DutchmenSport wrote:
You have to admit, for all the advances "technology" has come through promising to make things better for all of us, but at the same time making this world more and more dependent upon it, it sure can be a pain in the neck. It seems they give "us" a token offering to get us hooked, and then yank the cord and next thing we know we're paying big bucks when we've become dependent upon it and forgot how to get by without it. They give it to us, only in limited amounts so we are forced to pay even more. As we pay more, we become dependent more, and the vicious cycle continues on.
Direct TV is satellite driven and you can get it anywhere you can see the sky. There are some hoops you have to go through when you move from state to state to get local stations, but in general, the system is self-standing and self-reliant.
Add yet another complex layer of television viewing on top of the already complex layer of the Internet and WIFI, and the whole things is doomed to become a real pain-in-the-neck eventually ... guaranteed!
Personally, I don't have DirectTV or DishTV any more, because of the constantly rising prices. But ... opposed to "streaming video" that's dependent upon the Internet for normal television viewing .... well, I'll stick with the clear skies!
(we do have Netflix and Hulu... But Hulu freezes up too much, and you don't get normal television, so we do have over-the-air antenna viewing, and pay a premium for our cell phone data plans, If you REALLY want it .... you've just got to pay the price!)
Here is the local slant our one and only cable provider, Armstrong Cable, has now days.
We have business class fiber optic internet @ 200mbps download, 15 mbps upload and 1TB allowance for $79.95
Add to that the TV which totals out to $126.95. That's two HD boxes and a third SD, but with no HBO's or such.
Then add in phone, basically a re purposed Vonage thru them for $29.95.
Add in all the BS such as regulatory fee (state), tax (state), FCC user fee (Feds), franchise fee (State/County) and the whopping total is $230.98 per month. That' $10.40 discount in there for having all 3 so you could call it $241.38
Now I'm a moron as I also have Dish..... which is another $111.00 a month LOL.
The current thought is to kill off the TV and phone portion and just keep the cable internet as that is our only choice. That would knock the cable company portion down to in the range of $85.00 I think, but here is the kicker.
In this companies ultimate wisdom when you do not have all 3 services, TV, phone, internet but only internet, even though you're paying for 1TB of data as advertised, that changes to 200MB of data when you drop the other services, so forget any massive streaming like 4K movies @ 100MB each. They will however be happy to bill you an additional $10 per month for every 50GB you go over that 200GB limit. So if I wanted to stream a full TB that now costs me $245.00, $85.00 plus 800GB overage @ $10.00 every 50 LOL........
Back to square one. Its always going to cost $245.00 a month, and will go up at least $5.00 a year.
