I have DirecTV and have had similar offers for years. It seems they use the movie services as bargaining chips any time they need to make amends with subscribers. More than once I have called to complain about something they had messed up (usually on my billing) and I was offered X number of months of Showtime for free as an apology. (The only movie service I pay for is HBO - mostly for the original programming.)
I wouldn't be surprised if their offer of a discount on your pay services doesn't cost them a thing. I worked in television production for the local cable company for 17 years and know that (at that time anyway) the subscriber audit for the movie services was only taken once a year, usually at the end of the calendar year. So there were all sorts of offers of free pay services for a certain number of months to entice new subscribers since all it cost the cable company was the labor to hook it up. That is, unless it extended to the audit date. Which it never did. Back then they had to send a techie out to your house to remove a filter at the pole. Now all it takes is a computer stroke. So how much are they really losing to give somebody a couple of months of a pay channel for free? ----- Original Message ----- From: PGage To: [email protected] Sent: Saturday, July 03, 2010 12:51 PM Subject: Re: [TV orNotTV] MacWorld's "Hulu Plus" review On Sat, Jul 3, 2010 at 6:41 AM, Jason Carpio <[email protected]> wrote: I use the playon application ($20 one time) to stream free hulu to my tv. I guess I don't understand who they're trying appeal to. for 11/month (or 9 for SD), anyone can access to the bigger netflix library plus a blu-ray After years of opposition, last week I signed up for the 2 week free netflix trial. I am now an apostle for it (will convert to the $8.99/month SD after next week). I get as much or more content, more flexibility, and more access for less money than DirecTV. Longer story below for those who care, but my experience when I went to cancel most of my movie subscriptions with DirecTV after getting the netflix religion is that DirecTV is feeling the heat from netflix, and may be considering some kind of response. Last week my 12 year old son and I wanted to watch Season 4 of Buffy (that's another long story). I was about to buy the DVDs for $20.00, then my daughter said we just watch it online. Hulu only provides access to one season of Buffy at a time, last week it was Season 3 (which we had just finished) and now it is Season 1). We tried watching one episode on some free service, but the quality was really poor, and it was a pain in the neck to access, and I felt like I was opening myself up to all kinds of viral infections. It was then I spotted an ad for Netflix - free 2 week trial. I figured I might as well try it. Suffice it to say we have fallen in love with it. It does not give you online access to everything in their library - a lot of the recent stuff is only available on DVD - but a lot of the old stuff is online, and it is really easy to view. We use the SD, and the quality is quite nice on my iMac monitor. An added bonus that I had not anticipated is that you can access the netflix using your television in multiple ways (we use my son's Wii and his PS3) - this means I can watch netflix on my tv while using my computer to work (which is how I "watch" 90% of my tv) and it means my wife can watch the netflix in our room and or my son can watch it in the living room. Even better, my two college daughters (for the summer one in Manhattan, the other in DC) can watch using the same netflix, at no extra cost, using our account and password. We have found that a max of two machines can be accessing the content at the same time, which has been a problem once or twice already, but we can work that out. My netflix experience brought my Directtv movie channel subscriptions into question. Currently I have the maximum package, with all the premium channels. I have single friends who wonder why I would ever pay that much for movies on TV - the simple answer is to calculate the cost of taking a family of 5 out to the movies once a week, which I was doing 8 years ago. If there is even one film a month on all of those premium channels that I watch with my family instead of going out to the movies, I am significant dollars ahead). However, the truth is that now we do not watch 95% of the movies on these channels, especially with my older kids out of the house, and they can not access those subscriptions from college. I called Directv and asked them to take me down two levels in package, and add back only HBO & Showtime. This amounts to canceling 18 distinct movie channels - not counting duplicates on some of East and West coast feeds (I would not have Starz or any Encore channel, or TMC or MAX or FLIX or Extra or Sundance or IFC anymore). The savings to me would be a net of $24.00/month ($288.00/year) $33.00/month savings from canceling the movie channels + 9.00/month for netflix. I could save another $8/month if I cancel Showtime too, which would be a total net savings of $32/month ($384/year). I will probably cancel Showtime too after Dexter's run this fall. But when I told Directtv I wanted to cancel all the movie channels they immediately offered to cut my fees by $10.00/month for three months. I paused and then declined, saying it was no longer worth it to me, and then they offered to cut my fee by $20.00/month for 6 months. I paused again, partly to see if they would go lower, partly to do the math. Their offer means I would be paying $13/month instead of $33/month for all of the movie channels. That is pretty good, though I am not sure paying $13/month for a service I don't need any more is really a good idea. I can still cancel at any time, and might. But the point here is that, for me, the $9/month netflix subscription gives me more (in terms of programming and flexibility and access) than the $33/month of movie subscriptions I was getting through Directv (not counting HBO or Showtime). I guess I can just pay for Showtime in the months that Dexter is showing if I don't want to wait for DVD, which would be pretty much the cost of buying Dexter on DVD. All of this to say, it seems to me that DirecTV is feeling the threat from netflix, since they were so ready and quick with their counter-offer. Are there a lot of people doing what I am on the verge of doing - canceling DirecTV service because of netflix? Maybe they are hoping I will forget to cancel in 6 months after their price cut expires, but that seems a little too much wishful thinking for a real business plan. Is it possible that DirecTV is planning to both making their content easier to view online, and to give subscribers access to a bigger library of movies and television programs to compete with services like netflix, and they just want to hold on to people like me long enough to let us see what they have? One feature that would probably keep me with premium access at DirecTV is if they had online access "on demand" to recent live programming, like sports and news. I love DirecTV mostly because it makes it so easy for me to time shift sports programming. But I am at the point where it would be nice if I didn't even have to schedule a recording - if I could just log on to my account and pick any basketball or football or baseball game that I have already paid to have access to through DirecTV on my television, and just watch it on my TV or computer. This would be particularly nice when I am traveling. They do have this already for some content, but not live sports or news, and you have to have the HD service, which we do not have. -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
