(05-04-2017 11:44 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  They're going OTA + stand alone online services (Netflix, HBO Now, Showtime, Hulu, Amazon).

Then some people use illegal means to steal content that they haven't paid for, but suspect that's still a fairly small portion.

There are two practices here. 1) Kodi, and similar, in which nobody pays anybody anything for the service; and 2) password sharing, in which one person who pays for a service provides another person with a password that allows them to watch it through a streaming device. I really don't have much sense for how widespread either practice is, but I know some people who do one or the other. Sharing of passwords is generally not a violation of terms of service. For instance, HBO has confirmed this with respect to HBO Now.

According to this article, "46 percent of American adults with streaming media accounts admitted to sharing log-in credentials with people living outside of their homes." http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/magaz.../index.htm

This article says that in 2015 about 6% of U.S. broadband households use an over-the-top video service paid by someone living outside of the household and that it cost the industry $500 million a year in lost revenues. http://variety.com/2015/digital/news/net...201538908/

Viacom and Disney, for example, sure as s___ aren't just going to accept less revenue.

If they can only make distributors carry fewer of their channels, then they're going to charge more for those channels.

When I cut cable I went to an antenna. All the OTA free channels come in beautifully on my big Sony flatscreen. I also have Netflix and an Amazon fire stick. Right now I'm not using the fire stick. I have my video games set up to where I watch Netflix on my big tv.

(05-04-2017 11:37 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  The biggest thing here: don't let cord cutting zealots trick you into thinking there has been some great revolution in the way people think about TV.

That's a lie.

It has always been about, and continues to be about money. Plain and simple.


If cable/sat magically decided to let people keep their same bundles and hardware for $30-40/month, no one drops.

So, skinny bundles are quite obviously the way they need to go. But then that hurts programmers, who make more money by having more channels and forcing distributors to carry them all in order to get the good ones. Ultimately, we'll probably see programmers raising their demands on per subscriber fees to make the same money from fewer channels in the bundle, putting us right back to where we are now: suddenly 20% of subs decided they don't want to pay $50-60/month for TV anymore.

Netflix is solely responsible for that wave of change.

Good for them. Disruptions come and go, in any market, over time.

Are you employed by a cable or satellite company?

I ask because you seem to be a cable TV zealot and advocate who intensely dislikes the fact many people are dropping cable and satellite TV.

If the programmers raise their rates too high, I will just drop Sling and go solely with OTA (ND is on NBC) and Amazon Fire Stick.

If that means no more ESPN and ACC Network Extra, so be it. I just won't see those games, I guess.

I will listen over the internet to the radio broadcasts on WatchND.

Hell, I used to do that all of the time and was not the worse for it.

Life will go on just fine.

I am not going to be held hostage and extorted by certain entities over television prices.

Terry, good. That is your right. And more than that, you're a critical part of the market feedback to service providers whose price/value proposition is waning. No, I'm not employed by cable or sat.

orange, GREAT point about the password sharing. Thanks for bringing it up.

(05-03-2017 03:53 PM)TerryD Wrote:  

(05-03-2017 03:47 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  https://news.fastcompany.com/cord-cuttin...er-4036578

That's 0.6% of TV homes giving up pay tv packages in January, February, and March of this year.

I am one of them. I dropped DirecTV in January.

Yep. I have PS Vue which costs me $34.99 monthly. No shopping channels and junk channels. I can DVR all of my favorites and stream on five TVs simultaneously. I use ROKU to get free XTV and USTV which gets me all the networks live, as well as tons of on demand shows and movies. I used to pay DISH over $160 monthly. No more worries about the weather shutting me down. I am totally happy with this. No wires or big boxes. My back up is an OTA antenna which gets me 17 channels and all networks

Well this isn't a religion (I hope) but the increase in choices is probably a good thing.

I think the DVR and YouTube share credit for changing our ideas about TV. Few people are willing to accept the idea of someone sitting in some corner office making the decision about what time and day you are allowed to watch a program. Outside of sports I choose when I watch everything. Whether it is the most recent episode of Big Bang Theory on my DVR or binge watching Catastrophe.

Only thing left is determining whose library of content you pay to watch if you pay for any at all.

arkst,

Along those lines, another thought: the internet, generally, and now on-demand/DVR/iTunes type markets/streaming services, specifically, have somewhat altered the paradigm of "what's on".

Now it's less a question of "I wonder what's on right now, let me scroll through a list of temporally programmed channels to see if I like anything that's playing" to a question of "I know exactly what I want to see, what's he most efficient/least expensive method for me to obtain that".

The latter is great if you know what you want. But the former is being lost. Netflix does a nice job with recommendations, if you don't know exactly. But generally, the ability to just mindlessly scroll is going away or gone.

