HBO for the most part and that has been cancelled until more content arrives. But we tend to stay on NF because of the vast amount of quality shows. But, yeah, if I could only have one provider it would be NF...at the moment. I never thought D* would become practically useless to us but it is and it doesn't matter. If things change we can adapt.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

TheRatPatrol said:


> Well Fubo started out that way but then they started adding all the others. I don't know but something needs to give in the future with sports.


Prices in stadiums keep going up, payrolls keep going up. Television revenues seem to be the cause. And the folks that run MLB and the NFL seem to be riding a wave that never ends. We won't get any relief soon.

Rich


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

Rich said:


> I don't think so. Add to that, Hulu has PQ that I try to avoid. And Hulu is a real PITA to navigate thru. We do pay for the ad-free version. I can't imagine putting up with commercials I can't click thru.
> 
> Rich


Hulu offers 1080p on a lot of stuff and it looks about the same as Netflix's 1080p. And Hulu just introduced 4K for their Hulu Originals if you have an Apple TV 4K or Chromecast Ultra. I'm sure more devices will be supported soon. I expect a bigger splash this fall or next year, with HDR too.

And if you can't handle ads, do what I do and pay the extra $6/mo. Basic Hulu ad-free is $12.


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## TheRatPatrol (Oct 1, 2003)

Rich said:


> Prices in stadiums keep going up, payrolls keep going up. Television revenues seem to be the cause. And the folks that run MLB and the NFL seem to be riding a wave that never ends. We won't get any relief soon.
> 
> Rich


You and I can't be the only fans out there that would want a sports only package. But like you said, it's all about the money.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

Rich said:


> I'm a tad older than 30 and I never seem to run out of stuff to watch on NF. Just started _Stranger Things_ last night and was hooked very quickly. I'd list all the shows I've really enjoyed on NF but that would take far too much time. You left out _Marco Polo_ and _Bloodline, _two series that I thought were superb. You keep bringing up HBO, who owns HBO these days? Isn't that AT&T? Aren't they the folks that have truly screwed up D*? Have to wonder what will happen to the truly great lineup of series that HBO has produced in the past. From reading what the CEO of AT&T said about HBO I think we should be worried.
> 
> I get your point, this is just another subjective argument and, of course, YMMV.


I didn't watch Marco Polo (nor did much anyone else, hence the cancellation). They spent on a ton on it, so I'm sure it looked great but the tiny bit of footage I saw didn't grab me. I loved Bloodline's first two seasons but the third was a stinker rushed out after the writers were told it would be the last, so wrap it up. (But hey, at least Netflix gave them a heads-up. They don't even tend to do that before killing their series now.)

Yes, HBO is WarnerMedia, owned by AT&T. For now, at least, it looks like the HBO linear channels and the HBO Originals brand will continue on as protected areas within the larger, broader HBO Max service. (I'm basing this on the new corporate personnel structure, as well as their announced spending and slate of series on tap.)

I would analogize HBO Max to a shopping mall with four anchor stores: HBO Originals, Max Originals (this is the new line of stuff exclusive to HBO Max), TV Favorites from Warner Bros. Television, and Hollywood Movies: Classics to Today. (This last anchor store mostly features Warner Bros. Pictures brand goods but has a decent selection of new merchandise from Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox too.) Strolling out into the mall, we see smaller stores with the following brand names: CNN Originals, DC Comics, Looney Tunes, Hanna-Barbera Animation, TBS, TNT, TruTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, and Audience.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> For me, that's all D* is good for these days


What about Lifetime Movies .


