Pineapple Express: Someone Is Wrong on the Internet?

[payn]

The selection is still better than anything we got with cable. We choose whether or not we really want to have The Office at our fingertips 24/7. I think the counter to that is what they’re doing to sports like football, where watching a season of ball requires 3 to 4 services.

Even on the 2-3 you can watch sports games, it often requires upgraded and premium packages to watch them. So, it easily hits cable levels of cost.

 

[TiQuinn]

Even on the 2-3 you can watch sports games, it often requires upgraded and premium packages to watch them. So, it easily hits cable levels of cost.

Yeah, that’s an area where companies identified that fans will pay through the nose to be fans, and for lack of a better word, punish you for being fans.

 

[Velderan]

You know, when my wife moved in with me ten+ years ago, she convinced me to cut the cable. We have Netflix, the Max/Hulu/Disney package, and Amazon Prime (about $50 a month total), and they STILL cost less than my cable package did ($125 a month, and no premium channels, just the basics). Either people are misremembering how much their cable bills were, or they were seriously screwing over the people in my area with the cable bills.

You can definitely approach the typical cost of a cable TV package if you subscribe to a lot more streaming platforms than you have listed, which a shocking amount of people seem to do. Personally we save a lot with the streaming model, but we currently only have the Disney/Hulu/Max ad-free bundle which is ~$30 a month. We'll eventually drop those and pick up Netflix when there's enough to watch there.

The last time we had cable I think we were also paying $125 a month for TV and a crappy internet package, but there were definitely things we could have added to make that cost more.

 

[Velderan]

Even on the 2-3 you can watch sports games, it often requires upgraded and premium packages to watch them. So, it easily hits cable levels of cost.

The worst part is you usually need to subscribe to multiple platforms at those premium tiers to watch an entire season of a specific team, or at least that's the case for the NHL.

 

[Ryujin]

I mean, I knew the answer when I typed it. The Cable Monopolies have done a number on us.

We just get hosed on both cable/internet and cellular service, in Canada. Something about infrastructure needing to span vast amounts of empty territory.

 

[RealAlHazred]

We just get hosed on both cable/internet and cellular service, in Canada. Something about infrastructure needing to span vast amounts of empty territory.

I live in New Jersey, one of the smaller but more densely-populated States, and our costs are also high. So, the excuses are just that, "excuses."

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Part of why our 3-person household hasn’t gone to streaming is that our viewing tastes only overlap a little, so to watch everything we do now would require nearly as much $$$ and would be much less convenient.

To be clear, I’m the one who drives up the costs the most, and my parents would have the most problems dealing with migrating between the various streaming services.

 

[Cadence]

If we can justify Amazon Prime and Walmart Plus (w/Paramount) as being free with the other things we wanted, PBS streaming being for the community good, and we ignore the cost of the internet connection itself, then we don't pay too much at all...

Netflix with ads, Disney+, and Britbox total under $30/month I think.

(And thank goodness for the Roku for making them easy to navigate on our 2016 TV).

 

[Umbran]

If we can justify Amazon Prime and Walmart Plus (w/Paramount) as being free with the other things we wanted, PBS streaming being for the community good, and we ignore the cost of the internet connection itself, then we don't pay too much at all...

Yeah. My wife maintains Amazon prime to get things she needs for her business quickly, so Prime is a side effect. My PBS subscription i also view as a public good.

I just cut cable a little while back, and even with boosting my internet speeds on the new package, that saved over a hundred bucks a month. That covers a lot of streaming services....

 

[The Firebird]

I've not been paying for anything. I've had good luck with Tubi, Freevee, Pluto, and the old fashioned library dvd. A friend at the upper range (e.g., wanting to watch every Oscar nominee) says it is worse than cable. But at the lower end we are better off.