And I predict it will not go well.
I cut off the premium cable channels decades ago. I am down to Amazon Video, BluRay/DVD* and Youtube for most of my visual entertainment. We do have Comcast, but it is mostly for the few classic TV shows and movie channels my MiL loves, otherwise, I would kill the service.
(*): It is amazing how many good movies and series can be found in the discount bins of Walmart and in EBay. And you get to keep them!
We cut the cord over a year ago and went with streaming via Roku. I have Sling as an add-on and my bill is less than $70/month. At that we have MANY more channels available than we ever had with cable. And there are plenty of other add-ons we don’t use. Possibly an added bonus is that we don’t have to put up with Comcast customer “service.”
we have used Roku for years. bleep! cable and BLEEP BLEEPIN BLEEP F’in diseny.
Yeah, I’m a slow learner. Took me quite a while to make the move, but I’ll never go back. AND I’ve discovered the quality of British programming. Wow. No need to subscribe to BritBox, either. I’ve almost run out of some series, particularly mystery types. Now on the last season of “Frost” and almost there on “Midsomer Murders.” Couldn’t care less that they are all 10 years old or more — new to me! And I agree with you on Disney. I live 15 minutes from WDW and won’t spend a penny there.
The market is moving to streaming from cable. Cable as we know it is as dead as a landline. Comcast has been moving to a streaming model for years but they still get a lot of income from the less tech savvy crowd on cable so they are not ready to walk away from it.
We ditched cable some time ago and don’t even see the point of going back at this point. We went with streaming services and, at one point, we had Disney+ (don’t judge, I’ve got a kid and she loves to watch Bluey), Amazon Prime, Netflix, Discovery+, and Paramount+. With all those combined, we were still cheaper than cable. Even then, I only watched one of those (Discovery) and YouTube and the family watched the rest.
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Now that all those places have jacked the rates, we’re down to Disney, Netflix, and Discovery. And one more will likely be cut in the next 6 months. If not for the wife/kid, I’d probably have no streaming subscriptions because I never end up watching anything but Youtube if I watch anything at all.
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Funny thing too, our cable/internet company doesn’t even offer cable anymore. They’ll only offer a $10/month discount to YouTubeTV.
To be fair, Bluey probably is the best and most wholesome show on any screen right now. Unlike American sitcoms, it features an engaged, loving, and competent father; quotable dialog; good background music; memorable characters; and it tackles BIG issues in kid-friendly ways … all in (mostly) short 7-8 minute episodes. (In particular, if the “Copycat”, “Granddad”, “Dragon”, and “The Sign” episodes haven’t hit you squarely in the feels by the end, you have no heart.)
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It’s on Disney+, but it’s not produced by Disney; it’s a BBC show produced and animated in Queensland, Australia (one reviewer called it “unapologetically Australian”, which is a great description). Disney has nothing to do with anything but distribution*.
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* – But it’s still Disney, so of course they still tried to f*ck with distribution. Several episodes were “banned in America” for being “too sensitive/triggering” until public outcry — because you could still find and watch them online, and they weren’t that bad … kid-friendly, remember? — forced them to release them anyway. For example, the episode called “Bullying” was unavailable — because “bullying”, right? — but the “bullying” is the “kinda-sorta mean” jokes parents play on kids, not real bullying, and in the end it’s shown that the kids turn most of those jokes right back on the parents.
Amazon Prime and Disney+ (I’m a SW nerd). Oldest child had Netflix but cancelled it when he moved out. I cancelled cable years ago when I realized no one had used it for over a month except for me when I was paying bills etc. as background noise.
I’ve been buying DVD/BR of various series because it’s cheaper in the long run than paying for different streaming services and there’s no guarantee they’ll have them long enough for me to watch the whole thing.
Our local provider ditched “cable” about three years ago. Either go streaming, or get nothing except local TV. (Already available over the air.)
Apparently, the equipment required was getting too expensive to own, maintain, etc… Cheaper to just have internet servers.
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Realistically, I do not watch anything live any more anyway. TV just lived as background noise as we did whatever we were doing.
This one is new to me but unsurprising after the Disney± Hulu etc. bundle which all channels I will never pay for. This another bundle I won’t touch. I’ve already dumped Netflix over charging more for less. We have Peacock for some sports and few shows but we’ve watched all the Columbo reruns and haven’t watched a bicycle race this year so the clock is ticking. I can find a lot of stuff on my Roku, cheap DVD and I am technical enough to hoist the Jolly Roger and torrent stuff.
We use a Roku stick for video entertainment. We have Netflix and Amazon Prime that we pay for, and Disney+ that we don’t (we swap services with a friend; they use our Netflix, we use their Disney+ … ssssh, don’t tell nobody 😉 ). Also HBO Max that we piggyback from another friend. Those and the internet service to run them.
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We ditched cable TV years and years ago; the only thing we watched on it was news, and the local news stations all have Roku “stations” anyway. The above, plus a few free options — Pluto TV and Roku Channel (“free with ads”, which if you’re paying for cable just means you’re paying twice), and PBS Kids (for the littles; they love them some Daniel Tiger) — and our TV-watching bases are all covered.
But back on topic: “Everything old is new again”.
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Does this mean that Comcast will throttle Netflix again, even if they’re bundling the service?
We have Comcrap as the internet provider, only. (Local town has a contract with Comcrap, so no Ziply or others. Not sure if that is legal in this day and age…)
The only other options are buying 100gb chunks on T-Mobile, (I have a cellular modem for fail over,) use a satellite provider like Starlink, (I would if cheaper,) HughesNet, (no way in hell,) Viasat, (shudder,) 6mb/s DSL, or a local 25mb/s point to multi point radio system. T-Mobile is actually pretty fast, but it’s not practical $ wise. They keep dinging me with flyers for ‘home internet’ but when I give them my actual service address zip, they go ‘oops, we don’t offer it there, yet.’
Comcrap internet is $60 a month and the service has actually gone from 80/12 to 130/22 mb/s, and has actually been pretty reliable.
Funny that they’re bundling those three CRAP services together. I got AppleTV just because I wanted to watch Foundation, and after I binged on season one, well, I -really- tried to find some reason to keep the subscription, but after another month I killed it. When they come up with season two of Foundation, I’ll re-subscribe.
I will NEVER touch Netflix after they kowtowed to Obunghole.
Peacock…. Watch it sporadically. Wife likes the various ‘rebuilding the castles’ series. Also have Prime, but I’m getting close to dumping it since they are starting to incorporate ADs in a service that I’m PAYING FOR ALREADY.
We have a Roku box, so we stream some of the news services, PlutoTV, Tubi, and even YouTube for the freebies, and also have off the air for all the ‘major’ networks in the US, and can get several OTA Canadian stations as well.
Our former total ‘cable’ bill was pennies away from $200 a month. Nope, no more.
Insert dusting off the pirate bay meme here.
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I don’t know anyone who would do this but I heard you can take DVDs out from your library for weeks at a time with no supervision on what you do with them. Watch them as many times as you want while you have them, 😉