Cutting the Cable Guide

[Huntn]

HBO Max is being rebranded as Max due to merger (I think)

All About Max: Your Guide to the Rebranded HBO Max

Warner Bros. Discovery’s new streaming service is dropping the “HBO” from its name, but keeping HBO’s content (and launching a barrage of new shows).

www.vanityfair.com

 

[jdoll021]

HBO Max is being rebranded as Max due to merger (I think)

All About Max: Your Guide to the Rebranded HBO Max

Warner Bros. Discovery’s new streaming service is dropping the “HBO” from its name, but keeping HBO’s content (and launching a barrage of new shows).

www.vanityfair.com

Yeah, I saw this MR post after you posted the Vanity Fair piece. It got me seriously rethinking things. Because of channels like HGTV, food network and hallmark (for wifey), we never fully cut the cord and just went cable “light.” Now all that (sans hallmark) are moving to this Max service and HBO Max subscribers like me are looking like we’ll be grandfathered in. All I would need is a way to replace hallmark, get an HD antenna, and I could fully cut the cable! Was thinking of hallmark through the AppleTV+ channels but not sure if all of the movies are there. I already did that with paramount+. Anyone else get hallmark through their AppleTV+ subscription?

Oh, I’d also need a way to record content from the HD antenna. I’m thinking a plex server. I'll miss ad skipping though.

 

[Huntn]

Yeah, I saw this MR post after you posted the Vanity Fair piece. It got me seriously rethinking things. Because of channels like HGTV, food network and hallmark (for wifey), we never fully cut the cord and just went cable “light.” Now all that (sans hallmark) are moving to this Max service and HBO Max subscribers like me are looking like we’ll be grandfathered in. All I would need is a way to replace hallmark, get an HD antenna, and I could fully cut the cable! Was thinking of hallmark through the AppleTV+ channels but not sure if all of the movies are there. I already did that with paramount+. Anyone else get hallmark through their AppleTV+ subscription?

Oh, I’d also need a way to record content from the HD antenna. I’m thinking a plex server. I'll miss ad skipping though.

Some channels require a cable subscription for access I suppose because they have previously negotiated access deals with cable companies before streaming took off the way it has.

Option 2 is by choosing a pay channel distributer like SlingTV, Youtube TV, or Hulu, which feature cable channels and are available via both Roku and AppleTV*, requiring their own subscription. We have SlingTV because imo it is the best deal wise ($40)and offers things like TCM, Hallmark, AMC, and MSNBC.

* To be clear for anyone not familiar, Roku is free to access after you buy the box, Apple TV, after purchasing that box, is free as a distribution hub of channels in general (many of those channels are pay), and requires a subscription to access AppleTV produced content.

I’ve thought about getting a high def antenna and see what local channels I acquire. I live about 30 miles from downtown.

 

[jdoll021]

I’ve thought about getting a high def antenna and see what local channels I acquire. I live about 30 miles from downtown.

You should. My parents have one and they get a bunch of subchannels that I don’t get with the local pack on my DISH Network subscription. Things like channel 31.1 & 31.2 in addition to channel 31 (for example). Kind of neat and it’s actual content, not just a bunch of infomercials.

 

[Richard8655]

I agree with the above post. If living close enough to a larger city, an antenna for free channels is a great option in addition to a subscription streaming service. I have DirecTV Stream on Fire TV. But living 28 miles from my city center, an antenna brings in some interesting subchannels such as PBS Prime, Create, and World, in addition to other OTA channels unavailable otherwise.

 

[maflynn]

Looks like YouTube TV added the Magnolia channel (the old DIY channel), my wife is pretty happy with seeing this appear on our channel guide. The only other channel that we had and used on DirecTV (and cable before that) was the Cooking channel. We love what that has to offer as the Food network should be renamed the Food competition channel as that's all it is.

 

[Huntn]

A friend just dropped YouTube TV for Sling TV because YouTube was too expensive.

 

[maflynn]

A friend just dropped YouTube TV for Sling TV because YouTube was too expensive.

Yeah, it is pricey. I'm getting dinged 73 bucks a month now. My family seems content with YTTV, so I'm hesitant to find a cheaper alternative

 

[maflynn]

A friend just dropped YouTube TV for Sling TV because YouTube was too expensive.

I just took a quick peek at Sling and they really don't offer as much as YTTV. So if I want ESPN, I need the Orange package (40 bucks a month), but I also need channels in the Blue package, so I need to get that as well.

The combined Blue + Orange is $55 bucks a month. Sling doesn't offer the local stations, and many channels my wife and I watch are not available - so for 18 dollars more, I get everything everything I want (except for the missing cooking channel) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Huntn]

I just took a quick peek at Sling and they really don't offer as much as YTTV. So if I want ESPN, I need the Orange package (40 bucks a month), but I also need channels in the Blue package, so I need to get that as well.

