Hacker News Reader

Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

The majority of people who still have cable like it because, 1) They are not capable or wanting to learn about streaming and the new tech, 2) Enjoy the passive background comfort of TV, which requires no additional effort to consume.

Both of these will allow increased commercials with no reduction in viewership. If you were going to cut the cord you would have done it already.

View on HN

3) Cable internet is the only option for high speed, and the way they price it, the TV is almost or actually "free" once you pay out the nose for internet.

This describes my dad.

Back around 2008, he would come to my house and love watching movies on my TV connected to my Mac Mini running Front Row. The original Apple remote was a thing of simplicity and beauty.

I moved on to a Roku box running Plex and he still liked it, but it was more complicated, easier to misclick something and he would struggle to get back. He eventually got the hang of it. But by then, his hearing was declining and he kept having to juggle multiple remotes to turn the sound up and down.

Fast forward to 2017, we had a Roku TV with one remote to control everything and it made life a little easier. He could navigate the different apps and find enough to keep him entertained.

So I bought him a 49 inch TCL Roku TV ($350) and then the problems started.

- I have gigabit Ethernet up and down, reliable WiFi that never drops below 200Mbps and wired Ethernet throughout the house - my internet connection is reliable. They live in a small town with 50Mbps cable internet that’s not reliable. There is nothing so frustrating as having your video cut out in the middle and having buffering when you’ve been use to cable for the last 40 years.

- Data caps - we don’t have them, he does. He never had to worry about data caps when watching video.

- signing in. For some reason, the video on demand channels that he can get via his cable login keeps making him re authorize. That means he has to go to a computer or his phone to activate the channel - he’s not going to do that. I ended up just deleting all of those channels. He never had to do that with his cable.

- searching. The search interface is alien to a cable user.

- I signed him in to my Amazon Prime account but he’s afraid to use it because he doesn’t want to accidentally buy a movie since Amazon mixes in free with Prime, for rent and movies you have to purchase.

- if he logs into Netflix with someone else’s profile he sees a different set of movies. Once he watches all of the suggested movies on his profile, he thinks that’s all there is. He doesn’t search for other movies.

If he does want to switch to cable, he has to switch to another connection (even though it’s clearly labeled as cable) and use another remote. We use DirecTVNow for cable, it’s just another app.

Edit:

Did I mention that my Plex server that I signed him into doesn’t have 5 9s uptime. If it isn’t running when he wants to watch a movie, he will avoid it for weeks. No matter how often I describe the difference between Plex - that runs on my computer - and Netflix.

Or they DVR everything and fast forward through the commercials.

Take a look at AT&T subscriber losses last quarter if you think people have decided one way or the other and are done cutting the cord. The two points are a pretty odd choice and I would say increasing cost is at the top of the list.

Source?

"The company blamed it in part on some of the usual factors. Subscribers failed to reup after their promotional discounts expired; competition took its toll. DirecTV Now increased pricing, which undoubtedly led to some customers leaving."

The last article talks about a study including the type of people OP mentioned. They don't mind cable and commercials but end up being cord cutters anyway because of loss of control over the channels included.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonifitzgerald/2019/07/24/yikes...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tonifitzgerald/2019/06/29/portr...

Thanks.

This is more TV / scheduled video than traditional PSTN / data services then. Though AT&T aren't doing great in either of those markets either.

That seems a rather insulting take on people.

Have you met many people? :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com