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ESPN

Agent Orange

Agent Orange

Veteran Member
Joined
Sep 24, 2008
Messages
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Location
SE MI
Just read that ESPN is going off cable and streaming only which mean you will need a subscription. This may be the death nell for some cable outlets. Seems streaming is the wave of the future, and I'm on the waiting list for T Mobile in my area whenever they get the tower completed.
 
Does it have anything to do with their acquisition by Disney? I worked for them very briefly (contract work) back in the early 2000's. Pretty nice campus.



But is it any surprise? Cable is terrible. I stopped paying for cable programming back in 2003 or 2004 When I had a 5 disk a month subscription to Netflix. Whenever we stay at a hotel that has cable its 400 channels of pure garbage and much more advertising than I remembe in decades past. Good riddance cable.. You deserve to be buried at this point.
 
Playing devils advocate, I just held onto a good cable package, and it spared me a lot of the streaming wars. Perhaps not the most cost effective but sanity has a price. Also, using a DVR for everything but sports helps, which of course isn't an option at a hotel.

ESPN, ugh, lately all I know them for is buying up regular season hockey games to gatekeep them on ESPN+. It's cheaper for me to get the "out of market" hockey package on cable and watch the entire league, so I do that instead.
 
VERAULT said:
Does it have anything to do with their acquisition by Disney? I worked for them very briefly (contract work) back in the early 2000's. Pretty nice campus.



But is it any surprise? Cable is terrible. I stopped paying for cable programming back in 2003 or 2004 When I had a 5 disk a month subscription to Netflix. Whenever we stay at a hotel that has cable its 400 channels of pure garbage and much more advertising than I remembe in decades past. Good riddance cable.. You deserve to be buried at this point.
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Don't know about Disney. I do know that independent program streaming is becoming more prevalent. I'm all for it. Let me pick and choose what I want to watch. I agree that 99% of what's on cable is garbage. I like ESPN and BIG 10 Network along with the Discovery stuff and the wife likes Magnolia and Food and few others. Cable is going to go the way of Dish Network and DirectTv. Cable and satellite may survive for all while for those living in the boondocks.
 
Agent Orange said:
Just read that ESPN is going off cable and streaming only which mean you will need a subscription. This may be the death nell for some cable outlets. Seems streaming is the wave of the future, and I'm on the waiting list for T Mobile in my area whenever they get the tower completed.
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Gosh, very soon it'll cost as much as cable to have all the streaming networks.

As a subscriber of the magenta company, I don't know if I can fully recommend them anymore. The service has become the pits since the whole Sprint shake-up. For example, sometimes phone menus won't be able to hear DTMF tones and then comes the cycle of using the airplane mode button and hoping it'll hear it the next call around.
 
ST251 said:
Gosh, very soon it'll cost as much as cable to have all the streaming networks.

As a subscriber of the magenta company, I don't know if I can fully recommend them anymore. The service has become the pits since the whole Sprint shake-up. For example, sometimes phone menus won't be able to hear DTMF tones and then comes the cycle of using the airplane mode button and hoping it'll hear it the next call around.
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exactly! I keep telling my wife lets cancel netflix which I have had since 2002 as there really isnt anything good on it anymore. And Im not going to pay for 15 individual services,, thats put us back into the 80's hey days of cable.
 
VERAULT said:
exactly! I keep telling my wife lets cancel netflix which I have had since 2002 as there really isnt anything good on it anymore. And Im not going to pay for 15 individual services,, thats put us back into the 80's hey days of cable.
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"Error: HBO unavailable- unimplemented Trap"

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I assume piracy will be on the rise. As it is every show can be found on newsgroups within an hour or so of airing in any resolution you like.

My mom has dish network 100% for just the Greek channel and watching old TV shows. I replaced her old 720P TV with a 50" 4K HDR model with built in Roku which has a lot of old shows and movies on it plus she can stream using my Netflix account, but she still watches Dish.
 
VERAULT said:
There will always be piracy.
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Sadly I have to resort there sometimes but I try not to. I would really rather just pay for the right streaming service etc., but some shows/movies you're just pretty much stuck pirating no matter how many legitimate hoops you're willing to try to jump through.
 
skate323k137 said:
Sadly I have to resort there sometimes but I try not to. I would really rather just pay for the right streaming service etc., but some shows/movies you're just pretty much stuck pirating no matter how many legitimate hoops you're willing to try to jump through.
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Tubi is not too bad for older movies and the commercials are short and not overwhelming.
 
Are you sure about the going off cable, or is it just that they will offer the subscription service and still offer cable too.
 
I had cable TV since 1977 or so when they came door to door pitching it. Cable modems arrived somewhere around 2000 which is around the time I switched to DirecTV (probably late 90's) and ditched the cable box but kept internet.

The cool thing about cable back then was no commercials (and of course unedited rated R movies like Animal House on The Movie Channel).
 
Around 1974 I moved to a new apartment that had cable TV as part of the rent. My recollection was that it was a two coax line with switch affair. You essentially had two feeds. At some point, the owners decided that cable was available only as an extra payment, so they came and disconnected the switch and the connections into the coupler in the wall cavity, but leaving the coupler. I simply reconnected a length of cable to the coupler after they'd gone. They never knew about it. Around 1980, I had my own house and wouldn't let the cable guys anywhere near it.

That was when there still was decent broadcast content. Today, it seems that broadcast TV is mostly reruns and lots of commercials--and 6 hour golf tournaments. If something is advertised on broadcast TV, it's probably (a) overpriced or (b) a scam. The secondary channels (e.g. MeTV, iON Comet, Grit, Bounce, etc.) are even worse.
 
my family had cable pretty early on. We were some of the first to have digital color tvs (my folks were showy). i remember our first "cable box" . it was about a foot long.. pastel yellow with a long line of mechanical push buttons. On the side was a clear lens with a strip of paper which had a directory of what channel was on which button you pushed. Anyone remember something like that?
 
Advertising is around 18-20 minutes per hour for over the air broadcasts so people who pirate or have DVR's that don't record advertisement get to save 30-33% of their time watching a show.
 
A few broadcast networks now don't give the usual pause before starting a commercial--it comes at any arbitrary point, just continuous with the program material. Disorienting as heck.
 
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