Update on Cord Cutting (Cable TV) 2017 - 2020

[Freedom56]

So how do you know this is a problem in your area?

I'd love a free 400 Mb/s upgrade, though I'd have to get a new modem to handle those speeds (former TWC area)

We were also a former TWC area. We have our own cable modem so I don't pay the monthly fee for that. I bought it on Ebay for about $50. The break-even is about 6 months. The issue with our internet started just over a month ago. After 6:00 PM every night, the internet download speed would drop to near zero and devices would lose their connections. My normal speed from running speed tests was about 118 Mb/s. Spectrum guarantees 100 Mb/s. I verified it wasn't my router or cable modem and contacted Spectrum. They sent a technician the next day and he couldn't find any issues with my setup, but he contacted his office and was told that several other people in our neighborhood were experiencing the same issue and they were certain that someone with an illegal modem was cloning MAC addresses from paying customers and stealing their bandwidth allocation. They informed us it would take a few weeks to find the culprit and for compensation their upped our speed to the next higher level of service. They apparently found the person disrupting service in our area and the issue has been resolved for now.

 

[Rustic23]

OK... I was all set to try Directv Now..... Not so Fast!!!

We live in an area with only one internet provider, discounting satellite. It is Windstream, a telecom. They report our IP from one of their substations 250 miles from our house. So our billing address and our IP address does not match. So, no local channels!

There solution, go to Windstream and have them give me a static IP in my zip code. Might me possible, might not, at any rate, I don't think it should be up to me, or windstream to solve a Directv problem. PSVue, Hulu, and Youtube TV do not have this problem.

 

[Midpack]

We used Sling after PS Vue, it was more reliable but for the past 6 months we have been using TV Everywhere Apps on Roku using the credentials from our Florida Condo cable plan which is included in our monthly fee. Out of the 75 channels in our plan, we use 48 of them as TV Everywhere Apps. Our cable provider even encourages customers to use TV everywhere apps. They are rock solid and we have much better on-demand selection. We can pause/FF/RW our on demand selections as well as live broadcasts. The picture quality is vastly superior to PS Vue and Sling. As an example, just compare the content you get with CNN or FX with PS Vue with CNNgo and FXnow apps.

Amazing how individual these situations are. Our PS Vue picture quality is every bit as good as Dish TV (some compression) ever was, if not better. They’re both mostly 720p (some 1080i) and there’s no network TV live broadcasting in 1080p yet anyway that I know of. The only 1080p and 4K content is on demand movies with some providers.

I’m sure your cable provider encourages you to use TV Everywhere, so you won’t cut the cord and go for live streaming only. For us, cable and satellite was twice the cost or more than Vue, that’s what drove us to switch. But if you’re paying for cable, I can understand why you’d use/like TV Everywhere.

I’m not following your last sentence, what do CNNGo and FXNow (Roku?) apps have to do with PS Vue? I can just watch CNN and FX at 720p on Vue...

 

[Freedom56]

Amazing how individual these situations are. Our PS Vue picture quality is every bit as good as Dish TV (some compression) ever was, if not better. They’re both mostly 720p (some 1080i) and there’s no network TV live broadcasting in 1080p yet anyway that I know of. The only 1080p and 4K content is on demand movies with some providers.

I’m sure your cable provider encourages you to use TV Everywhere, so you won’t cut the cord and go for live streaming only. For us, cable and satellite was twice the cost or more than Vue, that’s what drove us to switch. But if you’re paying for cable, I can understand why you’d use/like TV Everywhere.

I’m not following your last sentence, what do CNNGo and FXNow (Roku?) apps have to do with PS Vue? I can just watch CNN and FX at 720p on Vue...

All 720p, 1080p, and 4K are not created equal. PS Vue and Sling use older data compression and stream at lower bit rates than the TV Everywhere apps. These apps adjust the picture quality according to your download speed. Some TV Everywhere apps are streaming 4K at 45-60 Mb/s. If you can support those speeds. With respect to CNN on PS Vue vs CNNgo, you not only have access to live CNN, CNN International, and HLN, but also every show they produce on demand. I don't recall having that with PS Vue. With FXnow you have live broadcasts of FX, FXX, FXM, Fox, and Natgeo, plus all their shows and their entire movie library on demand. You should be able to use your PSVue credentials to register TV everywhere apps on the platform you are viewing TV. You should try it and you'll see the difference. Plus, the higher your internet speed, the better your video quality.

 

[Rustic23]

Just got a quote from Windstream for a static IP. $20 a month. I won't be using Directv Now. Too bad, because it looks like a good service. I may keep it for three months just to get a discount on the Apple TV, but I doubt it.

