Why I canceled Time Warner Cable | Hacker News Reader

Why I canceled Time Warner Cable

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46 pointsdriverdan37 comments

I haven't had Cable/Satellite since 2002. I started watching all my TV on DVDs that I bought from Amazon, but then switched to iTunes around 2006.

Now it's mostly a combination of iTunes/DVD - I'm pretty certain it's less expensive than subscribing to TV.

The good part of this (and it should be emphasized) - is that you now watch for a _purpose_ - Latest episode of Lost, BSG, Dexter, Weeds, South Park, Doll House, BtVS, Angel, The Wire, DeadWood, Heroes, The Office, Dr. Horrible, Mad Men, Parks and Recreation, Castle, Californication, Dr. Who, Kings, Sarah Connor Chronicles, True Blood, Torchwood.

Any time that might have been lost to just passively watching television, news, is now, of course, lost to passively reading ycombinator, nyt, wsj, groklaw... :-)

Is the iTunes tv stuff still DRM'd, or have the shows gone the way of their music? I grabbed an episode of Drawn Together around 2006 (I think), and sort of drove me away from the entire iTunes tv stuff. The quality was terrible, the resolution was something like 320x240, and it would only play through quicktime due to DRM. As I currently keep everything on my file server for easy access from all my computers, that didn't work out well for me.

Right now I just download shows when they're available, and then purchase the DVD when its available. Not technically legal, but I insist on owning my purchases, and I don't feel like waiting a year for shows to come out on DVD.

I live in Spain. Local TV shows are crap, and cable or tv-over-dsl price & coverage also is. Satellite is dying and DTV (and soon, paid DTV) is taking over.

Right now, if you want good TV shows (US ones, basically) you have to subscribe to any satellite or cable/tv-over-dsl offer including FOX and AXN. You pay the equal of 80$ a month for watching badly dubbed TV shows, aired a few months after airing in the US. As a bonus, your internet connection is slow when you're watching TV (or recording a tv show with your shiny DVR which is obviously not included in the stupidly expensive setup fee) if you use tv-over-dsl (the most common way to get "premium" tv here).

And that's why I download tv shows. I have a Fonera router connected to my home DSL router. The Fonera runs a "patched" system (allows to stream movies through SMB –without asking password– and doesn't hangs the fonera's cpu when loading multiple files at once). When a new episode appears, it's pushed to the transmission server (the fonera runs a webserver and has a RPC service). Transmission downloads the episode, and it's "published" through the LAN network so I can copy it to any computer through WiFi, watch it through the wired LAN network or just watch it from the multimedia hard drive (which has a built-in network interface and a SMB client), sitting on the sofa (and enjoying a pretty good quality!).

So, definitely, it's much better to have my favorite TV shows ready to watch at any time (and having them downloading during the night, so my 1,5mbit connection doesn't suffers from it) than paying 80$ each month for what they call "premium tv". That it's not the future, but that doesn't means we have to live in the past, right?

Correct me if I'm wrong but my understanding is that Spanish copyright law allows downloading and sharing of TV shows anyway so long as there's no money involved.

You're right. Looks like they want to "regulate" this, but I'm pretty sure that things aren't going to change in the mid term (well, at least in the next 10 years). That's because we're in Spain (and even if things change, "real consequences" will require lot of deeper legal modifications, hard to accomplish). We're lazy, also.

(PS: not just TV shows, also movies & music or any other multimedia material. You can't be prosecuted –because of the "secret" in telecommunications which doesn't allows any tracking, as IP addresses are considerate "protected, private data"– and presumption of innocence does the rest (with no real evidence of being you, only you the infractor, there aren't any possibilities here to prosecute a particular).

For free, the best show on TV:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/view/

They've fallen off a bit lately, definitely go watch the older ones.

Also, especially if you have kids, Nova is pretty solid.

Nova has changed too. I watched it every weekend growing up and it was much more hardcore. I've seen them mainstreaming themselves and taking on more social issues and less science/physics issues. Nova now is like a blend of Nova Science Now and Nova of 2 decades ago.

We dumped DirecTV last spring and haven't looked back. The $80/month ended up costing us $2-$3/hour watched and we still had to sit through commercials or fast forward.

We watch most of our tv through Hulu and buy the rest through iTunes. The big networks I have to get through iTunes are Discovery (Mythbusters, Dirty Jobs) and A&E (Mad Men).

Our setup is a Mac Mini with Bluetooth keyboard and mouse + DLP projector. I've enjoyed having the full computer because it's easy to watch videos on websites. Don't have time to watch that 20 minute Vimeo or TED video you read about on a blog? Drag the link to a Dropbox folder and watch it that night.

I did the same and ditched DirecTV last February and saved the same 80-90/month.I honestly haven't had the time with my startup and blog to even turn on the TV for more than an hour a week, and am somewhat considering selling it .. 50" plasma.

That being said my setup also consists of a Vudu box that lets me rent movies whenever I want (actually have used this a ton) and a Roku netflix streaming box but I ended up canceling netflix to save money. If I have the time to watch anything, it is likely on my PC that shares the same desk as my development Mac.

Over the years I have documented my various home theater setups.. starting with my 100-inch college projector diy setup:

http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-100-inch-uber-theater-on-a-b...

http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-download-with-newsgroups

http://paulstamatiou.com/going-hd-part-1

http://paulstamatiou.com/going-hd-part-2-htpc

http://paulstamatiou.com/going-hd-part-3-blu-ray-and-surroun...

http://paulstamatiou.com/review-boxee-media-center-or-going-...

http://paulstamatiou.com/how-to-build-microsoft-windows-7-in...

