Update on Cord Cutting (Cable TV) 2017 - 2020

[UnrealizedPotential]

I am not an internet customer only and can’t access my account in that way. I have a TV and internet package.

I don't know what it is like now, but in 2016 I had Verizon and it was actually much more economical to get internet and cable than just internet alone. I don't remember the exact figures but to get the package seemed like a slam dunk. I doubt anything has changed. My only other choice was Time Warner Cable and I do not like that company at all.

 

[camfused]

^^ Some of our closest friends are complete technophobes. I know people who can’t plug a printer into a PC. I know people who have the latest smart phones and cars with hands free Bluetooth, but won’t even try to pair their phone. I know people with smart TVs who’ve never tried any smart features.

Yeah, my favorite is people who drive around without their DRLs on, or with their lights not set to auto, in cars that I *know* have these features.

And, the last few days I must have passed 5 cars driving around without their lights on, at night, just because their dashboard is lit, I guess. I flashed them, but of course that was a waste of time.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

We have been early adopters of cord cutting and generally have been happy. As mentioned before, we had the Directv Now but cancelled it. So, have been using Amazon Recast (local channels/DVR), Hulu, Netflix and Sling. Well, I have grown tired of the constant issues that I have with most of the applications. Everyone of the them has some sort of issue that is annoying and before anyone starts with the, "have you tried..." forget it...been there, done that. I just want it TO WORK, without issue, 99% of the time and NONE of them have (for me). Perhaps there are lots of folks that don't have these issues, but we do and it's annoying.

Anyway, our cable provider has been hounding us with offers for TV and I think I am about ready to bite. Yes, it's a two year contract. Yes, it will cost about $20 bucks more than we pay now (and yes, I know about and have figured out the "extra fees"), but it will probably work 99% of the time. In the next 2 years, I expect the streaming experience to get a lot better but right now, I feel like I am driving a Ford Pinto when I *could* be driving a Honda Accord.

Whew...I feel better.

 

[beowulf]

^^ Some of our closest friends are complete technophobes. I know people who can’t plug a printer into a PC.

Last time I plugged a printer into a pc was at least 10 years ago. Almost all modern printers, even the cheapest ones, have WiFi capability and it’s very easy to get them hooked together. OTOH, my wife has a hard time finding the on/off switch on either the printer or her pc. . I guess that’s why I’m around.

 

[Uncle Lumpy]

<off topic> I'm convinced my wife married me for in-home, 24x7 tech support.


Lumpy

 

[Cobra9777]

...right now, I feel like I am driving a Ford Pinto when I *could* be driving a Honda Accord...

Interesting. I feel the exact opposite. Cable TV and their expensive clunky old set top boxes are the Ford Pinto or AMC Pacer... totally outdated IMHO. Netflix and PS Vue running on Fire TV is fast, reliable, a great user experience, and getting better with each software update. I can't even imagine signing a two-year contract for over-priced, out-dated TV service. But... that's just me.

Full disclosure: 80-90% of what I watch on TV is YouTube. But DW has no issue navigating PS Vue and Netflix.

 

[REWahoo]

Interesting. I feel the exact opposite.

+1

Our OTA antenna plus two Rokus streaming Prime, Philo and Acorn have been flawless.

 

[pb4uski]

^^ Some of our closest friends are complete technophobes. ...

I have one of those. When we got back to Florida he said his tv wasn't working and asked for my help. I went over and looked and all the cables seemed right... he handed me the remote and I pushed the on button and it worked.

Turns out he was pushing the wrong on button.

 

[RetiredAndLovingIt]

I have a Pluto TV question: when you bring up the guide, how do you scroll to the right (or left) in the guide? I scroll up and down through the channels, but cannot seem to scroll through time. I googled this but was unable to find the answer. I am using Fire TV.

This is Plutos response to your questionThanks so much for reaching out! Pluto TV is more of a 'Lean Back' TV viewing experience, and there is no 'Search' function or 'Extended Guide' at this time.

With that said, please know our product and design teams are continuously working to bring more awesome features and expand our TV guide so you can better plan when to watch your favorite shows!

Pluto Tip: The 'On Demand' section has categories to help you can quickly drill in to show/movie genres.

We hope you stay tuned with us as we roll out features in the future!

 

[RonBoyd]

Our OTA antenna plus two Rokus streaming Prime, Philo and Acorn have been flawless.

I have listed all of the equipment and Services that I subscribe to earlier so I won't bore with that (well, except that I am currently giving Channels DVR a trial run). I have not had any "make or break" episode with any of them. Again, I have never had Cable or Satellite service so I can't speak to that.

