Good bye Direct TV satellite service

[rbertalotto]

😂😂...just having a little fun!

[Big5er]

54 minutes ago, hemsteadc said:

No you haven't.

LOL, you know I've been through 5 hurricanes, 4 in a sticks and bricks and 1 in my RV with a dish mounted on a pole. I've lost the roof off the garage and had more 60 feet plus tall trees fall on my property than I can remember but I've never once needed my dish re-aligned. 

[Chalkie]

4 hours ago, rbertalotto said:

😂😂...just having a little fun!

Sounds like an admission from a troll. Perhaps a moderate can close this ridiculous thread.

[Carlos]

We cancelled our satellite service in 2006, haven't missed it at all.  You don't need an internet connection ALL the time to make this work.  We download shows and movies to our devices, and play them later without an internet connection.  Out of everyone I hang out with, not one has cable or satellite any more.

My neighbor was an installer and recently left with an early "retirement" package because installs have slowed down so much.  He said mostly only people over 70 are signing up any more and their market is literally dying.

[acampingwewillgo]

In all my years of Direct TV(25+), not once have I realigned my dish antenna. Come to think of it, even when I had that huge 12 foot mesh dish receiving everything before encryption....never once adjusted that either. Yes, Satellite has been good to me especially the early days of it(big dish wise)  LOL

[rbertalotto]

More food for thought...or wood for the fire...why is Dish Networking going to spend billions on wireless and why did they spend billions a few years ago buying wireless spectrum....

https://finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/dish-network-nearing-6-billion-181803509.html

[Dutch_12078]

41 minutes ago, rbertalotto said:

More food for thought...or wood for the fire...why is Dish Networking going to spend billions on wireless and why did they spend billions a few years ago buying wireless spectrum....

https://finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/dish-network-nearing-6-billion-181803509.html

Dish has started rolling out a new 5G network. The Boost deal would give them an instant subscriber base and an experienced front office crew with interim MVNO usage of Sprint's towers and roaming agreements.

[rbertalotto]

Exactly....ALL for streaming TV. Charlie at Dish has stated numerous times at industry meeting that current satellite infrastructure is unsustainable when it competes with streaming services.

[Carlos]

Sprint is a loser has-been, and any company aligned with them is doomed.  Dish was a great company at one time, as was Sirius.  But their tech is dead and useless.

[hemsteadc]

It won't surprise me if Directv goes under, considering the experience I'm having trying to re-activate a receiver.

I have 2 HD receivers, one is active, one got lost, so I deactivated it about 6 months ago.  It's been found, and is on its way to me, so I went on the website to see how much trouble I'd have reactivating it.  I found it near impossible.

Any Directv.com site redirects you to ATT.  And it's a mess. After a half hour I finally found what I think is the activation page, but they don't list my equipment, they just make you wait 45 seconds and tell you you don't have anything to activate. Evidently after I de-activated the lost receiver it simply disappeared from my account. The old DTV site clearly showed my equipment and its location.  I had that page bookmarked, but that doesn't work anymore.

So I go on chat, which in most cases is automated (no help at all), but I finally got a real human. I typed my name to get started. He wanted to look up my account, so he asked my name, and zip code.  I told him I already typed my name, and could I use my account number.  So I waited a few minutes for him to look up my account.  Then he comes back and asks me for the serial numbers of the receivers.  Exasperated, I said "You're looking at my account but you don't know what I have?"

I terminated the chat.  A few minutes later I get a phone call from a man with a very thick Indian accent.  He tells me to go to directv.com/activate.  Right. That directs me back to ATT, and the whole mess starts over again. 

I like their product, but hate their service.

Edited June 19, 2019 by hemsteadc

[RV_]

On 6/16/2019 at 6:09 AM, Mark and Dale Bruss said:

Too many places in this country where there is not broadband Internet and the dreams of low earth orbit satellites have been around for a long time and still are dreams. 

Mark,

Did you miss the launch of the first 60 satellites by SpaceX for Musk's StarLink constellation?

https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/15/18624630/spacex-elon-musk-starlink-internet-satellites-falcon-9-rocket-launch-live

"Update May 23rd, 11:35PM ET: SpaceX successfully deployed all 60 Starlink satellites into orbit following liftoff, and the individual vehicles will fan out in orbit over time. The company also landed its Falcon 9 rocket following launch, marking this particular rocket’s third time going to space and back.

Update May 23rd, 12:57AM ET: All 60 Starlink satellites are now online. The solar array deployment should be happening soon.

