Most Americans Find the Cost of Cable TV Is Too Darn High

Imagine to be forced to pay for cable,,,,, i am, and it is one of the things that are sick in my country, and like you guys even though i just have 36 channels it is damn hard finding anything to watch, so i would prefer to box my 10 year old 1080p TV.
And the steaming services also dont have anything i would pay for, at least not their price as it is 10% tops of what they have i want to see.
But it seem like internet are cheaper, i get docis 3.1 on my cable and my 1000 / 60 mbit connection cost 30 USD / mo

BUT ! i am moving to where i can get fiber and 1000 / 1000 for the same price, just need a suitable apartment to become vacant ( have waited for that for some years now as i am very picky about where i like to live, not only in regard to the internet i can get )
 
Nobu said:
I'm not going to come home from work and sit down to watch ads for the last 3hrs of my day just so I can get ~1hr of mediocre content.
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That's why you need a DRV.
Time shifting and skipping commercials is the only is the only way to watch OTA or cable TV.
The problem with the cable companies DRV's is that the monthly payments are expensive, and they have limited storage.

The solution I setup several years ago, is a Windows 7 PC running media center, a 4 channel cable card tuner, and a 4TB drive for shows. Cable card is currently $2/month.
4 tuners covers the family about 99% of the time, and we rarely run out of space on the 4 TB drive, except when the wife decides to record the Olympics (she records all of it and then it takes her a few months to watch it) :confused:
Advantage is that I can watch the recorded shows from any PC in the house. About the only thing I ever watch live is the news.

Tiberian said:
Whenever some company realizes people are moving towards a profile of "I want to pay for what I actually want to watch, and I don't give a fuck about all that other crap..." and said company actually understands it then we'll see a shift towards true "pay-per-view" where people can literally pick and choose the content they want to view and pay for that and that alone (plus maybe a small service fee for such a plan but no more than like $3-5 a month because cable companies really expect people to "want everything whether they like it or not).
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Problem is the media companies.
They force the cable companies into must carry contracts (ESPN), or forced bundling (If you want the popular channel A, then you have to carry our other 5 channels that nobody watches).



If it was just me, I'd drop cable and switch to just streaming. Th kids also mostly stream, but the wife likes her TV shows.
 
Best buy sells them?? Been wanting to do the same.. that $10/month fee is so wasteful. It's funny if you ever ask for support they will say they don't offer it for basic level. Honestly 10 mbps is enough to stream 2x 720p videos

ithaqua_1969 said:
Use to have the full package at low introductory price. Then kept it at an astounding 170 a month, when I could afford it, didn't think about it. Started to prune that down, but every time lost services to change the price, sooner or later it would be back to where it was. Finally hacked off larger pieces, cable, then phone service, settling in on only internet. Found out later the level of internet they kept me on was still a TV package - which of course I asked them why do I need TV when don't even have cable box. Said it was for streaming purposes. Cancelled that and now have basic 10MB (?) internet service. Slow as balls from what I used to have, but 24.95 a month. The true breaking point of the whole thing was internet router/modem. They said that reduction of package would cause the rental rate to go from 5.00 per month to 10.00, told them keep your modem, bought one from Best buy and already have paid for it with the money they don't get. If they kept it 5.00 I probably still would be renting it.
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Considering my municipal internet here in Monroe, GA costs me $50 for 25/3 internet I don't really know what the fucking answer to this shit is anymore.
 
SickBeast said:
How much do you guys pay? Here in Canada I have gigabit internet and a decent cable TV package for $110CAD/month, including taxes. That works out to around $73USD/month, before taxes. Is cable actually cheaper here? I got a pretty good deal but deals like this are quite common. We tend to pay more for cellular also but I got a good deal there also, shockingly.
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I would be very happy with that price.

My only choice is COX. Internet (100mbps) with extended cable (120 channels) runs around $170. That with no HBO or any other special channels and no DVR or cable box rental, just $2 for the cable card in my HTPC.

