The Death Blow for Subscription Television as We Know It

[Mike A]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2015/01/05/dish-new-sling-tv-streaming-service/21236795/

 

Long and short, $20/month to stream a group of about a dozen channels including ABC Family, Cartoon Network, CNN, Disney Channel, ESPN and ESPN 2, the Food Network, HGTV, TBS, TNT, The Travel Channel and Adult Swim.

 

IMHO, live sports have propped up the current model this long.    

[btq96r]

Dish finally did what every other provider was afraid to do.  They're going to get interest in it, and I expect to see the other providers like Charter and Comcast bundle it into their internet packages instead of a box and 100+ channels.

 

It has my attention as an addition to my OTA antenna and Roku options.

[peejman]

Interesting indeed.

[JohnC]

Yeah but as long as you have data caps like Comcast has, you will be maxing out or paying overage fees all the time.

Add that your not going to want to run a slow connection, so bare minimum 50 Mbps with optimum being their 105 Mbps and Comcast will still get you.

I'm patiently waiting for Google Fiber 1,000 Mbps and their Google TV.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Edited January 6, 2015 by JohnC

[Monkeyman2500]

This is interesting me. We're moving to a home that is on a mountain top and I doubt there is any type of cable service in the area. Does anyone know of other options besides dish for non cable areas. Also what about Internet services. Already killing my Verizon monthly allowance.

[Dirtshooter]

I am ready to cut Dish off anyway for allowing Fox to get off my T.V. I noticed that Fox wasn't mentioned in any of the packages.

[nightrunner]

Now if they would just offer a package that included FX, AMC, etc

[MacGyver]

I'm afraid it might be too little, too late.  Mind you, we don't consume a ton of sports, but we cut the cord a year or so ago.  My wife wasn't sold on it at the time, but was just as peeved at the constantly rising cable bills as I was.

 

I mentioned this to her a little while ago, and she replied, "I don't know that I'd be tempted to go back - even at that price.  I just don't miss it."

 

I'd love to see unbundled cable on principle, but I don't know that it will affect our family.

[2.ooohhh]

Yeah but as long as you have data caps like Comcast has, you will be maxing out or paying overage fees all the time.

Add that your not going to want to run a slow connection, so bare minimum 50 Mbps with optimum being their 105 Mbps and Comcast will still get you.

I'm patiently waiting for Google Fiber 1,000 Gbps and their Google TV.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It does not take a 50mbps connection to stream media for a typical household. My primary internet service is under 20mbps and only actually guaranteed to 12mbps down and no issues running two full quality streams from netflix. In fact the picture/sound quality from netflix is so good in our home theater that a few guests at our holiday movie party didn't believe that the movies were streamed from netflix. It's not blue ray quality but it's much higher quality than the compressed crap comcast was calling HD channels. My WAN averages 18mbps to stream a top quality Netflix stream to the theater and a standard HQ(1080p no surround sound) to our living room. The only content beating our streamed content are blue rad discs and uncompressed OTA MPEG 2.

 

Many people hit limitations due to outside factors in their home and assume their internet connection is not up to snuff, My FIL was not happy with his roku's quality and was about to upgrade his 6mb DSL service but I found 4 cheap wireless surveillance cameras were eating up a large chunk of the available WiFi bandwidth. I ran a simple 60 ft cat5 cable down the hallway to show him the difference. The roku's video is now worlds away better in quality, no more random buffering, and much faster loading. Now he's begging me to come help put an actual wired network in for several more rooms of the home.

 

Now bandwidth caps on the other hand can be a problem, and are a little more tricky. I turned down the quality on my wife's ipad a notch for netflix, and the same in the rooms of our home with 22" TVs(bedrooms) this cut down our Netflix bandwidth considerably unfortunately this is beyond many people's ability since on many devices it has to be done in the router configuration of the home network to force traffic from netflix to particular internal IPs to utilize less bandwidth.

 

I have no interest in this offering from Dish, but I know it will be a good option for some, and more options in the market are generally better for the consumer. I also look forward to google fiber mainly b/c internet service drastically needs more competition in the marketplace.

