Can you pay for BTN and ESPN college Football without having Directv/cable?

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uihawk82

Well-Known Member
I would love to have just the BTN and Espn football and bball games and not be on cable.

Can you pay them directly and forget the other 200 channels of crap? Then watch on your pc or pc connected to TV.

I can get ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and PBS over the air. My wife doesnt watch any other cable garbage and really neither do I except for Morning Joe, which I could do without.
 
Let me add I would pay 10-15 bucks to each of BTN and espn to watch the hawks and college bball and football. I would still come out ahead of the normal cable TV bill.
 
uihawk82 said:
I would love to have just the BTN and Espn football and bball games and not be on cable.
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Amen to that ... The only reason I will keep DISH Network is for football season. All of the TV I watch now is via streaming. I will bump my DISH package up during football season and then downgrade at the end. It sucks doing this. I cringe and steam every time I get my DISH bill. I am paying way too much for a bunch of ^&%^ channels. Give me BTN and all the ESPN channels and I would be just fine.
 
uihawk82 said:
I would love to have just the BTN and Espn football and bball games and not be on cable.

Can you pay them directly and forget the other 200 channels of crap? Then watch on your pc or pc connected to TV.

I can get ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and PBS over the air. My wife doesnt watch any other cable garbage and really neither do I except for Morning Joe, which I could do without.
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Ah, but that's just it. They want you to HAVE to pay for the other 200 channels of crap, whether you want it or not. Believe me, I would love to have just the BTN and ESPN for the sake of watching sports, and forget the other garbage.. But it's never gonna happen. It's not in the best interest of Directv, Dish, Verizon, etc. to let you have a $7 TV bill every month, as opposed to $50-$60+.
 
1977Hawkeye said:
Ah, but that's just it. They want you to HAVE to pay for the other 200 channels of crap, whether you want it or not. Believe me, I would love to have just the BTN and ESPN for the sake of watching sports, and forget the other garbage.. But it's never gonna happen. It's not in the best interest of Directv, Dish, Verizon, etc. to let you have a $7 TV bill every month, as opposed to $50-$60+.
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I wouldn't say its never going to happen, I believe it is the inevitable evolution of television...it will just take awhile longer for channels like ESPN and BTN to get out of their exclusive deals with the cable/sat companies and the billions they pour into the rights. There are already channels that are starting to go streaming only for a fee, but the cable companies will fight this to the death.

As to the OP, there are a few not-completely-legal websites that stream almost every sporting event live with varying degrees of quality.

The best (in my opinion) way to get super cheap cable/satellite is to find a friend who actually pays for it and then buy them a slingbox (around $200) and have them get another cable/satellite box just for you and pay that friend a monthly fee for the use of that box. It usually costs $50 to $100 to get the box sent to your friend/and installed and then they'd pay around $5-$10 a month for that box to be rented and in use. So anyway after you get past the initial costs of the equipment, you're looking at paying your friend around $10 a month to stream all of his channels. That would pay for your initial up front costs in only a few months if you consider what your friend is paying for cable.
 
mopkins said:
I wouldn't say its never going to happen, I believe it is the inevitable evolution of television...it will just take awhile longer for channels like ESPN and BTN to get out of their exclusive deals with the cable/sat companies and the billions they pour into the rights. There are already channels that are starting to go streaming only for a fee, but the cable companies will fight this to the death.

As to the OP, there are a few not-completely-legal websites that stream almost every sporting event live with varying degrees of quality.

The best (in my opinion) way to get super cheap cable/satellite is to find a friend who actually pays for it and then buy them a slingbox (around $200) and have them get another cable/satellite box just for you and pay that friend a monthly fee for the use of that box. It usually costs $50 to $100 to get the box sent to your friend/and installed and then they'd pay around $5-$10 a month for that box to be rented and in use. So anyway after you get past the initial costs of the equipment, you're looking at paying your friend around $10 a month to stream all of his channels. That would pay for your initial up front costs in only a few months if you consider what your friend is paying for cable.
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I guess I meant that it will never happen as long as Cable companies have their say as to what you can subscribe to. :) If certain channels go independent so to speak, that's a game changer.

