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There's no hurry here

4K views 101 replies 16 participants last post by  Rich 
#1 ·
When you look at all of the changes going on in the cable\streaming arena right now, and with nobody sure about how all of the pieces will eventually fit together, I've decided that the smart move is to stay with conventional DirecTV satellite service for another year and watch the events play out.

I've had sales guys from Comcast and Spectrum knocking on my door offering impressive deals, and AT&T fiber is only a month or two away, so I'm going stay right where I am and wait. With my Genie plus an HR24 on whole home DVR, I have 7 tuners to record with and a very stable, proven environment.

I'm reminded of the story of the old bull and the young bull at the top of the hill. :)
 
#2 ·
When you look at all of the changes going on in the cable\streaming arena right now, and with nobody sure about how all of the pieces will eventually fit together, I've decided that the smart move is to stay with conventional DirecTV satellite service for another year and watch the events play out.

I've had sales guys from Comcast and Spectrum knocking on my door offering impressive deals, and AT&T fiber is only a month or two away, so I'm going stay right where I am and wait. With my Genie plus an HR24 on whole home DVR, I have 7 tuners to record with and a very stable, proven environment.

I'm reminded of the story of the old bull and the young bull at the top of the hill. :)
Same here. So far, DirecTV has been good to me with the loyalty program for over 10 years lol. If AT&T clamps down on that, I'll explore my options. Definitely not going to pay full price for DirecTV. $120/mo for Preferred Xtra and a HR54? Nah... Can't say at this point whether it'll be Cox, Dish, or even streaming. Haven't been hearing very many good things about streaming DVR functionality at this point and/or forced ads in certain situations. Not to mention lack of "channels that nobody cares about" :D.
 
#3 ·
I have zero interest in scrolling endlessly through 7 different apps to watch what I have now on Directv. I have zero interest in having to watch commercials on shows that I don't with my Directv DVR. I have zero interest in the PQ fluctuating with Internet traffic and not being able to watch TV when the Internet is out or very slow. I have had good luck with getting discounts and free things and everything I watch is on Directv. Why on earth would I stream?

My brother's Netflix account is signed in on my TV. If I really need it, it's there. I think I have used it maybe 10 times ever.
 
#5 ·
Exactly. The app juggling is an issue for me. Some people, it's not a big deal. I've done Netflix and Amazon Prime trials and those are a month. Honestly, on both services, I had trouble finding stuff to watch. No, I don't mean the UI sucked, I mean they don't have much good content. Most every licensed movie on AP is PPV, Rent or Buy. Netflix is losing pretty much all their licensed content. I guess that's why their stock has dropped from $420 to $263 :eek:. Glad I sold at $340. If I had held on another 1 week, I could have gotten out at $380 :mad:, but oh well. Better then $263. The only thing Netflix can do at this point to survive is add live TV. I don't think Hastings is interested in that though, so classic fare like Calibre :rolleyes: is going to turn Netflix into the next Myspace.
 
#6 ·
But you get forced ads on like 3 channels with YTTV, no? And you can't delete watched shows? I mean, who came up with that? You record a show and its required to stay on your DVR for 9 months? Or you do a "season pass" and it records 50 million copies of it?
Imagine doing that for Two And A Half Men or The Big Bang Theory? You'd be sifting through your DVR for 2 yrs to find the episode you want since its aired like 30 times a day.
 
#25 ·
Yeah, that sounds annoying. I don't keep ANYTHING after I watch it. I don't understand why I'd need 4 versions of the same episode. This would be a good use case if I wanted to actually build a library of a show that I just started watching and want to catch up on the older episodes... but that's pretty rare. Still would be nice to have one copy of an episode only.
So you're deleting it, waiting for it to come back on TV again, and then going back and re-recording it to watch it again? There is a big reason I would delete things from my HR-44, and that's the damn thing would bog down the more content you loaded into it. I made the mistake of hanging a 4TB drive off it once, and it was a disaster by the time it was half full. One of the benefits with a service like YTTV is that it doesn't suffer from that same slowdown when indexing a mountain of content.

