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AT&T disappointed with offers for struggling DirecTV
- Thread starter MitchDeerfield
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Att started THINKING about the purchase in '14 or '15, the sale wasn't till like late '15 or '16, iirc ...
purchase was actually in '15
They played with dish for about 10 years...it was a nice fit...but ole charlie wanting to run things
Yeah, I was pretty disappointed in the brand new boxes my parents got after switching from D* to Spectrum. Apparently X1 is a good platform, but I have never seen it myself.
- Nov 29, 2003
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The X1 box is a good system, both as a Box and the online version ( my Stepfather has the box on his main TV and the online version on the others), I just have a problem paying the extra fee every month for a box just to access the service I already pay a monthly fee for.
Comcast and Charter, at least for now, do not charge you if you only use the app on the Roku( or other devices), but sooner or later they will, Traditional Providers love those extra fees.
The only one I can think of that wants a commitment is ATT TV. I know YTTV, Hulu Live, Sling, and Philo are month to month, no commitment services. There there is Fubo, I think, but have no experience with them to know for sure, that they are month to month as well.
So which many are wanting the commitments?
Yep, ATT TV is the only one that requires a commitment along with an ETF. But some services are doing pre-pay deals where for a discounted rate you sub for some specified period of time and prepay for that. Think of it as a "non-contract contract".
Kind of like the cell companies that did away with contracts but now let you buy a phone with monthly payments that have a discount applied over some period of time. A discount you lose if you switch or even if you try to buy out the phone.
Their is also Amazon Prime - monthly or yearly, HBO/Max, Disney+, Peacock, Paramount+ formerly CBS All Access, Discovery+ - soon to be launched.
A bit of a stretch don't you think? All of the pay streamers have monthly offers, no commitment beyond the month you've paid for. That they also have offers for prepaying for different lengths of time at some discounted pricing is not exactly the same thing as a real commitment with a real ETF. In that case, only ATT TV stands out.
Yes, they are all 'subscription' services but mostly only for the month paid for.
Sorry, I didn't know Juan was talking about commitment based TV subscription services.
When I left DTV effective Jan 1st 2014 the deal had been done and we were told ATT now owns us but they will not implement anything or make any changes for some period of time, I think it was at least 6mo or so. I retired with a DirecTV badge and when I consulted back with the company several months later badges had not changed to ATT yet. I have a call in to some other DirecTV employees to find out exactly when ATT was in charge and started making changes.
As a subscriber to both, in my area, the picture quality is about the same when comparing the two services on the same channel on the same TV. Some channels look slightly better on DirecTV, some channels look slightly better on Spectrum. There is no significant difference IMO. The color saturation may be a little bit better on DirecTV, but it's close. I cannot tell the difference between Spectrum and DirecTV, but I can pick out Dish Network in a heartbeat because of how washed out the picture is at times.
Earlier this year Charter pushed out an update for boxes running Spectrum Guide that upconverts content to 1080p, and that has helped, no more jaggedness around text.
For audio, DirecTV is definitely louder, I can't say that it is necessarily better though. Some times the rears are so loud they drown out the front L + R and center channels. Probably could fine tune this in the settings for my A/V receiver, I did the initial set up using cable as the source.
- Nov 29, 2003
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Both Charter and Comcast started their MPEG4 transition ( from MPEG2) a few years ago with the Navigator and X1 boxes, also via the apps is MPEG4.
In my opinion, YTTV looks a lot better then Comcast ( never seen Charter's Video quality, I just have their Broadband).
Legacy Time Warner systems that Charter acquired have been using MPEG 4 on select channels for about 10 years now. The Cisco 4640/4642 and 8640/8642 were the first boxes to be MPEG 4 compatible for SA/Cisco headends. The HD feeds for the TEAM and GAME channels used for NHL CI/NBA LP/MLB EI/MLS DK are in MPEG 4 as well as most if not all of the international channels aside from the spanish channels. Not sure if it has expanded over the years
It depends on what you are watching. Live action will look bad on any provider. The compression can't handle the fast moving objects.
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