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Goodell is an idiot. Putting NFL Sunday Ticket on a streaming service will be a disaster. Too many folks who live in rural areas that don’t have reliable high speed internet service are going to be screwed out of seeing NFL Games.

Yeah, like my father-in-law. Still living on a patch of the old dairy farm in Wisconsin where DSL is available for $100/month at a screaming 900kbs on top of the compelled $75/month telephone line.

Then the Starlink box showed up.

Terminated the local CLEC's DSL and DirecTV the day it arrived. They stream everything now and save about $150/month. He'll have plenty of additional dough to pay for NST whoever carries it.

 

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Good for your father-in-law. What the hell is Starlink? Never heard of that service before because there is no such service of that name in my area. As was said earlier different areas have different services. Different services have different speeds and prices. Fact!

Starlink is satellite based and a simple Google search will bring you right to their page. (Fact!)

https://www.starlink.com/

It is available in the vast majority of continental US and is planned to cover 100% in 2023. It is real, it does work, and they prioritize delivering service to people in areas where other alternatives are poor or do not exist.

DirecTV has had a strangle hold on service to rural areas and monopoly on NST for decades. They have abused their duopoly with Dish for way too long and I am happy to see their business model disintegrate. I fired them at our home years ago to stream and I couldn't be happier. My services don't buffer, picture quality is in all of its 4k fidelity, I have unlimited DVR capacity, don't suffer rain-fade, doesn't cost me over $200/month, and when I pay for my equipment, I actually own it.

I'm still beholden to DTV at one of our remote vacation rentals where I am pending delivery of our Starlink equipment, but then I'll say goodbye to DTV once and for all.

 

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There is no way the NFL could be allowed to go to an all streaming service. No HD quality video in a lot of places, no way to DVR a game, a lot of disadvantages if a very popular sport like the NFL moves to streaming. It won’t work. Just watch. Fans in New York have been tweeting every Friday how they can’t see Friday Night Yankee Games because they moved them to Amazon and are wanting the games put back on YES. Just watch the NFL is making a BIG Mistake if they move games to streaming. The NFL already made a huge mistake putting the Thursday Night Game starting this year to Amazon. There will be folks mad who won’t be able to watch.

"could be allowed"? The NFL can do what they want with their content and streaming is the most likely target for them now. Apparently you haven't looked into streaming very much. A lot of services offer 4k streaming and DVR capability. If your internet connection can't handle it, then upgrade to Starlink or another service that can. This is no different than people who live in apartments or block condos where you can't put up a dish. There is no universal solution that works for everyone, but the options and ability to stream are much broader than the ability to put up a 70s technology dish on your house.

DTV has benefitted for decades with their NST monopoly. There are a lot of people that subscribe to them ONLY because of it. Well now they will have a different choice: Subscribe to the streaming service that carries it or don't.

 

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Well put. There's also this. DirecTV is moving away from Satellite. I know a lot of people grumble when Is say this, because they fear that their service will go away, but, look at the handwriting on the wall. At least where I live, I haven't seen an ad for Sat TV in years. We used to get a lot of ads for DirecTV and Dish, and especially DirecTV at this time of year with ST as the bumper. The only ads I see now from DirecTV is for Stream. That's what they see as their future. Satellite will probably be available in rural areas for awhile, but is that enough for them to invest Billions in new birds, new equipment (and there hasn't been new equipment either in MANY years), and so forth? No. And eventually when 5G tech proliferates and streaming improves (remember where it was 10 years ago when people complained about constant buffering, even on the BEST of systems?), even rural areas will be fine. So by jettisoning ST, they save billions on a dying system. It makes business sense. If their goal was to keep satellite going, then it would definitely have been worth it for them to put in a bid for ST.