Every year I have to call them and tell them to cancel the TV service.
They then offer me a discount, so I'm current paying $146. What a lousy way to treat a long time customer.
Last time I called, the person at the call center looked up my account and commented that I had been a customer longer than he had been alive :eek:
So why do they keep charging me more than a new customer?
 
Executioner said:
I have AT&T that includes internet and Direct TV. I pay $200/month for a full package deal, but I really only watch about 6 channels on a regular basis. Wife watches about the same, but she has been watching more on Netflix. So when the package deal expires and I'm ready to retire maybe next year, I'm dumping the package and getting an antenna. The only reason I have this package is to watch Game of Thrones from HBO; otherwise, HBO sucks including their leftest views and shows.
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That makes no sense - you can get HBO Go for $15/month. Why not ditch cable TV now and save even more money until you retire?

My wife was a heavy TV watcher. One day, I decided I was done paying for Cable TV. I went to her and said "We have two choices: 1) Cut cable TV. 2) You can pay the cable bill." She got mad and decided to pay the cable bill. Once that happened, Cable TV didn't last long in our house - she finally wised up and dropped it while picking up an additional streaming service.

As someone else said, it isn't the actual money that's the issue, it is the perceived value - what is the value in paying for hundreds of channels you'll never watch? Not to mention all the nickel and diming they do with fees.
 
Advil said:
Yeah we're paying $75 or so for 75/75. But I'd rather have the faster internet than any form of cable.

But yeah, it's kind of insulting to be paying that much for fiber... at that speed. I've got friends all over the country with anywhere from 100MB to 1GB service for that kind of money.

But the issue is TV. Yeah, a Netflix account for the rest of the family and we're all more than happy.

In my case, I watch a couple of major live action shows a year. They usually end up on Netflix within one season of current. The rest is Anime of which that's all acquired online. The last thing is Formula 1. I still follow that every year. They've made it a little easier to get it online but that's one thing F1 needs to work on big time.

None of these watching habits are served by a cable subscription.
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The funny thing? I have to pay for cable ($60/month) just to get internet ($80/month). If I were to pay separately I would get a slower speed for a higher price ($180/month at 50% less speed). Thats on FIOS. I have no other providers.

Now as for content: In the nearly 5 years I have owned this property I have yet to actually watch anything on the set top box outside of the occasional on demand movie that was on a free weekend. And that's only been done...3 times. The rest of the time its unplugged so I dont spend power on something I dont use.

I have Netflix and amazon prime but I rarely find much to watch on them as well. Netflix used to be great for old tv shows / movies but most of that seems to have moved to the exclusive channels (i.e. BBC, CBS, etc). I watch way less TV now than I did a few years ago. Now I might pick up a show, watch it for a week or two on Netflix or Prime, and then not find anything else to watch for months...
 
Tiberian said:
Whenever some company realizes people are moving towards a profile of "I want to pay for what I actually want to watch, and I don't give a fuck about all that other crap..." and said company actually understands it then we'll see a shift towards true "pay-per-view" where people can literally pick and choose the content they want to view and pay for that and that alone (plus maybe a small service fee for such a plan but no more than like $3-5 a month because cable companies really expect people to "want everything whether they like it or not).

I haven't owned a TV in years, no plans on getting one anytime soon. 98.5% of the content on TV doesn't interest me at all and the 1.5% that does I get from other sources whether the cable companies like it or not, that's just how it goes. Right now I'm actually paying close to $90 a month for only 60 Mbps Internet service and it's damned pricey even in spite of me actually getting 75-80 Mbps most of the time (so getting more than I'm technically paying for but it's still too fucking expensive for the speed).

Cable companies are fucking greedy bastards, there's no getting around it. It's not as if they're new and still building out their infrastructure and they need to charge more to pay for it - the modern cable system infrastructure in the US has been around for many decades now and has paid for itself 100x over the initial costs. Sure would be nice to not be charged so much for so little, but that's just a dream waiting to come true aka "It'll never fucking happen."
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We "cut the cord" over 10 years ago. The majority of what I watch now is You tube; mainly because I can watching something that interest me personally. Like watching a guy turning a wooden bowl out of an exotic wood on a lathe. Or a machinist turn down steel stock to make a part for a 90 year old tractor. I use to like watching a lot of car related content but now it seems most of the car guys are a bunch of ass clowns more interested in wrecking a car then fixing/restoring one.
 
joobjoob said:
Cut the sat in 2005. Never looked back. In those 13 years I've saved alot of money. Enough to buy all the TV collections of old shows I actially want to watch. A few episodes of newer shows, And still come out way ahead.

