Poll

Do you pay for cable tv?

Only registered users are allowed to vote for this poll.
74 votes were received.

Yes	33		45%
No	39		53%
I AM M A V I C	2		2%

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OP didn't vote?

uVerseTV. I have a bundle with 300Gb Fibre.

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San Antonio, TX (in the old city)


"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." - Eli Weisel

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

"I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it." - Billy Graham 1981

"Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise" - Barry Goldwater

He/she's waiting to see which way the wind blows - it will hopefully blow better than cable because cable sucks.

Dumped cable before all of the main streaming services went online. Best thing I ever did.

Are you talking about people who receive Cable TV but don't pay for it, in the 1980's this was commonly referred to as "Stealing Cable". Got more difficult when they started scrambling the video signal and then going digital and encrypting.

Quote
GGD
Are you talking about people who receive Cable TV but don't pay for it, in the 1980's this was commonly referred to as "Stealing Cable". Got more difficult when they started scrambling the video signal and then going digital and encrypting.

Damn, I wish I would have made that an option!

Quote
GGD
Are you talking about people who receive Cable TV but don't pay for it, in the 1980's this was commonly referred to as "Stealing Cable". Got more difficult when they started scrambling the video signal and then going digital and encrypting.

A friend moved into some sketchy apartments in the 90s. I noticed the cable box had been broken open and a bunch of splitters attached.

I attached one more for him....

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San Antonio, TX (in the old city)


"All that is required for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
“Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." - Eli Weisel

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Theodore Roosevelt (1918)

"I don’t want to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political right. The hard right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it." - Billy Graham 1981

"Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise" - Barry Goldwater

We do and I hate it, but not enough to get the Mrs. mad at me.

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“No persons are more frequently wrong, than those who will not admit they are wrong.” -- François de La Rochefoucauld

"Those who cannot accept the past are condemned to revise it." -- Geo. Mathias

The German word for contraceptive is “Schwangerschaftsverhütungsmittel”. By the time you finished saying that, it’s too late

I don't pay for TV but am dependent on Comcast for internet.

I am only half screwed.

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Staunton, Virginia

Back in the 80s and 90s "hot boxes" were commonly advertised in the newspaper classifieds. The non-English newspapers were especially bold. I heard a guy comes to your home and installs it for you too. I heard you get all the premium channels and even every Pay Per View event for free. I also heard you could hook it up to a VCR and record PPV events so your classmates in school could go over and watch WrestleMania after school. That's what I heard.

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Quote
Ombligo
We do and I hate it, but not enough to get the Mrs. mad at me.

When we switched, I signed up for a couple of the 1-week free trials and then found the one that had all the channels my wife wanted and that seemed most cable-like. Then I asked her (gently!) if she would try Youtube TV for the week and told her that she still had cable. She agreed to and liked it and we went forward. It did help that the cable company wasn't able to get her favorite channel to stop pixelating despite several tries.

Back in those daze I repaired CATV equipment. Yeah I got everything, in every room.

Tier information was digital pulses on the sound carrier. If you ran to many TV's the level would get to low to see the pulses and people would call and complain about their pay channels. Then someone would come out and bust them for not paying for the extra TVs in the bedroom, den, basement, you know.


When they went digital I was working in a another profession and Bootstrapping Satellite signals was the way to go.

Later the internet was coming into it's stride and the question was when was I going to take down that State Flower (satellite dish) beside the house. The bird baths were pointed straight up to get the free porn.

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Staunton, Virginia



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2020 06:32AM by Bernie.

interweb only with an OTA.

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!#$@@$#!

proofraed by OwEn the c@t.



Nobody remembers their first download, but everyone remembers their 1st LP.

.....like when your spouse gives you a dirty look for 'something you did'......and you will 'pay for' later.....

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_____________________________________

I reject your reality and substitute my own!

I've never had cable. Never seen anything worth paying for whenever I've been to someone house who have it or staying at a hotel with it.

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Portsmouth, Va

Not cable but satellite

Quote
Bernie
I don't pay for TV but am dependent on Comcast for internet.
I am only half screwed.