Edited January 6, 2015 by 2.ooohhh

[macville]

Yeah but as long as you have data caps like Comcast has, you will be maxing out or paying overage fees all the time.

Add that your not going to want to run a slow connection, so bare minimum 50 Mbps with optimum being their 105 Mbps and Comcast will still get you.

 

50Mbps?? Why would you even remotely need that much bandwidth to run a streaming service like this. That's 6.25 MB's a second. 6 Mpbs will get you a 1080p H264 stream no problem. Heck, I'm on 12 Mbps and I can run two HD streams and still have some bandwidth for web browsing and general internet use.

Plans like this are the way of the future. The companies that realize that today are going to be the market leader.

[tennesseetiger]

Yeah but as long as you have data caps like Comcast has, you will be maxing out or paying overage fees all the time.

Add that your not going to want to run a slow connection, so bare minimum 50 Mbps with optimum being their 105 Mbps and Comcast will still get you.

I'm patiently waiting for Google Fiber 1,000 Gbps and their Google TV.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Google will hurt some feelings in the TV world over the next few years...and I cant wait to see it happen. Companies like Comcast deserve everything they are going to get.

[LagerHead]

Yeah but as long as you have data caps like Comcast has, you will be maxing out or paying overage fees all the time.

Add that your not going to want to run a slow connection, so bare minimum 50 Mbps with optimum being their 105 Mbps and Comcast will still get you.

I'm patiently waiting for Google Fiber 1,000 Gbps and their Google TV.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

You're going to be waiting a long time for 1,000Gbps. ;)

[SupaRice]

This is one reason that the correct form of Net Neutrality is so very important.

[JohnC]

You're going to be waiting a long time for 1,000Gbps. ;)

Typo....

[JohnC]

50Mbps?? Why would you even remotely need that much bandwidth to run a streaming service like this. That's 6.25 MB's a second. 6 Mpbs will get you a 1080p H264 stream no problem. Heck, I'm on 12 Mbps and I can run two HD streams and still have some bandwidth for web browsing and general internet use.

Plans like this are the way of the future. The companies that realize that today are going to be the market leader.

I guess we're not a typical household, but at 50 Mbps, I can feel a drag at times. 105Mbps is the best for us.

But I have 3 iPhones, 1 iPad Air 2, 2 Acer Tablets, 2 Desktop PC's, and 5 laptops, 1 Roku and 1 Sony PlayStation in my home network.

We're not on all those devices all the time, but when we're all watching video, downloading and uploading at the same time, it can slow down.

[2.ooohhh]

I guess we're not a typical household, but at 50 Mbps, I can feel a drag at times. 105Mbps is the best for us.

But I have 3 iPhones, 1 iPad Air 2, 2 Acer Tablets, 2 Desktop PC's, and 5 laptops, 1 Roku and 1 Sony PlayStation in my home network.

We're not on all those devices all the time, but when we're all watching video, downloading and uploading at the same time, it can slow down.

How many are hard wired connections? ;)

[GlockSpock]

Yeah but as long as you have data caps like Comcast has, you will be maxing out or paying overage fees all the time.

Add that your not going to want to run a slow connection, so bare minimum 50 Mbps with optimum being their 105 Mbps and Comcast will still get you.

I'm patiently waiting for Google Fiber 1,000 Mbps and their Google TV.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

 

I guess we're not a typical household, but at 50 Mbps, I can feel a drag at times. 105Mbps is the best for us.

But I have 3 iPhones, 1 iPad Air 2, 2 Acer Tablets, 2 Desktop PC's, and 5 laptops, 1 Roku and 1 Sony PlayStation in my home network.

We're not on all those devices all the time, but when we're all watching video, downloading and uploading at the same time, it can slow down.

 

As far as I know, the "highest quality" digital media stream is from VUDU. It is 4.5Mbps. Netlfix may have some titles that go above 4.5Mbps, but I have not researched it. Your issue is probably that while uploading your downloading bandwidth is affected. If a lot of those wireless devices have poor signal, that could be an issue too. In that case you should throw up another access point or two. 

