Cable TV A La Carte? 461
Anonymous Coward writes "According to this BusinessWeek article you can now get your MTV a la carte. I having been waiting for years to buy my cable by the channel, and this article indicates that my cable company is now legally required to let me. I am going to call Time Warner tomorrow with my list just to see what they say. Anyone out there doing this now?"
woohoo! (Score:4, Interesting)
What's Basic Service.. (Score:3, Interesting)
As long as I can keep Women's Entertainment (WE) I'm fine.
talk about getting screwed (Score:5, Interesting)
What we have in parts of Canada (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Analog channels. Channels 2-~78 are analog. We can choose between 3 "tiers" which determine what type of filter is installed at the cable box itself. 2-28 is "basic" cable. 29-~42(?) is another tier, ~43-78 is another. They are grouped this way as to make filtering easier. Changing the programming is a PITA as someone has to physically drive down from the cable company and change things. Usually being wishy-washy as to what you want will net you a $50 charge each time someone has to drive over.
2) Digital channels. Channels 80-999 are digital. You can order most any of the "basic" ones for $2.50 / each / month. Bundling them in bigger sets gets you bigger discounts. ie: 5 channels for $10, 10 channels for $15, etc. You can mix and match as you please, and they are activated usually before your call to the cable company is finished.
It's been this way for a year and a quarter now.
does this apply to satellite, too? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Price limits? (Score:1, Interesting)
Myself, I'm just happy that my local cable company is too cheap to afford filters for their lines. I get my cable modem + regular cable for $50/month. I just told them that I didn't want the cable TV channels, but they said that the minimum plan has just the local stations they are required to carry. Low and behold when I come home after the hookup, I have full cable. The official reason why I have the regular lineup is that they are too cheap to buy the correct filters to block the stations. Oh well.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Premium channels only (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I missing something here? Seems to me that being able to select which regular channels you want (so you don't have to get QVC, for example) would be more useful.
Re:You're not married are you? (Score:5, Interesting)
Her best friend recently had a neighbor do an episode. The weekend after they left they undid everything that they had done to their room.
Situation in other countires? (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent four months living in France this year and my cable provider had a point system. Each channel cost a certain number of points (ranging from about 2 for something boring up to 15-25 for a premium channel) and you paid for packages with varying amounts of points. Then you could pick the channels you wanted and not waste points on something you would never watch. It seemed like a better deal (perhaps not cheaper, but much more flexible) than what we have in the US. I don't even have cable here since I'm not a huge fan of television and cable TV packages cost more than I am willing to pay.
-Joe
Re:What we have in parts of Canada (Score:4, Interesting)
The wonderful thing about "digital" cable is that it isn't. Only some of the channels are digital - generally everything below 80-100 is still analog. You can tell which are which by looking at the packages - the basic cable and extended basic are all analog. But any channels that get added by upgrading to a digital cable package are digital. Heck, if you're on digital cable you can still plug in a TV/VCR to the cable feed without a box and tune to any of the analog channels.
What I want (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No, you can't get MTV a la cart, read it again. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, in the case of AOL/TW, you are required to have digital cable in order to have HBO, because they simply don't offer HBO on their analog cable.
'Sides, one thing they can do (and are doing) to control this is with cable modems. I have AOL/TW's cable modem service. They charge $44.95/mo unless you have at least what they call their 'extended basic' package, which costs $39.95/mo. Otherwise, the price is $89.95/mo for the cable modem by itself.
Dish (Score:1, Interesting)
I declined their "generous" terms.
I wish the FCC would look into this obvious deception by Dish.
Re:Situation in other countires? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, in the UK, you've got Cable (NTL or Telewest generally) or if you want Digital, you have Sky [sky.co.uk] and Freeview [freeview.co.uk] (used to be called OnDigital then ITV Digital then bust).
Freeview is in its unfancy and is basically free stuff. I also know very little about it.
Sky on the other hand has tonnes of packages [sky.com]. In short, all the decent channels (IMO) are spread about several packages. Which means that if you want all of them you have to pay the premium rate and get 55 other really rubbish ones.
AFAIK there is no way to pick and chose your cable products too. You just have to pick a bundle and put up with the rubbish ones that come with it.
Re:What we have in parts of Canada (Score:3, Interesting)
That's just a pass-through connection...if you plug a TV directly into the cable outlet, it'll pick up analog. Here in Las Vegas at least (maybe in other Cox markets as well), I'm fairly sure that if you subscribe to digital cable, all channels are delivered as digital channels. I saw some decoding glitches last night while watching Enterprise, which would indicate that even the local channels are converted to digital before they're sent out. (It's either that, or the hard drive in my TiVo is acting up...but I doubt that's the case.)
