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Cut the cord and save money (if you do it right)

Bucky

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I'm afraid you got this backwards. The stations have greatly increased the carrying fees they want the cable and satellite companies to pay for the "privilege" of retransmitting the local stations' signals. When each contract expires a new one must be negotiated, and the station owners sometimes withdraw the retransmission rights as a negotiation ploy to try to bring the carriers to their knees. At the current time, Nexstar's contract with Directv is in negotiation and they've withdrawn all of their nearly 200 stations around the country from Directv.

Exactly. But, the stations love to blame it on DISH/Directv. They all run the banners saying they were pulled by DISH/Directv and please call and tell them you want it back!

Talk about two faced!
 

bbodb1

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It is so frustrating to see the broadcast companies NOT listening to what the consumer really wants - A LA CARTE!
Let me (the customer) pick and choose the channels I want to access. Cord cutting (as it is currently practiced) has become just another form of Dish / DirecTV - yuck!

If I could subscribe to HGTV, NBC Sports Network, and the Golf Channel - I'd likely be set.
 
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dioxide45

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It is so frustrating to see the broadcast companies NOT listening to what the consumer really wants - A LA CARTE!
Let me (the customer) pick and choose the channels I want to access. Cord cutting (as it is currently practiced) has become just another form of Dish / DirecTV - yuck!

If I could subscribe to HGTV, NBC Sports Network, and the Golf Channel - I'd likely be set.
Exactly. If you really tried to replace all of the offerings you get from Dish, Cable or DirecTV with streaming; A - you won't be able to do it and B - You will probably pay a lot more than you are with Dish, Cable or DirecTV. If you cut the cord and want to save money you need to be willing to give something up in return.
 

stevenh21

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In the Phoenix area, CBS and a sister station were taken off Dish for weeks. I put up an antenna for locals. After that was up and getting all local channels we added a Fire tv Recast that is a DVR and sends the tv signal to the all the televisions in the house over wifi. The other TV's have an Amazon Firestick attached. We decided on using Philo streaming service to replace cable type channels. We get 58 channels for $20 a month plus tax. Philo also includes a DVR service in that price. The downside is no sports channels or most cable news channels. Price difference $101 for Dish, $21.44 for Philo. I missed Amazon Prime Day, but caught the same prices from Bestbuy about 10 days later. Recast and 2 Firesticks were about $225. Got the upgraded Recast with 4 tuners and 1 TB hard drive. System is working well.
 

Steve Fatula

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In the Phoenix area, CBS and a sister station were taken off Dish for weeks. I put up an antenna for locals. After that was up and getting all local channels we added a Fire tv Recast that is a DVR and sends the tv signal to the all the televisions in the house over wifi. The other TV's have an Amazon Firestick attached. We decided on using Philo streaming service to replace cable type channels. We get 58 channels for $20 a month plus tax. Philo also includes a DVR service in that price. The downside is no sports channels or most cable news channels. Price difference $101 for Dish, $21.44 for Philo. I missed Amazon Prime Day, but caught the same prices from Bestbuy about 10 days later. Recast and 2 Firesticks were about $225. Got the upgraded Recast with 4 tuners and 1 TB hard drive. System is working well.

Yeah, we've been using Philo for over a year now and absolutely love it. The DVR is awesome! Locals are easy with antenna even for us country folk. I use Emby to dvr the antenna channels at no cost. Between Philo and Emby, get locals + all those Philo channels.

For sports, the only thing I care about is still NCAAF, which means I can subscribe to Sling or whatever the cheapest ESPN service is at the time for just one month a year. Vastly ahead over our previous satellite service, ~$1,000/year. We get a few channels we did not get on Sat, and, we miss a few, oh well. We're very very satisfied.
 

Bucky

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It is so frustrating to see the broadcast companies NOT listening to what the consumer really wants - A LA CARTE!
Let me (the customer) pick and choose the channels I want to access. Cord cutting (as it is currently practiced) has become just another form of Dish / DirecTV - yuck!

If I could subscribe to HGTV, NBC Sports Network, and the Golf Channel - I'd likely be set.

They hear us and understand, they just wouldn’t be in business long if they followed our requests!

Imagine going into a high end steak house. Their average ticket may well be over $100 with meal and drinks per person.Their break even on a nightly basis may be $2000. Considering that the $100 meal might only cost them $25, they would only need to serve 26 meals to break even.

Now imagine that everybody that came in only ordered the burger or a salad,etc that ended up bring the average ticket for the night down to say $30. Using the same cost factor (25%) you now have an average ticket profit of $22.50 Now you’ve got to have 89 meals to break even. The $2000 overhead is going to stay there regardless of what you eat so you have to cover it by increasing your prices or at the least maintaining that $100 average ticket if you don’t raise prices.

