A New Choice for Cord Cutters: DirecTV Now - Comments Page 1

I believe that if you have U-Verse bundled with other services you may lose the advantage of a bundle thus paying more for the individual services.

Their use of Directv made me wonder why you were talking about them; once you explained it had nothing to do with satellite stuff, I at least read the remaining information. It's still not worth it to me, as I find myself not caring what's being shown on broadcast/cable tv. I gave up on baseball after the 1994 strike and the rest of sports was not something that glued me to the tv.
All I have now is Netflix streaming and the 3-dvd plan. So, if a show takes a year to get to streaming or dvd, I'll wait.
I no longer (haven't had for a while) the patience to put up with 20 minutes of non-show content per 60-minute block. So, I can watch it in the 40-41 minutes it takes to play out on dvd or streaming.
I wonder how many people will ignore the service because of the directv name being part of it. Not everyone reads your newsletter, Bob (although I'm sure more and more do everyday).
Thanks for the heads-up.

In 2009 I reviewed every cable channel being delivered to me and tagged 93% of them to be useless pap trying to sell me something. I bought a $14.00 broadcast TV antenna and hung it in a nearby window that delivered 29 stations...maybe 6 of which were worth while for local/national news and sports. The only thing I missed was Fox News, but I got over that as their programming deteriorated. Today's network TV programming is delivering the dreaded secular/sexual PC crap from the MSM, reducing my interest to sports, while all the PC news has become liberal propaganda. Even with the recent "sea change" election, the networks will not change their programming mindset and are losing viewers, including sports. The "Vast Wasteland" is complete now.

Just wondering if this is available to Roku subscribers.

I would not be interested in Direct TV Now, their
lowest Tier includes basically what I can get with an antenna. I get 30-50 channels over the air with a phased array digital antenna. The picture quality is good and many of the channels are HD.

Sure, I miss out on ESPN, Fox News, and many of the premium channels... but I can live without them.

I had Time Warner & every year they charged more for the same service until we finally cut the cable. That was 5 years ago. I will never go back to subscriber TV service....

Looks like a pretty crappy deal to me. Very limited sports, and no NFL is a total deal killer here. And have got to have news, Fox News especially, CNN to some degree. This service need a lot of improvement before I would have any interest. But thanks Bob for the heads-up, maybe in the future it will improve?

Great deal until you read their privacy policy. That is a misnomer-no privacy would be a better named policy.

Three problems:
1. It's still too expensive for what you get, which is a lot of channels I never watch. A real choice would be something like a sliding scale for individual channels at like $1 a month for each broadcast channel and less for basic cable channels and even less for the fringe cable channels. Even at $1 or less per show recorded on a DVR it would be cheaper than my satellite package.
2. I live in the 5-6% of America where broadband is only available in satellite bandwidth limited packages that cost as much as satellite TV for less bandwidth than I want to use.
3. With an inconsistent top speed of 1.5Mbps I can't even watch any streaming content for several hours at a time several times a day.

$50 a month is somewhat reasonable, but I remember when cable was $25 ( I'm an oldie, but a goodie )
The root cause of stratospheric cable costs have to be addressed. I have never found out what is the the true cause.

Is it corporate greed? Is it outlandish CEO salaries & perks? Is it sport players salaries that are 10,000 times that of the best heart & neurosurgeons? Where are the answers?

If the problem isn't addressed, then any stopgap solution will be temporary at best.

That is why I have cut the cord and refuse to pay even discounted rates, until I have answers and the ultimate solution. (I'm sure not holding my breath! ) It will ONLY be when the money grabbers have been backed into a corner and their whole mess is collapsing on top of them that we will see real solutions and change.

Rabbit ears work the best for me. I get over 60 channels. If I want to stream, I simply google "USA IPTV". Many legal stream sites are listed. And don't forget what Bob informed us earlier, USTVNOW.

I think Playstation Vue (which works on Roku and does NOT require a Playstation) might be a better deal.

Bob, you mention:

"The solution for most people is to watch while connected to Wi-Fi, so as not to consume your mobile data."

Our Wi-Fi comes from our Verizon Jetpack which uses our data plan, which is not unlimited, so this DirectTV Now wouldn't help us as we would be paying for their programs as well as our data plan.

I read all your articles but seldom post :-)

Should I add this to the long list of services not available outside of the U.S.?
Hulu detects VPNs now!
As well as Netflix,Amazon Prime,Sling TV etc..

Still, this is just another bundle of crap they want to shove down our throats, only disguised as a streaming alternative. A bundle IS a bundle.

I might consider this once my current contract with DishNetwork is up...11 months. I had planned to just dump all then and go to antenna, but would at least try this out to see how well it works.

I have great interest in cutting the cable, mostly because we are dinged about $95.00 per month by DirecTV. Out here in the boondocks, options are limited.

A couple of issues I have with all of this is that we receive our internet through ComCast whose delivery of consistent broadband is less than stellar, AND the fact that our televisions are kind of in the moron class. Would we have to upgrade to some kind of set that is worthy of being in middle school or above?

The other cautionary point that strikes me is that we normally only watch about 10 or 12 channels from our current package. Without my cable news fix daily, it would be a "not interested" response in this product/service at this time.

Thank you, Bob for the continued great supply of technology news.

Respectfully,
Larry

I use Amazon Prime for movies and TV series. Unlimited. No need to be in front of the screen at a scheduled time. I get free shipping from Amazon also. Price is under a hundred dollars a year.

I just finished watching all 7 years of "The Good Wife" at my leisure, and wouldn’t have it any other way. Some viewers wait a week and watch the current episode. I prefer to binge.

Amazon has a good library of movies. I rarely watch them, though. My free alternative is to borrow movies from the library, copy them onto my disk drive, and watch them when I want.

Never cut the cable because I never had it... ever! Had a big steerable satellite dish in the 90's and found "specials"... a channel on sale for $0.99 a YEAR! and paid for about 6 channels, the rest being free. That showed me that if I can't pick the channels I want to pay for, then s-o-r-r-y BigCable, you need me, I don't need you! I recall in the 40's and 50's there were better things to do than be glued to the boob-tube. Today, is it glued to the "smartphone"! Oh, how did we get by in the "early days" without 150 paid channels? Yeah, I had a big garden, much more interesting than Faux Noose.

Not free, not for me.

Bob: How many American households will cut the cord on NFL, NBA or baseball? How about PBS?
The smartest way is to stick with Direct TV satellite, get 5 boxes, one for yourself and 4 for buddies and divide the cost for the biggest package
by 5.