Cutting D* for H+, iTunes, OTA

[IVB]

Man, I really should start a "how much do you pay" thread. I'm paying $85/month just for D* (with an HD box), if I had a deal like some of you i'd be a lot more patient.

Although as I think about it, I may wait to see what GoogSage offers up. No particular rush, I can wait another 3-6 months if a "roku on steroids" shows up.

[drewg]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I don't have Netflix so I have not seen that via PlayOn in Sage (seems like most teeth-gnashing and issues in the PlayOn thread are related to Netflix). But my wife watches all her old HGTV and FoodTV shows through PlayOn using the podcast recorder plugin - when a new episode appears online, it records and just shows up in the recordings list. I don't know if picture quality might vary if watching streaming vs. Recorded, but I've passed through the room when she's been watching some of those shows and thought they were something she'd recorded in HD off OTA. I suppose it varies based on the quality that the networks choose to post them on their websites.

Here are my thoughts on Playon quality:

At least in the past, the way that playon worked was to download the H.264 stream via flash hackery, then transcode it to MPEG2. That was great quality.

Then Hulu and some other sites started playing cat & mouse with them, and the flash hackery often did not work. So they changed to actually rendering the flash stream with flash to an off-screen framebuffer, and then transcoding that to Mpeg2 in real time. The quality of that transcode was abysmal for me (stuttery, dropped frames, etc), since I was running Windows in a VM on a fairly underpowered old circa 2006 dual-core athlon.

Since the quality became so bad with Playon, I started using the flash hackery directly, in the form of this "get_flash_videos" perl script & saving Playon for when the cat & mouse game breaks the hackery. This downloads the H.264 stream & subtitles directly, using rtmpdump. The nice thing is that the H.264 stream in an FLV container can be played on an HD300, and looks far better than an MPEG2 transcode. It also is lacking the logos. I'd say the quality rivals the worst OTA HD I've seen, so it is pretty decent.

What really irritates me about these hulu type sites is that they are so concerned with forcing their ads on you & making them unskippable that they make it impossible to watch directly on a lot of devices (HD300, WDTV, most XBMC builds). As a direct consequence, these scripts cropped up and now lots of people don't see any ads (since they're not in the main stream, they never get saved by those scripts). If they'd just put the video up there in H.264 format with the ads and logos already inserted like the smaller video podcasters do (Revision3), then more people would see their ads.


Drew

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

I can't deny that. But I like free. If I was worried about perfect picture quality with everything I watched, I would spend thousands to get it. But in general, I avoid monthly fees as much as possible, and 95% of what we watch is available OTA. To each, their own; everyone here has different priorities.

To be honest, I had cut the cord in 2008. I used my phone as my primary internet connection until August of 2011. I saved quite a bit of money doing that, but it got really old not having a dedicated internet connection. Then directv had a deal that was way too good to pass up so I finally signed on. I mainly watch OTA, but there are a few shows we watch that you can't get anywhere else. I could go the playon route, but that never really worked all that well. I honestly just downloaded hd captures of the shows and never missed anything. The only thing I'd really miss out on if I didn't have DTV would be football, and other sports. I had forgotten how much I missed sports.

[jchiso]

Originally Posted by IVB

Man, I really should start a "how much do you pay" thread...

I think you'd really see a big difference in a survey like this. The fact is, that for any fan of multiple sports "cutting the cord" is really not an option. I've scaled back my sports packages dramatically, but Sunday Ticket and Center Ice still set me back close to $500 a year, and I'll occasionally buy a partial-season package for other stuff. Still, it's much less than I paid when I also had MLB Extra Innings, NBA League Pass and they used to charge you for March Madness. Also consider that DirecTV pops up additional channels for golf and tennis Majors and it seems like (as a sports fan) "cutting the cord" would really just amount to shooting oneself in the foot ...

[wayner]

Most people have the OTA option that gets them major sporting events so that isn't the issue. So if you want to cut the cord then you can get major events, almost all PGA tour events on Sat and Sun and some NFL.

But if you want to watch your local teams' games in baseball, basketball or hockey then you need regional sports channels (I believe the online subs generally blackout games of your local market team). I personally watch lots of rugby which I get via a premium channel here in Canada that has international sports such as English soccer plus rugby from all over for $17/month. These games are generally available via certain torrent sites but it often takes 12+ hours for the games to be available.

Sports is really the biggest hook for Cable or satellite. The industry realizes this as well - which is why here in Canada that the two largest telecoms companies purchased Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment which owns the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Raptors and Toronto FC of the soccer league. Expect more such transactions in the future. Alternatively some teams may go to direct distribution of games over the internet in the future which may give them more control over distribution - think of the Yankes-Cablevision dispute of a few years back.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by wayner

Sports is really the biggest hook for Cable or satellite. The industry realizes this as well [snip]- Expect more such transactions in the future. Alternatively some teams may go to direct distribution of games over the internet in the future which may give them more control over distribution - think of the Yankes-Cablevision dispute of a few years back.

