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Old 12-09-2016, 01:24 AM   #41
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Yep, that's insane. I just re-upped a Comcast 2 year double play (Blast HSI + all channels + HBO) for $110 a month, about $120 with all taxes and fees included. I was on a $100/mo. new customer promo before so $10/mo. increase after 2 years which is not that bad, except they have added another $8/mo. in broadcast and regional sports fees over time.

That's using a single Cablecard in a Tivo + 3 Minis, which means I don't pay their ripoff equipment and outlet fees. The Tivo whole-house setup paid for itself a year ago vs. renting boxes. Plus I get a $2.50/mo. credit for using my own equipment.

I get that same new customer promo every 2 years when my current one expires. It wouldn't be much cheaper to only go with HSI + streaming services (something like $100 a month I think) and I wouldn't be able to auto-skip all those commercials without a DVR. Plus my son uses a ton of data today, we'd probably exceed the new 1TB data cap if we went all streaming.

Streaming is a very poor substitute to a good DVR setup IMO, but I can see why folks like it if they don't watch much TV.
I wish I could do that. We were on a promo for Triple Play, but that ran out a year and a half ago. We were paying $200, but then it jumped up to $240 and then this summer went to $274, and just last month went to $290. We've called several times to try to get something better but the offers have been awful. The one now that would save $60 a month is the best one we've gotten. The last time we checked it was going to save hardly anything and required a 2 year contract.

Where they really have us on the internet. I would just get internet alone if I could and just do streaming stuff for everything else. But, with the gaming and streaming we do, I can't tolerate the 25 mbps service. That is the fastest service that doesn't require a TV package. The next level is 100 mbps (we have 200 now) but requires the TV package.

We can't go anywhere else for internet. The only other option in our area is DSL from a carrier that people say isn't good and is on 10 mbps so way too slow.
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Old 12-09-2016, 12:42 PM   #42
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You might not need triple play with cell phones and free/cheap VOIP services like Obi with Google voice or Ooma. Port that number out and see what kind of double play you can get. It looks like you might be paying a lot of rental fees too.

Easy way to see what you can save with double is to use incognito mode browser to go to Xfinity.com and see what a new customer can get. Put in a neighbor s address that doesn't have it.
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Old 12-09-2016, 12:57 PM   #43
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Unskippable ads, limited VOD viewing windows, buffering issues, no Dolby Digital on a TON of stuff (e.g. none of the streaming TV providers have it). With a DVR you record and watch whenever and however you want with cable/OTA quality, which can be YMMV but is very good and rock-solid for me.

My Tivos and Minis all have commercial auto-skip for the big networks with a separate program I added (kmttg), don't even have to press a button.
If you put aside the cost, certainly the incumbents are better. But at one third to half the cost, Direct TV Now is worth consideration for us, IF they get their birthing issues fixed. YMMV

And if this isn't the answer (maybe not), we're one step closer to throttling back the cable & satellite rip offs!
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Old 12-09-2016, 01:28 PM   #44
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I wish I could do that. We were on a promo for Triple Play, but that ran out a year and a half ago. We were paying $200, but then it jumped up to $240 and then this summer went to $274, and just last month went to $290. We've called several times to try to get something better but the offers have been awful. The one now that would save $60 a month is the best one we've gotten. The last time we checked it was going to save hardly anything and required a 2 year contract.

Where they really have us on the internet. I would just get internet alone if I could and just do streaming stuff for everything else. But, with the gaming and streaming we do, I can't tolerate the 25 mbps service. That is the fastest service that doesn't require a TV package. The next level is 100 mbps (we have 200 now) but requires the TV package.

We can't go anywhere else for internet. The only other option in our area is DSL from a carrier that people say isn't good and is on 10 mbps so way too slow.

We are in the same area and same boat. We have 3 TV's one DVR box and two other boxes, with VOIP phone and internet and no premium channels. We don't stream much or play internet games but our bill crept up to $254/month then I went nuts.

I got Comcast on the phone and threatened to buy Tivo boxes when they had a current sale. You should have heard the agent doing all they could to hold us to the junk rental boxes (big profit center). Somehow we got the package dropped to $180/month. But they increase prices every 6 months and its creeping up again.

Since we have no real other quality choice for internet, we are stuck with them. Maybe this year I will look into the dish offers. What a pain in the @$$ this is each year.
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Old 12-10-2016, 06:51 AM   #45
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If you put aside the cost, certainly the incumbents are better. But at one third to half the cost, Direct TV Now is worth consideration for us, IF they get their birthing issues fixed. YMMV
Yes, certainly YMMV - as mentioned in our area the HSI + DTV Now (or Sling, PS Vue etc.) combo is not significantly cheaper than the double play deal I get with Comcast. It's maybe $10-15 cheaper and you have all the disadvantages with streaming that I mentioned above, plus I have free HBO and way more channels (most of which we don't watch of course, but some we do). But more importantly, ad-skipping is a must. I'm not going to go backwards with streaming and have to deal with ads.
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Old 12-10-2016, 06:53 AM   #46
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I got Comcast on the phone and threatened to buy Tivo boxes when they had a current sale.
Our Tivo + 3 Minis paid for themselves vs. renting in a couple of years. And they're so much better than what Comcast has anyway.

Just bite the bullet and do it when they have a sale. With the recent black Friday Tivo deals you could have spent around $800 for a 6-tuner 2TB Roamio Pro + 3 Minis and that would easily pay for itself in less than 2 years (assuming $40 or so a month in Comcast rental fees). If the hard drive ever fails on the Roamio it's a simple drop-in replacement, it reformats the drive and you're good to go again.
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Old 12-10-2016, 07:52 AM   #47
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We have only one TV with a Comcast box and then have one with a bluray player that we use for streaming Netflix and Amazon Prime (we have an OTA antenna there too as we can get maybe half the local channels with the direction the room faces, but we don't really watch even those). We don't pay Comcast anything for that TV.

