Streaming TV Costs a Lot Less Than Cable, but Choosing a Service Has Proven Frustrating
Like millions of other consumers, Evan Hartstein was fed up with pay TV. The 40-year-old father of two was paying nearly $250 a month for a bundle of phone, high-speed Internet and hundreds of cable channels that he and his family barely watched. So Hartstein and his wife recently ditched their standard cable TV subscription and instead signed up for Sling TV, Netflix and a few other streaming services. Their monthly bill was cut in...
Consumer Confidential: Time Warner Cable Takes Baby Step Toward More Affordable Pay-TV Service
Dana Sutton is typical of many Time Warner Cable customers. It’s not that he dislikes the company’s services. He just doesn’t want so much of them. For instance, the $12.75 a month he has to pay for his cable box. “That seems high,” Sutton, 73, told me. Or the many, many channels he never watches. “I’d jump at the chance for a-la-carte channels,” the Los Angeles-area resident said. Could it be that Time Warner Cable feels his and...
Consumer Confidential: Cutting the Cable Cord and Embracing a Digital Media World
I have seen the future, and it doesn’t have cable TV. Our house is undergoing some repairs, so we’ve been staying elsewhere for the past week. I’ve been using my tablet computer for online access to HBO, Showtime and the other premium networks that make up most of my TV viewing. And you know what? It hasn’t been the eye-straining, no-fun experience I’d been expecting. Watching movies and shows while kicked back on the couch, my tablet...
Comcast to Offer New, Low-Cost Streaming TV Service
Comcast, the nation’s largest cable company, is giving its customers the option to cut the cord. The company said Monday that it is beta-testing a video streaming service for its Xfinity Internet customers that will offer a pared-down package of TV channels, including HBO, for $15 a month. The pilot program, called Stream, is expected to launch later this summer in Boston, where Comcast customers enjoy some of the fastest Internet...
Consumer Confidential: Canada Sets an Example for a La Carte Pay-TV Pricing
Here in the Land of the Free, the telecom industry has fought aggressively for years to make sure people keep getting hundreds of pay-TV channels they don’t want, rather than just the ones they watch. Up in Canada, telecom companies were told by government regulators recently that they’ll have to unbundle pay-TV packages by next year and switch to a la carte channels. And guess what? The Canadian telecom industry is basically cool...
