Ditch Cable/Sat for AppleTV?

[Mac In School]

Assume that every show you get on cable/sat was available through the iTunes store (even live shows, like news and sports), and that each program was $1.99 and episode. Also assume that it was made available at the same time it is broadcast on television.

I know, there are some fantasy assumptions there, but amuse me.

 

[netdog]

I have already done it. The exception is that I still use DVDs as well.

 

[Mac In School]

I would not. It just wouldn't make sense, economically.

There are 3 people living in my home (wife, niece and I). I have about 25 TiVo season passes. The girls have about 15. There is some overlap there, but not much.

Where I would get killed is on programs that I watch daily. I can't imagine paying $60/month just to watch 30 minutes of NASCAR Now every day. Add a single news broadcast/day, and I'm up to $120/month ($30 higher than my cable bill). That's before adding a single prime-time show.

 

[hauntedcity]

I voted "yes", although I would probably use EyeTV to record off-the-air programs, and use iTunes only for items not available over an antenna.

Right now, I still have 1 thing holding me back, however. I'm not sure what I would do in football season. I would really hate to miss Colts, Bears, and Saints games on ESPN and the NFL network. I imagine the sports aspect will keep many folks from doing what the poll suggests. Now, if Apple TV could put together something like Direct TV's NFL Sunday Ticket, with live streaming games, I would ditch my current provider in an nanosecond.

 

[hotinplaya]

When iTunes comes out with 'al-Carte" channel purchase
good bye DirecTV

 

[Mac In School]

I voted "yes", although I would probably use Right now, I still have 1 thing holding me back, however. I'm not sure what I would do in football season. I would really hate to miss Colts, Bears, and Saints games on ESPN and the NFL network. I imagine the sports aspect will keep many folks from doing what the poll suggests. Now, if Apple TV could put together something like Direct TV's NFL Sunday Ticket, with live streaming games, I would ditch my current provider in an nanosecond.

Since it's a fantasy poll, assume that anything you're able to get on your current TV setup would be available through the iTunes store. Every football game for $1.99 each.

Sounds appealing at first, but if you watch football the way I did, when I was a DirecTV customer, it could get ugly...

Come 2:00, I'd watch my beloved Broncos, and my beloved Broncos only. But for the 11:00 game, I'd switch around and watch them all. If there were 10 early games, that would be $20 every Sunday, just to flip through channels. Truth is, I checked every game out, but some very briefly. It would kinda suck to pay $1.99 for the games I flipped to just to check the score to see if they looked like good games.

 

[imlucid]

I ditched Satellite in October and haven't looked back. 95% of my TV shows are purchased from iTS and the other 5% are recorded in HD with a pair of EyeTV 500's that then convert to Apple TV.

The fact that most of my content is commercial free is absolutely awesome and well worth $2 a show to me.

I definitely missed Hockey this year though did watch the cup finals from iTS (horrendous quality though!). But personally its been worth while.

Kevin

 

[Danksi]

There's bugga' all on Cable anyway...

Our TV's mostly for my wife's obsession with Iron Chef (Food Channel) and DVD's.

I'm considering a refurb'd TV for music, photo's, podcasts, family movies and kids movies that I've ripped to save the DVDs and DVD Player from total destruction.

 

[nichos]

I voted no. I would've voted "yes" if they didn't charge so much for apple TV, and it had DVR functionality, then I could get/record local programming.

 

[Mac In School]

Our TV's mostly for my wife's obsession with Iron Chef (Food Channel)...

Good Eats would be another spendy one for me.

 

[zioxide]

Maybe if iTunes had high definition content.

 

[Kevin83165]

If I lost the Cartoon network I would get mauled bu 1000 kids in my home so no lol

 

[OutThere]

Tivo makes this a moot point.

 

[Mac In School]

Tivo makes this a moot point.

Only if you were content only getting antenna-based programming. Otherwise, for the sake of my fantasy poll, TiVo would be canceled too.

BTW, I've been a happy TiVo subscriber since the day they released the TiVo/DirecTV box. Canceling it for cable now because I'm not pleased with DirecTV's HD/DVR offerings.