The Federal Communications Commission has already granted SpaceX permission to launch the entirety of its nearly 12,000-satellite constellation. SpaceX launched its first two test satellites, TinTin A and TinTin B, in February of 2018, and the company now has about six years to launch half of the full constellation to bring its license with the FCC into full use."

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/15/18624630/spacex-elon-musk-starlink-internet-satellites-falcon-9-rocket-launch-live

SpaceX has started already. Most discussion points raised here, negative or positive takes place in the comments sections at the end of the above article.

Here's the Starlink mission video:

Just as our cell phones don't need a directional antenna because as we move our conversation is handed off to another tower over and over except where there are no towers, neither will StarLink require aiming a dish. So we complain and ask them for more towers or switch to whoever has the better signal where we are or where we go. Satellites in LEO will work the same, not requiring ground stations as they go. This first group does, and like the proof of concept and demand Tesla Roadster, these are to learn from and do final design changes.

Since they will require an antenna to send and receive without aiming, communist and totalitarian countries can simply outlaw them. It's up to them to find bootleg dishes and subscribers.

 

Edited June 19, 2019 by RV_

[Chalkie]

5 hours ago, RV_ said:

Did you miss the launch of the first 60 satellites by SpaceX for Musk's StarLink constellation?

Putting .5% of the total number of satellites in the sky is nothing more than a proof of concept, in my opinion. If and when 50% of them are up then perhaps there will be cause for celebration and cautious optimism that it will become reality.

[hemsteadc]

27 minutes ago, Chalkie said:

Putting .5% of the total number of satellites in the sky is ...

12,000 satellites. That's hard to imagine.. from every standpoint.

[Dutch_12078]

1 hour ago, Chalkie said:

Putting .5% of the total number of satellites in the sky is nothing more than a proof of concept, in my opinion. If and when 50% of them are up then perhaps there will be cause for celebration and cautious optimism that it will become reality.

According to Musk, only 1,000 satellites are needed for the service to be "economically viable". More than that would boost capacity as needed to meet demand.

https://spacenews.com/musk-says-starlink-economically-viable-with-around-1000-satellites/

[chirakawa]

14 hours ago, Carlos said:

Sprint is a loser has-been, and any company aligned with them is doomed.  Dish was a great company at one time, as was Sirius.  But their tech is dead and useless.

I agree that streaming appears to be the future for TV watching, until something else comes along and replaces it.  However, most of us live in the present.  Millions of us don't have access to affordable broadband to do streaming and/or don't have access to OTA local programming.  So, until we do, we find other services to fill in the gap.

At present, DISH has over 11 million satellite TV subscribers representing about 30 million paying viewers.  I think the majority of those people would argue that DISH is not "useless".

DirectTV has even more satellite subscribers than DISH.  So, a conservative estimate would be that those two TV providers represent about 20% of America's population.  Pretty good for a "dead and useless"  technology.

[Carlos]

2 minutes ago, chirakawa said:

DirectTV has even more satellite subscribers than DISH.  So, a conservative estimate would be that those two TV providers represent about 20% of America's population.  Pretty good for a "dead and useless"  technology.

 

Yes, every time a tech becomes dead, there's a tail period where some people still haven't figured out their other options, and keep using it.  I actually did that myself with Sirius.  It still has no future, which is why they are laying off so many workers and providing early outs for many.  If there were a future, they'd want to keep trained employees.

 

[Dutch_12078]

4 minutes ago, Carlos said:

 

Yes, every time a tech becomes dead, there's a tail period where some people still haven't figured out their other options, and keep using it.  I actually did that myself with Sirius.  It still has no future, which is why they are laying off so many workers and providing early outs for many.  If there were a future, they'd want to keep trained employees.

 

In the DBS case, millions of people have figured out that there is no viable option yet for them. As broadband coverage expands, probably with a lot of help from the new LEO technology, more will find their way to a streaming alternative. That will likely be a number of years down the road before DBS is no longer viable. A Dish/DTV merger would be a precursor to the ultimate demise of DBS, but it will also extend that demise as costs come down and profitability is maintained longer.

Is Pandora adding subscribers in step with Sirius/XM losing them?

[Carlos]

11 minutes ago, Dutch_12078 said:

Is Pandora adding subscribers in step with Sirius/XM losing them?

Don't know, I cancelled that years ago also.  Apple's music service was adding more than Sirius was losing, for a while, but these aren't numbers I track.  Podcasts are becoming big business now, and terrestrial radio is becoming even worse than it has been for a long time.

You are right of course that some small number of people don't have some form of broadband.  There are also a number of people who simply won't change, or don't know their options and assume they "can't."  I personally run into an equal number of both.  So many also think that you have to have internet service to play your media, rather than download while on wifi to play later.