 

[Golden sunsets]

Right now we have no data caps with Spectrum (Charter), but that may change eventually. Our data usage has been as high as 1.4 TB per month. It averages about 800 GB now and will likely increase. AT&T has data caps at 300, 600, and 1TB and surcharges above that or $30 per month more for unlimited. Spectrum and AT&T are the two providers in our area.

New to this topic but interested. We are Spectrum (Charter) customers. How does one find out what our data usage is?


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[Golden sunsets]

We were also a former TWC area. We have our own cable modem so I don't pay the monthly fee for that. I bought it on Ebay for about $50. The break-even is about 6 months. The issue with our internet started just over a month ago. After 6:00 PM every night, the internet download speed would drop to near zero and devices would lose their connections. My normal speed from running speed tests was about 118 Mb/s. Spectrum guarantees 100 Mb/s. I verified it wasn't my router or cable modem and contacted Spectrum. They sent a technician the next day and he couldn't find any issues with my setup, but he contacted his office and was told that several other people in our neighborhood were experiencing the same issue and they were certain that someone with an illegal modem was cloning MAC addresses from paying customers and stealing their bandwidth allocation. They informed us it would take a few weeks to find the culprit and for compensation their upped our speed to the next higher level of service. They apparently found the person disrupting service in our area and the issue has been resolved for now.

Freedom; I have a slightly different problem. We have Spectrum internet with a 60Mb/s download plan as part of a triple play package. The reason we have not upgraded internet is we are on an old TWC plan that is increasing in cost each year but still significantly cheaper than if we switched all services to the Spectrum platform where our speed would be upgraded to 100 or higher. At any rate, we frequently stream Netflix or Hulu or Amazon and predictably if doing so after 6 pm, we will be disconnected with a message "insufficient bandwidth". One TV is 4K, another TV is not 4K. We do not stream on two TV's simultaneously. When we are disconnected, I prioritize TV in my google wifi smart phone program, but that doesn't help. I also check download speeds and detect 60+/-. Upload though is low, around 1,rather than the normal 5. I presume that it is the download speed that is important. So I'm trying to figure out what is going on. Why does this happen only at night? Why does this happen only after about 50 minutes, as opposed to immediately? Is the 60Mb/s the culprit? If so why doesn't it happen during the day? I thought download speed was different than bandwidth. Help. I'd love to solve this problem. Oh and we own our modem as well, which is top of the line I believe.


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[Golden sunsets]

FYI; DD tells me that as of last week in the NYC market, Direct TV NOW has DVR. She signed up recently when she moved and is delighted with it. She was a Spectrum Internet/cable user at her last place and now has Spectrum Internet and Direct Now.


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[Dawg52]

All 720p, 1080p, and 4K are not created equal. PS Vue and Sling use older data compression and stream at lower bit rates than the TV Everywhere apps. These apps adjust the picture quality according to your download speed. Some TV Everywhere apps are streaming 4K at 45-60 Mb/s. If you can support those speeds. With respect to CNN on PS Vue vs CNNgo, you not only have access to live CNN, CNN International, and HLN, but also every show they produce on demand. I don't recall having that with PS Vue. With FXnow you have live broadcasts of FX, FXX, FXM, Fox, and Natgeo, plus all their shows and their entire movie library on demand. You should be able to use your PSVue credentials to register TV everywhere apps on the platform you are viewing TV. You should try it and you'll see the difference. Plus, the higher your internet speed, the better your video quality.

I use the apps on my bedroom tv. I have Comcast cable for my living room but did not get a cable box for any other rooms. When I go to bed, I don't stay up late watching tv. Normally just a few local channels with an OTA. But I do have a few apps loaded on my Firestick that gives me more variety if I do want to watch other stuff. Nice quality video.

 

[RonBoyd]

I see I have come to this thread quite late. I have never subscribed to cable/satellite television so I am not really a "cord cutter." However, I have built an extensive system for television. I started about fifteen years ago when I built a HTCP (Home Theater Personal Computer) based around SageTV -- which, BTW, is still to this day the backbone of the system. Of course, I am fortunate to live in an area of great OTA television -- over 80 channels.

This system includes:

Vizio 65" television (will be replaced when the P Quantum 65" is released in June/July) (well, there are 3 other tvs but who's counting)
Windows Vista computer
Yamaha RX-V673 receiver -- setup as 7.1 speaker system (Will be replace with a RX-3080 when released in June/July)
SageTV v9.0 -- HD300
8 - HDHomeRun Tuners
3 - ROKU units (I-1Ultra, 2-Express)
nVidia Shield
PLEX
PlayOn

My subscriptions are:

DirecTV Now (DTVN)- $5.00 month ($10 minus $5 bundle credit)
HBO - free
Showtime - $6.95 month
Netflix - $11.39 month
Hulu - $5.99 month
Amazon Prime - Hard to say what the cost is because it is mostly because of the free shipping.
and, of course, the AT&T unlimited Internet service.