As to why to keep episodes from multiple channels -- ever have that channel that wants to run a 1/3rd screen animated overlay advertising some new event or show every 5 minutes? That's a good reason to keep copies from other networks, so you can side-step those obnoxious shenanigans.

Rather than trying to poorly describe it, here's some pictures of how the interface works, starting with the library interface:



Selecting a show gives you a season / episode navigation view, with thumbnails out of each episode:



Selecting an individual episode, gives you this option to choose the recording / VOD option:



For navigating the episode to skip commercials, or to find a part of the show you want to see, you get a thumbnail view:



But say that's not the episode you're looking for -- you can just swipe down and select other episodes of the same show:



Or other shows on the same network:



Or other live shows / events, ranked by matches against things in your library:

 
#26 ·
So you're deleting it, waiting for it to come back on TV again, and then going back and re-recording it to watch it again? There is a big reason I would delete things from my HR-44, and that's the damn thing would bog down the more content you loaded into it. I made the mistake of hanging a 4TB drive off it once, and it was a disaster by the time it was half full. One of the benefits with a service like YTTV is that it doesn't suffer from that same slowdown when indexing a mountain of content.
In my 2.5 example, no, I just watch it and delete it. Maybe I'll watch that particular episode again in 5 yrs, who knows lol... I'm not going to watch it again in the next 9 months, that's for sure.

The interface in your screenshot is pretty similar to Netflix and AP and even the Genie search in Season / Episode view.

The thing is, I don't want to have to memorize what season or episode I recorded. I just look in my playlist and see... Oh! That's the episode where Charlie slept with a hooker. Ok, well, bad example, he did that in every episode haha :D, but you get the point. I don't want to re-watch the whole show or sift through 250 episodes (even by season). I want to sift through the 5 episodes I recorded Saturday morning for example and watch & delete them by Saturday night and move on.

It's less of an annoyance if we're talking about a show that's still on the air, then I know I just care about the latest season / latest episode. But take The Big Bang Theory, I do occasionally watch re-runs (not planned, in drive by mode by scouring the guide)… so latest season / last episode would have worked last year... but if I also recorded an older episode it'd be lost in the shuffle.

I'm definitely not going to record every episode and re-watch the whole show.

Another example of why this is bad... let's say we're talking 2 or 3 years ago and I stumbled across 24 for the first time. Yes, I want to watch every episode in order. I was binge watching it and I think it took me 3 months to get through it. Is there an easy way to see where I am? There would be with Netflix and AP because they remember where you left off.

I happened to use TPB for that lol, so yeah, I just deleted the episodes as I watched them and downloaded 1 season at a time.

EDIT: I had a thought and tried to see if any of the providers had a public API. Apparently Netflix had one 4 or 5 yrs ago, but they shut it down. Too bad. I could have built my own DVR lol that unified multiple services into a single UI... but I guess they shut it down so people wouldn't do that and they could keep their branded UI.
 
#23 · (Edited)
Remember when people used to complain about Directv (or any product/service) Fanboys on here all the time? It's time to have an intervention with the streaming fanboys - what about not watching commercials (even if it's just on CBS/CW), not wanting several different apps, etc do you not get? One of the most frustrating things for me when I have been forced at other places was just the impracticality of using the streaming service. You can't even enter a channel number to flip between a few games on streaming. So you have to scroll through the whole thing to do that. Just a couple locals, if any. Come on now.

Switching between services is extra annoying. I have had to do that to watch Duke football this season. The first game was against Alabama and a disaster, but on broadcast TV (locals) so easy to find. Would it have been on streaming? The next two were online only, one was on ACC Network Extra on the ESPN app and the other was on Stadium. So to watch the game I had to know it was on those services, look for them there, and then watch the PQ fluctuate annoyingly. The Stadium/Facebook game was much better for PQ, but there were annoying emojis floating up the screen throughout as people liked plays on Facebook. When games are on real TV, just tune to channel 1205 for "my teams" and tune to game regardless of what channel it is on. Then take note for easy flipping if multiple games I want to watch are on.