Same here and since Verizon is permitted* to Red Line FIOS service areas,
looks like I'm stuck with Comcrap!
Good news; Comcast is installing miles of fiber now, I've got a fiber hub
within 1/4 mile. DL Speed is now 400+.

* Thank you corrupt politicians!

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39°36'17"N 75°44'43"W

DuckDuckGo
The search engine that doesn't track you.

DemComm Records 2021 Greatest Hits
includes:
Taxman by Joe & Nancy's Rich Ice Cream Band
The Humpty Dance by The Harris-Brown Hookup
Lets Spend The Night Together by The Fang-Swalwell Gang
Díaz-Canel Is A Friend of Ours by The AOC Squad
My Old Kentucky Retirement Home by MitchMcC & The Soggy Boxer Boys
Burning Down The House by Merrick & The Goons
Back In the USSR by Bernie's Red Square Trio

We get cable TV only because we use Comcast for internet and it costs more if we only get internet only than if we get a combo of internet and cable. We almost never actually use the cable TV part of the service.

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"In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion." (1987) -- Carl Sagan

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RgrF
......... because cable sucks.

That is sad. I've had Comcast cable TV since 1983 and have been very happy with it. Maybe 10 problems during that time, and all have been quickly solved. I've had internet with Comcast since 2000, and any problems have been fixed in short order. Prices for these services fluctuate among Comcast and the competition, depending on what is offered by whom at the moment. Overall, I would not change anything. The TV packages offered by the competition don't suit me as well as Comcast.

I'm also quite happy with Comcast's mobile phone service.

The streaming services now being offered don't cover all of my TV needs: some just don't have anything I want to see.

Most people in my area started with Comcast when it was the only game in town, and are still with it. Very few satellite dishes to be seen. ATT phone line TV/internet runs a distant second.

The one thing I don't like about Comcast is very little preventive maintenance is done, if any. No tree trimming. A branch has to fall and take down a line. Only then will the company act, and they try to wait until the phone company clears the debris.

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Ed (modelamac)

I think I will just put an OUT OF ORDER
sticker on my head and call it a day.

....for the most part cable is good but all the fees.....fees for local channels.....fee for remote....fee for everything.......and then they raise rates.........

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_____________________________________

I reject your reality and substitute my own!

Quote
modelamac
The one thing I don't like about Comcast is very little preventive maintenance is done, if any. No tree trimming. A branch has to fall and take down a line. Only then will the company act, and they try to wait until the phone company clears the debris.

If a pole has power lines on it, the power company owns the poles. The phone and cable are tenants. The power company is responsible for tree trimming.

If there are no power lines, the phone company owns the poles and cable is the tenant. Now the phone company is responsible for tree trimming. The cable company is only responsible for tree trimming when there are no other services on the pole (if you don't live in an area where a city/county has assumed responsibility for all the tree trimming).

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In tha 360. MRF User Map

Where I live now there is NO over the air TV so I have the most basic cable service. Spectrum charges about $40 on top of internet. I'm contemplating switching to YouTube TV which offers more but also would cost more. The only streaming service I have is AppleTV+ which was free for the first year.

I watched free cable TV for many years with an EyeTV and splitter on the incoming cable.

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Northern California Coast

We must just have had bad experience with cable TV over the last 30+ years.

We had cable in all rooms of our house, then cable scrambled and demanded $5/box/room, BEFORE digital conversion. This was just scrambling. Why not provide one de-coder at the main cable and be done with it? We were good paying customers. This was right after two rate jumps, and this was the last straw for my wife, who refused to pay the extra fee for each box AND the inconvenience of using a cable box instead of the basic tuners built into our TVs. Cable treated everyone like crap since there is no decent OTA in our area. With the so-called 'Triple Play', we were paying over $220 plus taxes for cable, internet and landline. No paid channels like HBO etc. For ONE TV.

