Still, these on-demand streaming services aren’t as bad as cable. You pay $15 to $60 a month and you aren’t stuck with any contracts. You can cancel your subscriptions whenever you want (or rotate them to save money), and best of all, you don’t have to deal with the cable company.
So much this on rotating them out, if you are willing to wait a month or two and binge an entire show from Hulu or CBS/Paramount+ or HBO Max then it's worth it to still do on demand streaming services.
The problem comes when you subscribe to services like YouTube TV, Sling, or Hulu with Live TV, which are direct replacements for cable. Like other streaming services, these live TV platforms are steadily losing content and increasing in price, to the point that they often cost more than a cable plan.
It's obvious that they used the drug dealer model with these services at the start with networks giving these channels to the services dirt cheap with the idea to test the waters of this seemingly niche idea. Now, it's not so niche and the channel providers want their cake back now that it's on a different plate.
If you aren't a "reality" TV person or a sports person there is little reason to have any form of "live" TV at this point because within a year most stuff comes to streaming. You can watch CBS News on YouTube/or their app for free, if you don't want CBS you can choose from several options on Pluto TV free, you can watch your local news usually through their websites or smart apps, you can also potentially use locast, but that's shaky as they are being sued and could disappear, and they also only cover select locations.
Your average cable provider, on the other hand, offers a 120-channel plan (with Fox Sports) for around $60 to $70 a month. Bundling that cable plan with 100 Mbps internet service pushes your monthly bill somewhere between $75 and $90 a month, which is still a better deal than streaming TV because it includes your internet. (Note: Some service providers may not offer bundles at this price, especially if you’re in a rural area.)
I'm in a major city suburb and can't get prices that low, we need to pay close to $150 for that package and that's before the taxes, hidden fees and mandatory gateway rentals.
The only streaming TV service with a better price than cable is Sling TV, which starts at just $30 a month. Sling is a fantastic alternative to basic cable or a “starter” cable plan, but its limited channel selection won’t jive with people who prefer larger packages.
Sling is great, if you can live without Fox Regional Sports owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, for around $60 you can get every channel they offer in English, I think it's around 80 for English and a handful of Spanish channels, but... we had a major problem with Sling, after we left a few months later somebody, I think Sling itself, reactivated the account, we called and they said tough, no refunds, and said somebody must have done it. I went through disabled the account, made sure to clear the passwords and cookies from the browser, deleted all the apps and it was fine, for a while. Then about a year later they did it again and refused to even talk to us, telling us this is not a problem on their end but ours, so we called the bank and the lady in the charge back department said this is not the first problem they've had with Sling and that it's happened to others and that the only option was to block Dish from doing business with our accoun...
Still, these on-demand streaming services aren’t as bad as cable. You pay $15 to $60 a month and you aren’t stuck with any contracts. You can cancel your subscriptions whenever you want (or rotate them to save money), and best of all, you don’t have to deal with the cable company.
So much this on rotating them out, if you are willing to wait a month or two and binge an entire show from Hulu or CBS/Paramount+ or HBO Max then it's worth it to still do on demand streaming services.
The problem comes when you subscribe to services like YouTube TV, Sling, or Hulu with Live TV, which are direct replacements for cable. Like other streaming services, these live TV platforms are steadily losing content and increasing in price, to the point that they often cost more than a cable plan.
It's obvious that they used the drug dealer model with these services at the start with networks giving these channels to the services dirt cheap with the idea to test the waters of this seemingly niche idea. Now, it's not so niche and the channel providers want their cake back now that it's on a different plate.
If you aren't a "reality" TV person or a sports person there is little reason to have any form of "live" TV at this point because within a year most stuff comes to streaming. You can watch CBS News on YouTube/or their app for free, if you don't want CBS you can choose from several options on Pluto TV free, you can watch your local news usually through their websites or smart apps, you can also potentially use locast, but that's shaky as they are being sued and could disappear, and they also only cover select locations.
Your average cable provider, on the other hand, offers a 120-channel plan (with Fox Sports) for around $60 to $70 a month. Bundling that cable plan with 100 Mbps internet service pushes your monthly bill somewhere between $75 and $90 a month, which is still a better deal than streaming TV because it includes your internet. (Note: Some service providers may not offer bundles at this price, especially if you’re in a rural area.)
I'm in a major city suburb and can't get prices that low, we need to pay close to $150 for that package and that's before the taxes, hidden fees and mandatory gateway rentals.
The only streaming TV service with a better price than cable is Sling TV, which starts at just $30 a month. Sling is a fantastic alternative to basic cable or a “starter” cable plan, but its limited channel selection won’t jive with people who prefer larger packages.
Sling is great, if you can live without Fox Regional Sports owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, for around $60 you can get every channel they offer in English, I think it's around 80 for English and a handful of Spanish channels, but... we had a major problem with Sling, after we left a few months later somebody, I think Sling itself, reactivated the account, we called and they said tough, no refunds, and said somebody must have done it. I went through disabled the account, made sure to clear the passwords and cookies from the browser, deleted all the apps and it was fine, for a while. Then about a year later they did it again and refused to even talk to us, telling us this is not a problem on their end but ours, so we called the bank and the lady in the charge back department said this is not the first problem they've had with Sling and that it's happened to others and that the only option was to block Dish from doing business with our account, so now our bank account has a block on any Dish Network and Sling charges. This probably doesn't happen to a lot of people but it was enough to scare me off their service.
So much this on rotating them out, if you are willing to wait a month or two and binge an entire show from Hulu or CBS/Paramount+ or HBO Max then it's worth it to still do on demand streaming services.
It's obvious that they used the drug dealer model with these services at the start with networks giving these channels to the services dirt cheap with the idea to test the waters of this seemingly niche idea. Now, it's not so niche and the channel providers want their cake back now that it's on a different plate.
If you aren't a "reality" TV person or a sports person there is little reason to have any form of "live" TV at this point because within a year most stuff comes to streaming. You can watch CBS News on YouTube/or their app for free, if you don't want CBS you can choose from several options on Pluto TV free, you can watch your local news usually through their websites or smart apps, you can also potentially use locast, but that's shaky as they are being sued and could disappear, and they also only cover select locations.
I'm in a major city suburb and can't get prices that low, we need to pay close to $150 for that package and that's before the taxes, hidden fees and mandatory gateway rentals.
Sling is great, if you can live without Fox Regional Sports owned by Sinclair Broadcasting, for around $60 you can get every channel they offer in English, I think it's around 80 for English and a handful of Spanish channels, but... we had a major problem with Sling, after we left a few months later somebody, I think Sling itself, reactivated the account, we called and they said tough, no refunds, and said somebody must have done it. I went through disabled the account, made sure to clear the passwords and cookies from the browser, deleted all the apps and it was fine, for a while. Then about a year later they did it again and refused to even talk to us, telling us this is not a problem on their end but ours, so we called the bank and the lady in the charge back department said this is not the first problem they've had with Sling and that it's happened to others and that the only option was to block Dish from doing business with our accoun...
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