Cable monopoly breaking down!

[newpball]

Looks like there is bright light on the horizon!

Hopefully we get rid of the 'mandatory this and that packages' soon everywhere.

Set-top boxes, satellite dishes, cables, antennas..... enough already!

People are mature enough to decide what (and when) they want to see!

https://thecrux.com/big-changes-could-be-coming-to-the-cable-tv-industry/

[mail2tom]

Interesting, but what I hear on news radio are infomercials about the proposed Comcast and Time-Warner merger, and how good it is for "everyone."

[rubbish]

Hopefully Comcast will stop trying to charge me more for removing TV than keeping it.


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[usually_quiet]

OTA TV is a cord cutters delight. There is no requirement for expensive upper tier high-speed Internet service and no subscription payments needed to watch free TV OTA. The cost of mounting a rooftop antenna is small compared to the ongoing costs of cable or satellite service or the additional cost of upper tier Internet service, and some lucky people don't need one. DVRs for OTA are not all that expensive, and there are good options for recording on the PC too.

[newpball]

OTA TV is a cord cutters delight. There is no requirement for expensive upper tier high-speed Internet service and no subscription payments needed to watch free TV OTA. The cost of mounting a rooftop antenna is small compared to the ongoing costs of cable or satellite service or the additional cost of upper tier Internet service, and some lucky people don't need one. DVRs for OTA are not all that expensive, and there are good options for recording on the PC too.

They may do whatever they want as long as people are no longer forced to pay for mandatory TV packages.

OTA TV is near dead kept and only kept on life support by lobbying congress to force people to pay for things they do not necessarily want.

The innovators are on the internet, traditional broadcasting does not innovate they only want to polish their 'golden interlaced cameras' day in and day out, if anything they stifle innovation.

[rubbish]

OTA hardly works in my house. The signal is awful.


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[usually_quiet]

OTA TV is a cord cutters delight. There is no requirement for expensive upper tier high-speed Internet service and no subscription payments needed to watch free TV OTA. The cost of mounting a rooftop antenna is small compared to the ongoing costs of cable or satellite service or the additional cost of upper tier Internet service, and some lucky people don't need one. DVRs for OTA are not all that expensive, and there are good options for recording on the PC too.

They may do whatever they want as long as people are no longer forced to pay for mandatory TV packages.

OTA TV is near dead kept and only kept on life support by lobbying congress to force people to pay for things they do not necessarily want.

The innovators are on the internet, traditional broadcasting does not innovate they only want to polish their 'golden interlaced cameras' day in and day out, if anything they stifle innovation.

I have to ask, does insanity run in your family or are you the only one so affected? OTA TV is mostly advertising supported. A little over $1 of my $69 monthly cable bill is paid to them. (My provider breaks this fee out as a separate charge.) Only 9 of my local broadcast channels (all HD!), are actually required to be carried and I think it is likely that more people here watch any of them than the Golf channel. Any other OTA local broadcast channels are provided by choice, and not all are available.

[dfisher052]

And then there are those of us that live in rural areas, surrounded by mountains, that have no other choice. OTA is NOT an option.

[usually_quiet]

And then there are those of us that live in rural areas, surrounded by mountains, that have no other choice. OTA is NOT an option.

...which means you are likely to use a satellite service for TV and possibly DSL for Internet, since broadband Internet service is not often an option in rural areas either.

However, according to most people with the OP's point or view, so little of the population lives in rural areas that their needs can be ignored. I happen to feel differently.

[newpball]

I have to ask, does insanity run in your family or are you the only one so affected?

Thee are two kinds of people in this worlds, people who like to use ad hominems and those ....oh wait.

[usually_quiet]

I have to ask, does insanity run in your family or are you the only one so affected?

Thee are two kinds of people in this worlds, people who like to use ad hominems and those ....oh wait.

You use them enough yourself, so I guess you would know. "Stuffy old engineers" is your catch phrase after all for anyone who disagrees with you.

[LMotlow]

Then there are those who live in crowded urban areas that never had decent OTA reception, which is how cable got started in the first place.

[fritzi93]

Streaming is really starting to hurt cable TV, and who knows, it may kill it in the end.

We dropped cable TV (Comcast) more than a year ago. The trouble is, there's no alternative for internet. DSL (CenturyLink) in our area doesn't offer enough speed. Even 10 Mbps would do, but no dice. We have different tastes, and usually two of three Rokus are in use at once. So Comcast is still very much a monopoly as far as we're concerned.