We can here... (Score:2, Interesting)
I found i still preferred to get a big package, though, just because i like to have lots of channels around. But someone who only wants the essential plus HBO wouldn't have to buy a package.
UK (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps the biggest difference is that the dominant pay-tv supplier is satellite, not cable. The satellite system has practically completed the switch to digital, the cable systems are much more recent than the US <10 yo) and pretty much entirely digital. You usually get a free STB, but are committed to a min contract of 1 year and pay for services.
The packages are similar to the older US system as described in the article, but are sorted by content type rather than supplier. i.e. Entertainment, Sport or Movie packages rather than Disney, Vista, etc. These tend to be priced at £10-£20 (15-30 $/) per package per month for ~10 channels. The exception is the premium movie channels with cost about £8-£16 (12-20 $/) each pcm, expensive but good. They do seem to take most new-release movies within a few weeks of DVD release.
Aside from the Premium Movie Channels, the best content is available from the free-to-air BBC which is mainly distributed though both analog and digital terrestrial (UHF) transmission. They are usually also bundled with the other transmission mediums. This medium also support some national and regional advert funded, free-to-air channels of good quality.
The new kid on the block is broadband IP-DTV, this is delivered via broadband xDSL line to a STB. It differs from cable because the network topology is star and not a ring. It supports a real return channel, dedicated bandwidth to each installation. And therfore allows true content on demand (VOD), server side PVR, and real interactive content. I guess you can call it programme level al-a-carte. Each movie is about £1.50-2.50 UKP (2-3.50 $/) for 24hours, this is about the same as a movie rental.
I work on this (www.kitv.co.uk) IP-DTV project. There are a couple of others, Yes, and Homechoice.
Why No One knows (Score:3, Interesting)
Tell that to the cigarette companies. They are being forced to advertise the cancer-causing properties of their products -- against their right to free speech!
For-profit companies do not have the same right to the freedom of speech as do individuals. The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence are addressed to human beings, not commercial entities. The Constitution begins with the famous phrase "We the people" and the Bill of Rights amendements all specifically designate people as the recipients of those important freedoms.
This law will be totally ineffective unless the corporations are forced to inform their own customers about their legal rights and options when purchasing services from them. It's not such a radical idea -- there are plently of examples of this already. The FCC should stop its laissez faire approach to regulation and actually try to enforce the law for a change.
Pipe Dream, They don't do this. (Score:3, Interesting)
ESPN2
MTV2
CNN
Comedy Central
Cartoon Network
TNT
USA
FX
History Channel
The Learning Channel
Discovery
Animal Planet
Sci-Fi
National Geographic Channel
The representative told me that I was 'wrong' and that I would have to pay $50 a month to get these, "along with over 120 additional channels". I told about the Cable Act, and she told me I was mistaken.
So there's non-compliance with the law right there. Should I press charges
Bastard cable companies.
Just got off the phone (Score:3, Interesting)
These people are criminals.
I signed up for HBO in september - I told them that i didnt want anything but to add HBO to my existing service. I was told that there was now way that I could get HBO unless I signed up for their Silver package - at 62 per month.
I asked what it came with and she listed all this other crap - i said that I didnt want any of that - that i just wanted HBO.
Then I called today about this law - and the fact that I just wanted HBO - and they quoted a range of other packages that are cheaper that had HBO. The girl said that they didnt have these packages in September which is why I wasnt offered. I told her to find out. Low and behold - these packages were available in september, they dont knwo why i was told otherwise - and that no they could not change the package and give me credit back retro-active.
the said that if you want HBo its 13.95/month + plus 12.55 for basic + 5.00 for the digital cable box rental.
this is all bullshit. I wanted to hit them in the face with a shovel.
In the end all i got was 10 off my bill for the next year.
but I think Ill just cancel all together.
Taking the next step (Score:3, Interesting)
There's also a lot of selection in PPV. Movies for $5 (a bit pricey I think).
What I'd like to see next is the ability to order specific shows on stations you don't subscribe to, for, say, $0.25 a show. All the TV listings are already there in the Digital cable box. I'd be more interested paying for shows than for channels. Take that marketing data to see if a show should stay on the air or not.
And for the record, I've only ordered one channel from the 31.