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

Rich said:


> I think NF will adapt to whatever happens. NF reminds me of Amazon in many ways. Wildly successful and plenty of haters. Why folks don't get NF is beyond me. Would be interesting to see what folks that put NF down constantly actually watch. I know going to NF for the first time is kinda overwhelming and it's easier to stick with what you know but there is so much good content on NF it boggles the mind.
> 
> Rich


I'm not a NF hater, I made a lot of money on the stock. However, the story has definitely changed recently. It definitely doesn't have to do with adapting to streaming, it just has to do with the content. They are losing all licensed content, so at $16/mo, it's a hard call for the occasional watchable movie. I watched Point Blank and Murder Mystery recently. Both were OK, but nothing more then that. I wouldn't pay money for that quality of content... it used to be you could find theatrical quality releases there and hit shows. They are even getting away from the shows. They are focusing on just buying up any movie they can whether its good or not -- and in most cases, its not.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Nick said:


> I think Netflix has a brand of sorts -- it's called '*Netflix and chill*'. No one ever said '*HBO and chill*'. If I could have only one content provider, it would be Netflix.


Johnny Carson had the same reputation for people "chilling" during his show. Several late night hosts have borrowed that line.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

Nick said:


> I think Netflix has a brand of sorts -- it's called '*Netflix and chill*'. No one ever said '*HBO and chill*'. If I could have only one content provider, it would be Netflix.


Funny you brought that up, because after I posted that thing about Netflix not really having a brand, the phrase "Netflix and chill" came to my mind. So essentially what you're saying is "Netflix's brand is Netflix." Yes, and tautologies make the tautologies! You're really just making my point for me, which is that, OK, Netflix has become a very popular, broad part of the pop culture landscape, but you're not telling me WHY people like Netflix and WHO it's for.

I guess if you had a family household -- Mom, Dad, 2.5 kids of varying ages -- and they could *only* watch TV from a single source for the coming year, well, Netflix might be a good compromise choice because, yes, Netflix does provide a lot of content and at least something for everyone. But unless the US economy goes full-on apocalyptic depression, I don't think that kind of scenario is going to be common in the 2020s. Americans will continue to drink from multiple video entertainment wells, in which case Netflix has to distinguish and differentiate itself from the other options competing for consumers' dollars every month.

So, again, where does that leave a service like Netflix that tries to be a jack of all trades but Master of None? (See what I did there?)


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

The real thing here is the folks that like Netflix have to realize is that the Netflix story has changed this past year. Prior, they had a good mix of original shows, original movies and licensed content. They had quite a lot of hit original shows and obviously people enjoy the licensed content. Where they've failed so far to me is the original movies which aren't really original, but bought up foreign content, bargain bin movies, straight to video, etc.

So they're losing all the licensed content, and they've already cancelled all the marvel shows. They've still got some popular original shows. They've also had to cancel a few of those due to bad publicity. I guess Murder Mystery had a lot of views, *shrug* it was watchable, but I wouldn't call it great or even good. It was there...

So no licensed / popular content + price hike = $380/shr -> $305/shr in a week.

They can obviously roll back the price hike, but I don't see that as the issue. I see the loss of popular content as the nail. There isn't really anything they can do about that.

They have a big lead and a brand name... but at the end of the day you need the big content to draw people in and then you can mix in the crappy content.

And the big outfits haven't even rolled out their services yet, so they haven't taken all their content off Netflix yet.

Some one else kinda said it, Netflix might just become the next myspace. At 135B market cap, nobody is going to buy it even for 150M users.


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## Microphone (Jan 30, 2007)

Rich said:


> That sports package would be great for me. For me, that's all D* is good for these days. They will never do that, of course.
> 
> Rich


And make sure that package has YES!!!!


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> The real thing here is the folks that like Netflix have to realize is that the Netflix story has changed this past year. Prior, they had a good mix of original shows, original movies and licensed content. They had quite a lot of hit original shows and obviously people enjoy the licensed content. Where they've failed so far to me is the original movies which aren't really original, but bought up foreign content, bargain bin movies, straight to video, etc.
> 
> So they're losing all the licensed content, and they've already cancelled all the marvel shows. They've still got some popular original shows. They've also had to cancel a few of those due to bad publicity. I guess Murder Mystery had a lot of views, *shrug* it was watchable, but I wouldn't call it great or even good. It was there...
> 
> ...