I've already cut Netflix and hulu. Just wasn't using it and few times I tried to watch a show and it would be removed. Got tired of the Netflix shell game.
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I'm in still in the middle of decision making with these dynamics. I got 'PlayOn' to cope with the streaming shell game issues. Totally worth it. Meanwhile I totally agree with all the bs of cable but now greed has really started to take a stronghold on streaming. Back when it was just netflix and prime I didn't mind. The two combined was a little over $20 a month and I got few extra perks to boot. I refuse to give in to the new regimes of Disney, CBS, DC, and whoever else is planning their own exclusives. These cut the cord stories are a bit misleading now. Five years ago the decisions were pretty obvious but now they've figured out how to milk it on the new frontier. I agree that just waiting for the disks is the best idea. Only problem there sometimes some shows take years before they finally get to disk. It's like they want people to pirate. I really feel old saying this but at some point I fell like just not watching anything.
 
Wow, two pages of comments and very little talk of data caps. The data caps are how they maintain profitability as more and more people cut the cord. As we start streaming 4k+ content people are going to start hitting data caps faster. This month was the first month my house hit our data cap of 1TB because we have friends staying with us for the holidays. 5 adults can pretty easily hit 1TB, especially in a streaming only household. With more services being used that stream, and as quality goes up, people will hit those caps even faster. Looking at our data usage, we had about 300GB going to Netflix, about 150GB to Amazon, 50GB to steam, about 50GB to GPM/spotify, and rest to web content (which was likely mostly YouTube).

I always said if crapcast charged me an overage or forced me into a true unlimited plan, as opposed to "unlimited" with a data cap, then I would stream Petabytes just to waste their bandwidth.

Anyone have a good suggestion of how I could clog their network with a lot of traffic while doing some good in the world, that isn't illegal (like seeding thousands of torrents might be)?
 
I do not have any data caps or rate limits.

Competition in the market is key.
 
Iceshot said:
HBO GO for $14.99 a month gets you HBO & Game of Thrones. Might consider dropping cable now and grabbing HBO Go at a fraction of the monthly expense.

https://www.hbo.com/order?camp=providers_gotopnav
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If you dropped cable it's probably HBO Now. And Amazon had a free month of HBO for me in 2017 even after I used the HBO Now trial. They also have Showtime, Starz, etc. but you use their app.

And maybe they changed it but using the actual HBO Now app once Game of Thrones started Sunday at 9:00 I could skip to the middle or end of the episode. Seemed like it's an mp4 on a server and you can go beyond the broadcast into the "future" etc. I didn't actually want spoilers and restarted the episode at 9:03 or whenever but I got a kick out of it.
 
I haven't ever paid for cable TV my entire life... and I don't miss not being able to watch TV shows live either.

Netflix and Hulu is just fine for me... and movies form the library and the occasional theater visit to watch a movie.

Cable is a complete waste of money.
 
I don't mind paying for content that I want to see.

What drives me up a wall are all of the garbage channels I'm paying for that I don't want and have no interest in at all. E! News, HGTV, Wealth Channel, Travel Channel, etc. etc.

I essentially only ever watch about 5 channels. There are a couple of other channels I'd get, but I'm unwilling to pay for the entire package they are contained within, so I don't.

It is absolutely insane that A La Carte channels aren't a thing.

People don't mind paying for what they want. They absolutely hate being forced to pay for shit they don't want.
 
yeah at least 10 of my 36 channels are garbage channels, for instance i get 5 German channels, and while many Danes do speak and understand German than thats just BS.
Same go for the Swedish ASO channels we get.
The cable company get those channels for next to nothing as it are just public channels from the respective countries, then then put them in the channel bundle to make it look as if you get your money worth, cuz if they wasent there people would be like WTF i will not pay that.
Clearly our countries are flawed for allowing this to go on.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
It is absolutely insane that A La Carte channels aren't a thing.
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FX is a la carte now with no ads. Plus their library like The Shield and Justified.