Of course, it would be nice if everything could be bundled together -- or. at least, some industry standards -- so I didn't "need" them all. It would be nice, for instance, if I didn't need both ROKU and Shield. But that is the free market system and I accept it.

They each have things I would like to see "universal." For instance, that trick of using the ROKU "back up" key, that takes you back 7 seconds, which handles that "What did he say?" question . (If you have Closed Captioning set to "on replay," you can even read "What he said.") Or the feature that some services have of displaying frame-by-frame thumbnails during FF/RW.

Again, I am fortunate to live in an area with ~80 OTA channels. This gives me, for instance, access to all of these channels:

https://www.cordcuttersnews.com/over-the-last-few-years-20-new-ota-tv-networks-have-launched/

So it is very difficult for me to complain about the current state of TV watching.

 

[camfused]

This is Plutos response to your questionThanks so much for reaching out! Pluto TV is more of a 'Lean Back' TV viewing experience, and there is no 'Search' function or 'Extended Guide' at this time.

With that said, please know our product and design teams are continuously working to bring more awesome features and expand our TV guide so you can better plan when to watch your favorite shows!

Pluto Tip: The 'On Demand' section has categories to help you can quickly drill in to show/movie genres.

We hope you stay tuned with us as we roll out features in the future!

Thanks. I left them and went back to Sling (but not for that reason).

 

[MichaelB]

ARS Technica has a new analysis (here) on the AT&T announcement, and it isn’t pretty. The headline

AT&T brings cable TV prices to online streaming with $135 monthly plan

The write up won’t help generate new business, especially with gems such as

In its quest to make choosing a streaming TV package as confusing as possible, AT&T has separate online services called AT&T TV Now and AT&T TV. They're both expensive, but AT&T TV without the Now also has the contract annoyances and add-on fees common in cable and satellite TV packages.

The conclusion reflects the sentiment here quite well

In summary, AT&T has taken many of the pricing annoyances that consumers hate about cable and satellite TV and brought them to online streaming. This strategy might raise the average amount AT&T makes from each TV customer, but it isn't likely to help AT&T stop the steady exodus of customers from its TV services.

 

[jimbee]

ARS Technica has a new analysis (here) on the AT&T announcement, and it isn’t pretty. The headline
The write up won’t help generate new business, especially with gems such as
The conclusion reflects the sentiment here quite well

The channels highlighted in the the ENTERTAINMENT block are interesting.

 

[RonBoyd]

Here is another not-so-flattering review of AT&T's offering: https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/d...television?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=rss.

In the present, though, AT&T TV is still a lot like regular, old television

 

[ziggy29]

Those AT&T plans are a joke. I thought going to streaming and cutting the cord was supposed to SAVE money. These rates are little cheaper, if at all, than DIRECTV. Is this a product geared for those people who want cable or satellite but can't or won't do the installation of dishes and cables?

 

[explanade]

AT&T TV is suppose to replace their satellite TV.

So they save money not having to send out satellite dish installers but they want you to pay the same as before and sign a contract.

Plus, you have to have Internet and it better not have a low cap.

Of course most people will have Internet anyways but now your TV service which is priced the same as old satellite TV will use up your data. I'm sure if you get AT&T Internet, either slow Uverse or even slower DSL, they might waive the caps for a bundle.

 

[REWahoo]

AT&T TV is suppose to replace their satellite TV.

So they save money not having to send out satellite dish installers ...

Another big savings:

“We’ve launched our last satellite”, John Donovan, CEO of AT&T Communications, told analysts in a presentation on 29 November 2018.

https://spacenews.com/directv-owner-att-says-its-done-buying-satellites/

 

[ziggy29]

Using DVR features on streaming is (currently) far inferior to doing so on cable or satellite. Until streaming feels as smooth and responsive as it is on a conventional DVR, IMO this will push a lot of customers away. Not to mention buffering issues, too. (Where we lived in the Texas boondocks, we had DSL and an old Roku and we got hit with "buffering" all the time. Now, with (supposedly) 100 Mbps cable internet -- usually more like 50-70 -- and a new Roku Ultra, buffering is almost nonexistent. But the fast forward, reverse and the like are still a lot clunkier than it was with satellite TV and a DVR.

 

[REWahoo]

Using DVR features on streaming is (currently) far inferior to doing so on cable or satellite.

My only experience with using a streaming based DVR is on Philo, and while it does lag the capability of the Dish DVR we had, I don't see it as significantly less capable. I'm about to subscribe to Hulu Live and will be interested in seeing how well the DVR feature works. Based on your and a couple of other comments, I'm not expecting a slick experience.

