
Estimate: 800,000 U.S. Households Abandoned Their TVs For The Web - jasonlbaptiste
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/13/800000-households-abandoned-tvs-web/
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warfangle
I already have. Most of what I want to watch is available on Hulu, Netflix, or
CBS' (crappy, admittedly) website. For the one other show I watch, I subscribe
on Amazon.

I haven't watched over-the-air or over-the-cable TV in almost two years now.

Why subsidize the 95% of TV I don't watch with a cable subscription? I'd much
rather directly fund the shows I'm truly interested in via Amazon's
subscription (or Hulu's ads).

The article notes that expected subscription-droppers are to double over the
next year. If that stays steady at doubling, in eight years cable and
broadcast will be dead. In all likelihood, however, that rate is only going to
perform as an S-curve (there will always be holdouts to new technology - just
look at the transition from analog to digital airwaves).

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warfangle
I want to update my last sentence.

The rate of adoption (not the adoption percentage) is not going to perform as
an S-curve. Once the adoption rate peaks, it will quickly drop to zero.

In other words:

Adoption rate is likely going to increase, either linearly or exponentially
(we humans are terrible at seeing exponential rate change at the beginning)
until the actual adoption percentage approaches its asymptote.

This asymptote represents the technologically and financially marginalized
portion of society. Adoption rate will likely be extremely slow on that end.

Adoption rate increase will likely look like an S-curve with a very sharp
drop-off at the point where the actual percentage of persons adopting TVoIP
technology approaches 85-90% of the population - unless an extremely
inexpensive TVoIP solution (Google-funded?) is adopted.

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nbroyal
I desperately want to drop cable, but I'm a huge sports fan which means no
viable alternative to ESPN really hurts. Anyone have any suggestions?

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bpick
If you love sports in general you might be out of luck. I love baseball in
particular hand have no problem paying the 100 bucks for MLB.tv to watch any
(and every) game that I choose, often in high-def, on whatever device I want.

I'm not certain about the other sports, but for baseball there is no real
reason to be tied to cable.

~~~
blazamos
Unless your favorite team is local and you are subject to blackout.

~~~
tvon
True, but you could probably pick them up OTA in that case.

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terrellm
My wife and I dropped a $75/month DirecTV bill over a year ago and haven't
looked back. Now, all the DirectTV box does is serve as a stand for our
projector to sit on.

Hulu has most of the new television shows and if they don't have one of your
shows, it's probably on iTunes. I'm not a big sports fan, but I was concerned
about the Olympics. Fortunately, NBC had them online.

Netflix is great if you watch several movies a month, but if you are like me
and one is enough then iTunes or Redbox work great.

~~~
timmaah
Same here. Though I get all the networks plus two PBS via over the air. I'm
continually amazed that via analog I couldn't get a single channel that was
watchable, but with the switch to digital I can get 6 stations (plus sub
channel) perfectly clear.

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blhack
I already have, and I suspect that a lot of people my age are going to follow
suit. I realized during a recent move that my TV was still at the old house,
and that it wasn't really bothering me not having it. I haven't even plugged
it in since I finally got it to the new place.

I'm either going to trade my television for a road bicycle or a keg-
refrigerator.

If you're a cable company trying to mount a closed "you will watch what we
want you to watch _when_ we want you to watch it!" platform against a "Here
are a bunch of things you can watch...whenever you want. Like them? Share the
link with your friends!", you're in trouble.

The model of "sit down at 7:00pm CST on Thursday evening to watch The Office"
is dead and the writing has been on the wall since the 1990s.

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pavs
So did I. But this seems appropriate:

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-
mention...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-
he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/)

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ugh
That’s weird. Are you really paying more than $100 per month for cable in the
US? I was confused there because I really couldn’t imagine that of all things
the cable bill would be a reason to ditch the TV. You get your standard maybe
thirty useful and seventy crappy TV stations in Germany for 15€. Probably
because pay TV never really caught on in Germany. Except if you are really
into soccer. I don’t even know what I could get by paying beyond soccer. No
HBO in Germany.

Having public broadcasting doesn’t seem to be too bad, after all :)

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loikujhygthj
$50 for basic cable here, another $50 for extras (discovery channel and comedy
network) HD and movies get a lot more expensive. Then sport - ouch.

There is only one cable provider and it has a monopoly. I just watched TV on
the net after the companies intro $10/month offer ran out.

~~~
jules
That's all in the standard package here. €16,45/month for 60 channels,
including discovery channel, comedy central and sport. The most popular
channels come in HD for free, but to get Discovery, National Geographic and
History in HD you need to pay extra (€4/month). Maybe we pay the difference
with taxes?

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logic
My wife and I are in that 800,000. When we bought our new house a few years
ago, it came with an antenna on the roof, so we decided to fore-go cable and
try OTA for a while.

A few years later, we watch almost nothing on the TV anymore (including OTA),
and get a lot of our video entertainment from Netflix, Hulu, the occasional
torrent for "niche" material, and local movie theaters if we're feeling
particularly rich (or want a night out), or manage to catch a matinée showing.

But, in general, we consume considerably less non-interactive media these
days. It's done wonders for my honey-do list. ;-)

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Goosey
I dropped my cable, but I have a nettop pc hooked up to my TV so that my
Hulu/Netflix/Torrent experience maps pretty well.

In practice it is like having TV/Movie on demand for a much lower monthly cost
with gaming and web browsing built in. If you do your shopping right LCD TVs
make great monitors at couch sitting distance.

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NEPatriot
As people in the TC article pointed out the only issue I have with cord
cutting is live sports. MLB has a 20$/month subscription service but I'd like
to only pay for my team say 3-4$/month. Once the other leagues follow, and I
can pay a few $ a month/team. I'm ready to cut.

~~~
jonknee
And MLB.tv doesn't let you watch local market games which are just about the
only ones I'm interested in. You can get around it with a proxy server and
alternate billing address, but that's a nasty hack.

~~~
lotharbot
Similarly with NBA.com's League Pass. Whenever my favorite team plays the
nearest team (almost 200 miles away) the game is blacked out for me.

Why make it hard for customers to pay you for the product they want? Why make
it easier for the non-payers using atdhe.net or justin.tv than it is for
subscribers like me to find the games we want? Why make customers pretend
they're from Brazil so they don't randomly miss games?

Still, these services are a big step forward from what was available 5 years
ago.

~~~
jonknee
> Why make it hard for customers to pay you for the product they want?

So they don't lose their lucrative licensing deals on TV. It's a bum out, but
that's how it will be for a while.

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allenp
Netflix and Hulu fill any TV needs we have - except for the NFL. If Hulu was
able to offer all of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox with no commercials for $30/mo I'd
snatch it up in a heartbeat, especially if they also sold some hardware to go
from the network straight to the TV.

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inmygarage
There are over 100 million televisions in the U.S. - so while this is a great
indicator (and I'm a huge fan of abandoning TV and am one of the 800K) there's
still a while to go before TV becomes a truly irrelevant screen.

