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The Real Reason to Cut the Cable? To Get Higher Quality Video!
ESPN made news recently when they released a study claiming that only 0.1% of Americans are cutting the cord. Some experts quickly claimed that the data was misleading, and noted that “research from ESPN is hardly neutral.” Other industry studies echo the sentiment that cord cutting is a myth, while different data suggests that the phenomenon is on the rise.
So are people cutting the cord or not? We wont know for sure for quite some time. The phenomenon is relatively new and the Nielsen numbers used for the ESPN findings cannot be seen as definitive (it is not in the cable industry’s best interest to share this information under any circumstances). As the LA Times recently stated, “there are a lot more stories about cord-cutting than there probably are people cutting the cord.”
So why is this happening? Reasons for dropping cable range from the technical (people love gadgets) to the ideological (people dislike cable companies) to the practical (people can’t afford the cable bill). I think the main reason to kiss cable goodbye is simpler: the HD video they are giving us is just plain awful.
I recently upgraded to a new 63 inch HDTV. It is a beautiful television. Even the box it came in was beautiful.
I set it up, popped popcorn (not really, too many carbs), and sat down to enjoy a glorious home theater experience. I turn it on and what do I see? Jaggies. Compression. Artifacts. Let me be clear: we’re talking really easy-to-notice stuff. Instead of watching the TV of the future, it looked like I was watching old episodes of MacGyver on the top-loading VCR we used in high school (outdated reference lost on younger audience, I know). How was this possible?
Just to make sure I wasn’t going crazy, I fired up the XBOX, installed the Zune app (Zune, seriously? yup) and started watching movie previews. Oh man. Glorious 1080p. The picture quality looked so good even my wife noticed (no disrespect to my wife, but she doesn’t care that much about TVs. If she noticed the difference in picture, it means something significant happened).
It looks like I’m not the only one having this issue with my cable company. Look at these screencaps from the same programs at the same time: one with Verizon FiOS and one with Comcast.
Verizon FiOS
Comcast
FiOS
Comcast
FiOS
Comcast
FiOS
Comcast
TVs are getting bigger, better, and cheaper every day. As a result, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of how good they are supposed to look. When the mass audiences start noticing pixelization during mainstream content yet their video game console can stream perfect quality movies and videos, it will cause a ruckus (much more so than any of the media streamers, 3DTVs, Smart TVs, or anything else).
What the cable industry needs to do is justify the money people pay them every month. They need to make all those big beautiful smart TVs look big and beautiful and smart. Heck, it’s probably an opportunity to make even more money.
But if they can’t deliver an amazing picture all the time, and primetime television starts looking more like youtube on the big screen, that alone will drive consumers to seek out different sources.
I am confused
What is your alternative if Live Sports
are your addiction?
Really wanna know
Not only for regular programming, but for movies this is a huge one, as well. Movie ‘channels’ like HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, whatever are upwards of $10-15/mo and only give you a few specific channels that show movies all day.
Contrast that with Netflix, sending Blu-Ray discs to you in the mail for what, $12/mo, with unlimited streaming of movies, many of which are 1080p now? It’s a complete no-brainer for the consumer. Heck, my Dad just did that – instead of getting a cable subscription, he went out and bought a PS3 for the Blu-Ray and Netflix streaming capabilities, and LOVES IT.
The images from the source show that they were compressed in 2008, its 2010.
Though I seriously doubt that Cable companies are giving more 2 years later, if anything it has gotten worse. I found it particularly interesting that they were compressing their signals in some areas, but not others. Let me guess, those other areas have competition right?
Aren’t we Americans sick of being treated like second class citizens, its been long enough, hasn’t it? Over 30 years (1990s) and counting . . .
I have read articles that cable subscribers are churning at the rate of over 300,000 per quarter, which makes sense based on how Americans have been treated. Customer No Service seems to be their only business model.