If things eventually get to where you can get certain channels online, that is something I would consider. We're trying to downsize as it is. It all depends on how much the streaming costs, per channel, per month, but I'll say the only reason I have Cable TV (Verizon FIOS) is so that I can watch the Hawks, and the Cubs (in years where they're worth watching). Otherwise, I just watch stuff on BluRay & DVD. The Mrs. and I watch a lot of TV related stuff, but that's nothing we can't get on disc as opposed to watching week-by-week on the tube.

Ideally, I could subscribe to BTN, and just do pay-per-view on any Hawk games that are on ESPN/ESPN2.
 
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1977Hawkeye said:
Ah, but that's just it. They want you to HAVE to pay for the other 200 channels of crap, whether you want it or not. Believe me, I would love to have just the BTN and ESPN for the sake of watching sports, and forget the other garbage.. But it's never gonna happen. It's not in the best interest of Directv, Dish, Verizon, etc. to let you have a $7 TV bill every month, as opposed to $50-$60+.
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The average home gets 189 channels and watches 17. 17 is probably even on the high end unless you have a family of 4 and work in some kid channels. http://arstechnica.com/business/201...-get-189-cable-tv-channels-and-only-watch-17/

Cable bills are becoming obscene and more and more folks are cutting the cord. This spreads the costs of cable across fewer people which will lead to more cord cutting. It's only a matter of time before the market breaks because proles simply don't have the disposable income to shell out $70 a month for each cell phone they have, plus $50 a month for internet plus $100+ a month for cable. Cable is gonna be the loser for telecom spending dollars. Cable is the only business I can think of where 90% of what you get sold goes unused.
 
okeefe4prez said:
The average home gets 189 channels and watches 17. 17 is probably even on the high end unless you have a family of 4 and work in some kid channels. http://arstechnica.com/business/201...-get-189-cable-tv-channels-and-only-watch-17/

Cable bills are becoming obscene and more and more folks are cutting the cord. This spreads the costs of cable across fewer people which will lead to more cord cutting. It's only a matter of time before the market breaks because proles simply don't have the disposable income to shell out $70 a month for each cell phone they have, plus $50 a month for internet plus $100+ a month for cable. Cable is gonna be the loser for telecom spending dollars. Cable is the only business I can think of where 90% of what you get sold goes unused.
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Where does that leave the BTN revenue going forward?
 
ESPN and BTN have a financial interest in keeping cable bundling going, so I doubt you'll get an option to subscribe directly from them any time soon.
 
ICHawk24 said:
ESPN and BTN have a financial interest in keeping cable bundling going, so I doubt you'll get an option to subscribe directly from them any time soon.
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Agreed, but the first internet domino to fall and recreate an entire business model was the music industry. Now there's Pandora, Spotify, Itunes, etc that is all internet based and Sam Goody is dead. Now the Movie industry is being forever changed by online streaming. The next logical service to fall by the wayside seems to be television. Things like Appletv, Hulu, etc are popping up...and then Amazon and Netflix are starting to make their own programming now, etc. If shows start selling their programming exclusively to Netflix or Itunes or simply streaming their entire channel online for a fee (like the WWE and UFC are starting to do), then there's really no point to having tv channels at all. It's going to take more shows like "house of cards" and "orange is the new black" to make this happen though.

Also, most channels, ESPN and BTN included, already offer free internet streaming of your content provided you have a valid cable/satellite subscription. If ESPN or another company was to skip the middle man (Directv, Time Warner, etc) and go right to the customer via online streaming, they could potentially make even more money.

I'm almost certain the tv station giants are already losing sleep over this whole situation. My guess is they will be attempting to "lock-in" most channels to long term commitments to survive for as long as possible. Their days are probably numbered, but right now there's just too much money in cable/satellite.

The real winner in all of this is going to be companies like Charter, Comcast and the ISP giants. Unfortunately, I already hate those guys :(
 
mopkins said:
Agreed, but the first internet domino to fall and recreate an entire business model was the music industry. Now there's Pandora, Spotify, Itunes, etc that is all internet based and Sam Goody is dead. Now the Movie industry is being forever changed by online streaming. The next logical service to fall by the wayside seems to be television. Things like Appletv, Hulu, etc are popping up...and then Amazon and Netflix are starting to make their own programming now, etc. If shows start selling their programming exclusively to Netflix or Itunes or simply streaming their entire channel online for a fee (like the WWE and UFC are starting to do), then there's really no point to having tv channels at all. It's going to take more shows like "house of cards" and "orange is the new black" to make this happen though.