Netflix's biggest problem is that people have no reason to pay for it for 12 months if they want content from other services. Unless you HAVE to watch the latest episodes of whatever when it comes out, you can subscribe for a month and binge to catch up on what you watch, then drop it and do the binging on other services. The whole point of streaming was to get rid of 'appointment TV' so why would you feel you need to watch the latest episodes when they are released? Unless it is a major social phenomena like GoT, but there has never been something like that on a streaming service where everyone is talking about it.

People have been fine staying subscribed to Netflix 12 months a year because they had so much content thanks to all that licensed content that people could keep it as their one streaming option. As that goes away people will want other services. Sure they could subscribe to 3 or 4 other services 12 months a year and it is still cheaper than cable/satellite but once they realize they are only going to each service once or twice a week many will decide to shift their viewing habits to allow rotating streaming subscriptions. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone like Apple set things up to make that easy for Apple TV owners, doing it automatically.

This isn't a problem for Amazon, because who is subscribing to Prime for the video? They will want it year round for the free shipping. Netflix however, along with all the other streaming services like Disney+ and so forth will have to live with the reality many people aren't going to stay subscribed every month. Disney makes most of their money elsewhere, so this won't be a problem for them. For Netflix it will be a huge problem, their revenue will decrease and their stock price will plummet. Unless they become a full fledged studio releasing movies into theaters that make a billion dollars like Disney's they won't have another revenue source to offset this.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> The whole point of streaming was to get rid of 'appointment TV' so why would you feel you need to watch the latest episodes when they are released? Unless it is a major social phenomena like GoT, but there has never been something like that on a streaming service where everyone is talking about it.


Dunno if to the level of GoT, but Netflix has a bunch of shows were people talk about them. House Of Cards, Orange Is The New Black, Stranger Things.



slice1900 said:


> People have been fine staying subscribed to Netflix 12 months a year because they had so much content thanks to all that licensed content that people could keep it as their one streaming option. As that goes away people will want other services. Sure they could subscribe to 3 or 4 other services 12 months a year and it is still cheaper than cable/satellite but once they realize they are only going to each service once or twice a week many will decide to shift their viewing habits to allow rotating streaming subscriptions. I wouldn't be surprised to see someone like Apple set things up to make that easy for Apple TV owners, doing it automatically.


Still think you're giving people too much credit here. Nobody is going to rotate through services every few months and keep track of when shows drop, etc. Too much hassle. You can't even convince a lot of folks on a DIRECTV FORUM to make a 5 minute phone call to retention to lower their bills .



slice1900 said:


> This isn't a problem for Amazon, because who is subscribing to Prime for the video? They will want it year round for the free shipping. Netflix however, along with all the other streaming services like Disney+ and so forth will have to live with the reality many people aren't going to stay subscribed every month. Disney makes most of their money elsewhere, so this won't be a problem for them. For Netflix it will be a huge problem, their revenue will decrease and their stock price will plummet. Unless they become a full fledged studio releasing movies into theaters that make a billion dollars like Disney's they won't have another revenue source to offset this.


The difference I see between Netflix and all the studio back ones is that the studio back ones aren't going to premiere content on the streaming service for the most part. It's more like "here's where you watch all our old stuff". While Netflix is going to be dropping new content daily.

THEORETICALLY that'd give Netflix the edge over the studio back ones... except the majority of stuff they are buying up is garbage.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

TheRatPatrol said:


> You and I can't be the only fans out there that would want a sports only package. But like you said, it's all about the money.


Everything is about money. The sports cartels aren't gonna do us any favors that cause them to lose money.

Rich


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

Microphone said:


> And make sure that package has YES!!!!


Of course that would be a requirement. Leaving the greatest sports franchise in history out would be an act of stupidity.

Rich


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> Still think you're giving people too much credit here. Nobody is going to rotate through services every few months and keep track of when shows drop, etc. Too much hassle. You can't even convince a lot of folks on a DIRECTV FORUM to make a 5 minute phone call to retention to lower their bills .