BTW, the ChannelMaster Stream+ I'm using as a DVR for OTA broadcasts has worked well with the exception of a couple of power related glitches, hopefully now solved with the addition of a UPS. The DVR functionality is very close to what I had when on Dish.

 

[RonBoyd]

Using DVR features on streaming is (currently) far inferior to doing so on cable or satellite.

I, again, have never had a cable/Satellite subscription so am unsure what this means. Other than Live (Sports), everything we watch has been recorded earlier... sometimes years earlier. I simply tell the device/service to record and have never had a problem playing the result back. What could be 'superior" to that?

 

[ziggy29]

I, again, have never had a cable/Satellite subscription so am unsure what this means.

It means that DVR navigation is, in my experience, a lot smoother and crisper with recordings on a local hard disk than with streaming. If you reverse, for example, you can smoothly see all the action (in reverse) with a conventional cable/satellite/OTA DVR with the recording saved on local disk. With streaming you see like one frame every couple seconds (or less frequent with faster rewinds) so if you are looking for a particular scene to replay, it can be harder to find.

As bandwidths and technology increase I'd expect to see the gap narrow over time. It's a lot better navigating through a streamed program than it used to be, but for me the experience falls short of navigating a physically stored recording (though that difference is not worth $100/month).

 

[RonBoyd]

It means that DVR navigation is, in my experience, a lot smoother and crisper with recordings on a local hard disk than with streaming. If you reverse, for example, you can smoothly see all the action (in reverse) with a conventional cable/satellite/OTA DVR with the recording saved on local disk. With streaming you see like one frame every couple seconds (or less frequent with faster rewinds) so if you are looking for a particular scene to replay, it can be harder to find.

As bandwidths and technology increase I'd expect to see the gap narrow over time. It's a lot better navigating through a streamed program than it used to be, but for me the experience falls short of navigating a physically stored recording (though that difference is not worth $100/month).

Oh! I believe I see what my confusion is. Everything I record is to a hard drive either internal to the device -- Tablo & HDHomeRun Qautro -- or on my LAN. If you are comparing that to some Cloud application, then I can see your complaint. That is hardly an issue with DVR, per se.

 

[ziggy29]

Oh! I believe I see what my confusion is. Everything I record is to a hard drive either internal to the device -- Tablo & HDHomeRun Qautro -- or on my LAN. If you are comparing that to some Cloud application, then I can see your complaint. That is hardly an issue with DVR, per se.

Yeah, with most streaming it's really "DVR" -- in quotes -- essentially trying to mimic the physical DVR experience. It's getting better, but still falls short.

 

[rpguy4]

My only experience with using a streaming based DVR is on Philo, and while it does lag the capability of the Dish DVR we had, I don't see it as significantly less capable. I'm about to subscribe to Hulu Live and will be interested in seeing how well the DVR feature works. Based on your and a couple of other comments, I'm not expecting a slick experience.

BTW, the ChannelMaster Stream+ I'm using as a DVR for OTA broadcasts has worked well with the exception of a couple of power related glitches, hopefully now solved with the addition of a UPS. The DVR functionality is very close to what I had when on Dish.

We had Hulu Live for a couple months. We had a lots of buffering issues, always ended up rebooting the Wifi router or the ROKU in order to watch a show. One evening, shortly after signing up for the service, I was trying to watch a show midway through or near the end that I had set to DVR from the beginning. Lots of issues, and would not work. Contacted Hulu, not supported. I had to create a separate profile to watch the same show, while my other profile was DVRing the show. We dropped HuluTV, and went to YouTubeTV. YMMV

 

[RonBoyd]

Yeah, with most streaming it's really "DVR" -- in quotes -- essentially trying to mimic the physical DVR experience. It's getting better, but still falls short.

I thought about what I had written and remembered that I do use my DirecTV NOW (or ATT TV NOW) account to record. I use it as a backup to my OTA recordings (sometimes the local signal is interrupted, local news/weather breaks, etc.). I duplicate all the scheduled SageTV recordings on DTVN. However, I had never used it. So I went to the DTVN "Library" and played back a couple recordings. (I assume the original is in the "cloud.") Anyway, I found no problems -- the quality and sound seemed to be equal to the HD version. The FF/RW was perhaps a little slower but I'm not sure... it wasn't annoying, anyway.

I should mention that I have never had a "buffering" issue. I am not saying it never happens but is rare -- mayby 2-3 time in the past year for a brief period. I have a 50mbps DSL service. I have always blamed it on the Service… Britbox, for instance.