I agree that sports is the biggest draw (I recently read that up to 44% of some cable bills are solely for access for ESPN). But I don't agree that sports will be going to direct-team-control soon. This is also where I have a hard time agreeing with those who think that "all TV" will go to "pay-per-view, streaming, on-demand" any time soon. The NFL isn't going to take Sunday games on Fox, CBS, and NBC away from America and say "if you want to see your team, pay $x and buy the rights to their games", or "if you want to see all the games, pay $x (like NFL Sunday Ticket)". A game here, a Monday Night game there (ESPN, NFL Network) on "pay" channels is one thing, but moving the entire entity to "pay per game" or "pay per team" would be excluding too much of America. Think there aren't low-income steel workers in Pittsburgh with a coat hanger antenna who live and die by the Steelers? Think there aren't poor factory workers in New Jersey who live and die by the Jets? Try making those people have to pay exorbitant prices for team packages and see how well that goes over.

But even more than that, college sports. There are only a handful of teams in football and basketball with the fan base large enough to support that one team having its own channel. Texas, Alabama, Ohio State football, Kentucky basketball, etc. CBS and ESPN have contracts to show SEC football every weekend that are so large that they pay each school - even if they never appear on TV - a combined $19+ MILLION PER SEASON, just for being in the conference. And while the Big 10 has successfully launched a conference-only network (and Texas has struggled with its "Longhorn Network"), they do not have (or probably want) first-tier right. Their prime games - the important ones - get sent to ABC or ESPN. Why? The want and need the national exposure and the payout. They don't want to be resigned to a school-only or conference-only network, where only fans of that school or conference will be watching. So while I expect that the Big 10 network will be followed by an SEC network, Big 12 network, PAC-(#) network, and maybe Big East and ACC (if they survive), those channels will always have second-, third-, or fourth-tier rights. They just don't have the money (or exposure) to compete with CBS or ESPN.

/sorry about the threadjack

[wayner]

As usual money will drive everything. The NFL is so popular that it can command huge rights fees from the networks, maybe even more than the true economic value since the networks may be willing to carry the NFL as a loss leader. But the NFL network is an example of what I'm talking about except today it is carried by cable and sat carriers. In the future this may not be required as AppeTV/Netflix/Hulu may start carrying an NFL channel. And it will start with the odd game here or there and eventually go to most games if the economics work.

It is similar to how most sports other than the NFL moved away from OTA TV to cable channels. I remember when the local OTA affiliates would carry one or two games a week for baseball, hockey and basketball. That is now pretty much gone as the economics favor regional cable networks or ESPN. In the future this may evolve to team or league owned web broadcasting entities.

The way I see it today there are usually three parties involved in the content creation and distribution for sports: team/league, TV network and cables/sat carrier. If the Internet allows the teams/leagues to cut out one or both of the final two links in the distribution chain then this may happen. It will also allow them to more easily distribute the content globally as I assume that there are Red Sox fans all over the world that pay would pay lots of money to watch all of the games live over the net. Switch Red Sox to Man United or Barcelona FC and think of a fan base of a billion people and that could lead to a lot of revenue.

I bet if the Knicks could sell online streaming if their games in China for $1 per game then they would be pulling in a ton of money thanks to Linsanity.

[Serra]

I had DTV and got rid of it. I use Sage for OTA now. I have Netflix on Roku. I get season passes for shows that are on USA and other cable networks via Amazon.

Overall, I'm VERY happy with that setup and it is far cheaper. I don't use Hulu at all, because I refuse to pay for TV with commercials.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by wayner

As usual money will drive everything. The NFL is so popular that it can command huge rights fees from the networks, maybe even more than the true economic value since the networks may be willing to carry the NFL as a loss leader. But the NFL network is an example of what I'm talking about except today it is carried by cable and sat carriers. In the future this may not be required as AppeTV/Netflix/Hulu may start carrying an NFL channel. And it will start with the odd game here or there and eventually go to most games if the economics work.

It is similar to how most sports other than the NFL moved away from OTA TV to cable channels. I remember when the local OTA affiliates would carry one or two games a week for baseball, hockey and basketball. That is now pretty much gone as the economics favor regional cable networks or ESPN. In the future this may evolve to team or league owned web broadcasting entities.

The way I see it today there are usually three parties involved in the content creation and distribution for sports: team/league, TV network and cables/sat carrier. If the Internet allows the teams/leagues to cut out one or both of the final two links in the distribution chain then this may happen. It will also allow them to more easily distribute the content globally as I assume that there are Red Sox fans all over the world that pay would pay lots of money to watch all of the games live over the net. Switch Red Sox to Man United or Barcelona FC and think of a fan base of a billion people and that could lead to a lot of revenue.

I bet if the Knicks could sell online streaming if their games in China for $1 per game then they would be pulling in a ton of money thanks to Linsanity.