The combined Blue + Orange is $55 bucks a month. Sling doesn't offer the local stations, and many channels my wife and I watch are not available - so for 18 dollars more, I get everything everything I want (except for the missing cooking channel) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We still find that most of the channels on Sling we don’t watch. My wife wanted TCM, Hallmark, and HGTV which she does not really watch anymore, and MSNBC which we do watch, which makes it an expensive channel. She spends a great amount of her viewing time on Britbox Which is a separate subscription.

 

[MisterSavage]

Finally cut the cord on cable tv this year and haven't missed it for one second.

 

[Boyd01]

I cut the cord when I moved to my rural home in 2006 and the only option would have been a satellite dish. Accumulated a big library of DVDs in the following years. Continued this way until 2020 with the pandemic and finally decided to get a streaming package so, I went with Sling.

They have gotten more robust since then, used to be that major channels would either be missing or frozen early in the morning, for example. There are a huge number of channels available now, didn't even notice until recently because I normally just have it set to show my favorites.

There are two (maybe more?) network channels from Philadelphia here on Sling. These would be my "local" broadcast channels (I'm about 50 miles from Phila). Only time I have ever watched them was during a local emergency, like tornado warning, hurricane, etc. Sports don't interest me.

So, I'm generally happy with Sling EXCEPT their app(s) which have been broken in one way or another for awhile on my AppleTVs, iPhone and iPad. Had so many problems with their website in the past, I stopped using it. None of these bugs are "deal breakers" but they are annoying.

 

[MisterSavage]

There are two (maybe more?) network channels from Philadelphia here on Sling. These would be my "local" broadcast channels (I'm about 50 miles from Phila). Only time I have ever watched them was during a local emergency, like tornado warning, hurricane, etc. Sports don't interest me.

Not caring about sports makes things a lot easier for me also!

 

[Richard8655]

I used to have Sling and then later (for many years) DirecTV Stream. I recently cancelled paid streaming service as everything of interest (and more) is on Pluto TV for free. The services were getting too expensive for what I got out of them. Antenna for over-the-air channels from a nearby large city complimenting everything.

 

[jdoll021]

I cut the cord when I moved to my rural home in 2006 and the only option would have been a satellite dish. Accumulated a big library of DVDs in the following years. Continued this way until 2020 with the pandemic and finally decided to get a streaming package so, I went with Sling.

If you don't mind me asking, what do you use for internet? I've been wanting to go rural again (lived rural when I was a teenager and we had to suffer dial-up in those days) but I haven't been rural in a long time so I don't know what, if any, broadband options there are these days in rural areas.

 

[Boyd01]

I really don't think you can generalize about "rural areas" because that can mean so many different things. I'm in Southern New Jersey, about 50 miles from Philadelphia with a small home back in the woods. The best I could get for 10 years here was DSL (about 0.6mbit on good day). Some homes in the area had Comcast cable and broadband then, but they only ran their lines down larger roads and into developments.

Then Verizon ran fiber into every home in my little town in 2017, so I now have 500mbit FIOS, which is great. They gave me an unsolicited free trial of gigabit but I didn't notice any difference for my usage, so I passed. Currently paying $80/month for internet plus a landline, which I don't use. An oddity of the pricing is that it costs more to only get internet than it does for a landline plus internet.

It would cost $20 more to upgrade to gigabit FIOS. Verizon constantly sends me e-mails and flyers promoting various package deals that include a cell phone. I have an AT&T phone though and am not interested in switching.

 

[max2]

I really don't think you can generalize about "rural areas" because that can mean so many different things. I'm in Southern New Jersey, about 50 miles from Philadelphia with a small home back in the woods. The best I could get for 10 years here was DSL (about 0.6mbit on good day). Some homes in the area had Comcast cable and broadband then, but they only ran their lines down larger roads and into developments.

Then Verizon ran fiber into every home in my little town in 2017, so I now have 500mbit FIOS, which is great. They gave me an unsolicited free trial of gigabit but I didn't notice any difference for my usage, so I passed. Currently paying $80/month for internet plus a landline, which I don't use. An oddity of the pricing is that it costs more to only get internet than it does for a landline plus internet.

It would cost $20 more to upgrade to gigabit FIOS. Verizon constantly sends me e-mails and flyers promoting various package deals that include a cell phone. I have an AT&T phone though and am not interested in switching.

Awesome.

 

[jdoll021]

I really don't think you can generalize about "rural areas" because that can mean so many different things. I'm in Southern New Jersey, about 50 miles from Philadelphia with a small home back in the woods. The best I could get for 10 years here was DSL (about 0.6mbit on good day). Some homes in the area had Comcast cable and broadband then, but they only ran their lines down larger roads and into developments.

