And have been for several years now? Are the cable/sat companies trying to get in on the streaming bandwagon by offering subs to certain internet channels? Or is the world quickly passing them by? [thanks to exclusivity deals I’d say]
Whenever I watch cable in a hotel (I don’t have it at home), it’s just the same basic channels, showing the same basic fare that they always have: you know the likes of TNT or the USA Network will still be showing endless reruns of Shawshank Redemption or relatively recent superhero movies. Yeah the hotel chains typically won’t spring for larger more expensive packages, but the rapidity with which these technologies have been going obsolete is still a bit shocking.
Anyone out there still paying for large cable/sat packages?
I have cable. What I don’t have is add-ons like HBO and Showtime. Sixty or so channels is quite enough. My wife subscribes to a couple of streaming services, but I rarely watch anything on them.
I still have cable, including both HBO and Showtime, though I’ve told myself I should cancel them, as there’s little good on either.
I read someplace that the cable companies actually don’t mind cord cutters as much as you might expect, since they’re generally the only game in town for fast internet (so you’re likely still going to be their customer) and supplying it to consumers is more profitable than supplying cable service.
When we moved house three years ago, we switched from DirectTV (satellite) to YouTubeTV (streaming) because we didn’t need most of the channels DirectTV offered but were still paying for.
YouTubeTV has all the channels we want, including local channels, plus unlimited DVR capability at one-third of the cost of DirectTV. YouTubeTV has since raised its prices but is still a bargain.
I think people with cable and satellite stick with it because they don’t want to learn a new system, they like having the option to watch 200+ channels or simply don’t care what it costs since they don’t worry about the cost.
Will cable and satellite service slowly change over to a streaming model? Not if they can continue to charge for tons of channels that few people watch, and people continue to pay for them. They also can charge extra for special packages, like sports packages, that may not be available from most streaming services… yet.
The cable/internet supplier I use (which took over management of the municipal broadband utility) is migrating everyone to a streaming service, probably because they don’t want to have to support two systems. I switched a month ago, and while the interface is primitive compared to TiVo I now have almost twice as many channels not to watch for two-thirds the price.
They’re not the only internet game in town — I could opt for Xfinity or CenturyLink — but at $25 a month for 250MB (which is plenty for my needs) I feel no impetus to move.
I have arrived at this year in the same boat, mostly by sheer inertia up to now so I will soon change that. And good point on the cable providers’ business: for instance, Comcast/XFinity with their broadband-only service will throw in for free their Flex set-streaming box, i.e. their version of a Roku/FireStick. They figure enough of their subscribers are streaming a-la-carte using the highspeed anyway.
Of course you and I know what that means, in a few years that will be the standard and it will be as bloody expensive as the current CATV bundle.
I’ve bounced back and forth a bit. I cut the cord for about 2 years but came back when we had fibre installed and the local provider gave me a great deal to add TV to make a bundle with Internet. The only issue I had with our antenna is that the main broadcast point (the CN Tower) here is exactly in the line of site to most of the Buffalo transmitters across the lake so reception from US stations sucked. Old habits die hard and I like watching the US weekend morning shows - Today, Face the Nation, etc.
I’ve had Dish TV since 2005. I live in a semi rural area and high speed internet was about 4 meg until a year of two ago. Now on a good day it’s 16 meg, but often it’s 8 or less.
I’d not trust streaming services to be fast enough on a regular basis.
Fiber is being installed in town, the county seat, but they are unlikely to come 6 miles down the road to my location.
Don’t forget his old we are here. I don’t watch YouTube. I’m not exactly sure what YouTube TV even is. We have Hulu and Netflix and even Prime. But those are all for movies or series like Murders in the Building or Tiger king. For “real” TV we have DirecTV. We pay a lot for it, but as you say, we don’t care
I can’t quite tell what DAZN is - it looks like pay per view , which means it probably won’t be any good for regular season baseball/hockey/basketball games. I can get most of the sports networks my husband watches with fubo but that might not be the case if I lived somewhere other than New York. And fubo doesn’t carry YES network so he won’t be able to watch most Yankee games. Fubo is just a somewhat cheaper, wireless version of cable - I’ll still have to get a package that starts at about $70/month. I could get the MLB streaming service but last time I checked, in-market live games are blacked out.
So yeah, really no streaming options for live sports.
I’m not a sports fan but I know that some live sports is available on streaming services. I know Apple TV+ has some baseball and football games, and supposedly is going to have some NHL later. And Prime Video has football on Thursdays.
That’s what held me back for the longest time. DirecTV stream however came along and I jumped onto that. Expensive for a streaming service but way cheaper that cable or satellite. They carry Bally Sports (previously fox sports) which runs all my local live sports.
We have A.T.&T. Uverse which I don’t even know if you can get anymore as a new customer. We have it in 4 rooms of the house.
We have every single movie channel and sports channel available. There’s over 100 channels that we can’t understand because they are in Spanish. Overall we have thousands of channels with this system.
Plus we have many channels via Roku.