SirRonmit wrote to Codenut <=-

"Cut the cable"

I was amazed at how many channels are on my new TV OtA .. plus the
Digital Channels from my local TV stations as well!

Yea you guys are luck.

Some tv set top boxes have pvr's in them.

ALano

Timothy Norris
aka SirRonmit
admin@f4fbbs.com
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Gamgee wrote to Codenut <=-

Codenut wrote to SirRonmit <=-

all those FREE HD channels, weren't free. You had to pay for HD DVR (monthly) + Channel access + taxes and a lot of other items.
I pretty much bought someone a nice home after all those years LOL

I have a solution to cable companies.
"Cut the cable"

Well, you likely still need the cable for internet access, if not TV.

I put a tv yagi up on my tower and I get CBC and CTV when I want
it with no fees. It's called Free to Air.

You will likely see tons of station if you are in an urban
station.

Yeah, that works great for local broadcast/network stations (ABC, CBS, etc...).

What if you want to watch the History channel? Or Discovery, or
Peacock, or the NHL Network, or Disney... need I go on?

Roku box, turns your tv into a smart tv using wifi.

No PVR.

Alan

There is a satellite arc in the sky and you can point a dish any
one of them

The reciever can be as cheap as $60.00. Cable, the tool to put
connnectors on $60.

I have a hard time believing this is a workable idea. Yeah, you can (maybe) pick up the satellite signal, but decoding it into a useable signal for a TV is another story. Would need a subscription to
whatever service you're trying to hijack. I don't think this would
work at all.

... The world is full of surprises, very few of which are pleasant.
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Nightfox wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

called the cable company to ask them to cancel my basic TV and just
keep internet, but they said my bill would increase. I find it odd
that they do that.

Yeah, they do all sorts of FUD when you call. It used to be that if you threatened to cancel they'd find some deal to keep you, now the level 1
people just process the cancellation.

The "your bill will go up when we remove the bundle discount, so you're
better off keeping the crappy service you're unhappy with" has to be the
most fucked-up marketing ploy known to man.



... Emphasize differences
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esc wrote to Gamgee <=-

Also an economic construct that banks on people like me not paying attention to how many subscriptions I have. Ugh.

Which creates a niche for paid services to monitor your subscriptions.



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I live in an urban metro area, and I do get plenty of stations over the

With my TV watching habits, I'm fine with local broadcast channels.
Some TV content I like to watch (local news, some game shows, etc.) are
on broadcast TV.

I'm with ya! I too am in an urban area. I get plenty of OTA channels and
my smart phone provides me with my internet connection via hotspot. We just
got a new channel called Story TV. It basically has all the shows I watched
on History Channel. I also watch old movies on !Movies.

... DISCLAIMER: Anything not explicitly labeled as fact is my own opinion.

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Codenut wrote to Gamgee <=-

I have a solution to cable companies.
"Cut the cable"

Well, you likely still need the cable for internet access, if not TV.

I put a tv yagi up on my tower and I get CBC and CTV when I want
it with no fees. It's called Free to Air.

You will likely see tons of station if you are in an urban
station.

Yeah, that works great for local broadcast/network stations (ABC, CBS, etc...).

What if you want to watch the History channel? Or Discovery, or
Peacock, or the NHL Network, or Disney... need I go on?

Roku box, turns your tv into a smart tv using wifi.

Yeah.... I have several Roku boxes, but....

You were talking about "cutting the cable". So how does your Wifi get
on the internet?

Also, just having a Roku doesn't magically give you access to those
channels I mentioned above. Sure, you can get them via a Roku, *IF* you
have subscribed to the appropriate streaming service... Oh! But again,
you need internet access to stream...

You seem a little confused.



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Which creates a niche for paid services to monitor your subscriptions.

Ah, interesting. Startup idea? :P

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The "your bill will go up when we remove the bundle discount, so you're better off keeping the crappy service you're unhappy with" has to be the most fucked-up marketing ploy known to man.

How about, "But in order to cancel, you'd have to write the super-secret cancellation department, at least three years ahead of your cancellation date, so better to just keep the service."?

...on a side note, I'm glad there's a push to make that less common. At least in the US. I'm not sure what the rules are in the EU (or NZ, for that matter), but hopefully, "as easy to cancel as it is to subscribe" will become standard everywhere.

Not really sure what to do about the bundles, though anything that reduces powers of companies to provide bad service is good in my book. It's nice when we get _good_ choices, at fair and honest rates.