Then Verizon ran fiber into every home in my little town in 2017, so I now have 500mbit FIOS, which is great. They gave me an unsolicited free trial of gigabit but I didn't notice any difference for my usage, so I passed. Currently paying $80/month for internet plus a landline, which I don't use. An oddity of the pricing is that it costs more to only get internet than it does for a landline plus internet.

It would cost $20 more to upgrade to gigabit FIOS. Verizon constantly sends me e-mails and flyers promoting various package deals that include a cell phone. I have an AT&T phone though and am not interested in switching.

I see what you mean. I tried AT&T at the address I used to live at and it shows no availability. I really thought things would have changed in the last 20 years, especially with all the squawking from the political class in congress about rural broadband. But I guess I overestimated their seriousness about it.

Still, it’s not enough of a reason to stop me from going rural anyway. I hate cities and suburbs. But that’s a topic for another thread.

 

[icanhazmac]

Clay Travis: ESPN vs Charter could be end of the table bundle ... and televised sports as we know it

Disney's dispute with Charter Communications could have ramifications beyond the sports world as other networks are poised to be affected.

www.foxnews.com

Great article (too bad they don't have spell check)! Not paying for services I did not want was more of a driving force for my own cord cutting than trying to lower the price.

F ESPN & Disney!

 

[maflynn]

From that article

So Charter is the first major cable company to realize that they have the power to dictate terms and not the cable channels. I was wondering when that fact would dawn on them. Without Charter, ESPN loses millions and millions of viewers. Charter isn't about to lose customers, Disney is

But the Charter guys, who don’t own cable channels like Comcast, look at the math and think, "We don’t really care about the cable and satellite bundle because we make most of our money off broadband." So unlike virtually every other carriage dispute we’ve seen, when ESPN’s games being pulled made fans furious and the resulting threats terrified the cable companies, the Charter people are actually encouraging you to go sign up for YouTube TV or whatever other streaming service you want to use. Why? Because they make more money off broadband, they don’t really care about their cable business any more.

And they know that ESPN wants to cut their arms and legs off, but they’re calling ESPN’s bluff here because for the first time ever, ESPN’s got less leverage than the cable company does. ESPN needs cable more than cable needs ESPN.

 

[icanhazmac]

I wish a major cable company had tried a true al la carte menu for cable. Take the cost of the channel, add your profit margin, done, no bundles, each individual channel is a checkbox on your order form. Even more surprising that none are trying it now, they are just falling back on their internet services without even trying to save their content business. Cable companies could be positioning themselves as a more convenient way to manage your "subs" to different channels. Ex: log on to your cable company, uncheck HBO, check Cinemax, binge, rinse and repeat.

 

[MisterSavage]

I wish a major cable company had tried a true al la carte menu for cable. Take the cost of the channel, add your profit margin, done, no bundles, each individual channel is a checkbox on your order form. Even more surprising that none are trying it now, they are just falling back on their internet services without even trying to save their content business. Cable companies could be positioning themselves as a more convenient way to manage your "subs" to different channels. Ex: log on to your cable company, uncheck HBO, check Cinemax, binge, rinse and repeat.

I always wanted that. I don't ever want to watch sports. Why would I want to pay month to month for that?

 

[icanhazmac]

Why would I want to pay month to month for that?

Agreed, add to that news channels and the scumbag cable bundles that take a popular channel and bundle it with their foreign language package.

 

[maflynn]

So looks like Disney/espn are back on Charter and that happened yesterday before the much anticipated Buffalo vs. Jets game. From hearing about some of the details, it appears Disney blinked as they didn't want to lose out on that many viewers. They agreed to give disney + (the basic tier) to all Charter subscribers and that was one of the major requirements from Charter AFAIK

 

[Huntn]

Football

• Amazon Prime has Thursday night Football.
• Peacock (NBC) has Sunday football, my wife was whining about Football, so I subscribed at the lowest with commercials price $6 a month. Today, we tuned up Peacock and was confused why I was watching NFL Football, CBS Sports? 😳
• Fill in the blank…

The answer: https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-ente...m-some-cbs-bet-cw-shows-and-paramount-movies/

But Wednesday's licensing news with ViacomCBS indicates Peacock is aiming to act more as an aggregator, with less of a fixation on becoming a dedicated hub for its own programming and franchises, a la Disney Plus.

Peacock is NBC's combatant in the so-called streaming wars, a seven-month window when media giants and tech titans are releasing a raft of new streaming services to take on Netflix.

Now, honestly, I’m waiting for the cable companies to disappear, and new packages to be organized between the Corporste Giants back to the same old cable high prices… just give me Ala carte… 🤔