What sold my wife on cutting the cord was HuluPlus. (I would have been happier with Netflix...no adverts). She's just gotta have her current TV series. They appear on HuluPlus a day or two after airing, usually. Limited commercials, yes, but nothing like OTA and cable. For me, adverts were just as big a factor in dropping cable TV as the monthly bill.

You might be surprised how many OTA channels you can get with one of those flat little HDTV antennas in the attic. Depending on local topography, of course; check out antennaweb. I figure, so long as we can get local news, that's fine.

Gawd, I don't miss cable TV one little bit. If I couldn't stream, I think I'd rather do without entirely.

[TreeTops]

No OTA in my area either.

[jagabo]

This is why ISPs (who is usually also your cable TV supplier) have quotas. They have foreseen this. The average family will blow through their 250 GB quota in a week. What will they do for the rest of the month? The next 750 GB will cost more than the cable TV bill.

[usually_quiet]

This is why ISPs (who is usually also your cable TV supplier) have quotas. They have foreseen this. The average family will blow through their 250 GB quota in a week. What will they do for the rest of the month? The next 750 GB will cost more than the cable TV bill.

Yes, and they can always raise rates for Internet service across the board, or eliminate the lower-cost tiers to make up for lost cable subscriptions. Most places have only one or two options for broadband Internet service. The two here don't choose to compete on price to any great extent.

[LMotlow]

Streaming is really starting to hurt cable TV, and who knows, it may kill it in the end.

Streamed video looks like crap. Always did. Always will. Last time I saw a video streamed it looked worse than it ever did. But there are always suckers around who can't see the difference.

You might be surprised how many OTA channels you can get with one of those flat little HDTV antennas in the attic.

What attic? It would surprise the hell out of people who don't have an attic.

Gawd, I don't miss cable TV one little bit. If I couldn't stream, I think I'd rather do without entirely.

Gawd, if I had to hurt my brain watching streamed video detritus, I'd rather do without. Period.

People sure do make a lot of assumptions about the way a lot of other people live. Gawd, you guys need your own planet.

[fritzi93]

Streaming is really starting to hurt cable TV, and who knows, it may kill it in the end.

Streamed video looks like crap. Always did. Always will. Last time I saw a video streamed it looked worse than it ever did. But there are always suckers around who can't see the difference.

You might be surprised how many OTA channels you can get with one of those flat little HDTV antennas in the attic.

What attic? It would surprise the hell out of people who don't have an attic.

Gawd, I don't miss cable TV one little bit. If I couldn't stream, I think I'd rather do without entirely.

Gawd, if I had to hurt my brain watching streamed video detritus, I'd rather do without. Period.

People sure do make a lot of assumptions about the way a lot of other people live. Gawd, you guys need your own planet.

Got a bug up your ass? So none of that applies to you. Okay.

[jagabo]

Judging by the popularity of Netflix most people aren't overly picky about video quality. Personally, I find Netflix HD streaming adequate. It's just "TV". Not that important to me.

[budwzr]

Check out the ChannelMaster DVR. We have one and free programming for life. We have so many recorded shows, we don't have time to watch them all.

ChannelMaster is an American company, so it costs a little more.

[LMotlow]

Streaming is really starting to hurt cable TV, and who knows, it may kill it in the end.

Streamed video looks like crap. Always did. Always will. Last time I saw a video streamed it looked worse than it ever did. But there are always suckers around who can't see the difference.

You might be surprised how many OTA channels you can get with one of those flat little HDTV antennas in the attic.

What attic? It would surprise the hell out of people who don't have an attic.

Gawd, I don't miss cable TV one little bit. If I couldn't stream, I think I'd rather do without entirely.

Gawd, if I had to hurt my brain watching streamed video detritus, I'd rather do without. Period.

People sure do make a lot of assumptions about the way a lot of other people live. Gawd, you guys need your own planet.

Got a bug up your ass? So none of that applies to you. Okay.

Might or might not have a bug up my ass, fritz puppy, but your reply is from somebody who's all ass.

[steveft]

Interesting... The problem is all the extra stuff that isn't needed to most, as well as getting charged for it!

[usually_quiet]

Interesting... The problem is all the extra stuff that isn't needed to most, as well as getting charged for it!

Streaming's main advantage is that it offers the ability to watch at a convenient time.

Monthly subscriptions offer attractive pricing, but many find subscribing to multiple streaming services is necessary to be able to watch everything that they want to see, and they are still paying for access to content that they will never watch. Going the route of paying for each individual video instead can become expensive if someone watches a lot of TV.