I won't pay for something like this. Like others have said, being required to pay for stuff I don't watch is the reason I left Dish and traditional pay TV in the first place. Luckily for me, true a la carte already exists on the internet. You just need to change your thinking a little bit. Channels don't matter to me anymore. It's the content that's important. Why pay for the entire History channel if you just want to watch Vikings?
A good chunk of what I was paying Dish to watch was available to me for free OTA. I like baseball so I subscribe to MLB.tv. I wanted to watch Fargo so I bought a season pass on iTunes. By the way, that season pass comes in the form of a 1080p stream that looks better than FX's 720p channel on Dish and without commercials. I supplement my OTA and season passes with the Netflix and Amazon Prime subscriptions I was already paying for before I canceled Dish. The theme here is that I pay for exactly what I want to watch. I don't pay for a group of channels someone packaged for me.
Buying a TV package from Dish over the internet doesn't sound appealing to me. It sounds like getting back into the system I just left. That's the beauty of the internet though. There is more choice available so I can get content my way and other people can sign up for this if they want.
Only issue for me and many is the ability to watch streamed live sports.... esp college. Get this resolved and I am on board.
I hear you. Live sports are what kept me paying Dish as long as I did. I get my Tigers on MLB.tv and I decided I could live without the rest of it. Most of the really big college football games are available OTA and almost all NFL games are so I decided that would be enough for me. This new Disney deal got me all the ESPN college football and Monday Night Football I would be missing though. I can do without it but using my parents' Dish login means I don't have to. I realize that isn't helpful for most people who wouldn't have WatchESPN account info if they cut the cord.
Many people here constantly say they want Dish to drop all the sports channels. The problem with that is that pretty much everything else is easily available online. Sports is the only hook cable/satellite still have into many of us. If Dish did what some people here want and dropped the sports channels that hook would be gone. All those people holding out just so they can watch their sports would be gone too. Dish knows that and that's why they got the Disney deal done even if it was expensive.
What is noted below is the catch. You are NOT doing without and the access is still paid for via Dish. You are just using a gray area to access it. Again, the live college sports access is the issue. For many, me included. much of what I watch for college sports is NOT on OTA and this is backed up by the fact that very little of what I watch would be accessable.
The second issue for many not mentioned before is intenet connection speeds. Reality is many do not have spped avaialble yet to steam reliably.
I wonder how this affects their partnership with NimbleTV?
I'm sure Comcast, TW, Cox, ATT and Verizon are going to welcome this with open arms. Lol can we say buffer buffer
Yeah, I understand. The thing is that I would have still done this without ESPN access. In fact I did cancel Dish about 2 months before that was even available. Also, I have never used WatchESPN except for when it was first added to test it out. Now that I have it I'm sure I will watch a college football or Monday Night Football game from time to time this fall but I don't need ESPN and I sure wouldn't pay $80 per month for it anymore.
I haven't had traditional pay TV for several months now and I honestly don't miss it. It was surprising to see how little cable channel content I actually watch.
You have A La Carte already! Why do people keep saying they want it, it is available. Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, etc etc are all A La Carte services. You pay one basic price per month then for the shows or series that are not included you pay per episode or series. Then you can add on other packages such as MLB or Vudu etc...