Plus everything on streaming is GIGANTIC. Only like 3 things fit on the screen at once. At least we can see more, and upcoming and record it.
 
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#24 ·
You can't even enter a channel number to flip between a few games on streaming.
The problem here is that "streaming" is too broad to describe the options. For example, as an NHL fan here's the interface I work with on the Apple TV:



When I click on "Home" once to pull back from the full screen game, I see all the other games on the schedule for the night. Scores can be hidden if you want to go that route, but I use it to pick which game to jump to by gauging which games are close, which game has a power play in progress, or which games are going to OT. In a glance you can see which games are in intermission without having to jump to the feed.

If you want to watch to keep an eye on 2 games, you can do that as well. Sliding left or right instantly switches the audio to that feed, zero delay. Clicking on either game pulls it up full screen.



The other advantage is that it's like having every single game set to record on your DVR. You can scrub the timeline on any game, having a visual thumbnail to help you narrow into things you might like to see.



Clearly this isn't the case for every sport, or every service, but I think it highlights a few of the areas where streaming starts to go beyond just moving the satellite feed to the Internet.
 
#28 ·
I think you overplay ATT's placement in streaming. So far they haven't shown that they have a clue about what the cord cutting movement is about. Hint, it isn't about fat channel counts, high prices and commitments.

I think the near future players will be Hulu, YouTube and Sling. Hulu and YouTube are better in quality overall, Sling is better in cost. Between those 3 you cover those wanting some more channels and those that want to save significant money.

I see ATT's issues as not understanding the streaming market and how much cost/commitment is a big deal. IMO, the 2 biggest attractions to streaming is no commitment and saving money because of lower channel counts.

The contracts ATT is negotiating for with the content providers may be an impediment. I say that as they are talking to a heck of a lot of them and all of them want a piece of that pie. The smaller streaming offerings are not hamstrung with those 'buggy whip' contracts that have saddled cable/sat.
Hint, check out the most-watched networks last year:

Top-Rated Channels of 2018: TV Network Winners & Losers | IndieWire

YouTube TV, for instance, is missing the following: #15 History, #17 Hallmark, #21 A&E, #24 Nickelodeon, #31 Lifetime, #32 MTV, #33 TV Land, #34 VH1, #36 Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. That's quite a few omissions for a $50 cable channel bundle to be missing. But YouTube TV doesn't have them because they don't have any carriage contracts in place with A+E Networks, Viacom, or Crown Media. Sure, there are lots of folks (men, especially, I'd guess) who don't care much about those channels. Still, though, those 9 channels all ranked among the 40 most-watched in 2018.

AT&T *does* have relationships in place with all those network owners, although not all of them are yet included in their new skinnier Plus and Max packages. But I believe they will be. The variety of popular channels offered in those packages, for the prices charged, with be something that AT&T TV and AT&T TV Now have that other streaming providers don't have.

As for the no-commitment thing, well, AT&T TV Now caters to that crowd. But I really don't think a one-year contract is a huge deal to a lot of folks. Most middle-class adults with a mortgage don't anticipate keeping cable TV service for less than a year at a time, or switching providers every few months. That's not normal behavior. Psychologically, I think a one-year contract is a lot less of a turn-off than a two-year contract. And, as I say, Uverse TV and AT&T Internet have always only had one-year contracts. I expect the same will end up being true for AT&T TV.
 