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How about, "But in order to cancel, you'd have to write the super-secret cancellation department, at least three years ahead of your cancellation date, so better to just keep the service."?

LOL!!! so true! How I stayed with them for over 25+ yrs ... slap me now.

Timothy Norris
aka SirRonmit
admin@f4fbbs.com
bbs.f4fbbs.com:2323 or :62323

... Everyone is entitled to my opinion!

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Gamgee wrote to Codenut <=-

Codenut wrote to Gamgee <=-

Roku box, turns your tv into a smart tv using wifi.

Yeah.... I have several Roku boxes, but....

You were talking about "cutting the cable". So how does your Wifi get
on the internet?

Yes I imagine it seems odd. We have only the internet. $90/month for Bell, but it is the best for quality.

Also, just having a Roku doesn't magically give you access to those channels I mentioned above. Sure, you can get them via a Roku, *IF*
you have subscribed to the appropriate streaming service... Oh! But again, you need internet access to stream...

yes, we subscribe to services because they are better than what we could find on TV at another $100/mth.

You seem a little confused.

I don't think I am confused, just not explaining clearly. :-)

We have to pick and choose.

I dropped the VOIP number a couple of weeks ago. $170/yr for no one calling other than marketting people.

It's hard to figure out what you can and cannot do.

Cutting the cable refers to ditching the TV and The phone service. At least that is what I read into it.

I watch a lot of Amazon.

My religious stuff comes from a Starchoice dish pointed at Galaxy 19, though tommorow I may aim it at Galaxy 28. It's free to air.


Regards,
Alan

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Adept wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

How about, "But in order to cancel, you'd have to write the
super-secret cancellation department, at least three years ahead of
your cancellation date, so better to just keep the service."?

When signing contracts for IT services, if I got a whiff of "we're going
to make it difficult to cancel", I'd include my cancellation notice with
the signed contract. :)

Not really sure what to do about the bundles, though anything that
reduces powers of companies to provide bad service is good in my book. It's nice when we get _good_ choices, at fair and honest rates.

This is all due to the "last mile" in the US (the infrastructure going
to residential houses) being a monopoly. Because it was expensive to
maintain, you had one cable provider and one telephone provider. it's
only now that the telcos bringing fiber in gives any competition to
cable.



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SirRonmit wrote to Nightfox <=-

forgot to note:

all those FREE HD channels, weren't free. You had to pay for HD DVR (monthly) + Channel access + taxes and a lot of other items.

I pretty much bought someone a nice home after all those years LOL

I have a solution to cable companies.

"Cut the cable"

I put a tv yagi up on my tower and I get CBC and CTV when I want it with no fees. It's called Free to Air.

You will likely see tons of station if you are in an urban station.

There is a satellite arc in the sky and you can point a dish any one of them

The reciever can be as cheap as $60.00. Cable, the tool to put connnectors on $60.

You also need dish (I use a starchoice one) and a test set, $80.00. (Gtmedia.com)

www.lyngsat.com

It took a lot of work to setup.

Cheers,

Alan

AND they blocked everything. At least now I can have my ports back
and run a firewall on my server in the basement.

Timothy Norris
aka SirRonmit
admin@f4fbbs.com
bbs.f4fbbs.com:2323 (keep getting :62323 blocked)

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"Cut the cable"

I was amazed at how many channels are on my new TV OtA .. plus the Digital Channels from my local TV stations as well!

Timothy Norris
aka SirRonmit
admin@f4fbbs.com
bbs.f4fbbs.com:2323 (keep getting :62323 blocked)

... As a matter of fact, it IS a banana in my pocket!

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Re: Re: Cable rip offs
By: Codenut to SirRonmit on Wed Jun 21 2023 11:04 am

"Cut the cable"

I put a tv yagi up on my tower and I get CBC and CTV when I want it with no fees. It's called Free to Air.

I was wondering what a "TV yagi" was, and I looked it up, and it looks like a yagi antenna is a type of TV antenna.

You will likely see tons of station if you are in an urban station.

I live in an urban metro area, and I do get plenty of stations over the air. Sometimes it seems like some people have forgotten that over-the-air TV stations still exist and will pay for cable when they might not need to.

With my TV watching habits, I'm fine with local broadcast channels. Some TV content I like to watch (local news, some game shows, etc.) are on broadcast TV.

