Guest Post by The Zman
I had been a DirecTV subscriber for years, mostly so I could watch sports, which is the only reason I have a television. I’ve gone long stretches of my life without a TV, but it is a nice convenience for when you’re stuck at home with nothing better to do. I do enjoy watching baseball and football. Some of the long form dramas produced by the big cable channels have been good too. Otherwise, I’ve never developed the habit of following sitcoms and serials. I doubt I could name one show popular in prime time.
Back in January I decided to cancel my subscription. The cost had reached the point where it no longer made sense. The game DirecTV plays is they slowly jack up the monthly fee until you decide you’ve had enough and call to cancel. They haggle with you and offer a discount if you stay with them. It is a crazy way to do business, but I suppose it works for them. Most Americans hate confrontations over money and most Americans hate haggling. My Arab friends love DirecTV.
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The haggle to finally get free took exactly 25 minutes. I knew what was coming so I was prepared to enjoys it. I allowed the customer retention rep to think he had a real chance to get me to change my mind. We went back and forth for about ten minutes and then he threw me a curve by transferring me to his supervisor. He and I did the dance for another ten minutes and I finally prevailed. The remainder of the conversation was going through a surprisingly long list of details in order to cancel television.
The funny thing about cutting the cord, at least for me, is I’m probably watching more television now than when I had a subscription. I have an Amazon Fire and I have a Prime account. I no longer go to stores, other than for groceries, so I get good use of the Amazon account. I’m one of those people who gets more than his annual fee in free shipping. That also means I have access to all sorts of video content on the Fire. Amazon does offer a lot of video content on their system.
I also loaded the Kodi app on the thing so I have the underground streaming services for just about anything you can imagine. I’m fond of Pakistani cinema so it is nice to be able to get that whenever I want. The Kodi app is to television what Napster was to the music industry. It is a tool to allow the black market to undermine the oligopoly controlling the US television business. At some point, Big Cable will figure out how to shut them down, but the damage will have been done and the cost of winning will kill the cable model.
Anyway, the reason I’m probably watching more television now is that I have more to watch. It used to be that I’d fruitlessly scan the channels looking for anything that caught my interest. Unless a game was on, I’d end up leaving the TV on and wandering off to do something else. Other than sporting events, it was mostly just background noise as I got tired of the process of finding something worth watching. Throw in the excessive commercials and the whole process was more punishment than pleasure.
Now, I have a whole list of programs I’ve queued up so when I want to watch a show, I turn on the show or movie. The fact that it is commercial free makes the experience more enjoyable. I’m binge watching, as the kids say, the HBO series Boardwalk Empire. It’s nice to watch two episodes back-to-back. By the time I settle into watch TV, it is around 8:00 PM so I watch two episodes then go to bed. I usually read or write for a few hours before bed so it works out well, so it works for me to do both.
It sort of reminds me of what television was like when I was a kid. We watched TV in the same way people went to the movies. It was a planned event. After school, we only watched TV when the weather was bad. My dad would watch the evening news on occasion, but usually, the TV was off until after dinner and some popular prime-time show that we watched as a family. In other words, television was not the center of life. It was just one of many cheap entertainments.
It’s not hard to see where it is heading. The days of the cable subscription are nearing an end. Old people will continue to prefer that model, mostly because it is simple and familiar. In time, the on-demand model will figure out how to appeal to geezers who don’t like change. I’m not quite a geezer, but I appreciate that going cordless is a bit of hassle. I had to fiddle with the Fire and load the Kodi app onto it. Just as Facebook is now dominated by seniors, these cordless services will soon be common among the geezers.
The other change on the TV front is I had to get a new XBox. The old one died, mostly from lack of use, I suspect. I’m not much of a gamer, but on a rainy day or when I have people to the ghetto for drinks, it is a nice to have item. I bought a new one and it has a Blu-ray player, which is something I never experienced. Having watched my first Blu-ray disc, I’m not seeing the big difference. It’s a little better, but I suspect you have to have an Ultra-HD TV to really appreciate the higher quality.
The comical part of the XBox was that I had to download 1.5 GB of updates before I could use the thing. I’m old enough to remember when computer storage always had the letter ‘K” in it. Once that was done, I loaded my first Blu-ray only to learn that the Blu-ray app need to download an update. Then the controller needed a firmware update. I bet it took three hours of prep just to use the stupid thing. A big part of modern life is waiting for your electronics to prepare themselves for your use.
Like a junkie just out of rehab, I’m off TV and I swear this is it for me.
I had Xfinity Triple-Play from Comcast for decades. I can only imagine how much I paid them in total! Recently I needed to buy a new TV, so I bought a ROKU TV. When I realized just how much is streaming now; I had no problem finally cutting my cable. I still have to have Comcast for high-speed internet, as they’re the only game in my town. But getting rid of the rest of the Triple-Play I have saved an amount equal to my annual property and school tax – so I am now a happy camper as they say.