Streaming isn't just the future, it is the now. In reality, when DTV moved to MP4 digital receivers in the mid-2000s they really became nothing more than streaming devices that have their own dedicated satellite network connection (not to be confused with an internet connection). DTV isn't broadcasting TV signals, they are broadcasting data streams. Yes, this does work completely different than an AppleTV that is dependent on an IP network and there is an independent stream to each device, but the data they are carrying is not very much different.

As far as service goes, both DTV and Dish caught on a number of years ago that DBS is dying a slow an agonizing death and thus created their own streaming services. My sister-in-law works for Dish and uses nothing but Dish's SlingTV service. She loves it and they do a pretty good job of combining streaming, live TV, and DVR features into one neat little app that does it all. (I think the UI is utter garbage, but the underlying services are solid) One of them should really wake up and smell the coffee and partner with Starlink to provide a combo video and internet service that could service the users in remote areas like no other solution can.

 

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lol the last birds life expectancy die out around 2030. Best case you got 7 years worst before if Directv pulls the plug earlier.

The numbers for DTV satellite-based subscribership are dropping. At the point that it is no longer profitable to operate the satellites, the service will fold into streaming only.

https://www.nexttv.com/news/directv... two quarters,1.9 million customers last year.

This does not spell the end of the TV service, just the mode in which the service is delivered. Streaming customers are steadily growing:

DirecTV: no of video subscribers in the U.S. 2021 | Statista.

But make no mistake of it, as you said, DBS service is going away in the near future. It is very unlikely to be profitable to fly additional birds and with a lifetime of only 15 years, the current birds' time is coming.

Dish Network, DirecTV satellites are dying. Neither company is replacing them fast enough.

This is why DTV and Dish need to be sweet-talking Starlink so they can salvage their customers that are in locations not served with alternatives. This way they can shift all of their costs and risks for building and launching satellites and therefore stabilize their operating costs. The problem is that with the loss of every satellite subscriber, the costs that have to be borne by the rest of the subscribers goes up. There is simply no way to get around it and that is why even the most basic subscribers are having to pay for their equipment upgrades, additional montly fees, and are doling out well over $100/month for DBS service when streaming competitors are offering the same service for 1/2 the cost or less.

If DTV or Dish doesn't, someone else will strike an exclusive deal with Starlink and the rest will be shutout (Hey YouTubeTV and Hulu, are you listening?). I would consider returning to DTV in our primary residence if I could get a reasonably priced bundle for TV and Internet combined, but if the cost of Starlink plus streaming service subscriptions is less, well I'm not willing to pay a premium to DTV to get the same service. Neither are most other people.

My wife and I own rentals and we have a remote mountain cabin that is wildly profitable, but today's guest demands having a full TV package and really good internet. I'm paying $200/month for DTV and just under $300/month for Viasat unlimited service. That's $6,000/year out of the pocket just to have TV and internet. My Starlink unit is due to ship by the end of the month and will run $110/month plus some taxes, so let's call it $121. YouTubeTV plus a few premium channels will run around $100/month. Let's just round it up to $250/month for service. Sure, I'll be coughing up $600 for the Starlink equipment and another $800 for streaming boxes for the 8 TVs, but I will be saving $3,000 a year in service and break even on the new equipment in less than 6 months.

There is simply no reasonable choice here. DTV is losing yet another premium subscriber.

 

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I think you'll hate it or be dissatisfied. You're going to lose the DVR functionality. I don't mean just the recording. You'll lose the pretty precise fast forward and rewind, 30 seconds skip, frame by frame replay. The experience is going to be less. The customer gets screwed and the NFL gets rich.

You are making some huge assumptions about losing DVR functionality or precise control. YouTubeTV and SlingTV both offer DVR capability and neither are limited to the amount of storage in your local device. Whoever ends up with NST will be highly motivated to deliver a very good viewing experience to those paying for this premium service.

 

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People paying half are not getting the same service. You are not going to find a $50 service that provides every channel and all the content of a $100 satellite service. There will be something missing from the $50 service.

