Weekend Open Forum: Time to cut the cable TV cord?

[Omnislip]

Lucky you, you Yanks. No way UK residents could switch away from satellite/cable 'cos there's no real alternative. Well, you could use Sky's online thing, but it costs just as much as the real deal.

But how can ou all cope without all the sports?

 

[Guest]

I recently purchased a Roku streaming video box, and it is pretty nice to be able to stream shows off the internet. The quality is not as good as regular tv(might be my internet speed), but this service has a lot of potential. Early this week though, after I disconnected DirecTV, I heard that AT&T is going to cap their high speed internet service to 150G a month starting May 2. That will stop a lot of people from cutting their services.

So as you can see, the major players are going to put up a fight to keep people from going to streaming video as long as they can. That way they can squeeze every last penny out of our wallets.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20042839-266.html

 

[TJGeezer]

What @Timonius said. Gave it up some years ago when legislated legal monopolies kept the prices unrealistically high. I didn't mind, back when my cable company reinvested and bandwidth kept rising, but when they stopped increasing bandwidth in favor of just increasing the price I quit in disgust. Worst example of "free enterprise" as dogma, not practice, I'd seen to that point. I guess with profits soaring they could buy more members of congress and senators.

 

[edison5do]

In my country Broadband its tooo slow..... so my cable will still there for a long time!

 

[Kibaruk]

@impcfast: So.... they are comparing water and electricity to a non-existant never-ending cost-free (We are not taking into account the WAN used to give the internet because you are paying a monthly fee for "maintainance", we are measuring the GBs, how much is 1gb worth to one of this retarded companies?) resource?

My only hope is that they get sued so bad they have to give free services to low income families.

 

[Prosercunus]

I have ditched cable myself. I was astonished to find out that my 20mbps down/2mbps up cable internet was 10 dollars CHEAPER than the BASIC cable my local company was offering. Absolutely ridiculous.

Even my parents ditched it and they were born in the fifties, at the absolute zenith (pun intended) of television and cable soon to follow. 48 dollars for basic cable when I could get my aforementioned cable internet for 37, which is a much much greater value? They are out of their minds.

 

[Prosercunus]

Prosercunus said:
I have ditched cable myself. I was astonished to find out that my 20mbps down/2mbps up cable internet was 10 dollars CHEAPER than the BASIC cable my local company was offering. Absolutely ridiculous.

Even my parents ditched it and they were born in the fifties, at the absolute zenith (pun intended) of television and cable soon to follow. 48 dollars for basic cable when I could get my aforementioned cable internet for 37, which is a much much greater value? They are out of their minds.

Edit: My parents basically had enough when they seen their bill sitting at 200 dollars (cable internet, cable tv, phone) and once they added on a few DVR boxes and the such. Thanks to the companies greed now they are getting at best 40/month from them for the internet.

 

[mattfrompa]

Omnislip said:
Lucky you, you Yanks. No way UK residents could switch away from satellite/cable 'cos there's no real alternative. Well, you could use Sky's online thing, but it costs just as much as the real deal.

But how can ou all cope without all the sports?

If you get an HD antennae you can get some local channels that are basically local news, sports, and a few sitcoms.

 

[madboyv1]

Eh, I watch Hockey and American Football now and then as well as collegiate sports, no real alternatives for that atm. I also like to use the TV as background noise, nor are any of the channels I actually watch available over the air or online (except Comedy Central, a TON of that is available online). So I am basically stuck. Either way... I should give the cable company a call.

 

[impcfast]

Well, I too watch most of my shows on hulu or some other site where the eps have been upped to fileshare services. But, I need my cable tv specifically for the sports: NASCAR and NFL. If it weren't for those sports, I wouldn't have need of cable either except for internet.

Last week on the dailytech news website, they had a story about ATT dsl/Uverse subscribers being capped. So, even if you leave Cable for a different ISP source, you're still looking at usage limitations. ATT looks as if they're about the same as Comcast in the amount of bandwidth though.

And I agree with those of you who said these type of limitations takes us back to the stone age of the internet. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that we'll see limitations go away any time soon.

 

[Guest]

Just ditched Comcast last month and I'm not missing it very much. I realized I was watching Netflix all the time. Netflix is $8/month and Comcast was $80/month for "basic" cable with a crappy DVR and crappier HD. I do miss late night TV but some of that seems to be on Hulu Plus. I'll be looking into that option soon.

 

[Lokalaskurar]

I gave up cable a while ago - Internet-based television is simply sooo much cheaper. Cheaper = free if it's on YouTube . So instead of cable, I use a 3G-uplink.

 

[Jurassic4096]

I got rid of cable 3 years ago, and only use the TV for movies. HTPC in my future.

 

[Guest]

one word:
XFTA

 

[Rasta211]

Ditched TV in 2005, lol.

For sports I got to bars or a friends house.