They do anything to create a billable event and then slowing increase your monthly $10 per month until you get fed up and leave. Its ironic that they try to convince you that you are somehow getting more when you are in reality getting less. Smart consumers stopped bundling service for this reason alone years ago. When you add the bandwidth restrictions, 100% of Cable providers throttle Internet Bandwidth, therefore to be out from under bandwidth is an imperative.
It is interesting to note that many DSL providers offer more bandwidth than Cable provider’s restricted, throttled bandwidth. In some areas DSL providers will guarantee a minimum upstream bandwidth. Try to get your Cable provider to do that…
For most DSL providers their lowest tier of 384Kbps is well over 300 times faster than a Cable providers actual throttled bandwidth.
Remember Speed tests lie, if you want to see your actual bandwidth in real time you need to run DD-WRT, OpenWRT or tomato firmware on a supported firewall/router. DD-WRT will give you bandwidth in real time, logging, additional security features. routing capabilities and so much more. Most of these advanced features are reserved for very high end commercial firewall/routers costing well over $3,000.00 per device. You can take a residential device costing between $10 and $200, add the DD-WRT firmware and you have all you need to see the reality of your bandwidth as restricted by your provider. And trust me, its ugly for almost all of them. With any of those firmwares, you see the throttling start immediately following the speed test. While watching content via the Internet, every time your content sputters, stops or pauses you will notice that your bandwidth has been throttled to less than 30Kbps, sometimes it is 0Kbps, no wonder it stopped.
Remember 100% of Cable Internet providers restrict bandwidth and always will to perpetuate their bandwidth scarcity myth in vain attempts to justify creating yet another billable event and charging you more.
To avoid this issue when home shopping, make sure your new location has FTTH are do not move there. Note: you do not want FTTn or FTTc, and if they call it FTTP, make sure its not just into the premise but fiber all the way to your fiber modem to avoid problems.
FIOS is not synchronous, the same upstream as downstream, its only 50Mb/5Mb for a double cable busting price of $119.00 per month. Most Cable providers are charging $59.99 or more after the introductory rate (usually 1 year) expires and you can expect them to increase it from $5 to $10 each and every year until you get upset and churn away. Some cable providers were getting a $10 discount for the first year, and when that year ends, they get a double whammy… $10 increase + loss of $10 discount for an actual increase of $20 per month in the second year. Its a deceitful practice and you really need to get all the details in writing if you want them to honor their promises to you the residential broadband subscriber.
Personally I can not wait to have User Owned Fiber (UOF) or Fiber To The Home (FTTH) and am seriously considering moving to get it. Until Google announces there five FTTH communities, there are the 16 plus communities in Utah via Utopia where the resident owns the Fiber (UOF) and can select from one of many providers. Other than that you can get 10Mb/10Mb in Wilson N.C. from Greenlight for $34.95 per month; 10Mb/10Mb in Layfayette, LA from LUS for $28.95 per month; 30Mb/30Mb in Chattanooga, TN from EPB for $57.99.
With Utopia you will be able to get either 10Mb/10Mb or 15Mb/15Mb for between $49 to $79 per month…be sure to check all the additional add on fees, just like you have to do with DSL today. At least you will have synchronous bandwidth and that is critical for high definition content!
And some if not all of those providers will let you run your own cloud server, consider the possibilities…
The real reason to cut Fiber, is net neutrality, synchronous bandwidth, ability to run your own server, having access to all bandwidth that you pay for…FREEDOM.
Here is a map showing the locations,
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=107636815986001525252.0004925bda8ab3461a9ef&ll=38.891033,-98.129883&spn=22.725937,53.481445&t=h&z=5 ~ Full URL
http://sn.im/1axal4 ~ shortened URL;
less than 30 as of December 2010, where a residential consumer can get synchronous FTTH access to the Internet. Since so many people have had their homes taken from them, why not move to a location where your Internet access will not be censored, restricted, limited?
To paraphrase a line from Survivor, “Worth moving for….?” An added plus is that for business owners, having access is critical and many of the cities have listed job creation as their number 1 reason in launching their FTTH services. A very smart and very “American” decision given the state of the economy.