What cable companies get away with

just cut the cord. use an antenna.

kill your damn tv.

its not that hard.

I'm surprised so many people still watch television.

I don't own a TV and have not since the 1990s.

It's a giant waste of time and money, and dumping it also frees you from the 24/7 propaganda of the statist MSM and the incessant and moronic advertising (which constitutes roughly half of the airtime).

Television is the media equivalent of a public restroom in a government school.

- Amazes me wrote:

Ought is another entitlement word. If you don't like it, don't buy it. There's nothing wrong with charging a lot for an in demand item. That's called good business.

I see that you insist on exposing your sheer ignorance for the whole world to see.

In case you did not know, there are laws in various states against price gouging. Such laws have been found to be constitutional.

There are also laws against cartels and monopolies.

And finally, states have regulations to control how much business can charge even for non essential items.

The bit about entitlement is so funny. Its typical talking point of ignorant right wingers who spend all watching Faux news and listening to right wing radio then they go to the web to regurgitate the nonsense they hear on radio.

I have no ignorance. You have a bad sense of entitlement. The cable companies should be able to charge what they want. If you can't afford it, then don't buy it. Do you complain about the cost of million-dollar sports cars too? The iPhone? Candy?

Cable is not a necessity. Most of my close friends don't even have cable anymore and don't miss it.

Your right wing rant is irrelevant. I'm not a right winger nor do I listen to their radio programs and thus nor do I regurgitate what they say.

Your right wing rant is irrelevant. I'm not a right winger nor do I listen to their radio programs and thus nor do I regurgitate what they say.

Woah lets not go too far there. Its pretty obvious with all the entitlement talk that you love listening to Rush, Hannity, et al

- Amazes me wrote:

Ought is another entitlement word. If you don't like it, don't buy it. There's nothing wrong with charging a lot for an in demand item. That's called good business.

I see that you insist on exposing your sheer ignorance for the whole world to see.

In case you did not know, there are laws in various states against price gouging. Such laws have been found to be constitutional.

There are also laws against cartels and monopolies.

And finally, states have regulations to control how much business can charge even for non essential items.

The bit about entitlement is so funny. Its typical talking point of ignorant right wingers who spend all watching Faux news and listening to right wing radio then they go to the web to regurgitate the nonsense they hear on radio.

Nothing you said actually contradicted anything he said. You basically listed things that the government had done to ensure that the price of some things did not go too high--almost as if they feel people are entitled to such products.

He was right---"ought" or "should" are entitlement words. You say "no one ought to do X, Y, or Z." But that is according to your own personal beliefs. Others may not subscribe to your personal beliefs...so maybe to them they think they have the right to do X, Y, or Z.

When you use "ought" you are making a judgement on what others should do. You are not entitled to have cable channels at any certain cost.

And so called "price gouging" is ridiculous. No one is forcing to make you pay extra for something you need to keep you alive. It's cable tv!! my goodness...You are not being price-gouged until you are being FORCED to pay for it.

This has nothing to do with foxnews or the radio, it's really just about learning some simple definitions and connotations of commonly used words in the English language. Try to keep up.

100- just for the basic cable.....its almost like you should tell the customer service you want the lowest rate in the area rate even though you are not from the lower rate area you would be awarded the lower rate because you specified lower rate. This logic actually did work for me at the Hilton for Chicago one year I said I wanted the corporate rate and it was $50 less.

But to get out of the fee's, contracts, hidden language a lot of people are starting to use an HDMI from computer to the flat screen. Don't know the live sports feed solution though.

McGruber's of the tele world chime in?

I have not subscribed to cable in 20 years. I feel so clean. And fresh.

I went to Target and bought an antenna for $10. That's all I need to watch Football, Jeopardy, and Seinfeld re-runs.

