Dish Network vs Direct TV

[ray66v]

In the beginning of "pay TV", they used the "commercial free" aspect as a sales feature to get people volunteer their money. Then, they started putting the commercials in, anyway.

Once everything is "on demand", you can bet, it will be full of commercials, and advertisers are not going be willing to pay for commercials, we are able to FF through. So, there will still be interest in recording programs.

As far as it being arduous to do so, My Tivo pretty much does it all for me. Including finding me new programs, based on what I like.

 

[rekees4300]

There are an enormous amount of choices available for internet TV.

That's true assuming your ISP doesn't have data caps (urban areas). Most rural plans do have data caps. We live in the boonies. Our plan is Verizon Wireless 4G with 20GB/mo cap. Go over the 20GB cap then they sock it to you at $8 per GB! Each streaming movie over the data cap would be $20-$30 bucks! Perhaps the situation will change with 5G but that is still years away?

 

[roadhunter]

That's true assuming your ISP doesn't have data caps (urban areas). Most rural plans do have data caps. We live in the boonies. Our plan is Verizon Wireless 4G with 20GB/mo cap. Go over the 20GB cap then they sock it to you at $8 per GB! Each streaming movie over the data cap would be $20-$30 bucks! Perhaps the situation will change with 5G but that is still years away?

This is just getting more interesting. I can assure you that I live in a much more rural area "boonies" than you do as there are less than 100k people within a 2 hour radius of my house.

So far we have seen people claim that the programming they want is not available streaming, yet none could say which channels they were not able to get via streaming. When asked directly they would not respond. Now the claims are you can't stream because the internet is still years away from being able to handle the data due to caps. Essentially people just dont' understand how this all works and they are loyal to thier satellite because they dont' know any better and are likely older. But as I said earlier cable/satellite is going to be obsolete in the next 10 years.

Reality check.

People in urban areas and rural areas stream TV all the time. Millions of them every day. Some watch movies, some binge watch entire TV series, some watch videos on you tube. If you want to pretend the content' isn't' available or your internet won't support it that is fine, but it doesn't mean it's true.

Heck I have verizon phone service and I stream TV on my phone all the time. No reason it won't work on your TV as well as your phone.

I'm getting ready to watch a NFL game streaming from CBS on my cell tower internet with data caps. Just like I streamed the bowl games yesterday.

 

[roadhunter]

In the beginning of "pay TV", they used the "commercial free" aspect as a sales feature to get people volunteer their money. Then, they started putting the commercials in, anyway.

Once everything is "on demand", you can bet, it will be full of commercials, and advertisers are not going be willing to pay for commercials, we are able to FF through. So, there will still be interest in recording programs.

As far as it being arduous to do so, My Tivo pretty much does it all for me. Including finding me new programs, based on what I like.

Recording TV programs to watch later will not be around much longer. There is no reason for it when you can simply pick what episodes of each show you want to watch from a library that has every episode and every season.

As far as commercials there will still be advertizing but you can pay extra not to have them. Many streaming services offer no commercial plans which are slightly more expensive.

DVR's will go the way of home phone service, huge satellite dishes in the yard, VHS tapes, etc.. as technology changes. To be honest DVR's are for old people at this point. It's certainly not something the younger generations are still doing.

 

[NoTrespassing]

This is just getting more interesting. I can assure you that I live in a much more rural area "boonies" than you do as there are less than 100k people within a 2 hour radius of my house.

So far we have seen people claim that the programming they want is not available streaming, yet none could say which channels they were not able to get via streaming. When asked directly they would not respond. Now the claims are you can't stream because the internet is still years away from being able to handle the data due to caps. Essentially people just dont' understand how this all works and they are loyal to thier satellite because they dont' know any better and are likely older. But as I said earlier cable/satellite is going to be obsolete in the next 10 years.

Reality check.

People in urban areas and rural areas stream TV all the time. Millions of them every day. Some watch movies, some binge watch entire TV series, some watch videos on you tube. If you want to pretend the content' isn't' available or your internet won't support it that is fine, but it doesn't mean it's true.

Heck I have verizon phone service and I stream TV on my phone all the time. No reason it won't work on your TV as well as your phone.

I'm getting ready to watch a NFL game streaming from CBS on my cell tower internet with data caps. Just like I streamed the bowl games yesterday.

How many gigs does a typical NFL game in HD use? How many gigs is a 90 minute movie? I'm trying to figure out how many games and movies we can watch before our 15 gigs of data is gone and we have to buy more @ $10/gig on one device and $2.5/gig on the other device. By the way, my wife's service doesn't support using her phone as a wifi hotspot so we downloaded an app as a work around. If the company detects too much data usage they will throttle the download speed.

 

[ray66v]

Recording TV programs to watch later will not be around much longer. There is no reason for it when you can simply pick what episodes of each show you want to watch from a library that has every episode and every season.

As far as commercials there will still be advertizing but you can pay extra not to have them. Many streaming services offer no commercial plans which are slightly more expensive.

