Internet / TV Service in the US

[Bo Deadly]

I've been paying $194.85 USD per month for NJ Verizon FiOS TV, Internet and phone and it's just not worth it.

I called Verizon and explained I don't really need phone (I have a mobile) or super-duper high speed Internet (I'm just doing email, posting on groupdiy and listening to "radio") and I could live without a lot of channels (probably should live with none since there's nothing really good on anyway - except for The Expanse in two days!). But there was basically no deal to be had. They claim the absolute bargain basement price for Internet + TV + DVR was $166 but that was with credits that expire after 2 years so I would have to keep calling up and re-signing a contract to save $30.

So I'm wondering if I should get just Internet only from whoever and use my Apple TV to get some kind of TV streaming service? Is the picture quality HD?

What are other people doing about this? All of the content is getting spread out on 10 different services anyway so it seems inevitable we're going to end up watching everything on the Internet.

The only other service here is Comcast Xfinity but from Googling around it doesn't sound like that would be much different. And presumably I would have to pay more to make the switch. And it could turn out to be bad service in which case I'm stuck. At least with FiOS I know it works. Or maybe I should just accept that I'm a slave to Verizon and lay down and go back to sleep ...

 

[desol]

I get my news from bbcnews and ctvnews daily on the internet. This allows me to choose the things I wish to read about. I disconnected cable tv quite a long time ago. I have a cell(flip phone) and voice/text only. This removes internet sillyness where it isn't needed(or wanted) and leaves the phone to it's intended purpose - phone calls, sometimes texts and/or emergencies if needed. I have the slowest internet package available at 5mbps which is still more than fast enough for videos, movies, email... That pretty much takes care of everything that I want and need.

So that's $45 for internet and $30 for phone.

 

[john12ax7]

Internet only is fine.  That plus a steaming service is all you really need.  You can get free trials for the major ones and then see what suits your needs. Quality is mostly HD,  with some 4k even these days.

If you have apple TV you should definitely explore all the apps / channels available with it. Tons of quality no fee ad based content.

You can also pay for things like HBO separately through the app without cable.

 

[pucho812]

I have cable/internet. the cable costs way more then the internet does.  I hardly watch it except for in the evenings as it puts me to sleep.  cutting cable is easy, still need the internet at the moment.  apple TV looks like a great option. Just do apple TV with the new version which does up to 4K and then get netflix for like 10 dollars a month and your set.  maybe do a digital antena so you can get the local news?

 

[Bo Deadly]

Believe it or not I don't even know what the streaming services are and how they work. Is it like TV with channels and live content and the local sports game? Or do you browse though content and watch stuff "on-demand"? Will I have to waste 10 minutes trying to figuring out how to get a particular program because it requires one service vs. the other?

 

[pucho812]

o.k. apple T.V. is like this.  net flix has an app in apple t.v. you laugh the app and you can browse all the net flix titles. then select one and your done.  you watch the show, or the series or whatever.

Others have apps too, like discovery channel, history channel, etc.  Some you pay for.  But like before you lock the app and browse the show and then watch.

 

[desol]

Oh yeah, I have amazon prime too, so that's $10/mth. I get most sports, etc from youtube and/or news...

 

[john12ax7]

There are some steaming apps that have channels inside like usual tv,  pluto tv is one.  But most streaming,  like Netflix, is on demand.  Just pick what you want and watch. Lots of popular tv shows and movies available.

 

[pvision]

Wow, you pay a lot for broadband in the USA! A typical UK package of broadband, WiFi Router, phone and free-to-air TV is £29 ($40) / month for 12 months then £48 ($67) / month in the second year. Thats with "up to 100Mbps" fibre broadband. Includes a TV tuner / recorder but you'll pay more for premium TV channels

We never had the Cable TV market that the USA had

Mobile phone coverage here is good enough in urban areas that the number of home phone lines is dropping fast

 

[PRR]

FiOS was the gold-standard when I left NJ. The only reason I didn't get it is that I was leaving town.

At the time it was FAST.

Agree that many folks do not need all that.

Until this week I was paying $167 to TimeWarner for the TV/Innernet screw-job. 16Mbps plan, though last year it silently upgraded to 25Mbps. This is indeed nearly fast enough.

TW is now Spectrum and the local sales-rep came to the door(!) for a "survey". Actually he suggested we call to say "Upgrade" and we would get Spectrum's 100Mbps plan, new modem, new TV box. The internet had multiple problems, some of them "me". I tried to have old and new boxes live at the same time. I expected the old hub/WiFi to talk to the new box. I actually called a person, who understood the issue, didn't tell me what I did wrong, turned-off my old modem, but now the new modem worked and the laptop got 114Mbps over WiFi!