Which channels do you want? Yeah if you don't like Scripps that's Travel, Food, HGTV, DIY, etc. and they're all $16 on a service called Philo plus AMC, Discovery, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central
 
Rule of thumb for me, if they force me to watch ads it better be free. If it's a free service, such as Pandora for example, I don't mind an ad here or there as that is how they keep the lights on. If they not only get paid top dollar by me but also advertisers to cram propaganda down our throats they're double dipping. I'm one of the folks who the instant Netflix decides to start running ads will be cancelling.
 
Advil said:
The price is simply the final insult.

There is NOTHING on those 100+ channels I want to watch. I could go for days sometimes and not watch anything on cable.

Using my internet connection and streaming services? There's a couple of things every single day I might want to watch.

The era of watching what is being broadcast at the moment is OVER. It should have been over long before now.
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Sure, there is plenty of things to watch on cable, its called commercials, mostly drug ads. Don't ya love it....
 
For me, it's factual to acknowledge that passive watching, which has been pre-programmed, is of no interest to me. Docility, persuasion, mesmerism, no thanks. Let alone the exorbitant pricing, dulling of the mental faculties, the dopamine/opiate rush induced by watching shows and/or most movies, why watch tv at all? On the rare occasion I want to watch something I'll look at it online and it certainly wouldn't be picked by someone else. It's filled with propaganda, fake news, moral police, feedback loop exploitation- I'm good bro. I don't even understand from a non-logical level, why people even subscribe to streaming services. I suppose some people really do get entertained easily.
 
I ditched cable (Cox) in 2002 because paying $120 a month for 80% of the channels I didn't watch/didn't care to watch in order to get the shows I wanted to watch was ridiculous.

The last TV I bought was in 2004 (50" Viewsonic Plasma PoS) and it served as the primary monitor on my gaming rig. Never had cable connected at all due to outlandish costs

I won't be subscribing to cable in the future until the cable companies realizes I don't want to pay for channels I'm not interested in watching.
 
Question for those of you with severe data caps that maintain cable because of it:

If your cable television is costing you an EXTRA $75-$100 a month on top of your internet (which it could be if you rent several boxes etc etc...) how much extra data could you buy on your data package for that $75-100?

Enough to just go ahead and stream / download whatever you'd rather be watching?

If the answer is yes you just need to change your habits.
 
When comcast re added data caps I switched to a local fixed wireless ISP. Great deal, great service, moderate speeds but no cap so I'll take it.
 
Now the problem seems to be that everyone wants their own streaming service instead of selling there content to another provider say Netflix or Hulu. So now you have to get Netflix Hulu HBO GO Disneys whatever the fuck, the ESPN flavor, and the list goes on
 
Do people have that much free time to watch all these shows? If I binge on weekends it would be such a huge waste of time...
 
Nunu said:
Do people have that much free time to watch all these shows? If I binge on weekends it would be such a huge waste of time...
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Wife and I have our moments but it's gotta be something special to us. Otherwise no. That being said I'm about to drop our cable package but do now have Prime, Netflix, DC, Disney + bundle. Probably more expensive than the basic cable package but at also have some nice 4k/Atmos options.
 
SickBeast said:
How much do you guys pay? Here in Canada I have gigabit internet and a decent cable TV package for $110CAD/month, including taxes. That works out to around $73USD/month, before taxes. Is cable actually cheaper here? I got a pretty good deal but deals like this are quite common. We tend to pay more for cellular also but I got a good deal there also, shockingly.
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The problem with this line of thinking is that you presumably don’t get paid in USD and the average Canadian gets paid in CAD what the average American gets paid in USD.

You aren’t paying $73 a month, you are paying $110 a month. I guarantee if the dollars hit parity tomorrow you’d still be paying $110 a month.
 
Advil said:
The price is simply the final insult.

There is NOTHING on those 100+ channels I want to watch. I could go for days sometimes and not watch anything on cable.