The subscriptions work out well for us because we travel quite extensively and simply connect all of the above, over the internet, to our RV.

Yes, DTVN has added the ability to record but recognize that it is still in BETA. Even though I am a member of DTVN's Beta team, I have not played much with the DVR portion -- SageTV and PlayON are much superior to any DVR system (from any service).

I have not read the complete thread (only the last page) so I don't know if the above information is useful but I should be able to give some useful information to specific questions.

 

[mpeirce]

So I'm trying to figure out what is going on. Why does this happen only at night? Why does this happen only after about 50 minutes, as opposed to immediately? Is the 60Mb/s the culprit? If so why doesn't it happen during the day?

Evenings can be problematic because your neighbors are typically also using the network then. Everyone is settling down to watch TV in the evening.

Cable internet works roughly like this: there is a hub in your neighborhood. It has a certain amount of bandwidth to the internet that everyone connected to that hub shares. It's ALWAYS much less than the sum of what they sell to everyone using the hub.

You're 60 Mbps service describes the MAXIMUM download speed from that hub to your house. Same for your neighbors, they might max out at 25 or 100 Mbps or whatever.

But what really matters is what people are actually using. Netflix says an HD stream might take up to 5 Mbps while a 4K stream could take up to 25 Mbps.

So lets say for arguments sake your neighborhood hub has 1000 Mbps capacity. But at 9 PM you have 10 neighbors using 4K streams (=250 Mbps) and 50 neighbors using HD streams (=250 Mbps) so everyone is using half the total available. Then someone downloads an app to their phone or does ANYTHING else that uses bandwidth and you will soon be saturating the hub. Something has to give, and so streams start stalling out.

The only real solution is for your cable company to upgrade your neighborhood hub with more bandwidth. They do this periodically, but often let it go way beyond what they should.

It doesn't hurt to complain to them. Good luck!

 

[bobandsherry]

My subscriptions are:

DirecTV Now (DTVN)- $5.00 month ($10 minus $5 bundle credit)

So... how did you get DTVN for $10 (or $5 after credit)? Best price I see for new subscriber is $35. I do see a 3 month promo for $30, but that's not sustainable contract rate.

 

[Freedom56]

Freedom; I have a slightly different problem. We have Spectrum internet with a 60Mb/s download plan as part of a triple play package. The reason we have not upgraded internet is we are on an old TWC plan that is increasing in cost each year but still significantly cheaper than if we switched all services to the Spectrum platform where our speed would be upgraded to 100 or higher. At any rate, we frequently stream Netflix or Hulu or Amazon and predictably if doing so after 6 pm, we will be disconnected with a message "insufficient bandwidth". One TV is 4K, another TV is not 4K. We do not stream on two TV's simultaneously. When we are disconnected, I prioritize TV in my google wifi smart phone program, but that doesn't help. I also check download speeds and detect 60+/-. Upload though is low, around 1,rather than the normal 5. I presume that it is the download speed that is important. So I'm trying to figure out what is going on. Why does this happen only at night? Why does this happen only after about 50 minutes, as opposed to immediately? Is the 60Mb/s the culprit? If so why doesn't it happen during the day? I thought download speed was different than bandwidth. Help��. I'd love to solve this problem. Oh and we own our modem as well, which is top of the line I believe.


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The minimum speed with Spectrum is now 100 Mb/s. With TWC it was 60 Mb/s. I logged into my account a while back and noticed that I had the 100 Mb/s Spectrum plan, but I was still only getting 60 Mb/s. They had just raised the price for internet. I called up Spectrum and they explained that TWC customers were grandfathered into Spectrum with their old setting and only 60 Mb/s was provisioned for my MAC address. They increased me to the minimum 100 Mb/s at no extra charge. I was upgraded to the next level of service which is 400 Mb/s due to the speed issues they were experiencing.

