Cutting the Cord on Cable
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For instance, I live in Brooklyn, and the only reliable high-speed internet service is via Time Warner Cable. I currently get their WideBand service (50mbps down) bundled with basic cable and an VOIP phone I never use in a 12-month promotion. This costs me $118 p/mo. When that 12-month period was up I called to cancel stuff and they extended that promotion for another 12 months.
If I subscribed to just the internet service, it would cost me $95 p/mo and that's before the taxes and fees, so it would come to about the same I am paying now.
The only other player for internet service in my area is Clear 4G WiFi which is a joke when it comes to speed.
So basically, I'm stuck with cable for internet service, and through effective bundle pricing the missus can still watch Housewives of * on the big telly.
BTW, like the OP, I have expensive Comcast service because I have no other effective choice, and they just sent me a box and let me set it up too.
However, the time came along where I didn't have as much time to watch racing anymore. I had a TiVo, but even then, I just didn't have the time to watch the recorded races. Eventually, I pared things down to the "Expanded" package. However, the few shows of interest went away. So when I moved, I pared down to Basic, only because if I didn't, I would only save $0.80/mo on my cable bill since Internet service would cost $10/mo more without a bundled television package.
I think the television was on about 12 hours last year, in terms of broadcast programming. Yes, twelve. Why? I fell out of the habit of slouching in my lounge chair and sitting there for a few hours every evening. My routine changed, and there always seems to be this large amount of inertia to overcome to change my routines. Unless the content producers come up with compelling reasons for me to park myself in front of the TV again, it will probably remain a tremendously expensive paperweight.
Granted, I do occasionally play video games, and stream content from YouTube, or my transcoded DVD library to an Apple TV, but I don't do that all that much.
It's like getting someone who lives in New York City to get excited about and buy a boring midsize sedan. They ride the subway, buses and take the taxi. You'd have to overcome their inertia of not using a car, and get them over the fact of what a car would cost them. I look at TV now almost the same way (though I live in Boston) -- there's this tremendous amount of inertia you have to overcome to change someone's habits, especially when there's viable alternatives that are nearly as good and cheaper.
I'm convinced that the only reason for them to do this is to whitewash the "myth" of cable-cutting. Comcast in my area has a similar deal - it's a couple of bucks cheaper per month to get Internet with "limited" cable rather than Internet on its own. To the networks and advertisers, I'm still a TV subscriber, even though the coax goes directly to my modem and nowhere near my TV.
I stopped watching television once I got into university. Living in a dormitory-style residence, the TV was in the floor's lounge, and my room was furthest from it.
I am not exactly sure when, but I went home one weekend, and I remember thinking to myself, "Why is the TV so irritating?" It was then that I realized that I had been living without television - and I liked it.
To be fair, my viewing habits did change as well. Being a student, I looked for entertainment that fit within my schedule (on-demand). My friends introduced me to anime, Rome, and DC++. The rest is history.
I think a few people in residence did choose to get cable in their rooms in order to keep following sports. I might have continued to follow hockey myself, but the NHL lockout occurred the previous year, so it wasn't the same for me.
I enjoy some of the content that's on TV, but the medium just isn't right for me. I don't like commercials, and I'd rather just have the option of paying more to not have them. I want what I want when I want it. I rarely care about realtime information from a television (I have the internet for that). I also like being able to watch most of a series in a short period of time. I like movies better than shows. 99% of of the content on TV isn't something I'm interested in.
At this point, cable TV just seems to be an annoying novelty to me. Its background noise when I'm at someone's house with it. I'm frankly shocked so many people still subscribe to it. Even if it was given to me for free, I wouldn't use it.
The live sports was my main reason for holding on to cable for so long, but I finally made the switch two years ago and it's great. I can watch all NFL I want, once a week baseball and sometimes basketball and hockey.
