Home entertainment

[Seymore4Head]

I have to switch back in forth between Charter and Direct TV/ATT every couple of years to get the best offer.

Direct TV has sent me their "Exclusive Invitation" and it is time to switch again. The promo package is 39.99 for all stations. The first hitch is that the promo package is only for the channels....if I want to hook those to a TV, I need an HD tuner. That cost another 5 bucks per month. That's a 60$ /per year jump before I even get started.

Charter offers a pretty good deal for new subscribers, but they soak you after the year promo is over. Charter Internet is much better than ATT U-Verse, but I can do without if for a year to keep getting it at the promo price.

I notice that Charter is currently offering to pay for early termination fees up to $500! I hope they still have that offer next year when I am ready to switch back.

Last time I switched fro Charter Internet to ATT Internet, I had to buy a DSL modem. I am told that U-Verse is not the same as DSL. The modem I bought from them last time is worthless to use this time.

I tried to repurpose the DSL modem to so I could have another wireless point (and 4 ports) on the other side of the house, but the modem would try to dial out once per minute which made it useless repurpose as another switch port.

[dadiOH]

I used Direct TV for close to six years. I finally got fed up with paying for a ton of channels I never watched at a cost of close to $100/month and dumped them in favor of streaming TV via Roku.

With Roku, I subscribe to Netflix and Acorn (my wife liked their Brit mysteries). Netflix is about $8.00/month, Acorn $6.00. I had Hulu Plus for a while but got tired of all the commercials it feeds you so dumped them. Of course, we also have access to all the many free Roku channels.

That means my TV watching costs $14/month plus the amortizarion of the $100 for two Roku devices (already recovered by dumping Direct TV). True, I cannot view broadcast stations via Roku and we are too far away for a realistic antenna. I don't miss them. I COULD have gotten them via Aereo for around $7.00/month if the Supreme Court had not decided that their recording of free, over the air signals and providing access to those recordings was going to work a terrible hardship on the broadcast companies.

[Seymore4Head]

Local stations used to be free and paid for by ads. You would think that local stations would be the first to jump at the chance to broadcast over the Internet. The plan should be to reach the most people.

There has to be a rea$on that you can't get local stations the same way you could Hulu.

[gfretwell]

They usually bring 2 or more DSL lines into the house when you get the entertainment package and they are multiplexed into a single data stream. At least that is what I heard from Century link when they tried to sell me their system. I ended up canceling it because they lied to me about the capabilities of their DVR (it WILL NOT accept an external drive). They also misrepresented their cancellation policy.

Federal law allows you to cancel within 72 hours if they initially contacted you, no harm no foul but if you cancel under their claimed

30 day test drive, you end up paying a fee. I got out the day after I signed up..