OT: Dish Has Crossed the Line for Cord Cutters | The Boneyard

OT: Dish Has Crossed the Line for Cord Cutters

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For years, we dealt with exorbitant prices for cellphone service. Then, T-Mobile, StraightTalk and a few others crossed the line to make cell service more affordable.

All the while, TV service has been the domain of monopolies such as Comcast and DirectTV. Finally, that wall is crumbling too. Dish has announced that it will offer a bundle of channels, including ESPN and CNN for a low price of just $20/month. Let the war begin.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/05/media/dish-virtual-cable/index.html
 

THC

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For years, we dealt with exorbitant prices for cellphone service. Then, T-Mobile, StraightTalk and a few others crossed the line to make cell service more affordable.

All the while, TV service has been the domain of monopolies such as Comcast and DirectTV. Finally, that wall is crumbling too. Dish has announced that it will offer a bundle of channels, including ESPN and CNN for a low price of just $20/month. Let the war begin.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/05/media/dish-virtual-cable/index.html
Looking forward to the day of ala carte cable.
 

UCweCONN

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I am moving within CT and in doing so, Comcast is jacking up my bundled TV/internet rate by $45/mo. As a result, I called DirectTV to get info. Can anyone give me an opinion on DirectTV? My main concern is that with Comcast, since it's cable, I have unlimited downloads but DirectTV has a data limit after which you pay extra. I like the idea of DirectTV but they said you can't play on-line games (this will not go well with my daughter) and the download issue.
 
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Me too. I'm tired of being told I'm getting 200 channels when 60% require a pay-per-view fee, are the SD version of the HD channel, or are shopping channels. Give me what I want and I'm willing to pay for it. This is the first crack in the dam is how I see it. I dumped Direct TV for Comcast/Xfinity last year but I'm able to get Sunday Ticket for $200 as an online only subscription to watch my Ravens. I get AtBat to watch the O's for about $150 year. I've now dumped Comcast when my last bill hit $192. I'm down to high speed internet for under $70. duck* Comcast and DirectTV.
 
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Me too. I'm tired of being told I'm getting 200 channels when 60% require a pay-per-view fee, are the SD version of the HD channel, or are shopping channels. Give me what I want and I'm willing to pay for it. This is the first crack in the dam is how I see it. I dumped Direct TV for Comcast/Xfinity last year but I'm able to get Sunday Ticket for $200 as an online only subscription to watch my Ravens. I get AtBat to watch the O's for about $150 year. I've now dumped Comcast when my last bill hit $192. I'm down to high speed internet for under $70. duck* Comcast and DirectTV.

Satellite for internet is a last resort for those in the boonies. My strategy is pay for the highest speed internet you can get, then cut the cable and get your TV via the internet.
 

jleves

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I am moving within CT and in doing so, Comcast is jacking up my bundled TV/internet rate by $45/mo. As a result, I called DirectTV to get info. Can anyone give me an opinion on DirectTV? My main concern is that with Comcast, since it's cable, I have unlimited downloads but DirectTV has a data limit after which you pay extra. I like the idea of DirectTV but they said you can't play on-line games (this will not go well with my daughter) and the download issue.
As a sports fan, I couldn't imagine not going with DirecTV and trying to cut the cord and get everything off the Internet. Maybe I'm an old guy when it comes to TV Tech, but the few things I've streamed live are never like the quality I can get from DirecTV. I also can't be bothered with trying to get a signal to the big TV in the family room and the lack of a DVR to switch between two stations or record things when I can't watch live are all deal killers.

As dogpause said above, if you can get FIOS, cable or at the worst DSL, there's no reason to consider DirecTV for Internet. First of all, it's got to go up and back from a satellite which is a large amount of lag you don't want to deal with - specially for playing games and it just wasn't designed for carrying Internet traffic. It's a great video delivery system, however.
 
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I'm going with cox for home phone and internet and Direct TV for cable to replace Frontier which took over for UVerse. The internet service became sort of spotty since frontier took over. I will be saving 90 bucks a month roughly from what I was paying Frontier. When I called to cancel they were willing to drop the price significantly according to them, but we never got to the details since I had made up my mind to switch. Cox has no contract, Direct TV price will go up about 45 dollars after the first year. This is a positive first step if at the end of these two years this streaming service looks like I can get what I want, I may go all in. I also bought one those android TV boxes and you can stream movies and shows in HD quality but the live sports feeds leave a lot to be desired. Only upside to that is its all free.
 