Nightfox
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Codenut wrote to SirRonmit <=-

all those FREE HD channels, weren't free. You had to pay for HD DVR (monthly) + Channel access + taxes and a lot of other items.
I pretty much bought someone a nice home after all those years LOL

I have a solution to cable companies.
"Cut the cable"

Well, you likely still need the cable for internet access, if not TV.

I put a tv yagi up on my tower and I get CBC and CTV when I want
it with no fees. It's called Free to Air.

You will likely see tons of station if you are in an urban
station.

Yeah, that works great for local broadcast/network stations (ABC, CBS, etc...).

What if you want to watch the History channel? Or Discovery, or
Peacock, or the NHL Network, or Disney... need I go on?

There is a satellite arc in the sky and you can point a dish any
one of them

The reciever can be as cheap as $60.00. Cable, the tool to put
connnectors on $60.

I have a hard time believing this is a workable idea. Yeah, you can
(maybe) pick up the satellite signal, but decoding it into a useable
signal for a TV is another story. Would need a subscription to whatever service you're trying to hijack. I don't think this would work at all.



... The world is full of surprises, very few of which are pleasant.
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Re: Re: Cable rip offs
By: Gamgee to Codenut on Wed Jun 21 2023 07:27 pm

You will likely see tons of station if you are in an urban station.

Yeah, that works great for local broadcast/network stations (ABC, CBS, etc...).

What if you want to watch the History channel? Or Discovery, or Peacock, or the NHL Network, or Disney... need I go on?

I know I'm probably rare, but I'm not aware of anything on Discovery, Peacock, NHL, Disney etc. that I want to watch. I haven't had anything more than basic cable in many years, and I currently don't even have a cable TV package. The things I like to watch are available on over-the-air TV or maybe a streaming service or online here & there, etc..

Nightfox
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Nightfox wrote to Gamgee <=-

You will likely see tons of station if you are in an urban station.

Yeah, that works great for local broadcast/network stations (ABC, CBS, etc...).

What if you want to watch the History channel? Or Discovery, or Peacock, or the NHL Network, or Disney... need I go on?

I know I'm probably rare, but I'm not aware of anything on
Discovery, Peacock, NHL, Disney etc. that I want to watch. I
haven't had anything more than basic cable in many years, and I
currently don't even have a cable TV package. The things I like
to watch are available on over-the-air TV or maybe a streaming
service or online here & there, etc..

I'd say you are indeed (quite) rare. I rarely watch anything on
over-the-air network channels. As far as streaming services and online,
yes, those can be good, but the original point of this was "cutting the cable", and..... without that, you're not doing much streaming.



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Well, you likely still need the cable for internet access, if not TV.

You missed the part where we went with fiber :) shaved $300/month US off my bills.

Timothy Norris
aka SirRonmit
admin@f4fbbs.com
bbs.f4fbbs.com:2323 or :62323

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Nightfox wrote to Codenut <=-

I live in an urban metro area, and I do get plenty of stations over the air. Sometimes it seems like some people have forgotten that
over-the-air TV stations still exist and will pay for cable when they might not need to.

The picture over the air is better than the pixellated 720p that my
cable company used to send over the cable.




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Gamgee wrote to Codenut <=-

What if you want to watch the History channel? Or Discovery, or
Peacock, or the NHL Network, or Disney... need I go on?

A consolidation is happening, Max now has a bunch of networks under it.
The other thing I'm excited about is being able to have a channel for a
couple of months, then pull it. Paramount+, for example. I'd like to
have it when there's a Star Trek series on, cancel it otherwise. Ditto
for my wife, she like English mysteries, and we alternate between
BritBox and Acorn. See a new show we like, switch services, or
subscribe for a couple of months. That level of flexibility will kill
cable.




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Re: Re: Cable rip offs
By: poindexter FORTRAN to Nightfox on Thu Jun 22 2023 07:29 am

I live in an urban metro area, and I do get plenty of stations over the
air. Sometimes it seems like some people have forgotten that
over-the-air TV stations still exist and will pay for cable when they
might not need to.

The picture over the air is better than the pixellated 720p that my cable company used to send over the cable.

In my area, there are a few over-the-air stations that broadcast in 1080p, but I think many of them broadcast in 720p. Some of it looks even lower than that - There are broadcast subchannels that show reruns of older shows & other things that look a bit more blurry, like it's from a DVD or VHS tape (perhaps they're still broadcasting 720p or 1080p but the source video isn't as good).