Do you really need the TV capabilities for three TVs, Katsmeow?
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Old 12-10-2016, 08:11 AM   #48
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And they're so much better than what Comcast has anyway.
The Comcast X1 system is pretty amazing, to me anyway. But I haven't used TiVo, so what do I know.
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Old 12-10-2016, 10:24 AM   #49
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Had SlingTV for a couple weeks to try it out. It was just OK but disappointed it didn't have more offerings.

DirecTV NOW launched and tried them for a week. Now I've cancelled Sling and sticking with DirecTV NOW. They have an introductory offer if you keep their 60.00 package called GO Big after the trial, you can have it for 35.00 as long as you don't switch packages. If you pay 3 months in advance, you will get a free AppleTV or Amazon Firestick. Already had AppleTV...it's pretty good for 35.00. Add HBO for 5.00/month.

It's cut my cable TV bill by 50%.
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Old 12-10-2016, 05:08 PM   #50
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Do you really need the TV capabilities for three TVs, Katsmeow?
Currently we do. We have it on the TV in our bedroom and in 2 guest rooms. One guest room is the one used by my mom when she is down here and she mostly doesn't do anything when she is here except watch TV (well, eat and sleep but still...). Also, if DH and I want to watch something different then we can each have a TV to watch. Then we have one in our college student son's room for him to use when here. He will be out of the house soon so we could drop that one. But, it only cuts the cost $10. We have a TV in our living room but it has an XBox on it so we use it for Netflix but not for TV.
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Old 12-11-2016, 06:35 AM   #51
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Well I signed up on Directvnow to learn more about it. But when I log in with Safari all I get is a blank web page. Anyone else having problems like that?
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Old 12-11-2016, 06:55 AM   #52
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Safari user here. Mine loads fine. If I recall when I signed up, it requires Microsoft Silverlight to display and render the page correctly on Safari.
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Old 12-11-2016, 07:22 AM   #53
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On a cord cutter group I belong to it was suggested that the picture quality of DTV Now is a little better than on Vue and Sling. I don't know if they know what they are talking about but they said Now is streamed in 1080hd whereas Sling and Vue is in 720hd. They also said the 1080 stream will eat up 30% more data. So for anyone concerned with data caps, that might be something to consider when subscribing to DTV Now. For me the picture quality of Vue is outstanding as compared to old cable packages w/o HD. But I can see a little bit of difference(better) when watching an OTA HD show via my home antenna vs Vue.
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Old 12-11-2016, 09:54 AM   #54
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For those who are trying the new streaming DirecTV now, is the content on it live, such as you would see if you had a cable subscription? We have SlingTV, but it seems that what we are offered on some of their channels is prepackaged series that run ad nauseum. I'm trying to determine if the content between the two (given the same channels) is actually different.
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Old 12-11-2016, 11:47 AM   #55
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For those who are trying the new streaming DirecTV now, is the content on it live, such as you would see if you had a cable subscription? We have SlingTV, but it seems that what we are offered on some of their channels is prepackaged series that run ad nauseum. I'm trying to determine if the content between the two (given the same channels) is actually different.
See post #28, it shows which channels are live (most), VOD or both. However, I don't have DTV Now yet, so someone else needs to confirm if that list is correct re: what's live.
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Old 12-12-2016, 08:17 AM   #56
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See post #28, it shows which channels are live (most), VOD or both. However, I don't have DTV Now yet, so someone else needs to confirm if that list is correct re: what's live.
thx midpack. do you happen to have a link to that list? I had some trouble reading the text in the attachment.
But You're right, it IS difficult to find that info, and I would like to see if others can confirm it. If we weren't travelling in the next week, I'd just sign up for the trial and see for myself. The other issue is that we have a roku box, and DirecTV now is not yet supported.
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Old 12-12-2016, 08:49 AM   #57
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I use a Roku and PlayLater that allows me to use my PC as a DVR. Looking at building up a specialized mini-PC to act as a universal DVR though. Hate having to make sure that the office PC is always on. Hate that most commercial DVRs seem to be tied to subscription services. If I could just find the time now that I'm retired to work on all these projects...
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Old 12-14-2016, 09:17 AM   #58
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I went ahead and signed up for a 3 month pre paid subscrip to DirecTV now, so that way I'll get a free AppleTV gen 4, and - if it works - I get locked in at 35 bucks for 100 channels. They don't offer it on Roku yet, so next to my PC, it's the only way I have to stream their content. Here's my take after two days on how this compares to SlingTV - Not ready for prime time! I cannot get any 'live' channel stream from direcTV. I am able to get a few movies to stream, but they are not nearly as sharp and resolute as SlingTV is right now on my roku. They appear rather soft. They shouldn't be as I'm getting 60 mbps on my internet feed. To be fair, I was an early adopter of SlingTV, and they went through similar issues in the early stages, with poor image quality and serious buffering problems. But now, other than content I should be able to view, SlingTV has a superior stream quality. I'm going to hang with DirecTV for the three months to see if they get this thing working. Perhaps others are able to view DirecTV now without issues, but I (and numerous others according to the forums out there) are having major problems.
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Old 12-14-2016, 09:24 AM   #59
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Well the Apple TV Gen 4 is a nice box, so at least you'll have that after your experiment.
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Old 12-14-2016, 09:40 AM   #60
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Well the Apple TV Gen 4 is a nice box, so at least you'll have that after your experiment.
That's good to hear. I'm sure it is also DirecTV's way of bribing me to try it out and generate some revenue for this fledgling service. SlingTV did the same thing, they sent me a roku streaming stick in the early roll out.
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