Semi-exception to that, an ex-girlfriend of mine moved at some point in an apartment with cable TV- the difference in the quality of our relationship with or without the TV was noticeable. Without TV, we'd go more out of our way to cook, find things to do, play games, etc.. With TV, a lot of evenings were spent just on the couch staring blankly at the screen (well, I would be programming on the couch while she would be watching TV).
It's a very subjective experience, of course, but all of that makes me feel that TV watching is inherently pernicious and to be avoided as much as possible.
I think a lot of the phenomenon is due to the fact that you can't watch TV in a discrete fashion- as soon as something ends, something else starts and you do not have to do any effort to keep watching. When you watch something like a movie, the activity is clearly defined in time, and as such you don't get sucked in like you do when watching TV.
I just searched for the my GF's 3 favorite cooking shows, and found ~8 torrents, total, for two of them and zero for the other. Granted Good Eats, a more "nerdy" cooking show, has every single episode available for its 14 season run on the private TV torrent tracker website. My girlfriend is pretty girly and not nerdy at all, so her "style" of show is hard to find.
I was also unable to find those shows on Food Network's website - perhaps I missed them? Could you point me in the right direction? And even if they are online, getting that content to my TV is difficult - certainly harder, at least, than a torrent playing through Plex on my Mac Mini.
And Flash, of course, is annoying when it does work :)
Cause many have to use cable to get a decent internet in the US, still. Sadly its usually called Comcast (but it does offer Internet-only - even thus its very expensive and internet+tv isn't much more expensive)
Then to complete the cancellation, I had to take the modem in to their office in person and wait in line to return it.
Comcast promotional deals: not worth the hassle.
Currently very happy with a community network cable provider internet-only service, against my "lassez-faire" inclinations.
Where else can I go to record/watch these besides cable? Some are on over the air channels, but I live in an area that can't receive those channels either.
The only reason I still have cable is for ESPN. They have live sports that are exclusive to ESPN and the only way to get ESPN is to have cable.
But no, no then they would make less money.
a) Saying 'hey, I can get this illegally for free' isn't really a valid economic argument. b) Pirating HBO just, I dunno, feels wrong. They're a company with a unique economic model that consistently produces amazing television; even if it's on an incredibly micro scale, I think they should be rewarded for that.
But yeah, HBO will earn more money when they get off cable-only.
Also, their customer service is.... not great.
I'm literally next door to a tower, so my experience is going to be better than most, I fear. I get 2mbit down and 1mbit up on a typical day. 8mbit down on a great one. I seem to get better speed after an outage, oddly enough.
The price is about 1/3 what Comcast would charge (I have the two-plan bundle: home net and phone service). No complaints about the phone service at all except for the extreme ping times. Talking to a mobile phone from the "home" phone is just as laggy as two mobiles talking. International rates are awesome.
I've run a light bittorrent set over it with no problem. I haven't hit a usage cap so far. Customer service, as others have noted, is pretty bad. AT&T/DSL-level bad.
We're witnessing non-death throes of a more-intelligent animal.
When the music industry was disrupted completely, their Plan B was a white-knuckle-grip onto Plan A (their traditional business model). The cablecos were foresightful enough to turn their TV monopolies into broadband value-adds. They've done a drn good job at it, despite the bellyaching we can do. While providing "the best available internet access," they're no dummies, and entrenched cableco interests will ensure cord-cutting's not easy.
HBO is balancing the beam effectively (for their business, if less so for their "audience"). They have zero plans to make their "HBO-Anywhere" service available except to cable subs.
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-hbo-to-cord-cutters-youll...
Competition is still Good. Cableco monopolists were in no hurry to improve things until DSL and fiber-to-the-premises services became available and attractive. But they've responded.
Re TV programming itself, cutting the cord is more difficult when kids are involved. Even with timeshifting as second (or first) nature, you need the source to switch from.* As for torrenting, etc., "it's only 'free' if your time has no value" comes to play.
Per the cited article, and per comments in this thread, TV is a lean-back, consumption-oriented time sink. I like to have that even knowing it's a less-than-optimal use of time.
