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.
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.
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.
