From [Link: qz.com], the article "It’s the beginning of the end of satellite TV in the US" from November 30, 2018.


...unless that was an article from The Onion.

Just waiting for the internet service price jumps. It’s coming.

Comcast has implemented a hard cap, but you can pay $50 extra for unlimited. When you call and ask about it, they recommend ditching Netflix and using the xFinity stream app.

I knew that old black and white TV would come in handy someday.

For what a door stop? That analog TV doesn’t pick shit up any more

Hook it up to the old Sony Betamax and watch the home movies. Be bissfully unaware how bad the world is getting.

Yea me!

Is this really a surprise? DirecTV IMO is horrible now. Satellite internet is a joke and expensive. Everyone is moving towards streaming based video content. Will Dish survive this? I doubt it. Maybe if they subsidize it by getting people to buy magazine subscriptions lol.

As far as comcast. I switched to the $19.99 a month internet only plan. Cheapest slowest available. We stream 100% of our video content. At least 3 hours a day every day. When im home working the TV is running all day long. YoutubeTV, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, CBS app, HBO app. Never any issues with streaming quality. Never ever reached any cap set.

I heard that there is a 200GB data cap with Comcast. But when I had them, a year ago, the cap wasn’t being used.

I have heard that they decided to start using it on some markets, or at least some customers. Presumably those who often over run the 200GB by several hundred GB.

So what is the news now with the 200GB cap from Comcast?

KOT

I've heard from two customers now that they've been notified they are exceeding the "data cap". Never heard this before in Boulder.

Comcast wants to charge an additional $10 for every additional 50GB.

They also seem to have a screw loose. The data cap is 1 TB. They claimed one customer used 1 TB of data, and another one supposedly used a whopping 2 TB of data (we're talking an older guy who just lives with his wife. Unless he's torrenting video all day I don't know how they could reach this)

According to Netflix you can use about 7GB of data per hour streaming Ultra HD and about 3GB/hour watching high def.

I had installed a third party modem at one customer. The customer was trying to figure out what was using so much data, but Comcast tells them that without the special Xfinity modem, they can't help them with diagnosing this.

The other customer does have an Xfinity modem, and, apparently, with the Xfinity app he can put his network devices in groups of 5 and then track how much data those groups use.

I'm sure it is going to become more common place as Comcast has to figure out how to make more revenue now that's it's become so easy to kick their TV services to the curb.

The funny part is, if Xfinity had the equivalent of YouTube Live with only relevant channels and a fixed price I might consider it. But I don't want to get stuck in their bait and switch tactics. They are in the perfect place to out-gun Sling and all the other competitors, but I don't know if they are smart enough to make it happen while they still have a chance.

Anyone out there do only streaming with Comcast for video?

Dealing with the "cap" will become more common with all ISP's as we push video to the net rather than OTA or cable. Net traffic is expanding exponentially. Unless the cost for supporting this traffic also decreases exponentially, something must give. Now that net neutrality is history, ISP's can offer incentives for certain traffic.

Dish is moving towards SlingTV, and they bought a boat load of 5g spectrum. I believe once 5g is built the will offer a new AirTV box with 5g built in and boom they just did an end around on Comcast.

As for the caps, I went over the Comcast 2TB cap 4 months in a row starting when the cap was put in place. Before the cap I never really even came close. You get 2 overages then they start charging you. Last month I got a bill for an extra $250 on top of my regular internet bill.

I had really hoped the new SnapAV Araknis routers were going to have a meter, I had called and asked them if it was going to before they came out and the guy said it would. Right before I blew my network up I called and double checked and same guy says oh no that isn't a feature.

Without a router feature tracking data on my LAN, there's really no way to find what in the hell is chewing through 2TB of data. I killed Plex Pass, dropbox on my home PC, got my wife to work out of her office rather than home VPN (geologist LIDAR data). We will see at the end of this month if anything changed, then I will add back things 1 at a time.

Also SnapAV OvrC Pro speedtest is 1gb of data everytime it runs so if you set it to run every 6 hours, that could chew up 120gb a month by itself! If your clients are on Sat internet that is going to chew up your entire cap.

oprahthehutt.

Which routers and switches are you using? Many units will report traffic for each port or connected device.

Look like these folks make firmware you can load onto some routers to see data usage by device.

Anyone used it by chance?

https://dd-wrt.com/

Your 2TB client - any chance they are watching a streaming channel and not stopping the stream before they turn off the system? Netflix and many other services will auto play the next episode.

I battle with the 1TB cap ever month. Four in my household, two are older teenagers with one who is a gamer and the other likes netflix and youtube and both could care less about regular Comcast TV services. I've found the XBOX uses a ton of data for game updates even when the console is not in use. I've had to reduce the resolution on streaming boxes due to excessive data use. I tried a couple of Nest cameras over the summer and those are serious bandwidth hogs (Comcast data counters work both direction). I just installed a Frame TV and I'm trying out the Comcast Stream app for TV services, will see how much that impacts the cap. Supposedly this data does not count against the cap.

I use Unifi here and on my client's sites and can see data usage per client device. No one has asked me to look into overages so I figure that either they are not hitting the caps or if they are they don't care about the extra $ per month.

I am conflicted about the coming end of Directv.

On one hand I am a former employee and a almost 20 year customer. They also used to be my "go to" when clients asked me what tv service they should go with. They were always the most reliable and had the best UI (and discretes). But since AT&T they have moved from as I put it "they all suck but Directv sucks the least" to "as crappy as everybody else".

As for broadband data caps, I have had a 1TB cap on my service for about 5-6 years now. Have never come close to hitting it. This month I started getting warnings that I was close to my limit. Not really sure what changed, my household admittedly uses a fair amount of data but usually in the 500-750gb/mo range.

Interesting that others are suddenly seeing the same thing. I wonder what the deal is.