BUT while Spectrum does not charge rental for the modem or the TV-box remote(!), the bill came to within a dollar of what TimWarner was gouging us-- $167/month.

This includes "premium" channels, including a LOT we do not want, but we have to pay more for a couple we do watch.

FWIW: TV/IP and TV/IP/Phone come to about the same price. They bundle too aggressively.

 

[abbey road d enfer]

In Paris I pay about $60 a month for Hi-speed internet (ADSL, not fiber), TV and unlimited telephone to 150 countries. Everything came in boxes from the post and I connected it myself.
In NOLA, when I found a HotSpot with 70 GB would last only two days with two teenagers in the house, I shopped for a fixed connection. The "best" deal I could find was $97 a month, and I had to pay $300 for the installation.

 

[john12ax7]

Is it possible that something is actually cheaper in LA?  Here it's like 35-50 a month for internet depending on what promotional plan you are on.  20 Mbps+ speeds.

 

[guavatone]

No fun here, being a soccer fan is what keeps me paying close to $200 a month on Optimum.  I’ve read blogs about threading to leave and getting your bills reduced and sounds like it probably works.  If I didn’t need my soccer, then i’d Run Kodi on a Fire TV with just internet and maybe subscribe to an app or two.

It still seems like a monopoly to me, when Time Warner is not competing in my area.  I ‘ve been thinking there must be a slick way to just use an unlimited cell plan to get internet through the phone alone.

 

[Gene Pink]

Wow, you pay a lot for broadband in the USA!

Yeah, no shirt. (censor sidestep)

[rant]

With everything in the medical community, big pharm, insurance,  pricing as high as the market will bear, why not cable, and in many areas, they were a monopoly.

Consumer groups were pushing for "A la carte" pricing options, but with no legislation passed (as far as I know) they didn't have to, so why should they? They didn't. Their argument was that if a channel/network had no viewers, they would go bankrupt and it would limit our viewing options. 

So why the hell is that a bad thing? It is not. Clear out some dead wood, and give other remaining channels an incentive to come up with watchable programming, where the viewership numbers actually affect the bottom line. Don't like that channel? Cancel it, they don't get paid. They go under. Last I looked, if you could get the channel, they got paid, just because it was on that tier you ordered, whether anyone watched it or not. 

An aside: 20+ years ago visiting my mom, in having a conversation in the kitchen with an old friend about this, he goes off on cable. As he put it, "19 channels of rotating jewelry". And what do I see over his shoulder? Some shopping network my mom left on, on the little TV, displaying sparkly rotating jewelry. So I point over his shoulder; "you mean like that?" 

For me, having had to endure and cuss out the many telemarketing calls from time-warner cable insisting that I upgrade to digital, the last one really set me off. "If you fargin iceholes* call me one more time, I will cancel right then and there".

* not exactly what I said. Bunch of bastages.

They stopped calling. A year later, when "The Sopranos" series on HBO ended, I cut the cable, and never looked back.

Here, at the present: Broadcast TV, with the newfangled digital with many subchannels, there is plenty to watch. Free.

Youtube: Free. Just type in the search: "Idiot Drivers". Or whatever, there are downloaders out there that get past youtube's latest efforts to thwart downloading.

Hard drive: Well, I won't get into that, but over 2TB available. Free, outside of buying the hard drives.

Internet here is ATT 3Mb adsl, all I need, rock solid service, about $45. Netflix comes in fine, although sometimes in reduced resolution, but smooth with no glitches.

Phones? Two cell and two land lines. Got rid of the dialup modem / fax line. 

Gene

PS: Somebody mentioned a "digital antenna" in this thread, there is no such thing outside of marketing-speak. It's an antenna.

A metal rod picks up a carrier, and is fed to a tuner. The rod doesn't have a clue about what is encoded on that carrier; analog AM or FM, digital, phase-shift encoded, side band... whatever. It is a radio signal. This grinds my gears when I see commercials advertising some miracle magic converter box that allows newer TVs to receive "an FCC mandated signal that broadcast stations have to, by law, broadcast." Like it is some secret backdoor to free TV that nobody else knows about.

It's a goddamn antenna, for fark's sake. I have to wonder how many people that don't get the tech, fall for this marketing bullcrap. "I cancelled cable, what do I do now?" Just hook up your old antenna, it will work fine.

[/rant]

PPS: attached, my "Magic Antenna". Feeds a USB dongle on the laptop, watch TV. I now get stations 70 miles away, couldn't before with analog NTSC. Must be this magic antenna.

