Comments on: Where the TV fight goes

By: Armando Zollar

Armando Zollar — Fri, 21 May 2010 16:50:26 +0000

It’s very difficult to decide on the best provider when it comes to broadband internet, however based on a few things i have seen verizon fioshas several fantastic marketing deals going on today if you are luck enough this in your town.

By: Vickey Coggsdale

Vickey Coggsdale — Mon, 17 May 2010 21:47:33 +0000

I have spent a lot of time researching fios and the cable and satellite alternatives. Does anyone actually consider that old school cable is actually better than Fios high speed internet? It seems that there is no competition between them when considering the actual network speed and funtionlality for viewing.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:01:17 +0000

Thanks for this information. I have been thinking of getting rid of cablevision as well. I am not really happy with their service for the amount I pay every month.

By: cm

cm — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:32:59 +0000

Nobody is forcing you to waste your time in front of TV.

Turn the damn thing off.

By: Andrew Tyndall

Andrew Tyndall — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:50:41 +0000

Yes, my monthly Time Warner bill went up by more than $11 in January. Of that, the “basic service” went up $2.50 and the “standard service” also by $2.50. The rental of each converter box went up $1.65 and so on. I could find no itemization that unbundled the hikes channel by channel.

By: Jeff Jarvis

Jeff Jarvis — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:00:25 +0000

right but then the rate went up. do you know what it was?

By: Andrew Tyndall

Andrew Tyndall — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:39:25 +0000

$1 was the amount Fox Channel 5 sought from Time Warner. Time Warner’s counteroffer was 30c. I think they kept their compromise secret but presumably it was somewhere in between.

By: Jeff Jarvis

Jeff Jarvis — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:16:40 +0000

Yes, the number I keep hearing is a dollar. I’m on bad connection now or I’d look up — was that what Time Warner raised its rates after the Fox deal?

By: Andrew Tyndall

Andrew Tyndall — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:57:33 +0000

jeff -- what is the basis for that $72 figure? Is that an annual number? Do you mean $1 per channel per month? Steve Safran at Lost Remote is quoting estimates between 27c and 65c -- andrew

By: Market Talk » Blog Archive » A La Carte Pricing In Cable’s Future?

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:15:30 +0000

[...] “will have the cause it seems to have wanted to require a la carte pricing for cable,” says CUNY journalism professor Jeff [...]

By: Rick

Rick — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:49:10 +0000

Also: it is almost impossible to DVR internet programming, and internet TV players are very good at preventing skipping of the commercials. Today streamed TV is much less cluttered than broadcast/cable, but how long will that last once the majority of the audience uses streaming? Argue that the commercials support the programming and I’ll count the number of commercials for products and services I will not or cannot buy (Boeing? ADM?) and in-house ads too repetitive to waste my life sitting through.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:47:52 +0000

>>It’s no longer true that broadcast channels are free. Fewer than 13% of Americans get broadcast channels over the air; the rest of us have to pay for cable or satellite to get access and now these channels — which got our spectrum for free — are trying to charge us yet more.<<

It's not really true that "the rest of us" (87%) *have* to pay for cable or satellite to get access to the spectrum channels, is it? (typically affiliates of major networks, public television and the odd local syndicateds). With the urbanization of our country most Americans must be in range of OTA signals.

Like some others in this thread I got fed up with $$$ and cut my cable tv entirely; now I do over the air with lots of channels in the DC area (with some of the locals beaming extra content including 24/7 weather) and internet for everything else. Hello, Roku.

By: Rick

Rick — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:44:48 +0000

I’m with the thread except: C-SPAN likely goes away without cable support. Brian Lamb’s take on covering government as an opinionless silent observer is close to all that’s left of truth transmitted electronically, specifically because it works hard to be agnostic. Of course Brian Lamb won’t last forever but absent cable company funding C-SPAN will go the way of a commercial network (corporate agenda) or PBS (corporate agenda pretending to be opinionless).
I would subscribe to C-SPAN for a reasonable amount even if I rarely watched. But too few will to sustain it in an a la carte world.

By: Tom Royce

Tom Royce — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:27:19 +0000

Look at our children and their television watching habits. My 10 yr old watches cartoons on TV. My 14 yr old watches the Discovery channel and other type shows.

But they both consume the heck out of YouTube.

If given the choice between shutting down YouTube or cable/satellite the answer would be a no brainer. Goodbye television.

So in our new house we are going to have it wired up like crazy and a computer attached to every television.

And the dish may well be left behind.

By: J.K.

J.K. — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:20:09 +0000

Despite the gazillions that Verizon has been spending on advertising on my broadcast t.v. for FiOS, the service hasn’t been available for the majority of New York.

And is anyone forgetting about free broadcast television. We get HD television for free across the air. No problem with that.

By: toshiba laptop drivers

toshiba laptop drivers — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:02:23 +0000

I must say that Verizon Fios is a very good thing that happened to our home, and most especially to me. We switched on it right before Oscars occurred so we are able to watch it and we are very grateful to that, and very unfortunate for those who saw the glamorous Oscars. Love it. Thank Verizon Fios.

By: Brian Gillespie

Brian Gillespie — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:44:24 +0000

So you’re saying that if you have an antenna you can’t get these channels? Because if you’re not, then people who pay for “free OTA” are to blame.

By: Matthew

Matthew — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 02:22:26 +0000

I’m dropping cable this at the end of this month and putting the money towards 30mbps internet. I’ll be getting the boxee box when it comes out, but until then I’ll just hook up one of my unused laptops to the tv.

Of course I’m a “geek”, so what i do doesn’t matter, right? Maybe, but even my non-techy friend has ALREADY done this (without my suggestion), so I think there is some movement towards critical mass.

Internet critics like Mark Cuban will point out the bandwidth superiority of cable networks. But I don’t think that matters. Some times having 1 killer feature is all that matters. The internet has that killer feature – 100% choice.

By: Tim G

Tim G — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:36:29 +0000

I’ve been using OTA HD for the past 6 months, and couldn’t be happier. Cost me nothing a month, and anything I miss can be downloaded later. The sooner the cable monopolies are unraveled, the better!

By: John

John — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:20:07 +0000

We had the same thing happen in 2008 with our CBS affiliate. Before they shut off their signal to DirecTV which we were handing over $100+/month for, we shut off the service and switched to a HTPC. Now we have wired gigabit to every room and are streaming most everything off the internets. We put up an OTA antenna for the big networks and pipe that over the same network. HD OTA is much better than what DTV passes off as HD.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:53:09 +0000

Sick of getting screwed by these programming wars? Sign the petition to bring a la carte programming to the US. http://tvalacarte.org/

http://money.blogs.time.com/2010/03/04/tv-a-la-carte-one-mans-dream/

Let the channels set the rate and then we can pick our own programming. Yeah capitalism!!

By: fred wilson

fred wilson — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:46:00 +0000

we are thinking about the same thing this weekend jeff

http://bit.ly/bYaNGL