I don't ever see American football going to pay-only because of the number of games and the fact that they are typically on weekend afternoons. Baseball, basketball, and hockey play too many games, on too many days, to reasonably be covered by a major network that has to show other content in order to compete. But football is once a week, at a day and time that is sorta "blocked out" in most people's schedule for nothing but mindless game-watching (in other words, there's really nothing else interesting on TV on Saturday or Sunday afternoons). Even with those other sports (basketball, baseball, hockey), major networks still usually show a "game of the week" on weekends, to this day.

[Serra]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Even with those other sports (basketball, baseball, hockey), major networks still usually show a "game of the week" on weekends, to this day.

The one down side of dropping DTV was missing about 10 gator football games. That did suck, but given the cost, my wife would say, "Is it worth $120 per game?"

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Serra

The one down side of dropping DTV was missing about 10 gator football games. That did suck, but given the cost, my wife would say, "Is it worth $120 per game?"

If you missed them, you weren't trying hard enough.

[Spot]

Originally Posted by Serra

I had DTV and got rid of it. I use Sage for OTA now. I have Netflix on Roku. I get season passes for shows that are on USA and other cable networks via Amazon.

Overall, I'm VERY happy with that setup and it is far cheaper. I don't use Hulu at all, because I refuse to pay for TV with commercials.

When I recently returned from a week in Europe, my wife complained that some of her recordings had not worked. It was only the clearQAM tuners that failed, so i suspected a frequency move for the HD programming.

After some troubleshooting, and a few phone calls/chats Comcast told me that Local HD channels were now encrypted as a "requirement" of the digital transition (nice misinformation). Looked at options, but because we live in an "island of no fios," I can't drop C* completely....so, I quickly built an HD antenna for the attic, connected my network tuners & have better signal than off cable. Local HD problem solved...after an inventory of what we really watch & pricing other C* bundles, I researched & signed up for an alternative voip provider (~$170US for 2 years--waiting to see quality).

We have had locals-only at another house & realize that we just don't miss all the other programming....except sports. I was already tired of the DTA transition & cost to get HD to every TV, so we're taking the plunge. We decided that the $80/Month we'll save can go to nights out at a local sports pub to watch anything we can't get. Redbox is now my movie alternative...tried netflix streaming & hated the selection.

[chmilar]

I dumped D* in 2006, and went with OTA + Netflix (discs in mail).

Since then I have added Hulu (not plus), Amazon Prime, and continue with Netflix (discs in mail).

When Netflix offered streaming for free, I was using it. When they changed the pricing model, I dropped their streaming and stayed with discs (I prefer high-quality blu-ray, and Amazon Prime is sufficient for streaming).

[wayner]

Yesterday's news that Netflix is talking to cable cos about becoming a form of on demand for cable has me worried. Netflix is currently disruptive to the Cable business model. If they start cooperating with the cable cos then they are less likely to disrupt them in the future.

[ybrew]

Originally Posted by ybrew

I REALLY want to do this. I've wanted to for a long time, but the only thing holding me back have been my wife and kids. My kids are starting to watch a lot of stuff online now that they're old enough to use computers. I will either ditch DirecTV or at least drastically scale back on it within a few months.

I plan to pay for DTV for 3 more months. After that, I'm ditching it. If my wife decides she wants to pay for it, great (but highly unlikely). I'll be OTA & Hulu in a few months.

[davephan]

I use OTA and Netflix. Cable and satellite kept jacking up the rates, and we didn't watch much on cable or satellite. Too bad you can't pick only 10 channels on cable or satellite, most channels are filler and garbage. We used to watch HGTV when it had gardening shows. It's been the Home renovations, purchasing, etc, with almost no garden shows. They really should drop the "G", or put the gardening shows back on the channel.

Dave

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by davephan

We used to watch HGTV when it had gardening shows. ... They really should drop the "G", or put the gardening shows back on the channel.

If networks did that, MTV would have become "STAT TV" (Slutty Teens and Twenties TV) about 15 years ago. Goodness knows they haven't shown music in at least that long.

[IVB]

Got Roku 2 in da house, when I realized Amazon Instant Video has season passes for Real HouseWhinyLittleAnnoyingWomen, which is 99% of what the wife watches.

And, I couldn't watch a new Roku on an old plasma, so I got a 40" LED Samsung TV 120Hz to go with it :-)

With any luck, I can terminate DirecTV within days.

[IVB]

This morning, 4.5 months after my serious convo with wife about this, a YEAR after the initial conversation, I terminated my DirecTV account. I now just have:

A) OTA via SageTV, or
B) Netfix/HuluPlus/AmazonInstantVideoSeasonPasses via Roku.

I'm only getting season passes for the wifes crappy shows. The one thing i'll miss is Eureka, but its only mediocre this season, no desire to pay $2/episode. They're on HuluPlus 30 days post air, but I think its only available for a short time period.

Plus, hopefully having fewer options will actually get me to either play more soccer, get further on my home improvement list, or (gasp) read a book.

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by IVB

I'm only getting season passes for the wifes crappy shows. The one thing i'll miss is Eureka, but its only mediocre this season, no desire to pay $2/episode. They're on HuluPlus 30 days post air, but I think its only available for a short time period.

You won't miss much. This is the final season for Eureka.