Price for Cable & Satellite services

[barnabas1969]

I stopped using the cable company's e-mail when I moved and was told that I could not keep my e-mail address even though I was only moving about 10 miles and staying with the same provider. Brighthouse changes your e-mail address every time you move. That sucks, but Gmail is awesome.

[Crash2009]

We pay about $150/month. $40 of that is for some rented equipment-DVR, STB, a couple DTA's, and a modem. The $150 includes the rented equipment, a landline, 25/4 internet, approximately 50 HD channels, 40 music channels, and 120 other channels. Also included are 6 access accounts to XFinity.com (On Demand) where we can watch some of the same content we are subscribed to, streaming over the internet. (comes in handy at the lake, or at my desk at work). They also have a few TV apps for the phones and tablets. I think, around here, Comcast provides pretty good value for their service's.

[wilkcards]

$83/month with Comcast: blast plus
includes digital economy cable package, a CableCard, and blast internet (50/10).
The blast internet is great. I'm actually routinely getting 65/12 though they advertise up to 50/10
I just recently ditched phone, and many channels to cut my bill by $100/month. It's an adjustment not having espn, mtv, tnt, and others but I'm getting used to it. It wasn't worth what I was paying for them.

[slowbiscuit]

Now if only I can get her to give up on the landline phone number that we could probably do without, especially if I hook one of those OBI boxes up to a Google Voice account.

Buy a Ooma. I have one and love it. It is a VOIP solution you can keep your current number and you only get charged your local fees for your area a month. Mine is about $3.75 a month. You also get 911 just in case. Here is a link just in case you have never heard of it.

http://www.ooma.com/

Works with whatever phones you have. Check it out. I have had mine for a year now and love it!!! You can buy them at Amazon, Newegg, and Bestbuy.

Yes but Obi 100 is way cheaper and 100% free per month, but you DON'T get 911 service. Most folks have cells so not as important as it used to be, but it is a caveat. I've had one for almost 2 years now and it works great.

http://www.amazon.com/OBi100-Telephone- ... ds=obitake

[leroys1000]

Magic Jack plus costs about $70 to buy with a year of service and about
$30 a year after that.
It has 911 service.
You can set it up on your computer,then take and connect it to your router
so you don't have to leave the computer on.

[BiggAW]

I've got a Comcast bundle for two years, where I'm at $90 for a year, and $110 for the next year (minus customer-owned equipment credit). It was an online thing that I managed to get them to fulfill in store after several chats and phone calls with unhelpful representatives. There's no contract, and I was able to add Blast! on for $10/mo. It includes the second tier of digital, not Digital Starter which is the defacto standard. I don't what I'm going to do when the 2 years comes up, but by then maybe the other cable company will have something compelling to offer (Groton, CT has two cable companies, Comcast, and one that up until recently was municipally owned).

They really get you, as any of the "cheap" packages below Digital Starter don't have any of the channels you actually want, like ESPN or the RSNs (all for college bball). I don't really blame Comcast for it though, it's the content providers that are totally out of control, and the cable companies just keep letting them get away with it. Not only are the carriage fees getting ridiculous, but the force-feed bundling has completely broken the market. That, and we have WAY too many channels. Most of them are garbage. Even though the whole system would collapse with a-la-carte, I almost want to see it, as it would apply some free-market economics to TV, and would kill off the weak channels (i.e. 90% of them), and maybe then Comcast would have enough bandwidth to stop triple-channeling their QAMs. I can dream, right?

[LuckyDay]

Every time someone mentions Comcast and their pricing it makes me happy Comcast isn't around in my area. It's crazy to me to think that something like ESPN wouldn't be offered with the most basic of cable packages.

I think the cheapest you can get it here on all of our providers is like the $30 basic package.

[crawfish]

Every time someone mentions Comcast and their pricing it makes me happy Comcast isn't around in my area. It's crazy to me to think that something like ESPN wouldn't be offered with the most basic of cable packages.

I think the cheapest you can get it here on all of our providers is like the $30 basic package.

Last I heard, ESPN charges the cable companies something like $5 a month...

[foxwood]

I resent paying $5/month to subsidise other peoples need to subsidise milllionaire "sportsmen"!