That's why I think Apple might do it for them. Give people a simple interface that shows everything you watch across all services, including stuff you've found and bookmarked to 'watch later', and they can have a simple way to binge all the stuff off HBO while they're subscribed, then once it is done choose Netflix as the next provider to switch to and have the HBO subscription automatically suspended and the Netflix subscription activated, etc.

The reason people don't make that five minute call is because a lot of people hate calling customer service over the phone for ANYTHING, let alone to be seen as "begging" for a discount. Personally I will ALWAYS use chat or email support if I have the option rather than calling. If there was a button they could click on their remote to ask for those lower bills without talking to someone, everyone who reads about it in the forum would do it. If Apple makes it that simple for Apple TV users to switch between services, people will do it.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

slice1900 said:


> Netflix's biggest problem is that people have no reason to pay for it for 12 months if they want content from other services. Unless you HAVE to watch the latest episodes of whatever when it comes out, you can subscribe for a month and binge to catch up on what you watch, then drop it and do the binging on other services. The whole point of streaming was to get rid of 'appointment TV' so why would you feel you need to watch the latest episodes when they are released? Unless it is a major social phenomena like GoT, but there has never been something like that on a streaming service where everyone is talking about it.


Yeah, rotating subscriptions is a thing and Netflix's model of "dump a whole season at a time so folks can binge it in a weekend" doesn't help. I read recently that Apple TV+ will likely release each individual episode in a series one per week, i.e. the traditional TV model. Frankly, I think that's pretty smart, for two reasons. It helps drum up buzz at the watercooler, on social media, and on TV talk shows (e.g. Kimmel, Fallon, etc.) because the public is "watching together" week by week. Second, if you start watching a new season of a series with 10 episodes, well, that's gonna stretch over 3 months, so you'll want to stay subscribed until it's done. But in the meantime, new seasons of other series will debut. (Showtime figured this out a couple years ago when they switched from running seasons of shows on a quarterly format to instead staggering season premieres and finales so that something new was launching every month.)



SledgeHammer said:


> Dunno if to the level of GoT, but Netflix has a bunch of shows were people talk about them. House Of Cards, Orange Is The New Black, Stranger Things.


Only thing Netflix has done that's reached anywhere close to GoT in terms of cultural impact and excitement is Stranger Things, which is, admittedly, huge. (I love the show, personally. Lots of 80s nostalgia.) House of Cards and OITNB were Netflix's first forays into prestige originals. House of Cards concluded earlier this year and OITNB is about to drop its final season any day now, so those are done.

The pre-season press for Stranger Things was leading us to believe that this new season 3 would be its last, although (no spoilers please, I'm only midway through it!) it sounds to me like that may not be true. And why would it? You *know* Netflix is gonna throw a ton of cash at everyone involved to come back and, let's be honest, do those kids have anything better to do? Still, though, you have to think the series has a shelf-life. The cute kids are becoming awkward teens, growing up before our eyes, so time has to move on inside the show from season to season and, at some point, the 80s are over, right? I can see Stranger Things having a final season 4 with the kids in high school, set in maybe 1987. (Season 3 was set in '85.)

The Crown picks up the torch for Netflix prestige series but it's definitely ending with season 4; season 3 will drop later this year. I expect season 4 to drop either late 2020 or early 2021. (Can't really keep that story going since they'll run out of real-life material.)

Beyond that, what do they have? Ozark has steadily gained buzz and it did nab several big Emmy nominations this year, including best drama, best actor and best actress. So that seems to be evolving into a tentpole series for them. Black Mirror seems to be running out of gas. Their Marvel shows are all done now. Fuller House ends this year. GLOW and Russian Doll are both acclaimed but I don't think either has really broken through as a mainstream hit. Maybe Steve Carrell's upcoming Space Force will be a huge hit for them.



