Showtime Standalone Online Service To Debut In Early July

[dalyew]

I'm guessing Eardemon is over the age of 40 (my money is on over 50) and willing to spend thousands of dollars on tv entertainment each year. If so, he won't get the allure of these iptv services which is primarily geared for the budget minded cord cutters who want to watch what they want, when they want on any device they want without paying hundreds of dollars a month to do so. I am over 40 & love my Directv but have reached the point where I think it's idiotic for me to be paying over $150 for the benefits you rightfully outlined but at that price, and with the option to switch to these iptv services at a third of the price, satellite & cable TV service has become a luxury for many people like myself.

 

[EarDemon]

I actually find myself typing the name of a show or movie more often on my cable TV settop box than on any Netflix app. With Netflix, I either browse my recommendations in-app (which after 12+ years of rating content on Netflix are pretty spot on) or I search shows using a regular keyboard on my laptop.

I don’t like having things ‘recommended’ to me based on tracking my habits. Which is why I rarely use things services like Pandora, never login to service like YouTube unless I have a reason to or have a personalized news feeds and whatnot. DirecTV also recommends programming for me to watch, which I ignore. I am a human being, I am not a part of some algorithm. Yes, I am well aware stuff like this is all around us, and I’m not paranoid about anything, I just flat out don’t like the idea and would rather not have suggestions made to me about things I may like or things I may be interested in.

With the cable TV settop box, I'd have to know the air date, time, and channel to quickly find it in an onscreen guide (and even still, that's much more than three button presses to pull up the guide, select the date, scroll to the channel, and then scroll to the time slot and go through the set up recording process). With so many damn TV channels, half the time I don't remember the channel number associated with any given TV network, which are prone to change every few years. I watch at least a half-dozen series on Syfy each year, but even with a gun to my head, I couldn't tell you what channel number that was in my cable TV package.

Don’t you only have to do that once per series? Set it and forget it. It’s not a big deal really. I just set up recording last night for the two new shows premiering on HBO next weekend, Ballers and The Brink. It took about 10 seconds total.

Regarding quality, the 1080p (with Dolby Digital Plus audio) streaming I get from Netflix via PS3/PS4 blows my cable TV's over-compressed 720p/1080i quality out of the water. I can't imagine what Netflix's 4K programming will look like once I make that jump. The quality of my local CW's HD broadcasts are almost unwatchable, with terrible macro-blocking during any kind of fast movement. Unfortunately, I'm too impatient to wait for many of my favorite shows to be added to Netflix streaming so I put up with thepoor broadcast quality.

I guess nothing I care to watch is in Netflix’s super duper HD. Every time I’ve watched something on Netflix and did an A-B comparison cable and satellite were noticeably better.

But I have been able to catch up on many great shows I've missed over the years on Netflix, including Breaking Bad, Sons of Anarchy and the Blacklist. Netflix streams the uncensored versions of TV shows, by the way (and yes, there is a difference between what airs on broadcast TV and on Netflix when it comes to M-rated shows).Not to mention, House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, Marco Polo, and Marvel's Daredevil are as good as anything on broadcast or premium cable right now.

I guess that’s where I differ from the rest of the world. If I wanted to watch Sons of Anarchy, I would have watched it when it originally aired. And I did. I watched the first few episodes and didn’t care for it and stopped. I guess since I tend to watch more TV then most, I’m always online looking for new shows that may interest me and watch them as they debut. And I have made it a point to at least check out nearly every single new series on the premiums in the past 10 years.


And what shows are uncensored on Netflix that were originally not? By ‘Broadcast TV’, if you mean OTA TV I personally could careless since network TV typically blows big time, but I’d like to know what if any cable series were edited. Netflix’s original programming doesn’t do much for me. Like I said I found House of Cards boring, Orange Is The New Black didn’t do anything for me when I saw it at a friend’s house, I don’t do comic book movies/TV shows so Daredevil is out. Next year when I do another free trial, I’ll watch the new season of Longmire though, unless they totally ruin it.

The "Watch" and "Go" apps come in pretty handy since half my local college's games end up on ESPN3 instead of on the regular cable TV ESPN channels. The quality isn't great, but it's better than nothing and the apps are easy to use.

