Posted on 05/06/2014 12:51:00 PM PDT by jeannineinsd
Cable TV's sports costs are prompting a growing number of people to "cut the cord".
Exhibit A: The $8 billion charged by the Dodgers for broadcast rights to their games knowing full well that pay-TV companies would have to pass along this sky-high cost to all customers.
Time Warner Cable is the Dodgers' partner in crime. It paid that whopping sum for exclusive rights to distribute the Dodgers channel to other pay-TV companies, assuming, like the team, that it would get away with sticking both fans and non-fans with an extra $4 to $5 fee every month.
The harsh reality, however, is that most Southern California pay-TV customers already are forking out big bucks for local sports that they may never watch.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
I can get free radio through MRN/PRN, no reason to pay for XM. I got a free subscription for a few months with a recent car purchase; for what XM is charging and content, silliness to pay that.
It’s not that the cable is irreplaceable, it’s that it would be very expensive to replace, you’re talking thousands of miles and 10s of thousands of man hours. Work the cable companies did once already and don’t want to do again. It took about 6 years for Cox to cable Tucson the first time around, if the city council voted to oust them their replacement would probably need longer (Tucson has grown). And during all that time the citizens would be pissed because the city cut off their cable. And there isn’t always a terribly useful tunnel under the street, most of the places I’ve lived don’t have those tunnels, recabling means digging trenches.
It’s a non-starter. A city quite simply will not kick out a cable company, because no other cable company would want to move in and the citizens would rebel.
You may have a point there. When I first attempted to get a DSL-only account, I had to deal with a condescending salesrep who said it was impossible to separate the DSL circuitry from the POTS circuitry. I informed her that I was an Electronics Engineer and had worked with such circuitry in the past and all the service tech had to do was pull one board out of the hub cabinet and replace it with another one. I had also designed such circuitry in the past and not only knew how simple it was to do, but I was working with the next generation of equipment in that area.
"Well do you work with AT&T equipment?", she asked.
"Not specifically, no, but similar.", I responded.
"Well, then I can assure you that unless you work with our equipment directly, the two can operations can not be separated since they work on the same phone lines."
I told her to just forget it and hung up the phone, exasperated.
Spend your money on a cable that will digitally hook a laptop to your tv instead. I pay for nothing and get more programming than any of the monthly pay things like Netflix, hulu, etc.
solarmovie too. I use both of them a lot.
Things are moving to on demand and Internet services, anyway. The cable companies will increasingly become Internet connection providers.
Then people will get apps for whatever channels they want, and just pay directly for access.
An HBO app, a Cinemax app, a Fox Movie Channel app, a Fox News app, etc, and pay monthly for whatever channels you like.
It will all come out in the wash, but I bet 1/2 the cable networks won’t make it, or have such cheap programming that they will have to give the channel away and sell advertising.
I only watch maybe a dozen channels regularly, but I can see subscribing to 20 channels and just having Netflix, Amazon Prime for movies.
“Tunnel” under the streets is the verb cable workers and pols who award franchises use to discuss installing infrastructure.
I just told you, personal experience — a cable company was ousted because of customer dissatisfaction in my market in Southern California. Another company snapped it up the franchise instantly.
Please counter with an example of what you’re saying happens — a company gets kicked out of a major market and the franchise is left hanging. You won’t find one because cable companies scrap over any franchise available, even if they have to install new infrastructure. That is the verifiable history of cable TV in the US in the last 30 years.
Consumers have power in this economic arrangement — they just don’t know it.
Kick outs are too rare, there aren’t examples. The question really is how many times have city governments CONTEMPLATED kicking out the company only to do some looking around and finding out no other company wants to take on the effort. I know in the 90s the Tucson city council talked a big game about “forcing Cox to make changes or lose the access”, but nothing ever came from it and eventually they shut up.
Consumers know they have the power, but as I pointed out yesterday, they use the power in a way you don’t like. They use their power to make the cable companies cave to ever increasing rates from the channels. Bitching and moaning about something then actually working to keep it the same is a long standing American tradition. Well on display here, we gripe constantly about cable prices and cable business practices but whenever the cable companies hit the mattresses to hold rates down or change the business we complain they aren’t giving us our channels.
???
If there aren’t examples, then how do you know what would happen?
I’m telling you exactly what did happen in the cable wars in Simi Valley, CA.
It’s a big country, there’s always going to be outliers. But we do know that areas changing cable companies is one of the rarest things to happen in this country, just above a politician upholding a campaign promise. So the question is why, and the answer is obvious. Unless the city finds a way to own the cable a new company will have to rewire the city, and that has major repercussions. Winds up being easier for everybody to just bitch and moan.
But where are you getting the programming in the first place?
You have to get the content somewhere then you can broadcast it with Plex/Playon or a wire.
A lot of sports are available through the web or apps for smart phones and tablets. You can then stream them to your tv. Some cost but you only pay for what you want.....
I have several free streaming websites that carries everything from new movies still in the theatre to old tv series to links that are put up as soon as a series on tv is broadcast.
Just the fact that it is a database full of citizens who want to be left alone is enough to avoid it like the plague.
People would think twice (well, maybe not) about signing up for a registry that promises that government will leave them alone. A valuable database indeed. They might as well paint a target on their backs.
I have one of these.....
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=auvio+usb+to+hdmi
to go with these....
http://www.free-tv-video-online.me/
http://www.solarmovie.tl/
Totally free and with more content than the pay subscriptions. Stuff is linked almost immediately.
Well, I was excluding the bootleg sites! Montenegro and East Timor!
I have a Logitech Revue on one tv and a Minix G4 on the other — no need for wires or adapters.
Most of our area has been without Astros baseball for a few years now, and that has pretty much destroyed any interest in what has become a laughable franchise.
I don’t recall the model number of the antenna, and I actually no longer see it on the Radio Shack website. It’s a directional antenna that actually looks a little like a satellite dish. The whole thing is encased in a plastic cocoon, and the untrained eye might think it was a satellite dish pointed sideways.
This last week I moved it to the top of a 10 foot mast, and also installed a rotator. I get every channel from Fresno to Bakersfield.
I’ve still got some more setup to do. I plan to move the wires inside of the mast to protect them from the chimney exhaust. I didn’t want to use a chimney mount since my chimney is brick and I was concerned with wind-load and cracking, but it was by far the easier way for my particular setup.
And I need to install guy wires also. But for now it’s working great. The big hassle now is getting all of the channels scanned in, and then deselecting all of the foreign gibberish.
Feel free to PM me if you have any questions.
I picked up an antenna for $60 at Fry’s. Came with the hardware to mount it to the satellite mast and connected to the same cables. Took 15 minutes.
Why would you exclude the bootleg sites? As long as you are streaming and not downloading they are fine.....and free.
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