Who Cut the Cord?

General Discussion
1

Verizon Exec In Charge of FiOS TV Confesses That She Cut the Cord

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/verizon-exec-charge-fios-tv-confesses-she-cut-135132623.html

When the executive in charge of your pay TV product admits publicly that she no longer pays for TV, it’s probably time to accept the fact that cable’s best days are behind it.

The director of FiOS TV Maitreyi Krishnaswamy had a momentary lapse last week when she admitted publicly that the cord in her household has been snipped.

“I’ve pretty much cut the cord,” Krishnaswamy confessed while speaking on a panel at the TV of Tomorrow show in Manhattan. As its name might suggests, the TV of Tomorrow event features a wide range of panels with speakers and discussions focused on the evolution of television and the direction TV is headed in the near future.

2

I’m on the verge of dumping DirecTV. As soon as the Apple TV 4 Tablo app appears, and it passes the wife test, it’s happening.

3

This is really odd. Well, it’ll never happen with a Comcast exec… because free TV is a perk. But, what a ridiculous thing to say in that forum. I hope the hints of FIOS dissolving in that article are unfounded. Hell, I even liked Fios TV - it was paying for the cable boxes every month that flipped me to cut the cord. 7 boxes is expensive.

4

I did almost 2 years ago… I had Bell TV (Sat). Never looking back!

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5

I have had DirecTV for 15 years. Instead of eliminating the service and turn everything back in cold turkey, I decided to SUSPEND my account for 6 months. If for some reason “cord-cutting” doesn’t work out, I simply reactivate it and I am back to where I was. I can tell you now after 1 month, I know for a fact I will be cancelling the DirecTV service once my 6 months is up. We are watching and enjoying TV much more w/ TABLO, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, WatchESPN, SlingTV, HBONOW and many of the Roku Apps.

It was an easy transition for our kids. They are already tech savvy and have no trouble poking around apps and getting what they want. My wife is slowly coming around. She still likes the old school flipping through channels in one interface.

6

It took my wife about two years to drop the cable habit and become accustomed to a combination of OTA + Internet streaming. Once we found packages such as Amazon and Acorn that had shows she enjoyed, supplemented with OTA, she came around and now wouldn’t go back to cable at all. The Tablo with its pictorial interface of shows was the last component to fall into place for her (to easily choose and record). She gets a kick out of the old movie posters of shows in the guide. Now we have more on our slate to watch than we have time.

7

There is definitely a detox time after cutting the cord.

Us too! This is really the golden age with all the options. Amazing how much there is out there. The new problem will be subscription creep.

8

In discussing content and distribution, Michael Eisner, ex CEO of Disney said the same thing in a recent interview:

“This is the golden age of television. Television is not hurting.”

9

I cut the cord. My issue is paying for stations I have no interest in. Give me an option to pick and pay at a reasonable price. I would reconnect the cord.

10

Canada was supposed to implement a la carte purchasing of channels through cable TV. Is that in effect or what happened?

11

I was very hesitant to cut the cord due to the wife as well.
I credit 3 things for making it happen.

  1. Amazon Prime
  2. Tablo
  3. Wife lost her job

I had looked into Netflix many moons ago and wasn’t all that impressed so I continued to pay my $140+ / mth Dish Network bill like a good little sheep.

I was on a business trip for work, found that the hotel TV channel options were horrible. Pulled out my laptop to play on Facebook and remembered I needed to order a couple things from Amazon… Being a Prime member for the shipping, I ordered a LOT from them. After checkout, I noticed the Prime Video advertisements, thought hell, nothing on this TV, lets look…

For the rest of the 10 days on that business trip, I never once turned on the hotel TV.

Started researching OTT services and streaming devices… Tried out Netflix again, got a Roku. I WAS HOOKED.

Wife, not so much, kept going back to the cable dinosaur…

Couple weeks go by and I start turning the DTV box back on myself, but then I realized, 99% of what I was watching was DVR of OTA stations… Google search leads me to Tablo…

Everything started falling into place but that initial Tablo buy-in cost and the fact the wife wasnt buying into the idea held it off a few more weeks.

Then she loses her job… We start to cut back on things, satellite bill needs to be one of them. Looked at lower packages, but I finally convinced her to give cord cutting a true test…

A month goes by and she is starting to come around. I go ahead and pick up the Tablo and another Roku for a second TV. Finally I “pause” our dish service…

3 months of this “test” go by, and neither of us miss satellite. Now its not even about the money, we wouldn’t go back if satellite was CHEAPER!

The choices, the flexibility of viewing stuff on the road, no commercials… No going back for us!

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12

When I retired, we also took a look at our budget and figured cable TV had to go. Our DirecTV cost was $137 a month. We cut that out and lowered our cost to $13 a month: $4.95 per month for Acorn and $90 a year for Amazon Prime. These streaming packages supplement our OTA. The $90 for Amazon Prime however cannot be totally allocated for video since I also use that service for product delivery and my Kindle.

Some of the programs we watched on DirecTV we now also have through our Roku - like the Smithsonian channel, the History channel and some others.

Since we retired, we have met a lot of other retirees who become intrigued with my OTA efforts when I or my wife mention it. A lot of people just aren’t aware that OTA can deliver a great video experience (unlike the olden days they were used to when analogue TV was a pain through the antenna - does anybody remember “ghosting”?). Several retirees on a fixed income have asked me to install antennas for them. When I do that, the next question inevitably is, “Can I also record OTA programs?”

13

I was a longtime DirecTV subscriber for 19 years, before deciding to cut the cord. Once I evaluated what I was actually watching vs. the monthly cost of over $106 and climbing, it was an easy decision. With all of the OTA prime time content, plus streaming via Netflix and Hulu, plus the deal I get through T Mobile for Sling TV at $13.99/month, I have way more TV than I can possibly watch, most of it in hi-def. DirecTV wanted me to pay extra for hi-def, something new subscribers get for free.

Tablo really helped with my decision to cut the cord, as I had grown addicted to being able to record shows and watch them at my convenience, not the broadcaster’s. I rarely watch prime time shows at the time they’re broadcast anyway.

14

Cut about 18 months ago and despite a couple of issue with updates, have not wished we were back with Dish. At this point, we’re clearly in the black on the initial outlay and I’m contemplating whether I should upgrade to a 5TB hard drive.

15

The interesting thing about “cutting the cord” and this article is that cutting the cord means differently things for different people. An executive that has stopped paying for traditional cable isn’t really that far out of line if that company also offers a different OTT option.

Still seems silly.

16

I cut the cord after Verizon kept overbilling me, and it took dozens of calls and finally a BBB complaint for them to fix it. They admitted the overbilling at the start, and kept saying they fixed it, but then the credits never appeared. Support had no clue why, but then kept telling me they corrected it. After months, and dozens of calls I finally opened a BBB complaint, and somehow they fixed it.

A couple months later, I moved and I cut the cord and cancelled FIOS. A couple months later my credit card bill showed my credit score tanked. Found out, it was Verizon. They said I owed $15. I asked why I was never billed (I had paperless billing), and they said they don’t do paperless billing after you quit. I had moved, and never received a bill, but alas, they said I was at fault for not paying the final bill that I never received. I did pay the final billing I had for the last month, so I still don’t know where the $15 came from because they said they cannot reissue the bill and my account was cancelled so they couldn’t pull it up on their end. I hate Verizon. Their technology is top notch, but their price, support and billing is the worst.

17

IMHO, its stories like these that are really the main reason to cut the cord (though saving money is an ok reason as well).