(this is not an attempt at link baiting, I genuinely believe several people in this thread will enjoy what I've got to say)

You should try Plex. It's fantastic for all of the above (except stuff through iTunes and Discovery).

In the UK I have found getting rid of my tv completely pretty easy, originally I went from sky to freeview, which has most of what I wanted for £120 a year (tv license), and then eventually just got rid of the tv+freeview and only watch http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ or http://www.channel4.com/programmes/4od

I have found that I ended up watching a lot more varied and interesting stuff when I can search as opposed to just watching whats on.

I have found that I ended up watching a lot more varied and interesting stuff when I can search as opposed to just watching whats on.

Wow. The seeds of mainstream TV's destruction right there.

I think this is a fundamental part of the newspaper's demise that is missed, by papers and many others. For me and probably many others, it's not that the papers/news online is cheaper or free, it's that there's at once more variety and more depth. It's the reason why I'm commenting on an HN post instead of a Denver Post article.

A single paper or corp, or a single station or network, cannot compete with a universe of shiny.

When WWI ended, Boeing kept their airplane builders employed for awhile by building furniture (airplanes were made largely of wood back then, so they were highly skilled wood-workers). I wonder how newspaper and TV infrastructure could be re-purposed, for something more permanent than the mere end of a war?

It still costs you £120 though.

You only need a UK TV licence to watch live TV online, not replay things that have already been broadcast.

iPlayer Doesn't Require A TV Licence... Yet:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2008/01/iplayer_does_...

This sector and the issues around it are about to explode (canceling cable, online content, digital living room, associated hardware, etc.).

The one resounding friction point people have when it comes to canceling cable is: SPORTS. Sadly it's content that requires you to make deals with gatekeepers, but someone should do something around RFS 4 and sports. I don't know if it starts as anything more than espn talking heads type content, but people clearly want more sports content via the internet to watch in their living room.

I will say that the only reason I have cable right now is because it is football season and i have 3 other roommates that i split the cost with.

with the major networks and hulu available through boxee, seems more and more like the apple tv will be a great solution when im living on my own and only watch a few shows.

I never set up cable when I moved into my apartment. I just got internet (through TWC). I sometimes miss being able to channel surf through the few channels I did actually watch, but that's just as easy to do with Hulu. The commercials are shorter, there's less of them, and I can watch at my leisure. Like the OP, I get annoyed watching TV at other people's houses now since cable is completely overloaded with commercials.

In the Netherlands you pay ~€8-15 / month for all the TV channels that are available, so the AppleTV solution would never work here. There are less channels and US series are delayed (usually by a year or somewhere near that), but it's still a lot cheaper. We get BBC1 and 2 but no other UK channels.

The AppleTV is much more expensive here, €270 ($400) and iTunes doesn't do any tv shows here yet, so it's not like we have a choice :). Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the tv market really differs a lot between countries.

I gave up on cable as well. I get my news online and then I subscribe to Netflix. I have the 2-at-a-time plan + all I can watch online. I've watched most of the movies I wanted to see during the years and soon enough I'll switch to one-at-time $9/month plan + all I can watch online.

My laptop has an HDMI output so all the online movies look decent.

In 3 years, I can't say I miss having TV. But what has happened is that I get a lot more irritated with commercials whenever I am someone's house and they have the TV on.

Perhaps OP should have tried to negotiate with Time Warner. I'm paying $79 for tv, HD, DVD, 3 months free showtime, AND high speed Internet.

+1 I call Comcast every 6 months and threaten to cancel if they don't give me the latest signup package. Been paying ~$80/month for TV, Internet & HD for the past 3 years :)

If they say they can't help you, just ask to talk to a manager, they'll do anything to get you off the phone.

When I canceled, my real reason was because the highrise I was living in at the time only had a 3LNB dish instead of the 5LNB necessary to point to all the satellites that carried HD programming... so I had this bleeding-edge 50-inch TV.. and SD programming. No thanks.

Sounded great to me. So I went to look at Apple TV on apple.com and I can't figure out how to see what TV shows are available. Help?

Check the iTunes store for shows.

I might do this when iTunes carries more shows in Canada.

Sadly, the selection has pretty big holes (f.ex. Dexter).

We don't have a TV (by choice).

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694

"What's all your furniture pointed at?"

A family (without a TV) that I know of has all their furniture pointed at a grand piano. Definitely not cheaper.

why would anyone vote this comment down? I think this is a good thing, and you can get more than enough entertainment from the net these days anyway.

Because it doesn't relate to the article. Who cares if he has a TV? This is about saving money watching TV by buying shows directly, rather than paying the general fee.

Because it does relate to the article. And, more and more people are killing their TV because it's crap. Save even more money and kill your TV.

That's pretty expensive to be buying those episodes from Apple. $35 a season? Why not get netflix and watch them online or get the DVDs in the mail? I guess this is a better solution if you are further ahead in the series you are watching.

Netflix only has past seasons and their quality is mediocre. I'd agree with you if they offered true HD and more current episodes.

With digital downloads you also get to keep the episodes forever.

Sadly the place I live by cable for all the units, whether we want it or not otherwise I might go for something like that as well (it would be far cheaper too, since I would only watch one or two shows).

Sadly it does not appear as if iTunes video store is available in Denmark, so I just read a lot of the free content.

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