Sorry, but no. I review it every couple of months. Please don't assume I'm an idiot.
See above. Incorrect, and apparently either cable rates are way, way different where you live, or you assume I'm a complete idiot, or you're simply not factoring in all the "little extras"
AT&T TV (used to be DirecTV Now) costs me $50 a month. We are indeed grandfathered to have all the old DTV Now channels, otherwise I'd have left already, but we'll probably jump ship very soon. Sling Orange + Blue would cost $10 less (after the discount period), but our reception of the local channels is not perfect and it's another app (I bought HD Homerun boxes years ago). But that that is our total TV streaming cost. If one raises rates, we can switch to another any time without any ridiculous rental of equipment, contracts, startup fees or any of that nonsense. We switched to DTVNow from Hulu with Live TV, and will probably switch to something else before long becuase AT&T is jacking up rates while removing channels. I have zero loyalty. The only thing I will absolutely not do is switch back to our cable company, or any satellite service. I like being able to actually watch TV uninterrupted when we're getting snow and rain storms.
The cable TV we dropped was costing us, with no premium channels, $84.99 per month after the initial "deal" wore off. PLUS another $17.47 for cable box rental (mandatory, and that was 3 TVs, no DVR of any sort). PLUS another $10.10 in "franchise fee" and "regional sports" surcharge. That's $112.56 per month for cable. Now, check my math here, but it looks to me like we're spending less money now. Hell, if they gave us cable for free they'd STILL cost us almost $30 a month. Of course they'll discount that a little. Not enough to get under double the price of streaming, and only if you buy their landline service at nearly $50 per month (no, I'm not making that up; I have the actual statements to back it up).
So it's streaming and Ooma, and yes, I keep track of every penny we spend compared to what we were spending before. We've shaved roughly $100 per month off our total spend on TV, Internet, and phone service. It would be more, but I decided to blow some of the extra on Hulu and Netflix so we can watch some really good series that you can't get on cable. Oh, and when I went in with my big box of cable equipment and crap to cancel everything but the Internet service, they were nice enough to offer us 1GB/sec Internet for $35 per month LESS than we had been paying for 300Mb/sec service... and threw in a new cable modem/wifi router. No intro deal, that's the "permanent" price, period. So there's that. I was concerned about the data cap they put in place a couple years back -- 1TB/month unless you pay extra for unlimited -- but we very rarely hit more than 50% of that, and usually less. We've never hit 75%, and remember -- I'm a full time telecommuter, so I'm on a VPN connection anywhere from 9 to 24 hours a day.
Please don't assume I don't know what the hell I'm talking about.
Never said you were an idiot. Said prices have gone up. You did however make these mistakes:
- Used the post-“deal” price only on the cable. You have to average the deal and post deal price to get the actual monthly price of cable. Granted, the longer you go, the worse it gets, but swapping services is a common way to alleviate that “deal” silliness. (You proved it with the Internet pricing. When you threatened to leave what was the deal to stay with all services? They do that.)
- In most areas the regional sports surcharge isn’t mandatory. If it’s not, those channels must be purchased on streaming and they’ll be roughly the same price.
- Sling is an “also ran” in the streaming biz. It’s not an apples to apples comparison to remove locals. Especially for anyone who has to invest in outdoor antenna systems. That wipes out the gain very quickly.
- You technically have to include the Internet cost as part of the streaming. Yes, you’ll “have it anyway” and use it for other things, but it’s mandatory or the streaming is dead. Once you add that back on as a must-have, even if you want to pro-rate it to actual video use... but really you can’t, it’s an all or nothing deal since it kills the entire streaming system without it... the numbers come a lot closer yet.
I get it. I like streaming. I have it. It has benefits. All I said was you hadn’t priced it correctly recently for a channel for channel match. It’s not that much cheaper anymore. Like you said, grandfathered with the old channels. A new subscriber isn’t.
One area you absolutely are correct is in equipment rentals and that’s definitely annoying but about 1/10 of the cost in most areas. Interestingly buying equipment has its downsides also. I like it better than renting but I’ve had a lightning strike take out two early AppleTVs which were replaced under insurance and I’ve now given away five of them that were truly too old to really be useful for much. The price of obsolescence falls back on the consumer in streaming and many have gone from 720, to 1080, to 4K on their own dime multiplied by number of TVs. You also didn’t mention if you have.
The channel for channel thing is the important part of my first message. The streamers are constantly losing content contracts and regaining them after negotiations. None of those are going down in price for them, per the industry and Street scuttlebutt. They’re going up. So prices shall continue to rise.
Other examples of similar channel to channel comparisons needed, include stupid stuff like AT&T owned DirecTV NOW doesn’t carry AT&T SportsNet. Hahaha. Think about that one for a minute and laugh... in a market that has five major league teams, AT&T doesn’t carry their own sponsored content provider on their own streaming service. LOL. (Not to mention in the same town, not a single streaming service carries the Altitude Network either, so if you’re streaming, you’re locked out of two major league teams in the same town.)
Those two examples are just to show the immaturity still of the offering. Pricing will have to go up for those, also.
And yes, we do have better deals than you were getting on cable in the metro. Out here, nah. Isn’t a cable in the ground for miles other than Centurylink’s copper and it’s hooked to a clapped out 1.5Mb/sec DSLAM. Which could be upgraded but won’t. They’re broke asses. Nobody willingly uses them for anything. I would barely trust them with a POTS line anymore.
So calm down there, I wasn’t claiming you weren’t intelligent or whatever you thought. You do have some errors in your pricing comparisons. Some simple, some impossible to really get a proper comparison.
But my point was that pricing will continue to go higher, and content is not the same between cable and streaming at all, yet. And in things that actually count, like the sports networks, but also goofiness like stupid CBS trying to do their own steaming thing... All Access? More like “Look at me I built my own streaming site!” LOL.
It’ll end up working it’s way up to match pricing with cable eventually. If it stays lower it’ll just be the difference in transport cost, the cable will still need to be there for the bits...
And of course the whole fake Net Neutrality battle will come back when one of the streamers doesn’t pay for enough data center connectivity and claims bias of the network... again... LOL.
(Having worked backbone stuff, nobody has time to slow anybody else’s stuff down. If it’s slow, they didn’t pay for enough bandwidth at the head end, or didn’t diversify content distribution servers enough geographically and expect someone else to drag it long haul for them with no bottlenecks without paying for that.)
Like I said. I like streaming. It won’t end up in the end any cheaper than the other stuff. It’s all just pumping bits around. And the content owners still have all these distribution systems squarely by the balls.
People have to be careful they’re getting what they want when switching and expect blackouts of content providers on all of them. In the end it’ll just be a question of whether they want to own the gear or rent it.
Another technical nitpick — to really compare apples to apples one has to measure compression. Full HD and even 4K isn’t always what you’re truly getting on streamers or cable. That requires knowing what they’re doing on the compression side of things. They’ve gotten pretty good at hiding it but when you have limited a pipe to 10Mb/s or lower to a device and the streamer still says you’re getting “HD” well... it’s not 1080p.
All sorts of fun and games with that will continue... forever.
Sounds like you’re in the sweet spot for your uses for now. It’s too bad it won’t stay there as far as pricing goes for new subscribers and eventually all of us.