My siblings and I live in three different states and split one Netflix account and have done the same with Hulu Plus at times as well. I give someone i know a couple bucks a month and use their Comcast account to watch ESPN and the Big 10 Network on my computer. I wait to watch Breaking Bad the next day online. I do pay $20 a month to watch my favorite (out of market) baseball team. That's my biggest expense but it comes out to less than $1 a game. Worth the hassle to me because I enjoy MLB.TV's features.

If I'm in a jam, I'll find a stream of something I want to see.

Cable costs are easily avoidable. The only thing I miss is being able to watch 3 Seinfeld reruns a day on TBS while I cooked and ate dinner.

Get an antenna, half-decent 5 meg DSL connections, netflix, and check out vipbox.tv (turn on adblocker first). Watch less TV, but you'll never miss an important game you really want to see. Only cost is the DSL line.

Show your clout as a consumer. Get a hi def antenna, and stream live sports over the ENT. Only idiots need cable!

Where do you watch breaking bad online?

Well, I have use my friends cable login to make that easier. But there are plenty of places if you check the web. I usually just torrent them in HD minutes after they air if I don't want to wait

i receive cable service from comcast only for internet service and i see the slow creep of cost increase. sometimes it runs horrendously slow and at one point when i noted this lasted a prolonged period they figured out, after sending a tech, that the cable had been spliced recently!

considering new neighbors had moved in and probably had their cable hooked up around this time, this seemed suspicious. and yet the service tech was surprised this had happened. oh really? my neighbors also have comcast and so a comcast rep splits the cable and yet comcasy doesn't know?

riiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. let's also build an abysmal web interface and customer service system! then when someone takes note of what we were aware of anyway and calls us on it,it takes us forever to respond. don't worry, we'll credit you 8 cents from when you noticed the service suck, not from the point when we knew it was happening.

but i don't need the internet, you're right about that, it's a privilege, and i should probably just get rid of it.

For internet, DSL or fiber is usually a little more expensive than cable, but worth it. Speeds are much more consistent and uptime is usually 99.9%. Even ATT uverse DSL is miles better than cable.

- Amazes me wrote:

There are also laws against cartels and monopolies.

No. There aren't.

It's illegal to explicitly agree to divide up territory, to raise prices, or generally not compete. But there's nothing illegal about a TACIT understanding not to move into someone else's territory.

Also, direct competition in the cable market is highly inefficient. It's like installing two faucets so you could decide which water company to patronize based on prices. It requires too much redundant infrastructure. This makes cable something close to a natural monopoly. A common solution for natural monopolies is price regulation. It's not an easy thing to do in the cable market, because what it provides isn't really a commodity.

Also, there's nothing illegal about simply being a monopolist. What's illegal are certain practices by monopolists. In particular, tying arrangements by monopolists are generally illegal because they allow the monopolist to leverage its power in one sector to gain control of another.

Precious Roy wrote:

I cannot see either my local MLB team or NBA team due to a dispute between my satellite provider and the new cable channel that carries both teams. If I want Universal Sports, I have to pay an extra $40 a month to either get some insane sports package or the everything channel-channel.

exactly - I just had to sign up for a $96 per year package just so I can get universal sports. It came with football, etc that I will never watch, god willing.

and I have absolutely no choice - I live in an apartment building that only time warner services. And it took me 45 minutes on the phone to sign up for the stupid package.

I would be more than happy to pay $50 per year directly to universal sports for on demand or streaming. There has to be a better business model.

jimmy mccricket wrote:

Get an antenna, half-decent 5 meg DSL connections, netflix, and check out vipbox.tv (turn on adblocker first). Watch less TV, but you'll never miss an important game you really want to see. Only cost is the DSL line.

Is it possible to watch vipbox without downloading the "free" player? God only knows what comes bundled with that.

Yes, it's very possible to watch without the free player crapware.

If you have a decent computer go this route

1. Plex

2. Roku

3. UAS on both (figure it out it's like fight club)

4. LMWT/etc

5. Install antenna

6.Laugh at how much you paid for so little:)