 

[Chalkie]

50 minutes ago, Dutch_12078 said:

According to Musk, only 1,000 satellites are needed for the service to be "economically viable". More than that would boost capacity as needed to meet demand.

https://spacenews.com/musk-says-starlink-economically-viable-with-around-1000-satellites/

"Economically viable" is another way of saying the company can make money at that point, but it provides no indication on what the cost to the end user will be. I am sure there will be some early users that will jump on it no matter the cost just for "bragging rights". The article also says that user terminals will use "phased array, electronically steered antennas". Further "Musk didn’t say how much the antennas would cost, however, or when they would be available. Most electronically steered antennas are too expensive for consumers and businesses to utilize." 

I will stand by my comment that until it is affordable and available to a larger part of the population it is still a dream. In the meantime, streaming via cell phones and other internet is not going away.

[Carlos]

Economic viability means that enough customers find it valuable to pay for it.  Bragging rights?  For a network connection?  That's funny.  Also steered antennas are now much lower priced and common.

[Dutch_12078]

1 hour ago, Chalkie said:

"Economically viable" is another way of saying the company can make money at that point, but it provides no indication on what the cost to the end user will be. I am sure there will be some early users that will jump on it no matter the cost just for "bragging rights". The article also says that user terminals will use "phased array, electronically steered antennas". Further "Musk didn’t say how much the antennas would cost, however, or when they would be available. Most electronically steered antennas are too expensive for consumers and businesses to utilize." 

I will stand by my comment that until it is affordable and available to a larger part of the population it is still a dream. In the meantime, streaming via cell phones and other internet is not going away.

I've seen Starlink subscriber prices listed in a few interviews that were very competitive with current cable offerings. Musk has also quoted earth station prices in the $150-$200 range for a pizza box sized unit. I don't know if those were installed prices or not. Of course it's anyone's guess at this point what will actually hit the market.

[RV_]

Oh we can't plug them in today. But neither could we connect at all until we developed a browser.

Today the US is way behind most first world countries in broadband deployments. Many states are no longer interested in supporting the cable and broadband DSL monopolies that the big ISPs had passed at the state level. The big conglomerates have abysmal records in customer service, and they carve out one town and another gets the next and so on.

The one thing we all agree on is that we don't have enough broadband. StarLink, may well be that solution. Or we may indeed have the next generation or two witness another mass extinction. These are seminal times simultaneous to technological extinctions as newer and better tech comes and resets the bar.

Just being able to discuss and cuss online is amazing in itself. It was just a couple of decades ago the telephone companies had a total monopoly and threw it away by balking at the cost of laying fiber. Hindsight is 20-20. Foresight is rarer. I enjoy this point in time on the continuum of human life, tech, and knowledge. And the amazing increases in weather and seismic anomalies makes for entertaining challenges to preconceived notions. My sons at my age and my grands will see changes we can't conceive yet. I'm only 67 and my sense of child-like wonder is tickled by the reality of commercial rockets and developing space tourism. All things Musk is directly involved in bringing to fruition. I made a bundle betting on him once. I hope the Starlink division does an IPO.

Edited June 20, 2019 by RV_

[docj]

14 hours ago, Dutch_12078 said:

I've seen Starlink subscriber prices listed in a few interviews that were very competitive with current cable offerings. Musk has also quoted earth station prices in the $150-$200 range for a pizza box sized unit. I don't know if those were installed prices or not. Of course it's anyone's guess at this point what will actually hit the market.

Why would you believe Musk's price projections for Starlink any more than his Tesla price projections or production estimates? No question he is brilliant, but IMO you're gullible if you don't discount his pronouncements. No doubt, something like Starlink will exist at some point in the future, but Musk may or may not be the one who makes it happen. JMO 

[Carlos]

I assumed it would cost double what he said.  Which is still cheap.  Amazon has hinted at $500 for their satellite receiver and sub-$100 service, also cheap for what you're getting.

Again, back on the topic of why satellite will die; you don't need full time access in order to get TV/movies online.

 

Edited June 20, 2019 by Carlos

[Dutch_12078]

1 hour ago, docj said:

Why would you believe Musk's price projections for Starlink any more than his Tesla price projections or production estimates? No question he is brilliant, but IMO you're gullible if you don't discount his pronouncements. No doubt, something like Starlink will exist at some point in the future, but Musk may or may not be the one who makes it happen. JMO 

What part of "Of course it's anyone's guess at this point what will actually hit the market." don't you understand?