DirecTV Spinoff Announcement

[CA_Traveler]

In todays news AT&T is spinning off DTV and other pay services to private equity firm TPG Capital as a 30% owner which will provide AT&T $8B in cash. Valued at $16.25B compared to the 2015 purchase for $66B.

[CA_Traveler]

For us DTV or Dish provides us news and entertainment from one company at home or on the road. Furthermore having a receiver that records and hence provides continuinity across the home/road and road/home transistions is appreciated.

Let me also state that we largely watch recorded shows when we want and skip over commercials. We are OK with watching the news hours later or shows weeks later. Generally we watch news or shows in about 60% of the air time.

Perhaps we'll switch to Dish as it appears to be the better provider. For us it involves setting up Dish at home (apparently involves buying the receiver?) and purchasing the RF Mogul dish kit to convert the RV to Dish.

The various DTV transistions and future outlook are troubling. Looking further ahead at technology advances I suspect satellite TV like DTV/Dish/Shaw etc will fade into history.

[wa8yxm]

When I was RVing I used 100% OTA TV..
Today in an amartment I can only get one station (Steel bones in the building) so I pay for cable 50/month. I HATE PAYING FOR TV.

[bgum]

We also switched from Direct after being with them over 20 years. More channels less cost. Much better equipment. Now have recorder on all boxes. Larger hard disk. Also more options and less expensive to take on road.

[way2roll]

Cut the cord a few years ago. Had DTV, then cable etc. Grew tired of paying a lot of money for them to make decisions on what 200 channels I got. I watched about 3 of them. So now I get to choose what I want to watch and don't pay for the hundreds of channels I don't.

[Lwiddis]

I'm not sure when the TV business will settle down...if ever.

Thank, chuck. We will investigate Dish again.

[chuckbear]

That still leaves AT&T with 70% ownership so I doubt anything will improve. We switched to Dish after 25 years with DirecTV and it has been one of our best decisions. Chuck

[ken56]

Personally I think I will be giving up on TV. All these spin offs and streaming things are just money grabs. Like the price we pay for cable/satellite services aren't high enough already now they want to charge for every program it seems especially if it's a popular one. It has degraded into all garbage anyway....250 channels and nothing's on.

[wildtoad]

That’s one heck of a tax write off.