Years ago, I had a basic cable TV package, and they gave me a small cable box to use with my TV. The cable box outputted a standard-definition square (4:3) image.. The 4:3 image bugged me because it cut off the sides of widescreen content rather than using black bars at the top & bottom. Also, I could tell the image quality wasn't as good as over-the-air digital broadcasts. At the time I wasn't sure my over-the-air reception would be very good, but once I realized I could indeed pick up a good number of broadcast stations, I called the cable company to ask them to cancel my basic TV and just keep internet, but they said my bill would increase. I find it odd that they do that.

Nightfox
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SirRonmit wrote to Codenut <=-

"Cut the cable"

I was amazed at how many channels are on my new TV OtA .. plus the
Digital Channels from my local TV stations as well!

Yea you guys are luck.

Some tv set top boxes have pvr's in them.

ALano

Timothy Norris
aka SirRonmit
admin@f4fbbs.com
bbs.f4fbbs.com:2323 (keep getting :62323 blocked)

... As a matter of fact, it IS a banana in my pocket!

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Hello Codenut!

There is a satellite arc in the sky and you can point a dish any one of them

The reciever can be as cheap as $60.00. Cable, the tool to put connnectors on $60.

You also need dish (I use a starchoice one) and a test set, $80.00. (Gtmedia.com)

www.lyngsat.com

It took a lot of work to setup.

Most of the C and Ku sats are scrambled. How do you handle
that?


--- OpenXP 5.0.57
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SirRonmit wrote to Gamgee <=-

Well, you likely still need the cable for internet access, if not TV.

You missed the part where we went with fiber :) shaved
$300/month US off my bills.

Yup. OK.



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poindexter FORTRAN wrote to Gamgee <=-

What if you want to watch the History channel? Or Discovery, or
Peacock, or the NHL Network, or Disney... need I go on?

A consolidation is happening, Max now has a bunch of networks
under it.
The other thing I'm excited about is being able to have a
channel for a
couple of months, then pull it. Paramount+, for example. I'd
like to
have it when there's a Star Trek series on, cancel it otherwise.
Ditto
for my wife, she like English mysteries, and we alternate
between
BritBox and Acorn. See a new show we like, switch services, or
subscribe for a couple of months. That level of flexibility will
kill
cable.

Yes, I can see that, and the attraction of it. Good points on the flexibility.

One drawback of that system, at least for me, is the hassle factor of subscribing/unsubscribing, shuffling things around, tracking when the
"free trial period" ends, and so on. Manageable, but irritating.



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On 6/22/2023 6:56 PM, Gamgee wrote to poindexter FORTRAN:

What if you want to watch the History channel? Or Discovery, or Peacock, or the NHL Network, or Disney... need I go on?

A consolidation is happening, Max now has a bunch of networks
under it.
The other thing I'm excited about is being able to have a
channel for a
couple of months, then pull it. Paramount+, for example. I'd
like to
have it when there's a Star Trek series on, cancel it otherwise.
Ditto
for my wife, she like English mysteries, and we alternate
between
BritBox and Acorn. See a new show we like, switch services, or
subscribe for a couple of months. That level of flexibility will
kill
cable.

Yes, I can see that, and the attraction of it. Good points on the flexibility.

One drawback of that system, at least for me, is the hassle factor of subscribing/unsubscribing, shuffling things around, tracking when the
"free trial period" ends, and so on. Manageable, but irritating.

I really lucked out when it comes to cable. The development that I live in has a cloud
DVR option. I can set the DVR to record programs and because they are in the cloud, I
can travel and still view them as long as I have at least a 2mb wi-fi connection and a
Roku device that allows me to access the Spectrum app.

My wife and I just returned from a 5 week trip pin our motorhome, and we were able to
watch everything that recorded, plus we could watch live broadcasts as well.

This is a big plus for us. We used to have to subscribe to Dish network to see programs
from our local area. Now I can do this at no extra cost from my cable company.

Mike Dippel

--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v7.0
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One drawback of that system, at least for me, is the hassle factor of subscribing/unsubscribing, shuffling things around, tracking when the "free trial period" ends, and so on. Manageable, but irritating.

Also an economic construct that banks on people like me not paying attention to how many subscriptions I have. Ugh.

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esc wrote to Gamgee <=-

One drawback of that system, at least for me, is the hassle factor of subscribing/unsubscribing, shuffling things around, tracking when the "free trial period" ends, and so on. Manageable, but irritating.

Also an economic construct that banks on people like me not
paying attention to how many subscriptions I have. Ugh.

I think we might be related. ;-)



... "He who is without oil, shall cast the first rod."-Compressions 8.7:1.
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