The main problem I saw with regular TV is that I couldn't watch shows I wanted to watch at a time convenient for me without commercials.

 

[tonylukac]

Gave up cable 2 years ago. I liked the digital tv conversion because we live near Chicago and get free over the air broadcasts in sharp hd. Sports are plentiful on the weekends, so I see no need for cable. We have att dsl and that's getting capped, but I guess being a volunteer librarian I just don't watch that much tv, including streaming tv. The next improvement in this house (condo) was to get Ooma phone service which costs $12 a year for a landline. Frys has that. Instead of watching tv, I keep up on the latest tech reading Techspot.

 

[3DCGMODELER]

They should call it "Comcast Cable Commercial" it is no way Comcast Cable tv, Cause the commercials amount to the same running time as the tv shows or movies...

I am about to cut the Cable tv, and just keep the Internet from comcast.

But when I do cut the cable tv, they said they have to charge me an additional $10.00 a month, because I wont have cable tv ???? what is up with that ...

Talk about getting ripped off ... that should be illegal ... IMHO...

 

[lipe123]

Would work well enough in the US but Canada is pretty stuffed as far as this goes.

Not to mention like another poster said before me, instead of upgrading the internet infrastructure thats mostly based on tech thats 10+ years old they simply want to restrict its use to lower the stress on band with etc.
Here's a crazy idea, how about instead of crippling the internet they spend some money on beefing up the backbone connections and possibly investing in some faster/better ways to transfer data.

Makes complete sense to just integrate tv/movies/phones all into the existing internet framework and be done with all the extra costs of running seperate networks. In almost EVERY future movie thats already the reality and makes perfect sense.

 

[Guest]

Only problem with this is because i digitally download all my games though steam or Xbox live or even the Playstation store bandwidth caps are not enought here in canada. I have one of the bigger packages now and without streaming I use or exceed my caps now.

I use to have unlimited but apparently Bell or Cogeco (my choices here) do not offer them anymore.

 

[Guest]

My family gave up cable in 2007; Between Netflix, Hulu and UTorrent we haven't missed anything. We love being able to sit down and watch 8 seasons in a row of any show in without a single advert or menu (the exception being Hulu of course). We own some Disney DVDs for the kids which serve to remind us of how imposing standard media distribution is. I.E. getting 20 minutes of studio promos, previews and adverts forced on you before even getting to the annoying 3d interactive menu. I don't like to feel like I'm being punished for buying a movie, I just want to watch the damn movie I purchased. That's why I pirate! ( a simple titled file that I just click and it plays the said named movie in whichever default media player I like. WOW! what a concept, if only the networks and movie industry could invent something like this in the next 10 years they would be rich!) My children get to watch an interesting time in history for technology : multi-billion dollar industries fail or thrive based on how they fight or embrace the change in end-users needs/wants with non-archaic digital distribution systems for media and entertainment. Meanwhile, greedy ISPs conspire and plot how to exploit and capitalize on the situation so they can bleed every last stone and our government building organizations that get to determine whether you are a jail-worthy criminal because you may have watched or read or posted the wrong image on the interweb that was trademarked, copyrighted or Eula Intellectual Property. I think it should at least be legal to pirate what you have already purchased like I have always done with games, movies and music to avoid constantly switching discs or having an obnoxious disc library in my living room. Just a thought, sorry about the non-thread related tangent.

 

[Guest]

This is a follow-up of my family giving up cable in 2007. We switched over from residential Comcast service to business class Comcast because business class is 16Mb(or maybe 12Mb) for $65 a month. It has no bandwidth cap so I can frag, download an stream movies 24/7 while my wife remotes into work. They also roll a truck within 4 hours when internet is down, they came out at 1:00 am once on my permission of course. The only downside is I can't download torrents and receive low ping for gaming simultaneously. I can only stream movies to one PC at a time while gaming if I want a low ping, and MagickJack voip device doesn't work proper during heavy torrents but still works fine while streaming gaming and remoting in.

 

[LinkedKube]

We use around 250gb a month in downloads and streaming, back at home at least. Not so hard to see with 4 laptops, 5 desktops and a htpc running netflix. I've even gotten a call from comcast after a deactivation to ask what was I doing. After further investigation I was found not guilty of running any illegal websites, ie child pornography, torrent sites(and yes that was said to me.) I dont watch so much tv anymore. With school and working with my dad I barely have time to get on TS.

 

[Guest]

Never had cable!!! Laugh Out Loud!!!

 

[Guest]

I have not had cable, dish, etc for many years now. I simply use broadcast TV (I live in a Metro area so I have a good selection of programs). My spouse watches a lot of TV over the internet which adds to what we get over the air.

 

[Guest]

Dropped dish about 3 months ago (best thing I have ever done), only watch OTA channels and Netflix. Built HTPC that is DVR, and media server, and also have PlayOn installed, using HD Homerun tuners to stream tv channels to others rooms.