Internet breaks out to $65/month of that well over $220 price now in town; my guess is cable was about $140/month price out of the Triple Play. You can now get a LOT of content for over $100 a month - YouTubeTV is our single block, but we also do subscribe to CBS All Access, Hulu, and Youtube Premium (which also gives us google play music, worth $15/month alone for streaming music). I did not include Netflix since we had that even when we had cable. [we do have our home video library, too, from handbrake conversions of our purchased content shared via an iTunes server, now on PLEX.]

I know that cable was basically an 'all-you-can-eat' content source. But it was expensive, and we could not direct our $$ to the content we wanted more of. And on-demand content was terrible or expensive, and every single other service like DVR was terrible. Not to count the complete lack of innovation in the set top box or interface.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2020 11:50AM by sekker.

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vicrock
Not cable but satellite

ditto

Which seems fair enough, as I don't have cable.

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I am that Masked Man.

All you can do, is all you can do.

There’s trouble — it's time to play the sound of my people.

Your boos mean nothing to me, I've seen what you cheer for.

Insisting on your rights without acknowledging your responsibilities isn’t freedom, it’s adolescence.

I've been to the edge of the map, and there be monsters.

We are a government of laws, not men.

Everybody counts or nobody counts.

When a good man is hurt,
all who would be called good
must suffer with him.

You and I have memories longer than the road that stretches out ahead.

There is no safety for honest men except
by believing all possible evil of evil men.

We don’t do focus groups. They just ensure that you don’t offend anyone, and produce bland inoffensive products. —Sir Jonathan Ive

An armed society is a polite society.
And hope is a lousy defense.

You make me pull, I'll put you down.

I *love* SIGs. It's Glocks I hate.

Nope; not for at least 5 years, I think. Don't miss it a bit.

OTA digital antenna for local news (becoming less of a thing; local channel features its stories on YouTube & livecasts its weather event broadcasts via Facebook and their own app). Not a live sports watcher, though I'll tune in for highlights on YouTube.

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I dumped cable TV back in 2005. The first month was rough but, after that, I haven’t missed it and, never looked back. If more people voted with their wallets, prices would go down and service should go up.

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testcase
If more people voted with their wallets, prices would go down and service should go up.

I'm seeing just the opposite with printed newspapers.

Not since September/October last year. 500/500 Fios.
Still streaming Amazon/Netflix and added Hulu. Cable over the Air when needed/wanted mainly for me to watch local news and latenight (with 2 tuner HD homerun) Moved a lot of dvd Blu ray movies to digital services like
Movies Anywhere/iTunes/Vudu/GooglePlay. Had to repurchase a lot. Vudu has disc to digital for $2, convert your dvd or Blu ray Movies to their service. Some convert others don’t. Buy most digital movies online for less that $5/6 on reddit. There is a “massive master list” of Vudu compatible movies. Cheaper convert that way. Also bought two AppleTV 4Ks and three amazon fire stick 4K.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/07/2020 03:25PM by Carm.

I would kill cable in a heartbeat if it wasn't for my elderly Pop's addiction to Nascar. It's pretty much the only thing he watches that is must see.

I'm happy with Netflix/Prime/ATV streaming and my vast collection of ripped movies and TV shows. That's more than enough TV for me.

And yeah, I pay for cable. I pay waaaay too much for cable.

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Mr. Lahey: A lot of people, don’t know how to drink. They drink against the grain of the liquor. And when you drink against the grain of the liquor? You lose.

Randy: What the @#$%& are you talking about?

Quote
Rick-o
I would kill cable in a heartbeat if it wasn't for my elderly Pop's addiction to Nascar. It's pretty much the only thing he watches that is must see.

Not my personal cup of tea, but there are other ways to watch. [www.technadu.com]

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Zoidberg

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Rick-o
I would kill cable in a heartbeat if it wasn't for my elderly Pop's addiction to Nascar. It's pretty much the only thing he watches that is must see.

Not my personal cup of tea, but there are other ways to watch. [www.technadu.com]

Thank you. I will look into it.

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Mr. Lahey: A lot of people, don’t know how to drink. They drink against the grain of the liquor. And when you drink against the grain of the liquor? You lose.

Randy: What the @#$%& are you talking about?

That's interesting, at first glance, Kodi seems to embody many original Napster attributes.