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It seems like there are two kinds of cordcutters; those that watch free broadcast tv and those that don't. Is the goal of this subreddit more to stop paying cable companies or to stop watching commercials? (self.cordcutters)

submitted ago by snuka

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[–]ezmobee_work 92 points93 points ago

It's to stop paying cable companies to watch commercials :P

[–]GAMEchief 32 points33 points ago

I don't think it can be put any better. I have no quarrel with paying Netflix for my streaming entertainment. No ads, and on-demand video from a high variety. I have no quarrel with ads that come up when I stream online. Shit's gotta be paid somehow, and rather ads than out of my wallet, right?

But why the fuck am I paying someone to watch ads? What are they doing that is so expensive? The modern TV business model needs to change.

[–]bhasden 2 points3 points ago*

I finally got fed up a few years ago when Comcast started including advertisements in their guide. Not only was I now paying for commercials, I was paying to be advertised to in the guide which now showed fewer channel listings.

[–]ARCHA1C 0 points1 point ago

But why the fuck am I paying someone to watch ads? What are they doing that is so expensive? The modern TV business model needs to change.

Because there is no competitor that doesn't follow the same model. It's the status quo for Television.

Even a provider that offered a "standard" add-supported plan and a "premium" add-free plan would be preferable to the money-grubbing options that are available.

[–]grubbymitts 7 points8 points ago

This. Your hour long cable/sat programme consists of: Four minutes, the credits, then a break of ads for about four minutes. Another ten minutes, then another break of ads for four minutes. This continues until the end. All the while you're paying (over here in the UK anyhow) about £20 a month for the basic packages. A bit of a rip off to say the least. Adverts are fine, when they are solely paying for the product you are watching, but when they are lumping in a subscription fee and forcing you to watch them, well that's just wrong.

[–]h1p1n3 19 points20 points ago*

Why can't it be both? I don't see a problem with having a setup where you still have your broadcast channels. We are all individual people with different goals and situations. Also there is a blend of people in between like myself. Cordcutter for working on 2 years now and I broke down not too long ago and got the basic cable package ($10/month) for local news really. I don't have time to mess with DVR's their crappy equipment and spoonfed what to watch and when. I use RSS fed torrents and my shows are ready in HD, no commercials when I am ready. Also what about sports enthusiasts? It seems like such a headache or damn near impossible to find a bug free HD sports game. In this case broadcast tv works. So, why cant it be a mixture of both situations?

[–]snuka[S] 0 points1 point ago

I totally agree with you and when I cut the cord for my new year's resolution I still intend to get local OTA HD broadcasts. I like my sports and I even watch the Today show in the morning and there is no internet-only options for these.

I guess to me cutting the cord means not paying the cable companies but I understand it can mean different things to different people. All commercial-free TV would be nice but is not part of my current plan.

[–]bandit74 19 points20 points ago

I visit this subreddit to figure out the best way to get rid of cable.

[–]BlackMouseSucks 11 points12 points ago

I don't have an aversion to ads. I just don't like the antiquated delivery model of cable. That and the price for all those channels I don't watch.

[–]Fumigator 3 points4 points ago

antiquated delivery model of cable

Depends on how you use it. If you think about it, it's actually a multicast system that doesn't require them to have the bandwidth to let every individual download the same thing from their servers. You just need to have a computer (TiVo, WMC, MythTV, etc.) on your end to save the content until you're ready to view it. There's no reason you have to watch it "live" as it comes down the pipe.

[–]ZebZ 5 points6 points ago

Antiquated as in the concept of channels, channel bundles, and timeslots. Not in technological delivery.

[–]MatmosOfSogo -1 points0 points ago

timeslots

Whoosh

[–]ZebZ 4 points5 points ago*

Whoosh

What? Timeslots are an antiquated method of delivery. My point stands.

You're really preaching to the choir. I cut the cord a looong time ago.

[–]MatmosOfSogo 0 points1 point ago

No it doesn't. His point was that timeslots only matter if you want to watch it live.

[–]excoriator 0 points1 point ago

If we could each do ala carte selection of the cable channels we actually watch, we'd pare it down to so few channels and get our bills so low that they couldn't afford to run the cables and deliver it to us. Hence the buffet approach. They used to be able to hide behind it being technologically unfeasible. Now that it's technically possible to deliver ala carte cable, it's economically unfeasible. Arghhh.