There is a much easier way to cancel your direct tv: stop paying. lol. Screw spending 25 minutes on the phone.
And screw up your credit score???
Although my credit score is a sky-high 820 or so, I could really care less what it is. And while I do know that credit scores affect much of our life now (like most auto insurers even run credit as a precursor to providing us with any offer); I don’t really need or care about mine. I’m retired, debt free, and I plan on staying that way – so I don’t foresee the need for any future loan, which the underwriting of (home mortgage, auto loan, etc.) would be my primary reason to have a good score in the first place.
OK then!
I’ve had the opposite experience. We’ve been debt free for 10 years. When we paid off our mortgage 10 years ago, our credit score was as high as it gets (close to 850). We just checked back in on our credit score a few months ago. After 10 years of no mortgage, no car loans, and no late payments or balances on our credit card, our credit score is now 650. It doesn’t really matter since we’ll never borrow money again, but it’s funny how having no debt and never carrying a balance on your credit card will destroy your credit rating!
Agree. The whole “credit” thing is a trap for the middle class to continue being the donkeys to the rent seekers. After I sold my businesses back in 2006, I have not had ANY use for credit. I don’t think I have seen my credit score in 10 years…no joke. Could not care less. It also cuts WAYYY back on junk mail and increases your privacy about 10 fold. It is amazing how liberating your life becomes when you release yourself from the traps of the system. All of a sudden, it is difficult to even relate to your friends “problems” when you can look in from outside the Matrix, and realize that most of the “problems” the everyday consumer faces are due to their own insistence and dependence on the “system”
I would prefer ‘A la carte’ selections for TV, not by show/event, but by a number of months./
Well I am a geezer. I even have geezer shorts. And I never watch tv. I use Kodi every night and watch movies and old bbc tv shows and the author is correct. The problem with tv is that they only have one schedule and it isn’t your schedule. They only have their ads and you don’t care about any of that stuff. And they only make the shows that they want to make and you don’t want to watch what they want to make. How many screaming harpies can you watch? How long does it take to figure out that dancing with the kardashians is a waste of time.
But it isn’t all rainbows and unicorns on Kodi. You have to figure out how to make it work and most merkins are not going to be able to do that. “Turn on duh tv” they got that down. But Kodi is a bunch of 15 year olds in their mothers basements stealing content from the criminals and handing it out for free. If you like what the 15 year olds like then you will most likely find something to amuse yourself. I happen to really like what the 15 year olds like so I am good with what I can get but the old bbc stuff is frequently hard to watch. No 15 year old is ever going to care about antiques roadshow uk so the files are frequently missing. And then there are the hundreds of dead servers for each show that you have to paw through to find the one that has enough bandwidth to serve you the show that you want to watch. Like all 15 year olds…nobody wants to clean up after themselves so files that have been deleted because the bbc criminals have sent them a cease and desist letter just sit there clogging up the server. All of this you must just deal with.
I personally find that corporate criminals are incapable of producing any interesting entertainment. So I don’t care to spend money that I could use to buy beer on the crap that they produce. I might watch it for free, but it isn’t worth paying for. If they upped their game I might change my mind but I don’t see that happening any time soon. If you want to pay amazon to feed you your tv and movies that’s fine. It isn’t that expensive and the clutter I described above is likely all been taken care of. If you don’t want to pay amazon – and let’s face it, you are here reading this because you don’t – then kodi is the answer right now and if you buy a set top box instead of an amazon fire stick you can attach a big ass hard drive and store downloaded movies and tv shows on it. Then you can watch what you want, when you want it, without the clutter caused by the 15 year olds.
BTW, I don’t want you to infer that I am in any way slandering the 15 year olds. I know that they are all in their 20s now but they still live in their mothers basement. These guys have worked like mad to create a platform to screw over the criminals at abc, nbc, fox, amazon, google, and all the rest of power structure. They have done far more than I have and probably far more than you have and definitely far more than those black block pussies in antifa.
I’m an old fart, and technological challenged. My wife struggles to figure these thing out. Even getting Cable and computer access has been difficult, and expensive, at best. We have only one option here. I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to watch what the 15 year old’s see. I’m into news, politics, science, history, unexplained, and western & old movies. We can do without any sports, so that is waste for us, not to mention the alphabet networks, GLBT, Latino, & BLM shit.
What I think that we need is some direct cable competition that offers channel/program al-a-cart, and pay for just what we want to see. Anyone else for that?