[barnabas1969]

I resent paying $5/month to subsidise other peoples need to subsidise milllionaire "sportsmen"!

Amen!

[slowbiscuit]

I resent paying $5/month to subsidise other peoples need to subsidise milllionaire "sportsmen"!

As a big sports fan, I appreciate your subsidy.

Yes, the existing pricing model is broken, but they don't want to do a la carte packages. Some of them do offer 'family' or 'economy' packages which don't include sports channels.

[barnabas1969]

Mine only has two packages. The cheap one is just the basic channels, including the locals. To get most of the channels that I want to watch, I have to get the more expensive one. Then, if you want groups of other channels (sports, international channels, HDNET plus a few others, etc), you can add "packs" of channels to the more expensive package. You can also buy individual groups of premium channels (Showtime, HBO, Cinemax, etc)... or you can buy "packs" that give you 2, 3 or all of them.

If they offered "a la carte", I could probably cut my cable bill in half. I have about 200 channels that I never watch.

[TeddyR]

I would love an a-la-carte option. Unfortunatly without significant regulation I doubt that would happen. The companies that control the content would throw everything they have against it. The reason that the cablecos say that they cant offer "a-la-carte" is that the content providers wont give them the channels they (and thus their users) want without forcing them to license those channels with other "less attractive" channels. Examples from "ABC", if your cable co wants to carry Disney Channel, they must also pay for Disney XD and The Family Channel. Another example is the "Viacom" list.. If the cableco wants to carry any of MTV, MTV2, VH1, CMT, Tr3s, Comedy Central, Logo, BET, Spike, TV Land, Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon, TeenNick, Nicktoons, Nick Jr., or Palladia, then they have to pay for most of them to carry any of the others. This then gets passed on to the end users as a "bundle"..

[staknhalo]

I'm not a fan of a la carte. If you watch more than a literal handful of channels it's prob gonna be more expensive - they aren't gonna give you channels for 50 cents a piece or anything. I am a proponent of more targeted/specific channel packages.

[BiggAW]

The idea of a-la-carte is nice, except that you have to accept that 90% of the channels out there would implode with that model, and go straight out of business, as they survive on carriage fees. Now, if they cleaned all the old movies and garbage programming off, they wouldn't even have enough left for the remaining 10%, but it would be painful in the process, and unfortunately, a lot of people watch garbage content, which is why it's out there. There's also a lot of shows that are compelling for a season or two, and then get really boring, or the producers ruin them, but they just keep running and running and running them season after season.

[barnabas1969]

I would love an a-la-carte option. Unfortunatly without significant regulation I doubt that would happen. The companies that control the content would throw everything they have against it. The reason that the cablecos say that they cant offer "a-la-carte" is that the content providers wont give them the channels they (and thus their users) want without forcing them to license those channels with other "less attractive" channels. Examples from "ABC", if your cable co wants to carry Disney Channel, they must also pay for Disney XD and The Family Channel. Another example is the "Viacom" list.. If the cableco wants to carry any of MTV, MTV2, VH1, CMT, Tr3s, Comedy Central, Logo, BET, Spike, TV Land, Nick at Nite, Nickelodeon, TeenNick, Nicktoons, Nick Jr., or Palladia, then they have to pay for most of them to carry any of the others. This then gets passed on to the end users as a "bundle"..

I thought of a funny analogy... it's like asking a hot girl out on a date, and she tells you that in order to take her out, you have to find some guy who's willing to date her ugly sister.

[staknhalo]

I thought of a funny analogy... it's like asking a hot girl out on a date, and she tells you that in order to take her out, you have to find some guy who's willing to date her ugly sister.

That's why god invented the wingman. We've all had buddies jump on a grenade for us from time to time (I hope). Hell, I jumped on one or two myself. Bro code.

[barnabas1969]

I thought of a funny analogy... it's like asking a hot girl out on a date, and she tells you that in order to take her out, you have to find some guy who's willing to date her ugly sister.

That's why god invented the wingman. We've all had buddies jump on a grenade for us from time to time (I hope). Hell, I jumped on one or two myself. Bro code.

I think you and I would get along really well. Since we live so close (about 2 hours), we ought to get together some time. I come down to your area to go scuba diving every once in a while, so I'm in your area every month or two.