DVR's will go the way of home phone service, huge satellite dishes in the yard, VHS tapes, etc.. as technology changes. To be honest DVR's are for old people at this point. It's certainly not something the younger generations are still doing.

As I said, I don't agree at all.

Commercials are the only reason the networks exist.

I guess we are going to find out.

 

[rekees4300]

This is just getting more interesting. I can assure you that I live in a much more rural area "boonies" than you do as there are less than 100k people within a 2 hour radius of my house.

So far we have seen people claim that the programming they want is not available streaming, yet none could say which channels they were not able to get via streaming. When asked directly they would not respond. Now the claims are you can't stream because the internet is still years away from being able to handle the data due to caps. Essentially people just dont' understand how this all works and they are loyal to thier satellite because they dont' know any better and are likely older. But as I said earlier cable/satellite is going to be obsolete in the next 10 years.

Reality check.

People in urban areas and rural areas stream TV all the time. Millions of them every day. Some watch movies, some binge watch entire TV series, some watch videos on you tube. If you want to pretend the content' isn't' available or your internet won't support it that is fine, but it doesn't mean it's true.

Heck I have verizon phone service and I stream TV on my phone all the time. No reason it won't work on your TV as well as your phone.

I'm getting ready to watch a NFL game streaming from CBS on my cell tower internet with data caps. Just like I streamed the bowl games yesterday.

Maybe I'm missing something or perhaps your perspective (no data caps?) is just different than mine? :confused3: "Streaming" is just another word for "downloading" right? It's all just data, 0's & 1's no matter if it's a movie or website. So please explain to this ignorant senior citizen boonie (who doesn't even own a cell phone) how to use Roku without connecting it the Internet? Their website says "Just connect your Roku streaming player to your wireless network and your TV, or connect your Roku TV to your wireless network, create a Roku account, and start streaming." When they say "wireless network" aren't they actually inferring "Internet"? Trust me I am not "loyal" to DirecTV. I would drop them and their $150/mo bill in a heartbeat if there truly was a viable way to get the TV programs I want, when I want them, and at a lower price (aka a la carte) .

Roku

 

[ray66v]

Maybe I'm missing something or perhaps your perspective (no data caps?) is just different than mine? :confused3: "Streaming" is just another word for "downloading" right? It's all just data, 0's & 1's no matter if it's a movie or website. So please explain to this ignorant senior citizen boonie (who doesn't even own a cell phone) how to use Roku without connecting it the Internet? Their website says "Just connect your Roku streaming player to your wireless network and your TV, or connect your Roku TV to your wireless network, create a Roku account, and start streaming." When they say "wireless network" aren't they actually inferring "Internet"? Trust me I am not "loyal" to DirecTV. I would drop them and their $150/mo bill in a heartbeat if there truly was a viable way to get the TV programs I want, when I want them, and at a lower price (aka a la carte) .

Roku

I'm no expert at this either. I believe the difference between downloading, and streaming, is the first is saving it, even if only temporarily, and the second is watching it as you download it, without saving it at all. Both are using lots of internet data. Neither really are going to be any different from your perspective.

I do have a Roku, and it does need to be connected to the internet, usually via your private wifi, (wireless), network. Some may be able to plug directly into your internet connection, if you don't have a wifi modem, or router.

 

[rekees4300]

I'm no expert at this either. I believe the difference between downloading, and streaming, is the first is saving it, even if only temporarily, and the second is watching it as you download it, without saving it at all. Both are using lots of internet data. Neither really are going to be any different from your perspective.

I do have a Roku, and it does need to be connected to the internet, usually via your private wifi, (wireless), network. Some may be able to plug directly into your internet connection, if you don't have a wifi modem, or router.

The bottom line is that until rural Internet infrastructure has the capacity to handle the streaming equivalent of Dish/DirecTV they will be in business.

 

[Oaktree]

Looks Like you have plenty of OTA antennas closeby, have you tried a long range antenna?
Coos County, NH - TV Channels & Antenna Map

There are gobs of free streams out there. Crackle has lots of movies for free. Tubit is another one great free movie channel. Weather Nation is a free knock off of the weather channel.

Yep. When the U.S. went digital (08?) I bought the biggest, baddest UHF antenna I could find. Vt. Public TV was all I could get when I did a scan. I could get that with a coathanger. It's still up there...I have a very steep roof and didn't really feel like going back up there to remove it.
Canada didn't switch until a couple years later, and there was one English-language channel (analog) we could get (several others in French).
The map you linked to is very deceiving. Now maybe there are all those signals available where it shows the reception point, but what doesn't tell you is that it is in the middle of national forest. For that matter, most of the high country here is either national forest or woodland owned by a paper company. It's the valleys where people live, and as I noted there are mountain ranges in pretty much every direction.

Do I need some external box to access these "free" streaming channels, or is it something you can get with a so-called smart tv? Don't recall seeing a link for either of the providers in the menu. Are the programs offered anything anyone would want to watch, or is it stuff no one would ever pay to see?

I realize that there are websites you can go to for programming, but I don't really have any interest in having to sit in front of a computer to watch a tv show.