“And then there are the hundreds of dead servers for each show that you have to paw through to find the one that has enough bandwidth to serve you the show that you want to watch. Like all 15 year olds…nobody wants to clean up after themselves so files that have been deleted because the bbc criminals have sent them a cease and desist letter just sit there clogging up the server. All of this you must just deal with.”
I personally LIKE the confusion this creates. Why? Because if Joe and Jane six pack were able to access it, so would the lawyers and asshats that defend and enrich the criminals. When anything becomes mainstream, two things happen 1. The oligarchy will find some way to monetize it, and thus YOUR level of service and cost to use will go up exponentially. 2. the government will then get involved and you will be taxed on it. Because the government goons can’t stand something they aren’t making some skim off of.
No, I enjoy the complication, as it weeds out those that are simpletons and control freaks from messing it up for those that think for themselves and choose to live outside of the “safe space” of sheeple town.
I’m binge watching Boardwalk Empire, too. Great show.
Pat. Kodi is right up you comfort zone. Unfortunately, you probably won’t like all the complications. It was developed by xbox users years ago so they could watch torrent content on something that they could program. A while back it changed from xbmc (xbox media center) to kodi and now there is apparently a standard committee and everything. But it is still based on providing a media center/player with menu access to torrents. All that is required is some programmable platform like a set top box, the amazon fire stick, a computer, or even a cell phone and internet access. So last Thanksgiving, after a day of eating and drinking too much I found myself in a hotel room with wifi and a cell phone at 1am. I downloaded Kodi and installed it on my phone. I set up Kodi (more complicated than it needs to be but check out you tube for instructions) and then I watched the brand new in theaters Fantastic Beasts and where to find them…on my phone using headphones so my wife wouldn’t be awoken.
I suggest that rather than paying for some on demand service you at least check out some Kodi videos on youtube. It really does work and does not require a criminal cabal to support it. Just a lot of enthusiastic 15 year olds.
I’m a retired geezer and I have a tablet, smartphone, 4 HD TV’s, high speed internet and DirecTV with Sunday ticket. I watch some shows on Fox news, e.g. Tucker Carlson, Hannity, and Lou Dobbs. I used to watch Red Eye but tomorrow is its last show. I read on my tablet or I go to bed and watch some video clips of Mr. Max the cockatoo (hilarious). I am addicted to the Internet and spend a majority of my day on it reading my political websites while I listen to Rush. I also have a tiny part time job that I do online. Although I live alone, I still feel connected to the world and it’s great Skyping my best friend in Oregon, my mother in Virginia or another best friend in North Carolina. I am a PRIME member and I too get more from PRIME for shipping costs than I pay for PRIME. However, I don’t like to watch Amazon Prime. The shows I have picked look crappy. Right now I have CSPAN on so I can watch the posing during the Gorsuch vote. I don’t quite understand this attitude towards TV although I wish I paid less for DirecTV. But when it’s football season, using my Genie system I can record 5 games at a time. Add to that the Monday Night and Thursday night games and I have a new game to watch 7 days a week. Works for me. Go Hawks!
— “Like a junkie just out of rehab, I’m off TV”
Not really.
— “Having watched my first Blu-ray disc, I’m not seeing the big difference. It’s a little better, but I suspect you have to have an Ultra-HD TV to really appreciate the higher quality.”
Compared to DVD or to what you were used to on DirectTV? The stuff coming over cable has looked as good as BlueRay for a while. If you can’t tell the different from DVD then that is very strange. Normal 1920/1080 display should be sufficient.
I finely got fed up with that game where I would notice my TV/internet package bill creeping up higher and higher and I would then call them up and they would tell me of a “special package” and for a few months my bill would be lower OR I would get some extra programming bull shit; And then in a few months I would be back to larger and larger monthly bill.
So about a month ago I decided to be done with this nonsense. I went and bought an over the air antenna, bought a couple DVR boxes, ran all the wire and got the system working, then called them up to cancel.
At first they tried again to put me in another special package and I told them I knew that whole game and that I was done with that bull shit and was already setup for over the air TV and wanted to cancel the TV portion of my service. When the girl saw I was serious she then said she would put me thru to the person that could set that up and said she would put me on hold. I was then ON HOLD FOREVER !! OK I’m thinking this is the next stage of this game, some people (actually the thought crossed my mind) will just get tired of being on hold and give up and leave things the way they are. Well not me, I just sat there doing whatever I was doing on the internet and stayed on hold until someone finally came back on line and I promptly canceled the TV portion of my service.
To make a long story short, I now pay less than half what I was paying since the TV portion was the largest portion of the bill, I get about 100 over the air channels although most are crap, I get enough local channels in HD (excellent quality) with local news which is all I use TV for anyway. I now pay NOTHING for TV and that is going to save me about $1500 a year from what I was paying. – I should have done this a long time ago.