Same thing applies to DISH and others. Don’t know what their overhead is or their average monthly subscriber ticket. But I know that I pay DISH around $100 monthly. Now if I could subscribe to the three channels you like for say $30 monthly, I’ve effectively lost $70 to pay towards overhead. So basically I would have to triple my subscriber base to pay the same overhead. Actually a higher overhead because of the higher usage.

Didn’t mean to drag this out but hopefully you can understand where I was trying to go with this.
 

bbodb1

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They hear us and understand, they just wouldn’t be in business long if they followed our requests!

Imagine going into a high end steak house. Their average ticket may well be over $100 with meal and drinks per person.Their break even on a nightly basis may be $2000. Considering that the $100 meal might only cost them $25, they would only need to serve 26 meals to break even.

Now imagine that everybody that came in only ordered the burger or a salad,etc that ended up bring the average ticket for the night down to say $30. Using the same cost factor (25%) you now have an average ticket profit of $22.50 Now you’ve got to have 89 meals to break even. The $2000 overhead is going to stay there regardless of what you eat so you have to cover it by increasing your prices or at the least maintaining that $100 average ticket if you don’t raise prices.

Same thing applies to DISH and others. Don’t know what their overhead is or their average monthly subscriber ticket. But I know that I pay DISH around $100 monthly. Now if I could subscribe to the three channels you like for say $30 monthly, I’ve effectively lost $70 to pay towards overhead. So basically I would have to triple my subscriber base to pay the same overhead. Actually a higher overhead because of the higher usage.

Didn’t mean to drag this out but hopefully you can understand where I was trying to go with this.

I hear you, Bucky - but to extend the illustration a bit, when it comes to restaurants the consumer enjoys a plethora of choice.
If only that were the case with television. :mad::mad::(:(

Your point about overhead is spot on - but then again, the fact that a broadcast entity is extracting such sums of money from the streaming and satellite services points (yet again) to the need for more competition.

In the meantime, if the content providers don't get their act together and produce more desirable programming, I think we are going to see a slew of mergers and acquisitions within the broadcast entity world very soon.
 

janwes

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In the Phoenix area, CBS and a sister station were taken off Dish for weeks. I put up an antenna for locals. After that was up and getting all local channels we added a Fire tv Recast that is a DVR and sends the tv signal to the all the televisions in the house over wifi. The other TV's have an Amazon Firestick attached. We decided on using Philo streaming service to replace cable type channels. We get 58 channels for $20 a month plus tax. Philo also includes a DVR service in that price. The downside is no sports channels or most cable news channels. Price difference $101 for Dish, $21.44 for Philo. I missed Amazon Prime Day, but caught the same prices from Bestbuy about 10 days later. Recast and 2 Firesticks were about $225. Got the upgraded Recast with 4 tuners and 1 TB hard drive. System is working well.

We are in Phoenix area also and are looking to get just internet. We will be using YoutubeTV. We're concerned about the data used for streaming -- who do you use? We are with Cox now and they tell us we have to pay $10 a month if we go over (a terabyte) but do offer unlimited but it's $140 a month! Century Link is doesn't specify how much it is if you go over ($10-20). There's only two of us so probably could go with the smaller plan but do watch lots of sports. I'm concerned with switching and finding out we don't like CenLink and have to start over with start up fees!
 

stevenh21

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We use CenturyLink. I have never read that we have a limit. Maybe I just missed that. All of our network tv is from antenna. We stream some Amazon Prime and use Philo to stream normal cable. Use of Philo will probably increase when new seasons of more of our shows begin. Only network not coming in well is PBS. I decided not to get cable sports channels. Just use what is on the networks.
 

durrod

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I’m using Philo as well and it’s been great. Excellent. No buffering and works with out any problem.
I recommend it. Finally a good service at a good price,
 

Bucky

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Thought I would revisit this topic when I heard that PS Vue was shutting down. It’s amazing how quickly these providers have raised their prices and either merged or went under. Appears Sling and Philo are about the only ones able to hold their pricing steady.

DTV Now is now ATT TV Now and has went from $35 initially to $50 now and going up to $65 soon
YouTube TV went from $35 to $40 and going up to $50 soon
Hulu TV went from $35 to $40 and to $50 soon

I guess it’s no different with any other retail service. Get people hooked on the service with low cost pricing and then start the increases.
 

Steve Fatula

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Thought I would revisit this topic when I heard that PS Vue was shutting down. It’s amazing how quickly these providers have raised their prices and either merged or went under. Appears Sling and Philo are about the only ones able to hold their pricing steady.

DTV Now is now ATT TV Now and has went from $35 initially to $50 now and going up to $65 soon
YouTube TV went from $35 to $40 and going up to $50 soon
Hulu TV went from $35 to $40 and to $50 soon

I guess it’s no different with any other retail service. Get people hooked on the service with low cost pricing and then start the increases.

Just an FYI, Philo is co-owned by the content providers. A&E, AMC, Discovery, Viacom. They are doing quite well and grew out of education market.
 
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