#37 ·
Hint, check out the most-watched networks last year:

Top-Rated Channels of 2018: TV Network Winners & Losers | IndieWire

YouTube TV, for instance, is missing the following: #15 History, #17 Hallmark, #21 A&E, #24 Nickelodeon, #31 Lifetime, #32 MTV, #33 TV Land, #34 VH1, #36 Hallmark Movies & Mysteries. That's quite a few omissions for a $50 cable channel bundle to be missing. But YouTube TV doesn't have them because they don't have any carriage contracts in place with A+E Networks, Viacom, or Crown Media. Sure, there are lots of folks (men, especially, I'd guess) who don't care much about those channels. Still, though, those 9 channels all ranked among the 40 most-watched in 2018.
You hit the nail on the head here, and is the perfect example of YMMV may vary with streaming services. I knew going in I would not have any of these channels and was entirely fine with it. There are others on this thread/boards, who watch a lot of that content. But my bill is only $50. It's a simple issue of trade-off, at this point; what are you getting, and what are you willing to live without? For each person considering streaming, it's up to them to decide. For those that want/have to have everything, traditional satellite/cable services are still the best way to go.
 
#29 ·
I thought you quit DirecTV because of BS fees? You're OK paying them on AT&T TV? AT&T TV will have RSN fees and per stream fees and box fees and "other fees" "as applicable". Oh yeah... and contracts. All the stuff you love on DirecTV. But you're fine with them as long as its being delivered over your internet connection? :D
No, I didn't leave DTV because of BS fees. I think you have me confused with someone else. I left it because I was more interested in spending money on the content available from Netflix, Hulu and/or Prime Video than the stuff available on basic cable channels. I could get my locals for free via OTA antenna, so when Showtime and HBO became available as standalone streaming services, there really was no point in sticking with any form of cable channel package for me.

That said, no, AT&T TV Now's Plus and Max packages (which I believe will become the default options on AT&T TV also) do not have RSN fees or broadcast channel fees. There are no box fees either. Your first box with AT&T TV is given to you free, yours to keep. You can buy additional boxes at $120 each if you want but you don't have to use their boxes; you can use the AT&T TV app on your own devices. There aren't really per-stream fees either. AT&T TV Now comes with 2 simultaneous streams while AT&T TV comes with 3 simultaneous streams. Both services come with a certain amount of cloud DVR included (20 hrs for AT&T TV Now; 500 hrs for AT&T TV). I'm not aware of any "other fees" for either service, aside from AT&T TV Now selling a 3rd simultaneous stream for an extra $5/mo.
 
#30 ·
That's interesting. So if you can use your own device for AT&T TV why exactly do you need their box at all? It's one of the things that would keep me from trying AT&T TV at all. I'm not interested in having any provider specific devices.
 
#31 ·
Just a thought if you're interested in making your 44 work like new. There's a link in my sig to a thread that details SSDs.
I've tracked that thread for a while now, and if I were sticking with DTV I'd definitely go that route. The elimination of native mode was the final nail in the coffin; put in my cancellation yesterday.

It's been good run, but better video quality is the key reason I switched from Dish to DIRECTV almost a decade ago, and better video quality is the reason I'm leaving in favor of streaming now.
 
#43 ·
Kind of like AT&T TV, T-Vision aims to emulate traditional cable TV, but with the live channels delivered via streaming. But with T-Vision, the DVR does record the live streams to a local hard drive rather than using cloud DVR, like AT&T TV, where the recordings are stored out on a server. And you MUST use the T-Vision STBs. They don't let you access the service via an app, either in home or on mobile devices for out-of-home viewing.

T-Vision also differs from AT&T TV in that it's not really OTT (able to work over any broadband connection). T-Vision relies on having an agreement in place with local broadband providers to ride over their network connection for the last mile. So it's not even available for the vast majority of Americans. T-Vision exists in this weird no-man's-land between managed IPTV and OTT TV, between traditional cable and streaming.

The first-hand reviews I've read indicate that T-Vision (formerly known as Layer3 TV) is somewhat buggy. I think they've also been really slow to fulfill their promise in getting popular apps like Netflix rolled out to their set-top box. Unlike AT&T TV, which has access to the Google Play app store for thousands of Android TV apps, T-Vision has to get app developers to create apps just for them.