(05-04-2017 02:35 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  arkst,

Along those lines, another thought: the internet, generally, and now on-demand/DVR/iTunes type markets/streaming services, specifically, have somewhat altered the paradigm of "what's on".

Now it's less a question of "I wonder what's on right now, let me scroll through a list of temporally programmed channels to see if I like anything that's playing" to a question of "I know exactly what I want to see, what's he most efficient/least expensive method for me to obtain that".

The latter is great if you know what you want. But the former is being lost. Netflix does a nice job with recommendations, if you don't know exactly. But generally, the ability to just mindlessly scroll is going away or gone.

You can mindlessly scroll through the apps of most services looking for something to watch

Not at all the same thing, and much more difficult in single network apps.

(05-04-2017 02:56 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  Not at all the same thing, and much more difficult in single network apps.

Download Yahoo! Video Guide for iPhone or (I assume) Android. Tell it what services you have. Then you can scroll or search multiple services at once. Some streaming devices may have similar capabilities built in (my 3rd generation AppleTV does not).

(05-04-2017 10:12 AM)BigHouston Wrote:  

(05-03-2017 05:51 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  Depends on how you define cord cutting.

If you define it as "households that dropped pay TV products like Comcast Xfinity, Charter Spectrum, TWC Spectrum, Verizon FIOS, AT&T UVerse, DirecTV satellite, DISH Network satellite, etc.", then that's not really cord cutting. These people are still paying for scripted and live video content that they still desire to view. They're just willing to give up some quality/ease of use/convenience to switch platforms and save a cheap buck.


Real cord cutters are people who actually don't care about TV, and are fine with an antenna, dvd player, etc. There aren't actually a ton of these people around, but they do exist.

Good points ^^^

I actually had cancelled my Direct TV in April but just last week switch it back on... Got a heck of a deal now... I was paying nearly $100 before but now am paying $35 for the same actual package.

Interesting. I've heard with cable one can cancel and have another family member, wife for instance, call and have the same service set up for way cheaper that was previously being paid. I hate playing that game but I'm seriously considering giving it a try.

(05-04-2017 03:07 PM)orangefan Wrote:  Download Yahoo! Video Guide for iPhone or (I assume) Android. Tell it what services you have. Then you can scroll or search multiple services at once. Some streaming devices may have similar capabilities built in (my 3rd generation AppleTV does not).

Appreciate the suggestion.

That to me, though, is just a way to more efficiently obtain what you want, when you know what you want. Roku has a built in service similar to that.


Nothing will ever replace the ability to just scroll through a big bundle of channels that have been programmed by someone else, using dedicated hardware that quickly changes the channels, for mindless watching, IMO.

But like I was lamenting, those days appear to be over. People have been "Google-ized" and no longer have he patience to consider wading through a pile of something to look around. They know what they want, and they wanted exactly that yesterday.

(05-04-2017 02:42 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  

(05-04-2017 02:35 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  arkst,

Along those lines, another thought: the internet, generally, and now on-demand/DVR/iTunes type markets/streaming services, specifically, have somewhat altered the paradigm of "what's on".

Now it's less a question of "I wonder what's on right now, let me scroll through a list of temporally programmed channels to see if I like anything that's playing" to a question of "I know exactly what I want to see, what's he most efficient/least expensive method for me to obtain that".

The latter is great if you know what you want. But the former is being lost. Netflix does a nice job with recommendations, if you don't know exactly. But generally, the ability to just mindlessly scroll is going away or gone.

You can mindlessly scroll through the apps of most services looking for something to watch

or you can not be a mindless drone and decide on what you want to watch ahead of time. I'll never understand the handful of people here who want to down people who don't care for cable.

Yes, you can do that. It is a perfectly valid way of doing things.

But it wasn't a realistic way of doing things, before the time of the internet, and smartphones, and virtually limitless, very cheap (free) information, in the palm of your hand, wherever you go.


There was a time where you could only watch what was on, when it was on. And having more channels meant you had more possibilities to watch something that was pleasurable.

Boomerang is now live as a separate subscription service. Currently only on Android and Apple devices. Roku and others are in the pipeline. Used the tablet to cast to TV.

(05-04-2017 04:10 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  Yes, you can do that. It is a perfectly valid way of doing things.

But it wasn't a realistic way of doing things, before the time of the internet, and smartphones, and virtually limitless, very cheap (free) information, in the palm of your hand, wherever you go.

There was a time where you could only watch what was on, when it was on. And having more channels meant you had more possibilities to watch something that was pleasurable.

I wouldn't know. I very rarely watch television of any kind. My dad was a couch potato and it really turned me off to be honest.

I have very few judgements when it comes to people's TV watching preferences, specifically.

I don't think a preference for mindless watching, when you do sit down to watch, is any indication of how productive and/or or lazy you are otherwise. The total time you watch, regardless of preference, is a better indicator there.