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Ok I am in the caveman era due to the fact I do not have a DVR. These days with 25 min of commercials every hour, you need a DVR to skip thru the crap. I checked it out and Direct Tv wants $199 for the cheapie DVR. The also want 4.99 fee every month. The clincher is "Direct Tv owns the box" even though I paid them $199.  What kind of deal is this?  I can buy a box on the net and "try" and get DTV to classify it as "owned" not leased but that doesn't always work. The last insult is that the warranty is only 90 days and after that I have to pay for repairs or replacement even though I paid $199 for the thing. Oh I can give DTV more money for a protection plan. Where is our government protecting me from this kind of skulduggery?

That's called "Capitalism"...a very popular concept in United States... :72-

In no way am I defending Direct but if you are a new customer they do have a offer
a free HD DVR or HD box without DVR the first box the $4.99 fee is waived but if you have a 2nd
box then they charge you for everyone after that.Oh but you do get free installation where you get to
wait all day for the installer to show up and drill holes into your house.

I think they also give you free movie channels for 3 months in HD for being a new customer
but after all that a basic HD package will run from 65-85 a month
being a owner of Plasma and Lcd tv I can not live without sports being in HD
and I do have Direct now, way over priced yes but NO WAY will I watch a crappy cable picture.
sometimes you have to bite the bullet.

Most of the channels now are all HD and it's a world of difference
from watching cable just my opinion.


Stay away from buying used Boxes if there is a balance owed from ppv orders or anything else you pay
they also make you buy a new card for it another $20 that's if they even activate the box
some of the older boxes won't work with the new satellite's they just launched for HD programming

Tim

Or you could just get a free to air receiver. Kirk Las Vegas is into this. There is an organization called freedbs.org that is trying to have truly free TV available to owners of FTA receivers. It is totally legal too as advertising would pay for the uplink. They already have the major networks on board and have cooking, travel, sports, etc. No, you can't get HBO or any premium stations but it's free, what the heck.

LOL, there's probably a few of us here that have been playing with "free to air" stuff since Big Ugly Dish days.  :89-

I've got a stack of various "free to air" receivers lying around, lots of 18"-36" dishes, and more.

Truth be told, the demise of a lot of "free to air" is what got me back into slots and stuff.

But, back on topic - yeah, you've got two major providers, and T.V. ain't a necessity, so you're stuck with whatever they want to give you. I'm also waiting to see if the freedbs gets off the ground, and how it is received by the general public, and if it makes Charlie and Dave nervous.

I hate to say this, but we got what we deserve. TV used to be free for everyone all the time. I remember when the only people who had cable were those who couldn't get air reception because of their location: it was a luxury that they paid for.

Cable flourished because they offered us more of the addiction that we craved and we bought into it hook, line, and sinker. Why get 10 channels free when you can get 100 channels and pay for it? So now, 25 years later, broadcast television is all but dead and television has become privatized and essentially monopolized. Whose fault it that?

The internet used to have hundreds of small ISP companies that one could turn to instead of the majors. The first ones that I subscribed to had absolutely no restrictions on content or email attachment size or anything else. Now we're getting down to a few giant companies who are restricting access (think bit torrent throttling, AOL blocking email traffic and web content and citing BS reasons, etc.)... ... ...  I give the net 10 years before the government locks it down tight by controlling access through two or three companies that lobby to keep control and play ball with the regulators to keep their positions secure. Then your bandwidth and uptime will deteriorate, while prices soar.

The other side of the coin is advertising. Since we repeatedly demonstrate an unwillingness to pay for content and information, sites must use advertising to make money. Anyone notice that most Youtube videos now have popup ads directly inside the video that weren't there a couple of years ago? How long will it be before you can't hide them anymore? They are also putting ads to the right of the video where useful information used to be located. The useful information is now compacted (hidden) and you have to click on an arrow to read it.  Sites are going to pander to those that pay their way. So advertisers will eventually start censoring content, just as is done on commercial television, and websites will eventually comply to keep the dollars flowing in. That's the way our system works.

Yeah I didn't want to get into the Free to Air stuff been in that game since they
first hit the market, some things better left unsaid with that.

Tim

Uh yeah, I call it near monopoly only because we have the other alternative "Dish TV, which isn't much better. I can't get cable out here so I have no recoarse. Even a cheap TIVO will be considered "leased" unless it is one of the higher priced units. I feel very "captured" and there is nothing I can do except hit the mute button on the commercials. So be it.

IMHO, the demise of broadcast tv was not brought on by cable or satellite, it was brought on by the Internet. Cable has been around since the 70s, satellite since the 80s. You can watch the current tv shows on the internet the day after they first air on the network, without commercials. And, you're not tied to the computer, these shows will play on personal media devices any time, anywhere. Tivo and other DVRs are able to somewhat offset this advantage...

I'm not sure that I agree. It certainly was a final nail in the coffin, so to speak, but watching new shows online has only become popular within the last four or five years. Broadcast television has been losing steadily to cable television for about twenty years. As I had noted, cable may have been around in the '70's, but it was considered a luxury item or a last resort for people who could not get reception. It didn't start to become popular until our generation (actually, those a bit younger that I am) grew up in the late '80s.