Using my internet connection and streaming services? There's a couple of things every single day I might want to watch.

The era of watching what is being broadcast at the moment is OVER. It should have been over long before now.
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I still think there are some use cases for TV, but not in the old fashioned "we broadcast whatever we want and you come watch it" way.

They need to kill off all of these stupid channels and keep a handful of them that produces quality content.

The whole "you get 50 channels if useless home remodeling, cooking and other terrible reality shows whether you want it or not" philosophy needs to end. It should never have existed in the first place.
 
ButtonPuncher said:
The other problem is the ads. People don't remember but cable (pay) TV use to be ad-free. Not just the movie channels but the majority of channels.

I also find it infuriating that ALL of the channels have their ads AT THE SAME TIME.

I've still got cable but it's only because I'm still running a Media Center rig and only pay $2 per cable card.

BP
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I can remember watching paid TV back as far as the 90s and every single channel had commercials, with the exception of the higher tier cable channels (ShowTime, Cinamax, HBO, etc..) but all the other channels that you had to pay for.... commercials.

So how far back did paid TV not have commercials?
 
I used to have DirecTV but one day I unplugged it while setting up my gaming room and never plugged it back in. Really when I come in from work I just turn on Netflix if I want to watch something as there's plenty of content on there to keep me entertained for the couple of hours I actually watch TV during the day.
 
Skillz said:
I can remember watching paid TV back as far as the 90s and every single channel had commercials, with the exception of the higher tier cable channels (ShowTime, Cinamax, HBO, etc..) but all the other channels that you had to pay for.... commercials.

So how far back did paid TV not have commercials?
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When cable first came out in my area (NYC), around 1973 or '75 (give me a +/- on that), there were no commercials. There was also no encryption, so if you could climb a pole and splice a wire, you could run your own cable to your house. Yes, I watched it be done...and that cable stayed hooked to my neighbor's teenager son's bedroom for well over a year. Maybe 2 or 3.

The No Commercials period lasted at least 4-6 years. (Only rich families could afford cable, so I never had it. My knowledge comes from going to those "rich" houses and playing with my friends.)

You paid $50 a month (about that), in exchange for not being bothered. Instead of getting their money from commercials, they got their money directly from you. Now? Sheesh. I cut the cord 3 years ago and only wish I'd done it sooner.
 
c3k said:
When cable first came out in my area (NYC), around 1973 or '75 (give me a +/- on that), there were no commercials. There was also no encryption, so if you could climb a pole and splice a wire, you could run your own cable to your house. Yes, I watched it be done...and that cable stayed hooked to my neighbor's teenager son's bedroom for well over a year. Maybe 2 or 3.

The No Commercials period lasted at least 4-6 years. (Only rich families could afford cable, so I never had it. My knowledge comes from going to those "rich" houses and playing with my friends.)

You paid $50 a month (about that), in exchange for not being bothered. Instead of getting their money from commercials, they got their money directly from you. Now? Sheesh. I cut the cord 3 years ago and only wish I'd done it sooner.
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Because Im old, I remember when cable first came out and yes..there were no commercials ... I dont remember when but somewhere along the line they actually got us to pay to watch commercials....
 
Man, 2nd necro-thread.....
Family used to have cable back in the day they had a rotary tuner dial on the scramble box. IIRC, there was no commercials.
Last time I had cable was when I moved into my 1st apartment in the 2000. They forgot to cap it for a few months because they were still building the other apartment buildings.

Since the switch to digital, OTA TV got way better and the channel count grew due to the sub channel local stations had.
Plus the ACE Hardware across the street had discount DVDs they got from somewhere to get my movie fix for the week if I got bored with anime. Popped them in my DVD and they got up-scaled to 1080p.

Rode 56k til 2010 and thought about getting high speed internet til I found out the guy in the upstairs unit had an open WIFI signal when I bought my 1st laptop around 2006-7.

Mega6 said:
A nice antenna, kodi, mythtv DVR with a quad tuner card.. all set for years now.
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hehe, I went with Meedio, never did get to finish it. :(
 
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