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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Are people here really so young that they never had to deal with traditional cable subscriptions? Let me tell you what it was like. You signed up for Comcast, paid a $50+ installation fee, prayed that the technician would even show up in the allotted window, paid $100-150 month for basic service, paid for a cable box/modem rental, paid for HD, paid for DVR, paid for each extra TV in your house, paid for premium channels, paid for on-demand, paid for sports packages, and then watched a shit load of ads to cap it all off. Complaining that YouTube TV is too pricey or is making things worse just shows that you don't know of the media world outside of YouTube and Netflix.

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Ah, don’t forget the incredible experience of calling Comcast customer service because your special promotional rate expired and your monthly bill went up 25%, or the free HBO promotion that you couldn’t opt out of expired and you are paying $10 more, or any of half a dozen other anti consumer nonsense some scumbag at Comcast dreamt up. The most outrageous was one some Comcast rep called me to tell me I qualified for a free DVR upgrade because I was such a loyal customer. By loyal I guess they meant captive, but ok. I don’t watch TV and only had a TV package cause it was somehow cheaper than just internet due to some promotion, but sure whatever. Turns out by free he meant like an extra $30 per month. Took me a few billing cycles to notice. I had never even unboxed it. They refunded me after several hours on the phone. I should have invoiced them for my time. I got rid of them as soon as I had an alternative.

We were paying about $350 for internet + the full package to get sports.

Now it's $60 for faster internet and $73 for TV. The ads are infuriating, but it's less than half the cost for pretty much the same TV experience. This is a very clear upgrade.

Torrents and reasonably fast internet have both existed for decades now.

I'm running jellyfin server on an old NUC (but you can use any piece of hardware or even your main computer). My android and iOS devices (including 2 TVs) have the jellyfin client. I can watch movies/TV shows anywhere and resume on another device anytime.

"We had it worse, stop complaining" is a super gross take. It was shitty for us, but that doesn't erase someone's current burden.

In a way, yes. It gets to a point people cannot appreciate how great they have it.

Correct, but there are cheaper options. Additionally, you can self-install cable these days in many places.

With streaming services you still have to pay for certain sports packages and premiums.

Most people who stream are still paying the Internet fees and modem rental.

Some streaming services will sell you equipment (for instance, DirecTV Stream has a set-top box that isn't required, but actually behaves more like traditional cable instead of having to navigate to a separate app)

...in the US.

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