Also, most channels, ESPN and BTN included, already offer free internet streaming of your content provided you have a valid cable/satellite subscription. If ESPN or another company was to skip the middle man (Directv, Time Warner, etc) and go right to the customer via online streaming, they could potentially make even more money.

I'm almost certain the tv station giants are already losing sleep over this whole situation. My guess is they will be attempting to "lock-in" most channels to long term commitments to survive for as long as possible. Their days are probably numbered, but right now there's just too much money in cable/satellite.

The real winner in all of this is going to be companies like Charter, Comcast and the ISP giants. Unfortunately, I already hate those guys :(
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Solid post. I've been saying for some time that we are seeing classic bubble behavior in the content procurement wars and I think there is another example from NASCAR. Yesterday was the last race on Turner Sports, who was the first cable company to start carrying live races (some of the broadcast networks beat them, but they were first on cable). The latest NASCAR TV deal was for a whopping $8.2 billion for 10 years. The bidding war basically came down to Fox and NBC vying for content on their sports networks established to rival ESPN. They are both salivating over the thought of being able to capture additional subscribers and demanding higher carriage rates.

I mean, I can't describe how insane of a price that is for NASCAR content. NASCAR peaked in popularity over 15 years ago and has been steadily declining since then. The tracks are taking seats out and ratings are down in the past 5 years something like 40+%. They produce 3-4 hours of original Cup level content like 30 weeks a year, which is a fraction of the content the NFL churns out, yet they got over $800 million per year. The model is absolutely going to break, folks. I want to say the NASCAR deal will be akin to the Pets.com IPO, but I suspect there will be a few more absurd eye-popping deals before something busts in maybe 5 or 10 years. The tech shift bince 2004 has been insane and I can't fathom what will be out there by 2024.
 
SamBrownlee48 said:
I get by just fine with a good internet connection, a chromecast, and a couple reliable eastern european websites.
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Exactly. If you watch the games live and have the internet you can watch them all. The only problem is with basketball season, I work weird and long hours and need a dvr to catch all the games.
 
uihawk82 said:
I would love to have just the BTN and Espn football and bball games and not be on cable.

Can you pay them directly and forget the other 200 channels of crap? Then watch on your pc or pc connected to TV.

I can get ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and PBS over the air. My wife doesnt watch any other cable garbage and really neither do I except for Morning Joe, which I could do without.
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We dumped DTV at the 1st of the year. Went to over-the-air and the reception is great. Found ourselves watching too much TV, and tired of playing games with DTV. They really took their pants down when we cancelled and then after it became effective went even lower. Not a great way to treat long-term customers, IMO.

What is keeping these cable/sat companies going is live sports. That is the only thing you can't reliably watch. I'll have to check into the 'eastern european' model on the internet. Any websites?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbad...valuable-media-property-and-worth-40-billion/
 
If you want to pay less just cancel. They'll be all over you for introductory rates in days.

Also, you can suspend dtv service. You could suspend the service in early April when the ncaas finish up and restart it late august.
 
BryceC said:
If you want to pay less just cancel. They'll be all over you for introductory rates in days.

Also, you can suspend dtv service. You could suspend the service in early April when the ncaas finish up and restart it late august.
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I have done both of those things successfully but it is such a game.

I want a box that will pluck out the electromagnetic waves at BTN and ESPN frequencies and I will gladly pay

We put people on the moon 40+ years ago and have vehicles on Mars taking selfies of themselves but we cant get a cafeteria plan model from the friggin FCC.

Legislatures and courts need to open up the spectrum to free markets and let companies start supplying their own signals. Put some satellites up that companies rent emission of their frequencies on and you buy one channel at a time.
 
gohawkz said:
Exactly. If you watch the games live and have the internet you can watch them all. The only problem is with basketball season, I work weird and long hours and need a dvr to catch all the games.
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You mean you watch them over the internet without a cable or satellite carrier contract? How do you do that?
 
I think we are a couple years away from ESPN having a streaming service like netflix. They have the capability now but too many cable deals.
 
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