The problem you are describing was very similar to what was happening to me. When streaming Neflix or Youtube after 6:00 PM the picture would degrade and then stop streaming. Netflix would report a network bandwidth error. I ran speed tests and found that my download was nearly zero and my upload speed which should have been 10 but was less than 1. I would run the speed test again and the download speed would be back up to 100 but the upload would be less than 1. We were watching Netflix on a 4K TV which only uses about 15 Mb/s for 4K broadcasts and about 5 Mb/s for 1080P. We were binge watching the Walking Dead series which was supposed to be 4K UHD. We only had one of five TVs turned on. The problem would occur throughout the night on and off and everything would be back to normal in the morning. You should call Spectrum to investigate. I believe someone is pirating your bandwidth. In the case of the guy they caught in our area, he was working during the day and had his modem turned off until he came home. He cloned MAC addresses of multiple paying customers and was hopping from one to another. I would call Spectrum and have them check your setup. It's a free service call. You can also check your Wifi channel interference with a Wifi analyzer app installed on a phone or tablet and change your Wifi channel allocation on your router accordingly. Spectrum will tell you to do that first. However, that did not solve my problem. Spectrum catching the culprit did. However, I am satisfied with the compensation they gave us for the inconvenience.
This old article explains how this all started. The hackers have just become more sophisticated by using firmware that hops from one stolen MAC address to another from paying customers.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/how-the-angel-helped-15000-people-steal-broadband/

 

[Chuckanut]

Evenings can be problematic because your neighbors are typically also using the network then. Everyone is settling down to watch TV in the evening.

Cable internet works roughly like this: there is a hub in your neighborhood. It has a certain amount of bandwidth to the internet that everyone connected to that hub shares. It's ALWAYS much less than the sum of what they sell to everyone using the hub.
!

Nice explanation. Thanks.

I would like to point out that while the above is true for cable, it is not true for FIOS services. My understanding (and please correct me if I am wrong) is that each FIOS user has his/her own connection and that the neighbor's usage does not affect it much if at all. There is no neighborhood hub.

I am not a fiber optics engineer so the above may be wrong or incomplete.

 

[RonBoyd]

So... how did you get DTVN for $10 (or $5 after credit)? Best price I see for new subscriber is $35. I do see a 3 month promo for $30, but that's not sustainable contract rate.

Yeah, that is kind of a fluke. When DTVN was first started they were begging for customers. They were having difficulty competing with already established streaming services (Vue and Sling, primarily) so they offered a $25 discount for new sign-ups to the "Live a Little" line-up. This price will remain in effect forever... well, unless I quit or change levels. (So far there is nothing in the upper levels that make me consider that.) FWIW, I would say that, even at $35, DTVN is a bargain and having used it for some time now, I would sign on for that amount without question.

A similar thing happened with PlayOn -- I bought in for a one-time payment of $25 for a lifetime subscription. BTW, this program is incredible for recording streaming video (either to the cloud or a local drive). In addition, their Playback program is pretty impressive although I, personally, use SageTV for that,

I guess I should mention PLEX, also. I got in on the ground floor there too. PLEX and KODI were originally the same company. There became a difference of opinion among the programmers. Some wanted to go in the direction of making it open-source so that users could personalize every aspect. The other group wanted to make the program more user-friendly and prevent (most) user tweaking. KODI is just too complicated and time consuming for me but PLEX fits my use perfectly.

 

[RonBoyd]

I would like to point out that while the above is true for cable, it is not true for FIOS services. My understanding (and please correct me if I am wrong) is that each FIOS user has his/her own connection and that the neighbor's usage does not affect it much if at all. There is no neighborhood hub.

I am not a fiber optics engineer so the above may be wrong or incomplete.

I don't know either. I have a 60 Mbps DSL connection and have never had loss of signal or buffering at any time. This may be that very few of my neighbors use a streaming service and are Cable/Satellite users and, therefore, don't place a strain on the system.

 

[Freedom56]

Nice explanation. Thanks.

I would like to point out that while the above is true for cable, it is not true for FIOS services. My understanding (and please correct me if I am wrong) is that each FIOS user has his/her own connection and that the neighbor's usage does not affect it much if at all. There is no neighborhood hub.

I am not a fiber optics engineer so the above may be wrong or incomplete.

TWC/Spectrum uses fiber to the street junction box and copper to the home in our area. Each cable modem is provisioned bandwidth. When someone is not cheating the system, your neighbors cannot impact your bandwidth. After they caught the guy that was pirating, I have been running periodic speed tests during the days and evenings and they have been consistently in the range of 420-440 Mb/s.

 

[explanade]

Free HBO and Showtime for only $7?

 

[zinger1457]

Free HBO and Showtime for only $7?

AT&T offers free HBO with DirecTV if you also subscribe to one of their phone plans.

 

[RonBoyd]

Free HBO and Showtime for only $7?

Well, now this is interesting. (As mentioned above, HBO is free because we have our cell phone service through AT&T -- which also explains the Bundle discount.)