 

I consider myself very tech savvy and can "make do" plentifully at 30Mbps. Now, if in  your "downloading" you are maximizing your connection, then yes of course things can "slow down'. In my opinion, take the total number (15 devices), divide by 2, and then divide 105Mbps by that number. 105/7.5=14. Via your router, if possible, throttle the down speed to 14Mbps per device. You divided by 2 because how likely is it that you use all those at once? 

 

If at 14Mbps throttle per device you feel things are "speedy", bump it up to 15Mbps and keep going until it starts to get "slow". This is a week or month long process here. The point is to reserve enough bandwidth down per device so computers and the like are not hogging nearly all of the 105Mbps for themselves.

[tennesseetiger]

This is interesting me. We're moving to a home that is on a mountain top and I doubt there is any type of cable service in the area. Does anyone know of other options besides dish for non cable areas. Also what about Internet services. Already killing my Verizon monthly allowance.

Stay away from satellite internet. It is a complete rip off...we have a camp in the mountains and I cant even get DSL up there so I gave up on internet...cant get a hot spot signal through verizon either for that matter.

If you can get DSL I say go for it, but other than that you might have your hands tied depending on where your place is located.

[midtennchip]

I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but the DISH internet-based service is also limited to one device at a time.  That, alone, eliminates it for my house.  We typically have at least 2, and as many as 5, devices (TVs, tablets, etc) running television shows at any given time when the whole family is in the house.

[btq96r]

50Mbps?? Why would you even remotely need that much bandwidth to run a streaming service like this. That's 6.25 MB's a second. 6 Mpbs will get you a 1080p H264 stream no problem. Heck, I'm on 12 Mbps and I can run two HD streams and still have some bandwidth for web browsing and general internet use.

Plans like this are the way of the future. The companies that realize that today are going to be the market leader.

 

This is the truth here.  The cable companies want you to think you need their massive download speeds to stream.  On multiple devices, perhaps, depending on what you are doing, but for one or two devices anything from 10-25 Mbps is plenty to cover your needs.

 

 

I guess we're not a typical household, but at 50 Mbps, I can feel a drag at times. 105Mbps is the best for us.

But I have 3 iPhones, 1 iPad Air 2, 2 Acer Tablets, 2 Desktop PC's, and 5 laptops, 1 Roku and 1 Sony PlayStation in my home network.

We're not on all those devices all the time, but when we're all watching video, downloading and uploading at the same time, it can slow down.

 

Sounds like you need to go into the settings of your router and limit the bandwidth to some of those devices.  You might have to manually assign IP's for devices and separate them into different IP and bandwidth ranges, but it's not too hard.

 

 

I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but the DISH internet-based service is also limited to one device at a time.  That, alone, eliminates it for my house.  We typically have at least 2, and as many as 5, devices (TVs, tablets, etc) running television shows at any given time when the whole family is in the house.

 

This plan is for small households (single mom with 1-2 kids), and unmarried people living alone.  The kind of people who may have already cut the cord and are living off of OTA and Netflix.  They figure at $20 a pop, it's not too much for most consumers, where service somewhere around $75-$100 is out of reach to bring them back into the fold. 

 

For houses like yours, this plan isn't the target demographic, but maybe in the future some plans will develop you can live with.

[Mike A]

The little woman and I are empty-nesters.  Typical usage is a few hours of streaming in the evening likely paired with a little web surfing.  18Mbps (U-verse) works fine for us.  I can't imagine we get anywhere near the data limits (250GB I believe for U-verse).  Obviously, based upon this thread, individual mileage will vary and this isn't a one size fits all solution.  I think this new service will fill a niche for folks who are on the cusp of cutting the cord but want some live sports options and folks like us who've already cut the cord tired of subsidizing all the junk they don't want but don't mind paying a little for programming they might actually enjoy.

 

On second consideration, maybe this is more of a good hard lick than a death blow.  Gotta think it's indicia of things to come.