Cord-cutting is Difficult

My beautiful wife and I recently retired and bought a wonderful home in Sedona, AZ. We plan to move there this summer, but in the meantime we’ve been going back and forth as much as possible. There’s lots of decisions to be made as we plan our move. Which furniture do we pay to move and what do we buy new? Which cars do we keep? Do we really need a Jeep to take advantage of the hundreds of miles of trails surrounding our new home? Do we move our DirecTV subscription or try cable-cutting?

The first trip to our new home was all about getting things set up. Power, natural gas, water, sewer, garbage pick-up and the like. There was no doubt about needing an Internet connection, so I studied the options and talked to existing customers about their service experience. I settled on the local cable company, Suddenlink. They offered the fastest and most affordable service. I purchased their small business package with 100 Mb down and 20 Mb up service for ~$60/month. I just happen to be a Suddenlink customer at our current residence and I was pleased that our new home connection is over three times faster for the same money. I arranged for them to install our new service the second day after we arrived. Everything went smoothly. I chose the high-speed Internet-only option for now since we’ll only be there one week per month until we move. I took along one of my 3^rd generation TVs and hooked it up to a 27” monitor so we’d at least have something to watch while we’re there in the interim.

In our existing home our TVs are mainly used for streaming from our iTunes library, using AirPlay from one of our iOS devices and watching the occasional YouTube video. For normal television we’ve been DirecTV customers since 1994. Yep, that’s me, Mr. Early adopter. I bought my first DirecTV dish/receiver setup within two months of its original release and yes, paid over $1000 for it and yes, had to install it myself. Today you can get up to five HD receivers plus installation for free if you sign a two-year contract. C’est la vie.

After hooking up the TV I got my first taste of cable-cutting. I tried watching several of my favorite channels included on the TV, History, Smithsonian, CNN, etc. and almost all of them required me to “validate” or “activate” using my DirecTV login before I could watch them. I launched the channel using the remote and browsed to a season and episode of a particular show I wanted to watch. I noticed a small “padlock” icon next to the show title. When selected, the TV would present me with a code and a URL to visit to “activate” the channel. On my laptop I visited the URL, entered the code and then the site made me select my TV provider. I chose DirecTV and was redirected to a DirecTV login where I would enter my DirecTV account credentials. The site would “think” for a few seconds, then tell me my TV channel was now “activated”.

The point of all this is, there is very little you can watch on an TV if you don’t already subscribe to a cable or satellite provider. The several channels I tried don’t even give you the option of paying for the channel individually with one exception, CBS. They have a service called “CBS All Access” you can subscribe to for $6 per month. They claim to have 7500 show episodes available and live streaming of your local CBS affiliate. The service also promises next-day availability of new episodes. It is as close to an “a la carte” service as anything I’ve found. It would be great if there were about a dozen more services like it. But there aren’t, and that’s the rub.

It seems the big content providers still take their marching orders from big service providers like Comcast, DirecTV, TimeWarner, etc. Either that, or they just don’t get it. I’m leaning toward the former. Guys like Discovery Network (History, H2, Science and Discovery Channels) must be getting some rather sizeable and regular checks from the cable and satellite TV companies who obviously stipulate some level of exclusivity when it comes to distribution. Those same cable and satellite companies strategically bundle groups of channels (many of which almost nobody cares about) in order to persuade customers to purchase three or four bundles in order to get the dozen or so channels they really want. The result: a typical $100+/month cable or satellite bill. If each of these dozen “hot” channels were available individually for $6/month like CBS, the bill would be $72. Comcast, DirecTV and their ilk like to brag about having hundreds of channels, but let’s face it, most of them are complete crap. Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve been a DirecTV customer for over 20 years. During that time, I’ve had to re-evaluate my subscription at least a dozen times. New channels come on-line frequently, existing channels get HD versions and DirecTV’s packages change periodically. I have to stay on my toes to make sure I’m not paying more than necessary to get the channels I want. Believe me, nobody from DirecTV calls when there’s an opportunity for me to lower my monthly bill. No customer should have to work that hard to avoid overpaying.

The bigger point is, we should be able to buy individual channels on our TVs or ROKUs or Chromecasts or whatever.  The world is moving toward “single wire” connectivity where Internet, TV and phones all come into our homes via a single connection. One might argue that’s the case already, but you’d be wrong. Take Comcast for instance. They can hook your home up with all these services through a single cable. The problem is, Comcast treats it like three separate connections. Think about it. If that weren’t true, then why would they call their combination of services “bundles”? For regular television you have to purchase a package and install one of their proprietary tuners. For telephone, you have to purchase a package and install their proprietary VOIP phone system. Internet service is their only offering where no packages or hardware is required. You can even use your own modem. You simply pay for speed. There are a multitude of options for low-cost internet telephone service like Skype or MagicJack. There’s TV and Movie solutions like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime where you can get a plethora of older content. The problem is finding a way to watch current TV episodes and live streams for news and sports. If someone knows how to do this, I’d appreciate you letting me know.