it also depends on agreements... For Example in Pittsburgh only 2 of the 4 local channels can be used via the app outside your home network... With the ATT TV app.. this is not the case.. You can watch all 4 channels plus your RSN
Is DirecTV still a thing?
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OK, but isn't that just a difference in semantics? (Not that semantics aren't important in marketing, mind you.) You can say that there's a 2-yr contract with an ETF based on the number of months remaining in your contract, or you can say there's no contract but you'll have an "installation balance due" based on the number of months until you reach your 2-yr anniversary.
And if they were to go that route, that would effectively mean that new customers would pay a *higher than regular* monthly price to begin with. So it wouldn't just be a matter of scrapping the reduced first-year promo pricing to entice new sign-ups, it would actually mean raising the cost the first 24 months above what you'd pay after that. Which might be fair to longtime customers who have long ago paid off their acquisition costs but it's probably not a great way to attract new subs. (But then again, I suspect the game plan going forward will be to use DTV Stream to attract new subs while just trying to hold onto DTV Sat's existing base on either service at a sufficiently profitable ARPU.)
IDK, I guess DTV Sat could be really slimy like lots of cablco's and have a fine-print "installation fee" tacked on to the advertised price, the same way caboco's do with their broadcast TV fee, which is typically in the $15-20 range these days. At least the installation fee wouldn't be permanent, only for the first 24 months. And as you say, it could be optional too if they allowed self-installs, including re-use of existing installations.
All that said, I'll be surprised if they really re-jigger the formula too much for DTV on any front -- pricing, packages, hardware. As I say, I think the plan will be to mainly advertise and build up DTV Stream while DTV continues to melt down (hopefully more slowly) toward a base of sports-loving rural dwellers.
To some extent it is just different wording, but I think people would understand the install needs to be paid for (especially if there was a way to self install) more than the ETF which just seems like something a greedy company does.
Having the same packages/prices for satellite and streaming, and better yet the same clients / GUI - and allow use of things like an Apple TV as a client for either delivery method.
They need to rethink how they market things, or they will continue to bleed subscribers as people think of them as yesterday's technology.
So for ATT, its rinse and repeat, same thing they been doing for the last 3-4 years, introduce a new format, try to draw as many as possible to it while degrading the D* product, once the New product doesn't get enough people interested, drop it and make another.
Isn't the ATT TV App considered a different service ?
If I have D*, I can't just load the ATT TV app and log into my D* account, right ?
This mostly seems like a desire to take the features of the DTV Stream -- its lower everyday pricing, its lack of contracts, its GUI, its app-based client -- and apply them to the older satellite system, which would be problematic and/or require additional investment on DTV's part.
And my question is "Why?" If you're drawn to those features, why wouldn't you just go with DTV Stream? The reality is that people already do think of DBS as "yesterday's technology" (to the extent that consumers care or think about such things). Today's technology is the internet. The way forward for the company is to make the new streaming product as good as possible and draw customers to it. Due to the internet-based nature of the product, it has economic and feature benefits that DBS simply doesn't.
If there are no/low-cost improvements to the satellite service that can help it retain subs or draw in new ones, then great, they should do that. Perhaps shifting to a new everyday pricing model, with a cheaper self-install option, would be a smart move (although I suspect the increased initial pricing would just push more folks to DISH or other options.) But I can't see sinking significant resources into new tech or major advertising for DTV Sat at this point.
I don't think TPG was under any illusions that they could stop the outflow from DTV Sat. They may be able to slow it with improved customer service, pricing changes, etc. but they know what AT&T knows, which is that the user base will continue to shift towards homes without broadband access. This is why TPG insisted that AT&T TV be included in the deal. They wouldn't buy DTV Sat by itself. They understood which service is rooted in the past and which one has a chance to grow in the future.
You have a point. Although they haven't really been making one new streaming product after another so much as they've just changed the brand names, added features, and adjusted prices and contracts while they continued to *slowly* develop the single underlying streaming platform.
They started off with DirecTV Now back on Nov. 30, 2016. I don't think they ever intended to keep that as the long-term brand. They knew they were starting with something rough -- the service didn't even have a cloud DVR to record anything for its first couple years and the service had all kinds of bugs. They basically took the satellite service's channel packages (minus a few channels here and there) and offered them at way lower, contract-free prices. They had to be losing money on the service but that was OK -- AT&T was essentially offering cable TV below cost to attract beta testers to help them develop and polish their new OTT video streaming platform (which was based on tech they got from their June 2016 acquisition of streaming company Quickplay).
I think DirecTV Now was always intended to be a temporary "throw away" brand; they knew it would inevitably become associated with unsustainably cheap prices and buggy, feature-compromised service. Once the tech was fully developed, that brand would be sunset and they would launch AT&T TV as their new full-featured sustainably-priced flagship cable TV service, the next-gen successor to both DTV and Uverse TV. But it took AT&T a ridiculously long time to get their streaming tech platform ready for primetime. They kept pushing back the launch of AT&T TV. It didn't officially launch nationwide until March 2020, at least two years later than originally anticipated. And even now, over a year later, there are still a few channels and features that DTV has which AT&T TV lacks.
When AT&T TV launched (initially with the same 2-yr required contract as DTV), they renamed DirecTV Now to AT&T TV Now and kept it around as a lower featured, contract-free option. But then they realized, "Hey, people really hate 2-yr contracts!" so they ditched that aspect of AT&T TV and stopped selling AT&T TV Now as a separate thing. Keep in mind through all of this that DirecTV Now/AT&T TV Now and AT&T TV were all being delivered through the same set of apps from the same AT&T servers.
It's been a long and winding road but now we're coming to the do-or-die final iteration of this streaming cable TV service. It's about to be spun off (along with DTV and Uverse TV) to a separate group and renamed DIRECTV Stream. It's looking like there will be some feature improvements happening to the service at the same time. Hopefully it will benefit from the focus of a smaller company dedicated to running it as opposed to getting lost in the shuffle at AT&T. (The same could be said for the satellite service too.)
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