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I think the best way to lower prices is to have other cable companies compete for your dollar. Were we live we can only have one cable company, Time Warner or whatever it is called now. Our government should break up these large cable monopolies and allow competition. Dish and Satellite TV are not equal competition here as snow and rain will mess up the signal.


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I agree that competition is good. We have a couple Telcos here in Canada that are competing for your hard earned money, but the problem is they're also undermining their loyal customers. They will bend over backwards for new customers, and will try to show loyalty to customers who have been with them for a long time, but this also causes a bad thing in that customers will often switch back and forth every few months to get the "new customer promotion".

Shaw's doing something right in adding exclusivity, but the prices are way too high. For Internet 30, I have to pay $73 dollars per month. That is atrocious, especially when I started work there a few years before it was $55 for Internet 25.

Infrastructure costs a lot of money, but the prices are getting so high that eventually no one will be able to afford it and it will crash. Internet is definitely something everyone needs, though.


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Originally Posted By: Mat - PG Music
Infrastructure costs a lot of money, but the prices are getting so high that eventually no one will be able to afford it and it will crash. Internet is definitely something everyone needs, though.


The problem is all the carriers now use fiberoptic cables in all the metro areas and fiberoptic carries everything. Your internet, TV and phone. It's the same infrastructure costs which is why the bundles are cheaper than trying to separate internet from TV from your landline phone. I'm sure that's not true everywhere but for the most part it is.

What that leaves for us wannabe cord cutters is to dump all of it and just try to find the cheapest internet and live with it. Or not.

It's really ridiculous now with all the consolidation. Here in the States Verizion Fios was the big dog and they just sold out to Frontier. Verizon is only wireless now.

Time Warner just sold out to Spectrum right when I was going to see what I could do with TWC vs Frontier. Seriously, it's like we can't move fast enough to try to get anything cheaper.

I'm sure you're too young to remember the classic Bob Newhart comedy albums from the 60's. This was long before he became a TV star. He had a bit about low cost airlines. It was about taking a flight with the Mrs Grace L Ferguson Airline and Storm Door Company. That airline was a little light on amenities like seats...

It was hysterical and that's about what I'm feeling like now.

Bob


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Wow. I barely finished writing the above on Friday when the news says AT&T concluded a deal to buy Time Warner for almost 85 billion.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2016/10/22/at-t-time-warner-deal-start-new-media-industry-consolidation.html

I kinda doubt for that kind of money they're going to separate all this stuff out to make it more affordable like we've been talking about. Who knows though? This article talks about it's a way to consolidate because of all the younger cord cutters who want to watch streaming content on their mobile devices.

Bob


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Haha yeah I heard about the TW acquisition, and thought about this e-mail thread!

A la carte won't happen in the states unless enough people get the FCC to change the rules. Unfortunately, we won't go into the whole idea of lobbying as we know what's going on there.

I hope things change over there as well.


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Didn't Time Warner merge with another large cable provider earlier this year?


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Quote:
Didn't Time Warner merge with another large cable provider earlier this year?


Jim, this from Wikipedia...

Time Warner was formed in 1990 through the merger of Time Inc. and Warner Communications. The current company consists largely of the assets of the former Warner Communications, as well as HBO (a Time Inc. subsidiary prior to the Warner merger) and the assets of Turner Broadcasting (acquired in 1996). Time Warner currently has major operations in film and television, with a limited amount of publishing operations. Among its assets are Home Box Office, Turner Broadcasting System, The CW Television Network, Warner Bros., CNN, DC Comics, and as of August 2016, it owns 10% of Hulu.

In the past, other major divisions of Time Warner included Time Inc., AOL, Time Warner Cable, Warner Books, and Warner Music Group. All of these operations were either sold to other investors or spun off as independent companies between 2004 and 2014.

On October 22, 2016, AT&T announced its intent to acquire Time Warner for $85 billion.


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Here's very interesting article about how ESPN just lost 650,000 subscribers:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-29/

Parts of this is pretty technical but there's good tidbits of info here too. Like HBO is now selling their service separately for $15 per month and it talks about some other services too.

Bob


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I get a "page not found - 404 error" when I tried the link.


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Hmm, so did I just now. I just did a search using "ESPN loses subscribers" and it popped up again.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-10-29/hbo-killed-cable-bundle-and-espn-latest-victim

Moving on to something else I just found this:

https://www.playon.tv/

I just read about this on PC World. It looks pretty slick as far as replacing a cable box DVR is concerned. I had initially talked about using Windows Media Center as my DVR which is no longer available in Win 10. Playon might be one good way to get that functionality back.

Bob


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Good one, thanks Janice!

Bob


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This is very interesting, read over their website, still have a few questions. I would suppose streaming quality is dependent on your internet speed, bandwidth, and router capabilities (QoS, MIMO, MMS etc). I'm still confused on how they make money. Other than the cost of the unit itself, they apparently have no revenue stream. Who is paying for the access fees?

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"Who is paying for the access fees?"

Interesting question. I can think of lots of ways it *could* work, but can't really think of one that would meet the intent of laws .. I suppose finding a loophole may work for a while.
Still, I am intrigued ..


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I used MajicJack to replace my land line.. paid a one-time fee for the device, and I've had free phone service for the past 4 years... including long distance calling. I have to assume that their income stream is for the device itself.

Likewise, there are apparently laws that treat streaming differently than downloading. If you search for something on the device, and it can find it and stream it to you.. there might not BE any access fees.

My concern is that I'll spend the fee for the device, then some law will change and it will become a useless hunk o' junk. It would have to be viable for quite a while to offset the price of Netflix or Hulu.

But... it's the ONLY solution I've read about that includes sports, and pretty much everything else.

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Muvibox sure sounds like the old Napster. The key is what's the source of the programming? No way it could be legal. How could they possibly tap into the Discovery Channel or the NBA's live stream and just reroute it to you for free? I mention those two specifically because recent Discovery Channel shows or live home games are not available legally anywhere.

Seems like there needs to be a third party pirate hiding somewhere...or it's not really free.


Bob


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Wow, things are moving fast. This is about AT&T's DirecTV Now service.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/features/2016/11/29/review-at-ts-directv-now-not-ready-for-prime-time.html

Bob


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I cut the cord about a year ago. I had been paying AT&T U-verse $150/month for about 200 channels of crap and I could never find anything I wanted to watch!

we also have AT&T for internet - I increased our download plan to 50Mbps and dropped UVerse, bought an antenna to pick up local broadcasts, subscribed to Hulu and Amazon prime and I'm still saving nearly $100/month!

there are some things that we miss, but not enough to pay $100/month more!

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