How many of those 250+ channels are you actually watching? The way DTV sets up their tiers you have to go to Ultimate to get it all. Once they add on all of the fees for DVR, Advanced Receiver, Regional Sports, etc you are looking at $175/month for one TV. Have more TVs? Start racking up the additional charges. And god forbid if you have been a long time subscriber with a 5 or 6 TVs and you need to upgrade your old HR21-100s. Have an extra $2k laying around to pay for equipment that you lease? Oh, and after that they want to have you pay an additional $9/month to protect the equipment that you don't own and you pay to lease just in case it fails. SMH Tack on a couple premium channels at you're over $200 and locked into a 2 year contract. Sure, you can get DTV for $100/month, but you won't be getting very much. Sure, they call it 160+ channels, but geez 1/2 of them are music channels and 1/4 of them are spanish.

I challenge you. Write down every show you've watched this year and which service it was on. How many unique services did you get? Was is 300? 200? 100? 50? I'll bet it is less than 25. It's that set that you actually watch that you should be paying for, not the other 225+.

YouTubeTV gives you 85+ channels for $65
Hulu Live TV gives you 75+ for $70

Something missing? Pay for it's stream separately for $4-$8/month. Premiums cost the same or less than DTV, especially if you bundle.

75% of what I watch is on Hulu, Netflix, and Broadcast for locals, so I have no need for YouTubeTV or Hulu Live. The rest is on Prime, Showtime, and HBOMax which costs me a whopping $37/month (Yeah, throwing in the $12/month for Amazon Prime through I'd pay for Prime if their streaming service didn't exist). Netflix is free as I have TMobile service and Hulu is $13 (no ad plan). $50/month and there isn't a show or service I want to watch that isn't available. Heck, if you want to do the numbers game, I receive 130+ channels on my antenna and have a Amazon Replay DVR to hoover it all up and I don't have to pay an additional $10/month for the privilege.

And then the subscriber will need to pay for their own Internet to view the streaming service. Sure, they may subscribe to the same data plans and home Internet without subscribing to a streamer but to pretend that there is no cost is deceptive.

Are you trying to tell me that you don't pay for internet because you have DTV? You have internet and pay for it anyway, so it is a sunk cost either way. Why not actually get more value out of the service you are already paying for? But I'll play. I have 600mbps service for $45 all-in with taxes. Add that to my streaming costs and we're at $95/month plus about $5 in taxes on the streaming services. $100/month and I want for nothing. What is your bill total with DTV and Internet service?

On top of that, I don't pay for my premiums all year. When a series I like is over and nothing much else is on, I just cancel with a couple clicks instead of fighting with a CSR for 30 minutes on the phone and then resubscribe, generally with a "come back for 1/2 price for 3 months" when I do. I had Starz for $0.99/month for 18 months because every time I went to cancel after the 3 months for $0.99 they extended the offer to get me to stay. Took my wife that long to plow through the 77 seasons of Outlander and Godz. I cancelled and now I get an e-mail every week asking me to come back for $0.99 and I will once there is something I want to watch. Have a single show, say Better Call Saul on AMC, pay for the service for a couple months at $9 or buy the whole season on Amazon for $9.99 and watch it whenever you want. Want to check out Ted Lasso, well you can't get it on DTV, so you'll pay $5/month for AppleTV+ and need to buy a box to stream it on since DTV won't allow the service on their box.

As subscribers move from traditional MVPDs to streaming vMVPDs or non MVPD versions of streaming the cost of content will follow the subscribers. If one wants the content one needs to pay, regardless of the delivery method.

Yup, they just don't have to pay $250/month to watch 10% of the services they pay for.

TL;DR Version: Streaming allows you to watch anything you want and pay for it al a carte for a lot less. The only thing you couldn't get on streaming was NST, but soon you will.

 

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Neither of those are the $100 in content for $50 claim that you made in your previous post.
And now you are doubling down by further inflating the cost of satellite. When you are ready to calm down and have a rational (less emotional) conversation we can get into the details.