I can see how that would be useful for sports. I passively follow our UB Bulls but the MAC doesn’t get a lot of national coverage unless one of the teams plays a payola game against one of the big time schools and gets blown out. I’ve seen UB games listed for ESPN 3 but never watched. UB seems to be getting more coverage on ESPN U the past few years especially near the end of the NCAAF season when they tend to play a few weeknight games.

 

[EarDemon]

The part I put in bold is where you completely lost me. You say binge watching is an idiotic concept and that you can't take watching the same characters in the same situations over and over and then follow that up with saying you watch several episodes of reality TV back to back.

I don’t really consider watching two half an hour shows back to back and then moving on to something else ‘binge watching’.

Like Zookster said, to each their own, but I find all the reality shows to be the most idiotic part of TV. That was one of the reasons I canceled my TV subscription for a year and half. I was sick of paying for a couple hundred channels filled with crappy reality shows when I could pay much less money for the few TV shows I actually like.

While edited and manipulated, I love watching shows like Storage Wars, Shipping Wars, Food Truck Road Race. If for nothing else it shows people who take initiative with their lives. I love Capitalism and these shows and shows like it demonstrate what Capitalism and going into business for your self are all about. I also like my low brow reality shows like Impractical Jokers and My Strange Addiction.

Your statement of not wanting to watch the same characters in the same situations over and over again would stop you from watching pretty much every show on TV

How do you figure? I like watching episodes of the same show a week a part. I guess I should have said I don't like watching the same shows over and over and over back to back to back as it gets boring fast.

As for the rest of your arguments against streaming, it's clear that you are very set in your ways and we aren't going to change your mind. I'm not going to even try to do that. For people who are open to change, streaming can be a good alternative to save some money depending on their personal situation. We can argue all day about whether watching content on a streaming device like the Xbox One or your TWC DVR is a better experience but again, this is subjective.

Yes I am set in my ways. Until I find something better. I fail to see how any of this is better. And when it’s all said and done, IPTV services will look more like traditional cable bundles than anything else.

 

[EarDemon]

I'm guessing Eardemon is over the age of 40 (my money is on over 50) and willing to spend thousands of dollars on tv entertainment each year.

I’m 32 actually. Both my wife and I have decent jobs, not too terribly high paying but decent. After 10 years working a dead end job I got an entry level IT Network Administration position and it pays a little better than most. My wife is in the accounting field and has made a few advancements in her career and she’s slowly moving up. Neither one of us drink, we don’t smoke, we don’t gamble. I personally spend next to no money on big label clothes or fashion, that stuff isn’t important to me. Don’t really eat out much, unless we go on a road trip. We don’t spend $7 a day on some overpriced foofoo frape thing from Starbucks. Where I used to work, every Friday and Saturday a bunch of guys would go the bar around the corner and blow their pay checks and then would wonder why I was able to afford nicer cars, and various electronic toys and they weren’t. I was the first person I knew with an XM or Sirius subscription. Back in the early days of satellite radio I would be mocked out for ‘paying for radio’ by the same guys who would take two shots of something that tasted like horse pi$$ at the bar and be out more money than I pay for a months’ worth of service.


So no, we are not budget minded people. Other than our respective car payments, we have no debt. No credit card debt, we own our home outright and have no student loans. We both have strong savings accounts, and decent retirement plans in place. At my previous job I was paid hourly and had plenty of overtime opportunities and took advantage of every single one and was able to build up stack of cash working a minimum of 65 hours a week for almost two years straight.

If so, he won't get the allure of these iptv services which is primarily geared for the budget minded cord cutters who want to watch what they want, when they want on any device they want without paying hundreds of dollars a month to do so.

Here’s the thing, I want to watch my content within 24 hours after it airs. Which one of these IPTV services can I watch tonight’s Ultimate Fighter on tomorrow evening at 5PM when I get home from work? I don’t want to wait 6 months to a year or longer for my favorite shows to become available across a half a dozen different streaming platforms. Because of the amount of shows I watch, when you factor in the costs of streaming services, the cost of paying per episode for some shows, plus the inconvenience of it all, In the end these solutions won’t work out to be much cheaper than just turning on a cable or satellite box and hitting the DVR button. Not to mention live sports. And the only device I want to watch it on is my TV. I don’t want to watch anything other than a quick YouTube clip on a smartphone or tablet.