SledgeHammer said:


> Still think you're giving people too much credit here. Nobody is going to rotate through services every few months and keep track of when shows drop, etc. Too much hassle. You can't even convince a lot of folks on a DIRECTV FORUM to make a 5 minute phone call to retention to lower their bills .


Yeah, some will but a lot won't. Most folks aren't that organized or care that much about saving their money.



SledgeHammer said:


> The difference I see between Netflix and all the studio back ones is that the studio back ones aren't going to premiere content on the streaming service for the most part. It's more like "here's where you watch all our old stuff". While Netflix is going to be dropping new content daily.


Not quite true, I think. HBO Max (WarnerMedia's streaming service) will have a whole line of new Max Originals series and movies (in addition to HBO Originals). And they've already mentioned how Warner Bros. Pictures will be involved in making movies to feed to that service. I think we might see them take a page from the Netflix/Amazon book of making romantic comedies, artsy prestige pics and other smaller movies and putting them in theaters for short runs and then quickly bring them to HBO Max while they're fresh.

And, of course, HBO Max will still get the big tentpole movies that Warner Bros. puts out (as well as all the films from Universal, 20th Century Fox, and Summit until 2023). Disney+, Showtime, Starz, Hulu, and Prime Video will also continue to get Hollywood movies that debuted in theaters 6-12 months earlier. But meanwhile, I think Netflix's only deal for recent theatrical movies now is with Sony Pictures Animation, which puts out like 2-4 films a year. Other than that, Netflix only seems to get hand-me-down movies from Showtime (from STX and other non-major studios), after they've streamed there for about a year.



SledgeHammer said:


> THEORETICALLY that'd give Netflix the edge over the studio back ones... except the majority of stuff they are buying up is garbage.


Netflix's strategy for original films seems to be to do a couple big prestige picture a year -- last year was Roma, which was nominated for Best Picture -- and this year will be The Irishman. But otherwise, it's a lot of straight-to-video type stuff but with recognizable stars, like Murder Mystery and Wine Country.


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> Personally I will ALWAYS use chat or email support if I have the option rather than calling.


I've tried chat and its *way* more painful then calling in. They're talking to like 20 people at a time so it takes them 5 minutes to respond to each sentence. Gets annoying.


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## Rich (Feb 22, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> That's why I think Apple might do it for them. Give people a simple interface that shows everything you watch across all services, including stuff you've found and bookmarked to 'watch later', and they can have a simple way to binge all the stuff off HBO while they're subscribed, then once it is done choose Netflix as the next provider to switch to and have the HBO subscription automatically suspended and the Netflix subscription activated, etc.
> 
> The reason people don't make that five minute call is because a lot of people hate calling customer service over the phone for ANYTHING, let alone to be seen as "begging" for a discount. Personally I will ALWAYS use chat or email support if I have the option rather than calling. If there was a button they could click on their remote to ask for those lower bills without talking to someone, everyone who reads about it in the forum would do it. If Apple makes it that simple for Apple TV users to switch between services, people will do it.


I've never had to call any streaming providers to cancel the service. Always do it online and it takes seconds. But your suggestion about the way Apple could do it merits consideration. Anything that makes life a bit simpler is worth discussing. One other comment: When you cancel a streaming video service you still have access and have to pay for the rest of the month. In other words you can't just call up and cancel. Once you activate a service you are charged for a month.

Rich


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## TV_Guy (Nov 16, 2007)

Rich said:


> I've never had to call any streaming providers to cancel the service. Always do it online and it takes seconds. But your suggestion about the way Apple could do it merits consideration. Anything that makes life a bit simpler is worth discussing. One other comment: When you cancel a streaming video service you still have access and have to pay for the rest of the month. In other words you can't just call up and cancel. Once you activate a service you are charged for a month.


Same is now true of Directv. No credit for partial months. A few states like NY prohibit this practice.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

TV_Guy said:


> Same is now true of Directv. No credit for partial months. A few states like NY prohibit this practice.