Ok then, show us your $100 DTV bill. Don't have one of those, eh? That's because while the $100 DTV bill does exist (without all the year 1 discounts), you get nothing but a bunch of channels you don't want to watch, no DVR functionality, no HD, and only 1 receiver.

Here's my father in law's bill that is the basic equivalent of the Choice package today. No premiums. None. Zero. Nada.

Once you get past the 1st year discounts and are locked into your 24 months contract, DTV is outrageously expensive for what you get.

$171.11 for 160 channels on 1 TV. You want seem to want to go volume regardless of quality of content. Ok, I get nearly as many channels off of my HD antenna as DTV provides for $171.11 for exactly $0. I mean, why not, the volume is there and who cares if I only ever watch 5 or 6 of those channels? I could watch the tens of dozens for the full-service experience. At least I pay nothing for that privilege.

Ok, so you want the Ultimate package and have 3 TVs, welcome to a $250 bill that gets you all those channels you just have to have.

But sure, you want to cringe at 250 channels for $250, fine. 160 channels for $171.11 is right in front of you and still more than 3x my streaming bill.

Nice claim. Not 100% true, but nice claim. The claim only works if one limits "anything you want" to whatever is available via streaming AND limit "anything you want" to less than a full subscription. One can narrowly define a few content channels and scream from the mountaintops that streaming is cheaper within that narrow definition.

Well geez James, if you want to completely ignore the $50 in services I layed out in very fine detail, well so be it, but I provided you the exact $50 service package a la carte. Outside of NST that soon you will NOT be able to get on DTV, what can't you get via streaming? Name it. I'm sure there is something you can scrape up. Go ahead, I'll wait. There's a hitch though, there is a lot more you can't access without streaming. NO service provides 100% of everything no matter what you pay. Again, it is about what you watch, not about what you don't watch.

Amazon, Netfilx, and Hulu have 100s of shows that are only available via their service and only available by streaming. Even the DTV exclusive content doesn't stay exclusive. I'm a King fan and wanted to watch Mr. Mercedes. Welp, I watched it for free on Peacock. Name a single Amazon, Netflix, or Hulu original that has shown up on DTV service.

A la carte will be the death of low priced TV. Right now content providers are surviving on their "deliver our channels to 80 million MVPD subscribers every month whether they watch or not" marketing plan. When people decide that they don't want to pay $10 per RSN or $20 for the ESPN channels and their MVPD lets them opt out the customers who want that content will be paying more. $20 for an a la carte RSN? $30 for the ESPN channels. It will only be cheaper if one chooses not to subscribe.

A la carte is the renaissance for TV. No longer do you need Nielsen ratings to try to figure out what shows bring in the viewers and which ones don't. The customer streams it or they don't. You know EXACTLY who watched it, when they watched it, and if they watched it again. You know what that means? Ad revenue and LOTS of it that can be targeted to the exact viewers they want to have it. Providers aren't suffering, they're getting record profits by not sharing with the carrier. Any provider that has a ****e lineup will start dropping subscribers like flies trapped in your Oldsmobile during August. This has and will drive providers to seek out and deliver quality content or go out of business.

A la carte will allow people to choose to not subscribe.

Now you're beginning to get it!

Hopefully the content channel can survive on less subscribers paying more than the current "everyone pays a share" plan. And hopefully none of the content channels that die are ones that you or I want to watch.

The channel mind-set. Pheww. Who cares about channels? Channels are a 1920s concept, it's all about content in the 2020s. I don't stream channels, I stream CONTENT! I have no idea what channel something is on, nor do I care. There are no channels unless I'm watching OTA live and I never do that. I DVR it and again just watch the content. I just say the words for my content and it starts playing.

Content doesn't go away when a channel dies, it is sold to another content provider and continues on if it is content worth watching.

Streaming is the largest growing segment while Satellite and Cable continue to lose subscribers. The MAJORITY of people in the US subscribe to a streaming service now.