[–]CannonballSplash 5 points6 points ago

I have a Tivo, so any time I record off broadcast television I skip the commercials anyway. I've had a DVR for 10+ years. No way am I going back to commercial watching.

[–]CarpeNivem 1 point2 points ago

...not to mention, cable and satellite DVRs let you skip commercials anyway. To me, cutting the cord is not about avoiding commercials. I was doing that anyway, even tethered. To me, it's about no longer paying for hundreds of channels when I only ever wanted a dozen.

[–]30thCenturyMan 2 points3 points ago

We want what we want to watch for less that it costs to watch it.

A la carte programming or a netflix with everything (that doesn't raise prices).

In essence we want too cut the cord but not to stop watching TV because we believe we pay for more than we consume.

[–]Laminar 2 points3 points ago

Yes...

[–]excoriator 1 point2 points ago

Commercials pay for the programs. If nobody watches commercials, the really good programs go away and about all that will be left will be reality crap featuring the Kardashians and anything else that can fill a timeslot with product placements. Either that or the industry will turn into Dobermans and Rottweilers on piracy.

[–]ZebZ 11 points12 points ago

Ratings are determined by about 25000 families chosen by Nielsen to log what they watch. That data is extrapolated out to 110000000 households to estimate viewership demographics. If you aren't a Nielsen household you aren't counted directly anyway. Given the relative few number of downloaders, we through a shows ratings off by maybe 2%.

How are people who download any functionally different than those inferred in the DVR+7 rating that captures people who watch on a DVR, usually without watching commercials, within a week?

[–]cmdrNacho 0 points1 point ago

I disagree, cable you are essentially be taxed in several ways. The pipes that deliver cable and internet are the same. Also you're paying for bundles of stations that are not watched. If you just payed for internet service, and an a la carte by channel or maybe like a channel store that allowed you to pick up channels and drop channels easily (think of an appstore).. I think the focus would go back to quality programming to attract real viewers.

Also would be more indicative of actual viewership. Basically its just greed that keeps costs high at this point.

[–]excoriator 0 points1 point ago

I think the focus would go back to quality programming to attract real viewers.

If that were true, every channel would look like PBS instead of filling hours with garbage shows that celebrate stupidity and appeal to the lowest common denominator.

[–]cmdrNacho 1 point2 points ago

well I think the issue is specialization or focus of channel. PBS is focused on educational programming, and lets be honest people don't to like to learn, but its still in our best interest. The better example is HBO.

[–]sporkinum 0 points1 point ago

That's just like ad blocking. Most people don't have the wherewithal to set up a browser with an ad blocker properly. Along with maintaing the rules and adjusting them to make what you want to work.

On the DVR side, people are too lazy to either make an HTPC, or to set up a DVR and then zap the ads.

What it boils down to in most instances, is that ad blocking/ad skipping is statistical noise.

[–]quartermann 0 points1 point ago

There's that K word again...

[–]hadees 1 point2 points ago*

By your logic wouldn't all tv go away? The truth is that will never happen. Even if people stop watching all commercials you will still have money coming in from DVD and Bluray for the foreseeable future and sites like netflix and hulu. Plus the threat of no commercials is more from DVRs then anything else. We are a tiny minority. I don't know one person in my regular life that has the automated setup I do although I do know people who occasionally download shows and movies however most of their consumption is still the regular legal way.

I do agree eventually there will have to be a paradigm shift but in all likely hood that is going to be something akin to Hulu with extremely targeted ads so that they can charge more per view and ultimately show less commercials but make more money.

If content providers offered me an alternative to the XBMC + Sabnzbd + Sickbeard setup where I still got the highest quality but watched the occasional commercial I would give up my pirating ways. Although that future is a longways away.

[–]sk8rphink 0 points1 point ago

I have no real intention of cutting the cord, because I love sitting on the couch and flipping through the channels. I just like the flexibility of having more viewing options than my cable company provides.

[–]bjmarte 0 points1 point ago

I think the name of the subreddit implies that it is more focused on getting rid of cable companies.

Also, I think the premise that OTA vs. Online Only is in any way connected to watching/not watching commercials is completely incorrect. You can use a DVR with OTA and fast forward through commercials. There are commercials in online videos and streams that can't be avoided.

[–]nimajneb 0 points1 point ago

Doesn't cord cutting mean you lose the appliance itself? in this case the TV (note the term was developed before video over internet)

[–]bjmarte 0 points1 point ago

I think the popular use of the term recently in the media refers to people who are giving up their traditional tv providers, cable and satellite, for alternative and cheaper methods. OTA augmented with online video seems to fit that.