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BTW, I also have an over-the-air antenna (Amazin Basics $59). I'm in Bristol and I get every OTA station in CT except channel 8. It's an indoor antenna. I may get an outdoor antenna in the Spring. The image quality is better than cable or DTV because it's uncompressed. It can get blocky for a second or so here and there, but DTV has "rain fade blackouts" during heavy storms.

The OTA signal is all digital, so if you get a signal, even a low strength one, it's generally a great picture.
 
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Twenty bucks for ten channels sounds like a really great deal. SMH. I would literally watch two of those channels. Not to mention it is internet only.
 

junglehusky

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BTW, I also have an over-the-air antenna (Amazin Basics $59). I'm in Bristol and I get every OTA station in CT except channel 8. It's an indoor antenna. I may get an outdoor antenna in the Spring. The image quality is better than cable or DTV because it's uncompressed. It can get blocky for a second or so here and there, but DTV has "rain fade blackouts" during heavy storms.

The OTA signal is all digital, so if you get a signal, even a low strength one, it's generally a great picture.
For both comcast and OTA digital, I've noticed similar levels of compression blockiness during fast moving shots (for example, during a replay where they go to the sideline camera and the background is whizzing by, probably due to the complexity of the video changing too fast). I kind of wondered if it was some of my hardware, I guess the next time I'm at a sports bar I'll have to remember to watch closely and see if I see the same artifact.

Anyway I'm going to keep an eye on Dish's SlingTV... especially if they have one of the $5 sports bundles that has FSN, NBCSN, and SNY would be nice. The price of the Comcast bundle I'm getting now isn't quite exorbitant enough to make me want to cut the TV cable right away; but I'm going to have to renegotiate with the customer retention specialist in about a month before the price goes up. Maybe if I upgrade my connection speed and offset the increase by switching TV to Sling, it might about break even and then I'm not paying part of my cable bill for a lineup full of bogus history and redneck reality shows.
 
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Satellite for internet is a last resort for those in the boonies. My strategy is pay for the highest speed internet you can get, then cut the cable and get your TV via the internet.

This is even a last resort for us with no internet providers. I go the portable verizon personal hotspot route. The satellite companies direct, hughes, etc always seemed crappy to me mueller we just cell service two years ago. So three days a week I was incommunicado which in hindsight was great.
 

nomar

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Am I old fashioned because I want all 2000 channels?
 
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Well I'm sure they'll slowly jack up your price as you go along with them, right? Don't all the companies basically do that now?
 
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For years, we dealt with exorbitant prices for cellphone service. Then, T-Mobile, StraightTalk and a few others crossed the line to make cell service more affordable.

All the while, TV service has been the domain of monopolies such as Comcast and DirectTV. Finally, that wall is crumbling too. Dish has announced that it will offer a bundle of channels, including ESPN and CNN for a low price of just $20/month. Let the war begin.

http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/05/media/dish-virtual-cable/index.html

The problem is that Dish is the T Mobile of the TV industry. The product is vastly inferior, so all they can compete on is price.
 
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Looking forward to the day of ala carte cable.
Yeah, no you're not. Because everyone that thinks they want ala carte thinks they'll pay $20 for the 10 channels they watch.

Which, taken to its logical conclusion, reduces the available revenues by 80% or more. And then what happens ? The available channels are reduced by 80%.

You can't get something for nothing. And you can't get something slightly less than you already get for next to nothing. And that's what you want. Guaranteed something you think you'll be able to pay for ala carte ends up disappearing completely because not enough other people are willing to pay for it ala carte.
 
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I am moving within CT and in doing so, Comcast is jacking up my bundled TV/internet rate by $45/mo. As a result, I called DirectTV to get info. Can anyone give me an opinion on DirectTV? My main concern is that with Comcast, since it's cable, I have unlimited downloads but DirectTV has a data limit after which you pay extra. I like the idea of DirectTV but they said you can't play on-line games (this will not go well with my daughter) and the download issue.
I've had them all at one time or another - Comcast, TimeWarner, FIOS, Dish, and DirecTV. They're all comparable. You'll be fine with any of them. The real impact comes in trying to get them to package things, etc. The best deal you'll get is to switch. Try and maximize the length of time your switch-over deal lasts.
 
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