It's now true of all AT&T services. Found that out the hard way when I dumped AT&T Internet earlier this year.


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## slice1900 (Feb 14, 2013)

SledgeHammer said:


> I've tried chat and its *way* more painful then calling in. They're talking to like 20 people at a time so it takes them 5 minutes to respond to each sentence. Gets annoying.


I always do it while I'm surfing the web and doing other stuff (like reading dbstalk) so I don't have to care how long it takes them. When you call a company you have to listen to some awful hold music forever (why can't they have it automatically call you back when your reach the front of the line?) or worse you get bombarded with VERY LOUD ads for their products and services (can't turn the volume down too much or you won't hear when you get connected) Then you have to listen to them typing away furiously while they try to help you, or they'll transfer you to someone else - which seems to have a 50/50 chance of dropping the call anytime it happens!

Chat is way better, even if they are doing 20 other things at once.


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## dminches (Oct 1, 2006)

NashGuy said:


> The pre-season press for Stranger Things was leading us to believe that this new season 3 would be its last, although (no spoilers please, I'm only midway through it!) it sounds to me like that may not be true. And why would it? You *know* Netflix is gonna throw a ton of cash at everyone involved to come back and, let's be honest, do those kids have anything better to do? Still, though, you have to think the series has a shelf-life. The cute kids are becoming awkward teens, growing up before our eyes, so time has to move on inside the show from season to season and, at some point, the 80s are over, right? I can see Stranger Things having a final season 4 with the kids in high school, set in maybe 1987. (Season 3 was set in '85.)


Stranger Things was never going to be limited to 3 seasons. I would be shocked if it didn't go beyond 4. I believe it is Netflix's #1 series. Money talks!


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## SledgeHammer (Dec 28, 2007)

slice1900 said:


> I always do it while I'm surfing the web and doing other stuff (like reading dbstalk) so I don't have to care how long it takes them. When you call a company you have to listen to some awful hold music forever (why can't they have it automatically call you back when your reach the front of the line?) or worse you get bombarded with VERY LOUD ads for their products and services (can't turn the volume down too much or you won't hear when you get connected) Then you have to listen to them typing away furiously while they try to help you, or they'll transfer you to someone else - which seems to have a 50/50 chance of dropping the call anytime it happens!
> 
> Chat is way better, even if they are doing 20 other things at once.


I once called my local Best Buy and the guy put me on "hold"... except he apparently didn't know how to put somebody on hold cuz I heard his entire convo&#8230; he was playing a video game with his buddy... when he came back, I asked him if he won the game.

Usually my hold time on DTV isn't that much. I just have to go through the whole process of confirming all the info, etc.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

dminches said:


> Stranger Things was never going to be limited to 3 seasons. I would be shocked if it didn't go beyond 4. I believe it is Netflix's #1 series. Money talks!


Yeah, probably not, although Netflix was definitely coaching their actors to make it *sound* like season 3 would be the final season. There will certainly be a season 4. A 5th season might be pushing it but I'm sure that if Netflix can make it happen (with or without the Duffer Brothers), they will.


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## pds3 (Jul 27, 2012)

Just discontinued Directv after over 20 years of service. Their dropping our CBS feeds was the final straw. I re-installed my rooftop antenna and now get over 30 local OTA channels from Chicago. I use my Roku box to get any incidentals that I might want.


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## NashGuy (Jan 30, 2014)

pds3 said:


> Just discontinued Directv after over 20 years of service. Their dropping our CBS feeds was the final straw. I re-installed my rooftop antenna and now get over 30 local OTA channels from Chicago. I use my Roku box to get any incidentals that I might want.


Yup, streaming subscription apps plus free OTA TV is what I've been doing for a few years now since I left DirecTV in 2015. Funny thing is, if you end up subscribing to HBO Max on your Roku next year, AT&T won't really even care that you no longer subscribe to DirecTV. They know it's their past and HBO Max is their future. It's where they're going to stuff all the content that they actually own.


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