What is the really interesting part is that I looked and found that I had paid Showtime $6.99 on Dec 20, 2017 and just assumed that was the monthly.

Further inspection shows that it was paid to DirecTV Now. Apparently, Showtime Anytime (the on-demand version) is a add-on to the DTVN subscription for $8 a month. Then it got strange. I can not find where I ever paid DTVN again -- including the main subscription.

So I went to "My Att&T" website and found that "If you have a DIRECTV NOW balance, you'll be billed separately and won't see it on your AT&T bill."

I have never seen a separate bill and find no mention of DTVN on my AT&T bills. In addition, I can find no indication that I have a "balance due." Apparently, I paid the first month of DTVN (the sign-up) and then the Showtime thing but haven't paid anything else. What a deal!

This really didn't come to my attention because the reason I subscribed was to watch "Twin Peaks" and we did that in January. Also, I notice that I have "The Chi" scheduled to be recorded by PlayOn and it has recorded every episode without incidence. Oh! And I just went to Showtime Anytime with the ROKU unit and everything worked as expected -- I could watch whatever I wanted.

So what can I say... don't tell anyone?... or don't tell anyone.

 

[bUU]

Evenings can be problematic because your neighbors are typically also using the network then. Everyone is settling down to watch TV in the evening.

Cable internet works roughly like this: there is a hub in your neighborhood. It has a certain amount of bandwidth to the internet that everyone connected to that hub shares. It's ALWAYS much less than the sum of what they sell to everyone using the hub.

You're 60 Mbps service describes the MAXIMUM download speed from that hub to your house. Same for your neighbors, they might max out at 25 or 100 Mbps or whatever.

But what really matters is what people are actually using. Netflix says an HD stream might take up to 5 Mbps while a 4K stream could take up to 25 Mbps.

So lets say for arguments sake your neighborhood hub has 1000 Mbps capacity. But at 9 PM you have 10 neighbors using 4K streams (=250 Mbps) and 50 neighbors using HD streams (=250 Mbps) so everyone is using half the total available. Then someone downloads an app to their phone or does ANYTHING else that uses bandwidth and you will soon be saturating the hub. Something has to give, and so streams start stalling out.

Excellent explanation.

Internet service from an ISP is a shared resource, no matter how much we may want and think that we've purchased a certain amount/quality of service from the ISP. That's why some of us see net neutrality as a bad thing: We want the ISP to be able to manage its network unencumbered by rules that require it to treat video (which is more efficiently delivered via broadcast rather than streaming) the same as all other data.

 

[bUU]

I would like to point out that while the above is true for cable, it is not true for FIOS services. My understanding (and please correct me if I am wrong) is that each FIOS user has his/her own connection and that the neighbor's usage does not affect it much if at all. There is no neighborhood hub.

I'm not a network engineer either, so I'll let one try to explain it:

https://forums.verizon.com/t5/Fios-Internet/Fios-shared-or-not/m-p/602025/highlight/true#M39730

 

[mpeirce]

Well, now this is interesting. (As mentioned above, HBO is free because we have our cell phone service through AT&T -- which also explains the Bundle discount.)

Another benefit of having DTVN and AT&T cell service is that you an stream DTVN to your phone and it won't use up cell data. So basically you can watch all the TV on your phone (or iPad with an AT&T SIM card) you want. Just FYI.

https://www.directvnow.com/data

 

[RunningBum]

I see I have come to this thread quite late. I have never subscribed to cable/satellite television so I am not really a "cord cutter." However, I have built an extensive system for television. I started about fifteen years ago when I built a HTCP (Home Theater Personal Computer) based around SageTV -- which, BTW, is still to this day the backbone of the system. Of course, I am fortunate to live in an area of great OTA television -- over 80 channels.

80 seems hard to believe, plus with most people it's a matter of certain stations being available, not just sheer numbers. Being able to see multiples of CW, PBS, Fox, ION, etc, isn't too interesting, nor are the various weather channels on the substations. I found https://nocable.org/availability-report/zip/80291-denver-co and it shows about 60 by my quick count. Maybe with a really good antenna you can get more from further away, but those are almost sure to be dups.

 

[RonBoyd]

Another benefit of having DTVN and AT&T cell service is that you an stream DTVN to your phone and it won't use up cell data. So basically you can watch all the TV on your phone (or iPad with an AT&T SIM card) you want. Just FYI.

https://www.directvnow.com/data

Even better, you can plug your phone into the TV via HDMI and watch it on your tv. We did this, in the RV, until we got AT&T's version of the "Air Card" and now connect a ROKU unit wirelessly.