If you are trying to differentiate everyone who is watching video with a cable to their tv instead of their computer screen directly, that just seems like a silly distinction. I'm not sure their even is one. I have an OTA tuner in my computer and my TV is really just the monitor.

[–]ghjm 0 points1 point ago

I still Tivo things off broadcast TV for three reasons:

  1. Local programming doesn't exist anywhere else.
  2. I want to retain mainstream communications capability in an emergency like a hurricane.
  3. In the likely event that they eventually find some way to finally kill filesharing, like having the ISPs charge high per-gig prices, I want something to watch while I figure out what other country will take me in.

[–]AllTheyEatIsLettuce 0 points1 point ago

My goal is to stop paying cable/sat companies for content delivery service. I still watch commercials on OTA broadcasts, iPlayer, and Channel 4 catch-up.

[–]JohnYonder 0 points1 point ago

Way back in the day, being a cordcutter meant ditching television altogether, but the term has since evolved to mean just getting rid of cable/satellite. I think there's a place here for both groups of folks, the ones that still watch OTA broadcasts and those who solely watch content via downloads and rips.

[–]onebit 1 point2 points ago

I've never understood why cable costs more than Internet.

[–]excoriator 1 point2 points ago*

Cable programming is aggregated from a bunch of companies, each of whom expect to be paid for every subscriber their channels are delivered to. Wholesale Internet access is a commodity service that to work, needs only to be acquired from one of several companies. [edit] The Internet wholesaler doesn't care if you divvy up their Internet among 10 customers or 10 million... the cost to access it is based on bandwidth and throughput.

[–]matt_maddox 0 points1 point ago

For me it was all about getting rid of the overpriced cable company. I had a TiVo before, so I never watched the commercials. I actually see more commercials now because of Hulu than I ever did when I had cable, but I don't care because it's a tenth of the cost.

[–]frequentpooper 1 point2 points ago

I don't mind paying for convenience and a high-quality signal, but the $80/month I was paying was not proportionate to the value I was receiving. Now I pay $8/month for Netflix streaming and $8/month for Hulu Plus, and get virtually everything I want. We don't really even watch live content, even though we get a decent signal from our antenna.

[–]maniaq 0 points1 point ago

I've never had cable - but I will admit I've grown quite intolerant of commercials on FTA since installing an HTPC...

this subreddit is just the closest thing I've found to one that is specifically about HTPC hardware/software (obviously I'm too lazy to look into creating one - hey, getting MythTV configured just right is hard work enough ;)

[–]RoboNinjaPirate 0 points1 point ago

For me, It's Cost Cutters, not Cordcutters.

Getting rid of commercials is secondary at best.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point ago

it's getting value for money from my TV entertainment. Paying $100/month to watch the 2 or 3 shows I actually like to watch, along with a ton of other crappy content and a shit load of ads is not "value for money".

Paying for a VPN and a torrent box does give me value for money.

[–]original_4degrees 0 points1 point ago

cant it be both?

[–]toiletscribble 0 points1 point ago

Personally I think it is about watching what you want, when you want, without being bombarded with commercials. I am downloading from usenet mostly but I am open to paying for services that contain no commercials and are easy to use like netflix, HBO Go, etc.

[–]navarone21 0 points1 point ago

Is HBO Go now available outside of having the cable package?

[–]toiletscribble 1 point2 points ago

Nope. Not unless you have a friend with a cable package.

[–]navarone21 0 points1 point ago

Damn...

[–]RugerRedhawk 0 points1 point ago

I think it's about ditching the incredibly expensive cable plans. I pay $5.40 a month to time warner for basic cable (no ota signal at my house) and $7.95 a month to Netflix. I am overwhelmed with more content than my family could possibly consume, and save a ton of money.

[–]pudds 1 point2 points ago

Don't forget those of us who can't get OTA tv.

[–]DigitalMindShadow 0 points1 point ago

My personal preference is to just watch as little TV as possible. Seems to achieve both ends pretty well and frees up my time for things that are more valuable to me.

[–]Ontopourmama 0 points1 point ago*

I watch broadcast TV and don't mind commercials. I know that without commercials there is no money to produce a show but what I do mind is paying a cable company for the exact same content and still having to watch commercials.

[Edit] I do maintain the most basic package only because it allows me a higher bandwidth. ATT caps at 150GB/month without it, 250GB/mo with it.

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