State of the art, 300 ohm. That's more than 75 ohms, must be better, right?  ;D

 

[Bo Deadly]

It sounds like if I want live TV, the streaming services are not an option. I would have to get 5 different services (some of which are $30-$40) and figure out how to make each work. That's silly. So I'm not going to cut the cord.

But has anyone made the switch from FiOS to Xfinity? Xfinity is quite a bit cheaper at ~$112 for 2 years (see correction in my next message) of 140+ channels + DVR. Installation is $60. After 2 years it's +30 but you can reduce that some with a new deal.

Does anyone know how Xfinity compares to FiOS? I tried to Google "fios vs xfinity" but there are bunch of "review" sites that look very suspicious.

I'm also wondering how Verizon will react and if I will get them to cleanly uninstall in a timely fashion so that I'm not without Internet for as long as necessary. I guess I can only schedule both for one right after the other and hope for the best. The closet where this stuff goes is tight.

PS: The cost of living is fairly high in NJ being next to NYC. So I would expect Verizon employees that live in the area to be paid more and facility costs are no doubt higher so it is to be expected that those costs will be reflected on customer's bills. But there's no way that accounts for the exceptionally high cost to consumers.

 

[guavatone]

I found this site to be helpful with plan comparisons

https://www.whistleout.com/Internet/TV-NJ

It seems you can get xfinity for $94 for a year then you still have to pay the $150+ And they appear to have a data cap of a TB.  All these years and I still can’t get FiOS because there’s only 4 houses on my street, or they don’t know the geography. 

 

[Bo Deadly]

I found this site to be helpful with plan comparisons

But you should also consider that a site like that is getting paid to promote the products and services listed. So it's not hard to imagine how they might not provide a completely honest review.

Having said that, $112 + 30 is 142 which is not far from your 150 number but still a lot less than $166+30 for FiOS.

[UPDATE: Correction: Xfinity is $132 with HD DVR + all the little fees and taxes. So the 112 was wrong (didn't include DVR). But that is compared to the vaguely equivalent plan (minus a few channels like Viceland which I will miss slightly) for FiOS, it's still $30 less. So I signed up with Xfinity. Will try to remember to post a follow up after a few months.]

As for the 1TB cap, I will ask about that but even if it's true, that's a lot of data. I would have to download 200 linux ISOs or watch 1000 hours of 3D unitard porn in 4K (not that I would ever do that of course but if anyone has a link don't be stingy  )

 

[john12ax7]

For live TV you can look into sling TV,  it's a paid app that live streams the cable channels, might be cheaper.

Are data caps still a thing these days?

 

[PRR]

> being next to NYC. So I would expect Verizon employees that live in the area to be paid more and facility costs are no doubt higher so it is to be expected that those costs will be reflected on customer's bills. But there's no way that accounts for the exceptionally high cost to consumers.

That's not how it works at all.

Your tech has a full day's work in a 15 mile radius. My tech may cover 100 miles between stops. (Yes, your streets may be 8MPH true average, but many of ours are 40MPH and very twisty/windy.)

Your cable has >100 customers per mile of backbone. My street has 23. (FWIW: a traditional rule of thumb is you don't wire a street with <25/mile, so my Cable TV is a 1980s fluke and I really doubt any other wire/optic service will ever come here.)

John's LA has some of the highest land values in the US, and dense population, yet he says his rates are lower.

I am *sure* it has a lot to do with competition. Out here in the woods there is only one serious provider. In the jungles of NYC/NJ the territorial rights were divided-up decades ago, and price-wars do not happen. (FiOS is tolerated by Cable because FiOS's price is higher.) If the historical politics of LA encouraged multiple providers (LA used to have at least 5 telephone companies) then maybe Fred undercuts Jose and Luis is low-balling both.

 

[The Kid]

Kinda depends WHAT you want to watch, as far as tv goes; I'm still watching OTA, actually never had cable.  But anyway, with OTA, there's 22 channels in my area, plenty of variety, and everything else I just watch dvd/vhs, whatever.  I did have Amaz prime, but never watched anything, mostly 'cuz as I mentioned, I got more than enough from the sky!  The one time I did want to watch something on prime, it was an extra charge, so I didn't do it.  Speaking of diy, I made my 4 bay tv ant. myself, outta pvc and wire cutoffs, so it was basically free.

Internet, I was on char*ter, $40/month but had to move to area that doesn't have enough fiber, so was forced to go satellite, hu*ghes $65/month.  And did have landline/cell, but figured out it was costing MORE to have landline than to just have cell.  So have verzn phone, $35 basic text type.