 

[Bruce]

Here’s the thing, I want to watch my content within 24 hours after it airs. I don’t want to wait 6 months to a year or longer for my favorite shows to become available across a half a dozen different streaming platforms.

I don't like to wait a year till cable shows show up on Netflix but I do love binge watching, for example after this Sunday we will watch all of the fifth season of Game of Thrones, I hate watching just a episode, we save them up until the season ends then watch.

Cable shows are great for that since most of them are only 10-13 episodes a season.

As far as Netflix goes, without it we never would of discovered Breaking Bad, Mad Men, SOA, Blacklist and a bunch of others.

 

[Zookster]

As far as Netflix goes, without it we never would of discovered Breaking Bad, Mad Men, SOA, Blacklist and a bunch of others.

Same exact experience here. There are so many shows that I normally wouldn't watch because they don't seem like my kind of show (I mainly watch sci-fi/fantasy). But then a year or two after they come out, I start to hear about how they were nominated or won a bunch of Emmys or Golden Globes. I can't tell you how many I've been able to catch up on by watching past seasons on Netflix while recording the current season on broadcast TV until I'm ready to watch it.

I can't really justify spending what my cable company would charge me to subscribe to two or three different premiums. But for the price of $8 for Netflix Streaming and $10 for one blu-ray disc at a time, I can get everything I want. The only hitch is for some movies (not all), I have to wait few weeks before Netflix carries them on disc after they come out on disc/PPV -- but still much sooner than the premiums get them. At the same time, I'm getting all the great TV shows the premiums produce (Homeland, Game of Thrones, True Detective, etc.) -- just waiting a year for the new season to come out on disc.

 

[john262]

Not just one usage! Most cable companies charge a higher rate for 'internet only' customers. Mediacom around here charges a $15 surcharge if you don't have TV or Phone service. New internet customers don't see it as it doesn't apply to the sign up promos.

I'd be glad pay that $15 in comparison to a $100+ cable or satellite bill. And it depends on where you are. I get stand alone DSL with no cap and plenty of bandwidth for streaming for $40 a month. And I'd have that anyway even if I were not streaming so it's not an additional charge. But none of this is etched in stone. If they raise their rates I will reconsider my options. And if satellite ever becomes a better deal than OTA plus streaming then I'll switch back and probably get a lucrative sign up bonus.

 

[lparsons21]

I'd be glad pay that $15 in comparison to a $100+ cable or satellite bill. And it depends on where you are. I get stand alone DSL with no cap and plenty of bandwidth for streaming for $40 a month. And I'd have that anyway even if I were not streaming so it's not an additional charge. But none of this is etched in stone. If they raise their rates I will reconsider my options. And if satellite ever becomes a better deal than OTA plus streaming then I'll switch back and probably get a lucrative sign up bonus.

I use streaming but not OTA and cable. My 100/10Mb internet service with a 1Tb data cap costs me $50/month. I use cable and my owned Tivo Roamio and have all their normal cable channels, HBO, Showtime and Encore and it costs me another $80/month. For $130/month total I'm getting all the channels I will watch and virtually unlimited internet service. I figger that's a fair deal.

 

[whitewolf8214]

Cool Thanks for sharing and can't wait!!

 

[Poke]

Showtime Launches Its New Streaming Video Service

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Showtime-Launches-Its-New-Streaming-Video-Service-134398

 

[john262]

I use streaming but not OTA and cable. My 100/10Mb internet service with a 1Tb data cap costs me $50/month. I use cable and my owned Tivo Roamio and have all their normal cable channels, HBO, Showtime and Encore and it costs me another $80/month. For $130/month total I'm getting all the channels I will watch and virtually unlimited internet service. I figger that's a fair deal.

I'm happy you have something that is working for you. I would never presume to tell anyone else what to do. In my case I'm paying less than $20 monthly for Netflix and Hulu. It cost me less than $100 to put up an OTA antenna and that was a one time charge. So I am happy but admitably I don't watch that much TV anyway so that might be a factor in explaining why I don't need all of those other things.

 

[lparsons21]

I watch quite a bit of TV. I have both Hulu and Netflix, but they aren't enough to meet my wants so I have cable too. I'm a big boxing fan and streaming just doesn't cut it for boxing or most sports for that matter.
And that's why we have all these different ways to skin the TV cat!