Cable, Satellite Providers Lost 4.7M Subscribers in 2021

27 Curious Cable TV Subscribers Statistics to Know in 2022

You don't think the content providers moving to provide streaming services are making money? They sure are. When I pay $15/month for HBOMax, HBO gets it all and doesn't have to share with a carrier. Same with every other direct service subscription.

AT&T, who owns HBO, is cannibalizing it's own DTV division's profits by introducing the direct streaming service. Why? Because they're making boatloads of money doing it.

https://www.fiercevideo.com/video/hbo-max-drives-154-revenue-spike-warnermedia-q4

13.1 Million net additional subscribers year over year! At an average revenue of of $11.15 per new subscriber, that's an extra $1.75 Billion in extra revenue per year. Why would content providers ever think of walking away from additional revenue streams like that?

They won't.

In fact, the next time DTV decides to get into a pissing match with their content provider over the carrier contract and pulls their "channel" of off the service, the content provider may just say. "Cool man, you do you, we won't allow you to put our content back ever." Then what will you do to watch your Designing Women reruns? Well, you'll just have to stream them on Hulu.

And, oh my gosh, what if it is NFL Sunday Ticket that will no longer be on DTV and you have to stream it instead? That could never happen, right?

 

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When you are ready to calm down and have a rational (less emotional) conversation we can get into the details.

Yes, yes James. Anyone who you can't engage logically needs to "calm down" and be "less emotional". I am not excited nor emotional, however I find this a heck of a lot of fun.

This isn't a longest post contest.

Can't keep up?

Sure it can happen - and will happen. We have been discussing it for at least a year. Annoying if one never streams any content and needs to add or configure equipment or if one has poor Internet and annoying if one has been receiving free NFL ST for so long they forgot how much it costs. Many people will pay DIRECTV $300 this year (plus their regular subscription fee) then pay Apple $300 next year (which may include the regular fee). They don't have to lose DIRECTV to watch Sunday Ticket via streaming.

Yup, but no more annoying than it is to those that live in multi-unit properties where they have never had the chance to get DTV or the people that simply find DTVs fees too high. Now that the majority of people in the US subscribe to at least one streaming service, thus have a streaming device and internet, this point seems to be moot. Plus, it's not like you have to fork over $1000+ for a DTV MPEG-2 HD TiVo DVR that never supported over 12 channels and was only supported for 18 months. Rokus start at $19.99.

Are you expecting Apple to give away Sunday Ticket for free with a $60 per year Apple TV+ subscription? The move to streaming pretty much ends "free NFL Sunday Ticket".

Nope, never expected anything for free, especially from Apple. They're just as greedy as DTV in their business practices. There has never been a "free" NST, they just baked into the rest of your contract. That's why DTV forces a 24 month contract and the 1st year teaser rates and discounts do not ride over into your 2nd year. It's like the people that think they are getting a free phone if they sign a 24 month contract their cell carrier. Is seems that these very same people have sudden amnesia when they get their free phone and their bill suddenly goes up $30/month.

What I very much dislike is DTV's monopolistic behavior and I'm not disappointed to see their empire disintegrate. DTV perfected the tiers of service so you'd always be wanting something and enticed (or forced) to purchase up. I am very happy that people living in remote areas that have had no choice but DTV or Dish, like my FIL, for decades are now getting new options and the ability to pick their services a la carte.

Now that DTV's monopoly on NST has been broken, it is my prediction that NST will be available to many more, subscribers will rise sharply, and the price will go down. Yes, I said the monopoly was broken, because it was. If DTV was going to make money on it, they'd still be bidding on it and most likely to win it, but with dwindling subscriber numbers and no way to prop them up, they can't afford to compete against leading streaming businesses and even if they did win the contract, they would either have to increase the price further to make a profit or risk winning the bid being nothing but a loss.

It's all natural selection here. DTV didn't adapt to the wants and needs of its customers rapidly enough and they are now being selected out of the gene pool.