Posted on 04/30/2017 3:51:48 PM PDT by EveningStar
The television screen went dark a month ago as Daniel Fitzgerald watched “American Pickers” on the History Channel.
Perplexed, he grabbed the remote and surfed through CNN, Disney, Comedy Central and the rest of the standard cable lineup. Many of them were gone, too. In their place was a black background with a small block of text advising him that his subscription no longer provided those channels.
“I thought, ‘What the hell? I just paid the cable bill,’” Fitzgerald recalled last week in the tiny Lexington [Kentucky] apartment he shares with his disabled 16-year-old son.
Fitzgerald called Spectrum, the subsidiary created last year when Charter Communications of Stamford, Ct., acquired Time Warner Cable, which was then Lexington’s cable provider. A Spectrum representative told Fitzgerald that he hadn’t been paying Time Warner enough for the standard cable package. If he wanted those channels back, his monthly bill for cable and Internet would jump from $103 to $139, effective immediately.
(Excerpt) Read more at kentucky.com ...
Ping
“Now, now, there may be some people that will miss the outrageous cable bills they pay every month for stale reruns.”
I cut rid of cable almost 2 years ago. I only rarely miss it. I have internet access so almost anything I really have an interest in watching I can get online. I don’t understand why conservatives aren’t sticking it to the left wing cable companies.
Actually, depending on who charters the cable company, there is a lot that can be done. Often such cable services are chartered as local monopolies, and whoever gives the charter can either cancel it, or open it up to competition from other cable companies.
So is it morally acceptable to receive free streaming channels provided by “jail broken” Fire sticks??
Here in Grand Junction, the city council is being told by various people that phone wireless won't be where it's at and the community will be able to survive only if every residence in town has buried fiber optic running all the way to the premises. This would put the city in hock for something like $70,000,000. So far, only the two farthest Left of the council members are buying into it.
Ditto. I signed up for Amazon Prime for the free shipping over 10 years ago, long before they started including streaming movies. I signed up for Netflix back when they were only shipping DVDs.
Once I got a Ruku and started streaming Amazon and Netflix I saw no reason whatsoever to keep paying for cable. I added Hulu for some current TV shows (Neflix and Amazon usually stop at the end of the last year's season).
I got a ROKU stick for free for subscribing to Sling TV (internet TV). Sling has 3 Channel plans, I pay $25/mth for 25 channels and NO ESPN.
I am getting ready to dump cable. What is needed to make Amazon TV work? I see Amazon sells numerous systems. Which is best?
Cut last month have a stream box one no more $220 a month bill. Love the box and free air tv. cable played the the same crap over and over no more Now we watch what we want when we want. Never going back.
You don’t have to pay anything you can watch the same stuff free streaming on Kodi. Why spend Netflix when you can do it for free
I use a Roku. My daughter has an Amazon Firestick. Either one will allow you to stream Amazon, Netflix and Hulu (along with other channels), and you can pick up either one for about $40.
You also MUST have broadband internet service (either WiFi or you need to be able to run a cable from your TV to your router). I am in a rural area and have fairly crappy broadband (under 3Mbs) but it is sufficient for streaming to one TV at a time. My daughter has much better broadband in her city and she and her roommate can stream two different channels while also using the interweb on their PCs.
The more they tighten the screws the more people will cut the cord, pirate, trade, barter etc.
I already know people sharing Netflix, HBO, Showtime, Amazon accounts etc.while paying for one and trading access for that for the others.
There is going to be so many creative ways for people to cheat this bloated system that aren’t even thought of yet.
If the cable companies don’t think KODI, account sharing etc are going to bury them they’re going to learn the record company lesson of the 90’s the hard way.
They can’t justify 26 minutes of commercials an hour, $140 a month for what passes as basic entertainment. They’re going to get kicked so hard it’s not going to be funny to their stockholders but it will be to the rest of us.
...took me a little while to stop laughing, she was not amused.
Frequent at contract time.
Cable/satellite company posts that a group of networks refuse to deal with the cable/satellite.
Group of networks post that cable/satellite company wants too much money to air the network’s channels.
The screen goes blank. Eventually, one or the other caves and the programming returns.
Been going for decades.
“What is needed to make Amazon TV work?”
Internet connection. You use the FireStick which uses WiFi, or you can use the FireTV which uses either WiFi or wired cable. Both work great. Highly recommend them.
The Amaon Fire system comes with some content, but Netflix is highly recommended at about $9/month. Many other channels are also available. We subscribe to KlowdTV For $7/month which gives us OAN conservative news. (good stuff!)
You can get Hulu and a number of pay channels, but you will spend far less than you ever did for cable and get 10 times the content. Many shows are available through these pay channels that are not on cable.
“. They’re going to get kicked so hard it’s not going to be funny to their stockholders but it will be to the rest of us.”
Well start laughing! Cable loses 270,000 subscriber per month! That’s over 3 million per year. It’s a great start!
We cut the cord about a month ago. It took a few days to adjust but I don’t miss it now. Mr. Mercat has found lots of nerd TV on the internet and I’m watching all the seasons I purchased on Amazon Prime back before I retired. It’s great.
And yet TWC/Spectrum cannot figure out why cable internet here after replacing everything goes through bouts of losing DNS. It’s usually a few short rounds then everything stabilizes for several days.
It makes no difference if there is a router in place or not, Windows 7, W10, or Linux.
On my Dell PC, the firewall will detect a zone shift, the hardwire will drop, the wireless adapter shows in the tray, Avast will say something about no internet and then the hardwire connection will pick back up.
I’ve used Open DNS, Google DNS, and auto of course.
TWC pulled the logs for a few weeks and checked against some times I had for the drops and TWC didn’t see any loss.
The neighbor who has the same service says his works fine and is stable.
I’m not a network engineer but am fairly knowledgeable about low level stuff.
It is so frustrating chasing a random problem.
Someone should tell this poor guy to get a KODI STICK.. Then he can cut cable TOTALLY!! Cable is a scam!! They should allow consumers to do AL LA CARTE... Thats why I cut my cable. Screw ESPN and all these lefty overpriced cable companies! NEVER will I have cable ever again! I don’t have to watch commercials with the KODI STICK either. hahaha Suckers!
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