Whenever I hear someone disregard torrents offhand, I get the distinct impression that they've either never actually tried it or that they're simply being dishonest, because piracy has never been easier.
Have you actually tried torrenting TV shows or movies (or any other type of digital content, for that matter)? Contrary to the FUD that seems to be popular opinion on HN, it's a cake walk. Most importantly, learning how to use torrents is a (rather small) one-time time investment, whereas watching TV means that you perenially waste 1/4th of your viewing time watching ads. And don't forget that you have to keep track of when shows are airing and either watch them then or remember to record them for later viewing.
So if saving time is one of your primary concerns, the numbers simply don't add up in favor of broadcast TV, no matter how you look at them.
In fact, piracy is so easy that I won't even bother with free solutions like Hulu - why should I waste my time traversing 10 different sites looking for a particular episode of a particular show I want to see when I can go to the same torrent site every time and have a virtual guarantee that the content I want will be instantly available, and in HD, at that?
If you have moral qualms with respect to piracy, I can agree to disagree, despite my personal lack of objections to the practice. But claiming that piracy is somehow time inefficient is nothing more or less than pure prevarication.
Because one avenue is legal, and the other is illegal. I'm not saying that that will serve as an incentive to change your (or others') behavior, but that's the answer to your question.
It wasn't offhand: it takes more time to find and download content than it does to turn on the tube and flip through its offerings. With hope, you're not arguing that point.
Your distinct impression is incorrect in my case: The last several torrents specifically for shows not then available via other means took me several minutes to find and many more to download. The shows in question weren't tiny unknowns; in my experience, finding less-popular shows is even more of a hassle. If any of these had been available on demand, for "purchase," or via Hulu (to which I subscribe), I would have preferred those methods.
Your own points are also not mutually-exclusive: piracy may be as easy as it's ever been and still be more involved than turning on and tuning in. I don't mind paying for content I feel is of value. I also value my time and the frictionlessness with which I can ~"mindlessly" enjoy some programming. Less hassle - even if it's still little hassle - is worth it to me. YMMV.
> I also value my time and the frictionlessness with which I can ~"mindlessly" enjoy some programming. Less hassle - even if it's still little hassle - is worth it to me.
I think our use cases are different. I have no interest in flipping on the TV and "mindlessly" watching whatever programming happens to be on at the time. I have always hated "channel surfing", and I certainly don't like watching anything from the middle (of the episode or the season).
I carefully pick and choose what I watch. Once I've picked a show, I always watch it from the beginning to the end, in order, and keep careful track of which episodes of which shows I've seen (using Anigrate: http://anigrate.glacicle.org/). As you can imagine, I take my TV viewing quite seriously (though this is not necessarily true for all, or even most, torrenters).
> The last several torrents specifically for shows not then available via other means took me several minutes to find and many more to download. The shows in question weren't tiny unknowns; in my experience, finding less-popular shows is even more of a hassle. If any of these had been available on demand, for "purchase," or via Hulu (to which I subscribe), I would have preferred those methods.
Like I said, it takes a (small) upfront investment of time to educate oneself in the best means of finding such things. I don't know which particular shows you were looking for, but I can likely find a torrent (or direct download, if that's your preference) of any show you name in under 30 seconds.
However, if that's your fear, you can always use direct download, which also has the nice advantage of being sequential, so you can watch the episode as it downloads (basically streaming). In fact, if your connection is fast enough, you can stream 720p TV show episodes.
Try it for yourself. Go to http://www.filecrop.com/, disable the Rapidshare and Hotfile checkboxes (leaving just Megaupload), then search for any TV show, adding the usual Scene-style season/episode indicator (e.g., S01E01). If you want HD, add "720p". You can find a direct download link that will max out your connection for pretty much any show.
That is a profoundly terrible research on their behalf. Yes I cut my cord because it was cheaper for me, but i didn't do it to save money, I did it because cable tv simply isn't worth the money for me. paying for streaming hbo would definitely be worth it however.