In all sorts of ways, T-Vision is less flexible than AT&T TV. I don't see it ever taking off. I think T-Mobile bought it mainly to acquire their talent, engineering, and existing channel contracts, to serve as the basis on which they could build a more future-proof app-based OTT TV service for delivery to smartphones as well as TV-connected streaming devices (much like AT&T TV/AT&T TV Now). My guess, though, is that T-Mobile will realize that it's going to be such an uphill battle to create a profitable pay TV service, given that they don't own any content (like AT&T, Comcast, Disney, etc. all do), that they'll just throw in the towel and decide to partner up with someone else.

That's what Verizon did. They did extensive beta-testing on a next-gen IPTV service that was going to replace FiOS TV, and perhaps also be distributed over Verizon's mobile service too. But the industry -- in terms of the economics as well as the technology-- was changing so rapidly out of their favor that they just chucked that new IPTV service. Instead, they've teamed up with Google to re-sell YouTube TV to their home broadband and mobile customer base. I expect we'll see T-Mobile do the same. Maybe they switch from "Netflix On Us" to giving all T-Mobile home and mobile customers the $13 bundle of Hulu, Disney+ and ESPN+ for free. And if they want cable TV, they can add on the Live tier to Hulu. They could even do like Verizon and AT&T and roll out their own little customized Android TV device that they give away to customers for free, except this one would be customized to feature Hulu.
 
#78 ·
I'm not sure if slice1900 was referring to the tradeoff of TV operator equipment issues over to home network issues.

One complication is that diagnosing home network issues can be more challenging than sorting out issues with a Dish/DTV installation. With a quick scan of the signal strength screen you can check the functionality of the LNB (and thus the power inserter as well), and the receivers have their own diagnostic routines.

It's more complicated for the average person to troubleshoot things like a marginal cable modem, a router that has intermittent buffering issues, Ethernet issues, or wireless interference.

For streaming to work well, you need a solid home network and a solid ISP connection (and a little bit of luck that your nearest CDN servers are adequately provisioned). Compared to traditional TV services, there are more places for things to go wrong.
 
#81 ·
One complication is that diagnosing home network issues can be more challenging than sorting out issues with a Dish/DTV installation. With a quick scan of the signal strength screen you can check the functionality of the LNB (and thus the power inserter as well), and the receivers have their own diagnostic routines.

It's more complicated for the average person to troubleshoot things like a marginal cable modem, a router that has intermittent buffering issues, Ethernet issues, or wireless interference.

For streaming to work well, you need a solid home network and a solid ISP connection (and a little bit of luck that your nearest CDN servers are adequately provisioned). Compared to traditional TV services, there are more places for things to go wrong.
Yes, this is all true. Although the situation with regard to the performance and reliability of OTT streaming video keeps getting better every year.

One of the reasons why I wouldn't worry much about recommending my elderly parents to get AT&T TV is because if they do, they'll be getting it with AT&T Fiber, using AT&T's provided (multicast-capable) IP gateway and the official AT&T TV box on each of their TVs, connected to the gateway by ethernet. But, yeah, if you're getting your OTT TV service from a different provider than your broadband service, and then you add on top of that that you're using your own third-party retail devices for everything (modem, router, streaming device), then you'd better know a little something about home networking and internet troubleshooting.
 
#79 ·
Yes sorry I wasn't clear, I meant that you trade the issues you have with cable/satellite provided boxes for ones with software (i.e. a crappy Fox Sports app) or network (provider gets overloaded during busy events)

I'm talking mostly about live streaming which is in general sports. Things that are on demand won't really have network/server related issues because they can stream far enough ahead to avoid network hiccups and more easily balance server load since not everyone tries to stream GoT at the same time versus trying to stream the Super Bowl at one time.
 
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