SultanOfSwing

We bought all nine seasons of the X Files years ago and we're still not through season 8 yet . Keep getting sidetracked with other things.

I definitely recommend Fringe though, great show. Also, 24 and The Walking Dead help make days disappear before your very eyes

Nutek

Fringe is worthwhile, just for Walter.

Great show.

Bob

No, they're equally as shit, especially when things don't work.


Though they all are because they know they can get away with it as there isn't any real competition.

Adelphia, before they were TW were actually half decent, but that's showing a bit of age and were shit once they were bought out.

Direct is also a load of balls.

What's a bit annoying is how complicated they can make things. Our last gaff, choice was Comcast or Dish, but if you used Dish, you still had to use Comcast for the internet.

hungryhorace

That's the main problem isn't it - a complete, and total, lack of any competition within the broadband market here.

md95065

Farley Katz's Daily Cartoon About Comcast : The New Yorker

scrubbedexpat091

I sat down and went through the 120 channels or so provided by the cable company, cost is about 110 if you exclude the internet portion.

Of the 120 channels, I watch 5 A&E, History, TLC sometimes, Discovery, and Dejavu.

My GF watches another 4 that I don't, so a total of 9.

We are going to dump it once they start charging again, its not worth the cost for so little return.

Sally Redux

I would get rid of it altogether but husband likes the sports. It's unbelievably poor value.

Michael

Some are pushing for legislation to allow customers to pick and chose. However it costs so much to run cable and SAT companies and if that was passed into law, the companies would still have to get the same amount of money on average whether people picked 1 channel or 100 channels. The major problem is that the cable and SAT companies have to pay for programing. ESPN charges the cable companies $5.13 per month per customer and if people were able to pick and chose and only 1/4th chose ESPN, then the charge for ESPN would have to rise to over $20 per subscriber per month. Even CNN charges $0.57 per month and MTV charges $0.39 per month.

Combatting the influence ESPN, sports networks have on cable - The Pitt News: Opinion

Even with Comcast now owning NBC Universal, each of the two divisions have to be profitable so NBC Universal has to charge Comcast cable for it's programming. The main reason that basic cable can be cheap is that Comcast doesn't pay anything for those channels (although CBS was trying to charge TWC for it's programming in LA).

kimilseung

At least charging real market value per channel, for those that want it, would be transparent.

Maybe things like Willow.tv are the future $15.00 a month but you know what you are getting, and there is a lot of it. High per channel cost, but very specialized.

Michael

But you can't use willow.tv if the cable companies can't make money to pay for their infrastructure so internet service would likely rise to over $100 per month for basic internet without the support of cable programming. Right now, companies like Netflix are cheap because the customer can get high speed internet but without high speed internet, Netflix will die.

I know there will be disagreements since some European countries have very fast cable service at reasonable prices without cable TV but wiring up the Netherlands with a population of 1,259 people per square mile or the UK with a population of 650 people per square mile is a lot different than wiring up the US at 84 people per square mile or Canada or Australia at under 10 people per square mile. Also the US was wired up with very expensive cable systems that had to carry both analog and digital TV and the cable companies carry a very heavy debt load where as many of the fiber optic cables in Europe we designed only for phone and internet or digital TV only and were significantly cheaper.

I don't think 4G, 5G, 6G, 7G, ... will be able to replace fiber optics cable in the reasonable future since I don't think the airways could handle that type of traffic and/or be reliable if all of the internet traffic was via 4G, 5G, 6G, 7G, .... If you understood how a backbone worked on the internet, you'd probably have great doubts that the airways could handle that type of traffic to the degree that would be needed.

scrubbedexpat091

Government is considering something similar here. I completely understand why they have all those channels on offer and the prices that go along with them, I am just at a point where I watch so little, its just not worth having cable at all.

Would help if they actually showed things entertaining and not the same thing for 12 hours straight or in loops so every 3 hours its the same again.

The cable company seems to be really discouraging its employees to cancel services and instead offer free stuff and promotions for 3 or 6 months.

Nutek

We will be dumping cable TV when we move (probably next year), but we will still be forced to use Comcast for internet.

The main thing that drives me away from cable (aside from having to wade through about 150 channels I don't want to get to the four that I do), are the commercials. I'm done with paying for someone to push crap at me.

AlphaTangoMike

I cut the cable this month. We had FIOS for the past 3 years. No issues with the service, just the crazy price.

We had the 'extreme' HD channel package, 15/5 internet and a landline. (Not that we ever used the landline, but it was bundled as part of the deal).

The monthly charge has slowly been creeping up and was hovering around $176 (it started at $86!). Over the years, we would get emails to say that such and such a channel has dropped out of the package (nothing new added).

There's no value in having a cable TV subscription. As others have said, 500 channels of absolute junk. Out of that, maybe 5 channels interested me. More often than not, I would browse through the channels and find nothing. (Or find a show that I wanted to watch and then realise that it was a repeat from 2 years ago).

We just need an internet connection (streaming TV / films via Amazon Prime or Netflix).

With FIOS, this now costs $67 a month, but at least there's a better cost / benefit ratio.

Sally Redux

We were paying that for directv without internet, and that was after complaining at the price hikes and supposedly getting some kind of discount.

You pay for it, then get programmes that cost tuppence ha'penny to make like 'House Hunters', and local news where the presenter is at the scene of protests at the death of a man and then stands there going, "his name was...er...er...", and still have massive amounts of commercials.

Funstuie

Do you live in the UK?

TV here is shit. While there are good, highly rated drama's and comedies on freeview they are not round the clock. We have a full sky package (which I get for free - I am not saying how) and I also have a full virgin cable package (152mb internet but it's cheaper with the TV and phone options added) which my works pays for. We never watch TV. Freeview is full of absolute drek 22 hours of the day. In the UK all we have is reality TV of some sort or another and then there is the soaps.

Sky TV while being a monopoly here does produce some very good TV and imports a lot of the best shows from the US. The advent of Sky has made terrestrial TV up their game. In reality how UK tv beats US TV is there are few ad breaks. also Channel 4 news is probably the best news program in the world.

Also you can get BT Sport (which shows a lot of football/soccer) on freeview you just pay extra for their channels.

So while freeview is great (as it's free) and there is a lot of good stuff like old Only Fools on Dave or Gold it's mostly crap.

Where the UK is winning is the broadband service offerings. I can get fibre, cable or copper services on my road. BT Fibre is up to 48mb, DSL is up to 24mb and Cable (through Virgin) is maxing at 152mb right now. So online offerings like iplayer, 4OD, Amazon prime, Netflix are starting to take over the market. I was shocked when I started researching internet/TV options for when I move to the US in a few weeks. It seems internet services are years behind and have very restrictive caps and its stupid bloody expensive.