satellite direct tv

[banditpowdercoat]

The problem with everything, and I think it should be illegal, is price upping. Take Call Display for instance. When it was offered to the public, it was about $2/month. Now, once everyone is hooked and can't live without Call Display, they up the rates to almost $10/mo. Don't tell me the technology required fpr CD has goten more expensive!.

And Satelite TV, the packages used to be Sports, Learning TV, Networks. Discovey and THC were in the same package. NOW, Shaw mixed them all up, AND won;t let you juist order Discovery alone. The popular channels are mixed with unpopular ones and you "have" to buy the package. it just infuriates me. But I can;t live without my Discovery LOL

[Delphinus]

Found the link. I dunno, it seems pretty fishy to me.

- First of all anything with that "As Seen on TV" logo is something that.. um .. OK I don't really know where I'm going with this other than it puts it it all into the same category as K-Tel Mini-Pops, It Slices It Dices, and "Hi Anthony Sullivan here, you can get CASH for your unwanted gold!".

- When I clicked away from the link, I got an automated popup saying "Are you sure! A LIVE AGENT would like to offer you a discount!" .. instant turn-off.

- Here's the thing. Most network channels allow streaming of their shows anyhow. So it makes me wonder if it's just some kind of data concentration service. Thing is if they are circumventing geographical restrictions (ie., if you're in Canada, you can't just go to abc.com and watch Lost, you need to do it from ctv.ca) then they'll likely be forced to change their model sooner or later and I bet you're out the $50 at that point.

[sphelps]

Yes essentially the "direct satellite" software is a kind of scam in the sense it's not exactly clear what it does and isn't exactly what it says it is. It's just a simple piece of software that is suppose to organize what are essentially links to live streams provided by TV networks. However I figure if they actually did a half decent job of it, it might still be worth $50 which really isn't much. I was curious if anyone has actually tried it, all the reviews online are obviously fake so it's hard to get a real feel for it. Either way I'm not saying this is the answer but I do believe the answer is related to the PC.

Anyways I'm off that idea and onto something else. I got a program called TED which stands for torrent episode downloader. Now this likely isn't 100% legal but in all fairness it's not that bad when you consider what's considered right and wrong these days. Plus if more people take this approach and ditch the cable companies they will be forced to lower there prices to attract more business. So it's a simple program if you're familiar with the torrent world and it simply allows you to set a schedule of your favorite shows and automatically downloads them once they become available, you can even set it to download HD quality only.

TED is a completely free program and if it works as good as it's suppose to I don't see the need for cable TV. You might end up watching your shows a day after everyone else but that's a small price to pay.

The main purpose of this thread is to see what others do for alternatives to the cable company. I'm personally sick of the system, even the fact you have to pay extra for HD in the same channels you already have and pay for. Then on top of that you have to pay additional HD fees for each additional TV. Then when you finally get around to watching something good it craps out on you and you miss part of all of the show. So exactly what are we paying for??

[Delphinus]

I find that between having two small kids, the reef tanks, the basement/280g build going on, I watch *extremely* little TV anymore anyhow, but this is what I do (ie. watch my shows off a PC - it's just that my TV is hooked up to a PC running as a PVR).

I agree that the future of TV involves watching shows on your computer. Sites like youtube with "channels" are further pushing things in that direction. This nice thing is you can run your TV off a PC now anyhow, so it's not like your watching TV in some chintzy format or a little 2"x3" window or something.

My PVR was starting to have issues though in the last year (5 year old computer now, no wait, 6 years, which seems to be about the life expectancy of any of my PCs.. not sure if that's average or not, but .. well whatever). So every once in a while it would miss a show for whatever reason. In those cases I would find the missed episode by other means. Which generally meant I would watch the show in 1080 HD, and already without commercials. The quality of the "watching" was far superior. It really made me question whether I want to sink a couple hundred or more into replacing the hardware when the end result will be a step backwards in quality.