What Satellite & Cable Companies are doing as a Result of Cord Cutting

[RalphVa]

We had cable here when we bought the house and continued with cable for around 10 years at only $10 or so/mo, incl ESPN and all. Think Xfinity then bought Comcast, and the prices were to go up a huge amount. We went with DirecTV as part of our package with CenturyLink for phone and internet. This is after we got some rabbit ears for each of the 3 TVs to get local channels.

About a year ago, Roku and another outfit or two came out with their gizmos to give you TV off the internet. At that time, DirecTV dropped their price to about $25/mo. Only a couple months or so ago, they were going to raise their price back up another $50/mo. I went out and immediately bought a Roku gizmo. Worked great with Sling TV at $25/mo. for my ESPN. Got a 2nd Roku. The devices themselves were about $40 each.

Gobs of free movies on both the Roku and Tubi systems.

Ralph

 

[dmccarty]

...
Not just robustness, but would there be a sufficient ROI on a 5G network in thinly populated areas? As it is in rural areas cell towers are concentrated along major highways, it's just that current cells are large enough to reach a fair distance. Smaller cells, maybe not. I'm sure the pole-top antennas are much cheaper than the current ones, but a lot of contracts will need to be negotiated to place them.
...

I was surfing around our local websites and noticed an application for a new cell tower. The new tower permit is 3-5 miles from an existing tower which surprised me. The new tower is along a different highway and we have not had a problem with dropped cell signals on that route so why the new tower? We wonder if it is to supply 5G in the future? :confused3: I *** THINK *** we could pick up 5G from the tower near us but that is just a guess.

Later,
Dan

 

[kcflhrc]

I was surfing around our local websites and noticed an application for a new cell tower. The new tower permit is 3-5 miles from an existing tower which surprised me. The new tower is along a different highway and we have not had a problem with dropped cell signals on that route so why the new tower? We wonder if it is to supply 5G in the future? :confused3: I *** THINK *** we could pick up 5G from the tower near us but that is just a guess.

Later,
Dan

Probably another Carrier

 

[ning]

My bad with your first post, but appears your bad with this one
Was just on the Dish sight prior to my last post and Welcome, Smart and Flex
Welcome Pack | English Programming | MyDISH | DISH Customer Support

Not sure what you mean by "your bad on this one" because I certainly do have local channels, just as the link you sent shows...

 

[goeduck]

How are people getting Fox News and Sports on ROKU? Fox is not on many streaming bundles that I can find but is available separately on ROKU for five or six bucks a month. Sports, particularly local teams seem to be hard to get on a bundle if even possible.

 

[dnw64]

Given that the average cost of TV service in the United States is around $100 per month, cutting the cord starts to look like a pretty attractive option. Even if you羆*e just replacing a cable bundle with a live TV streaming service such as YouTube TV or PlayStation Vue, you could still potentially chop your TV bill in half. Unlike traditional cable or satellite TV, these services achieve lower prices by cutting out certain channels and not making customers rent expensive set-top boxes. They also subsist on slimmer or nonexistent profit margins while trying to build a larger audience for targeted ads

For the potential $50/mo savings I am not yet willing to give up "certain channels" and being faced with "targeted ads".

Case in point - this past February we had been away for 10 days and when we came back (the day before the SuperBowl) our DISH was not working. I didn't have time to do anything about it until the next afternoon (the day of SB). The long and short of it was that we would have no DISH for the SB, so I spent a bit of time trying to figure out how we could watch it online. I feel like I'm pretty tech-savvy but I eventually gave up. If it were a Big Deal to watch the SB I'm sure I would have prevailed, but on a scale of 1-10 my wife was at 5 and I was at 1 (the main reason I watch it is because my wife is generally a fan, but not so much this year).

And we are in the rather unique position of living in the boonies with excellent (fiber optic) internet. A lot of people in more remote locations don't have much of a choice for internet.

 

[CMV]

How are people getting Fox News and Sports on ROKU? Fox is not on many streaming bundles that I can find but is available separately on ROKU for five or six bucks a month. Sports, particularly local teams seem to be hard to get on a bundle if even possible.

You can add fox news channel as a free channel on roku. Haven't done it, but saw it was there under "top free" section

 

[thekkfan]

You can add fox news channel as a free channel on roku. Haven't done it, but saw it was there under "top free" section

It will only activate with a paying subscription from another provider-- sat, cable, etc. BEWARE. While Directv Now has Fox News and several others, the apps won't always activate. That's another reason why I left them. Course now their hiking to $50/mo and slashing channels. I have had no issues activating Fox News, NatGeo, or Discovery with my Hulu subscription.

 

[CMV]

Oh...sorry for passing along bad info. I saw it there under free section so just assumed....

 

[prof fate]

For the potential $50/mo savings I am not yet willing to give up "certain channels" and being faced with "targeted ads".

Case in point - this past February we had been away for 10 days and when we came back (the day before the SuperBowl) our DISH was not working. I didn't have time to do anything about it until the next afternoon (the day of SB). The long and short of it was that we would have no DISH for the SB, so I spent a bit of time trying to figure out how we could watch it online. I feel like I'm pretty tech-savvy but I eventually gave up. If it were a Big Deal to watch the SB I'm sure I would have prevailed, but on a scale of 1-10 my wife was at 5 and I was at 1 (the main reason I watch it is because my wife is generally a fan, but not so much this year).

And we are in the rather unique position of living in the boonies with excellent (fiber optic) internet. A lot of people in more remote locations don't have much of a choice for internet.

don'yt know about this year, but 2 or 3 years ago the satellite went out in the middle of the superbowl and i found it on my latop, plugged that into the tv and finished watching the game.