New alternative to cable for ESPN

eneq said:
Until Comcast gets rid of the data limit on their internet plans, this won't be an option for Comcast subscribers
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Most cable company data limits are 100s of GBs, which should be plenty to watch tens of football games a month.

Data limits aren't bad because they are non-discriminatory. You get what you pay for.
 
Looks like no ESPN3 or ESPNU:

Plus, the basic tier also comes with limited access to WatchESPN, the sportscaster’s online video service. Sling TV subscribers won’t be able to access everything that WatchESPN has to offer, but they will have access to the ESPN1 and ESPN2 feeds through that app.
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However there is this:
Consumers can tailor their experience with add-on packs for access to additional programming, at $5 per month. Sling TV will offer a "Kids Extra" add-on with Disney Junior, Disney XD, Boomerang, Baby TV and Duck TV, and a "News & Info Extra" add-on with HLN, Cooking Channel, DIY and Bloomberg TV. A "Sports Extra" package is coming soon.
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Another site says the Sports Extra package is expected to include other ESPN channels, but will not include regional sports networks.

ABC OTA + Sling TV ESPN1 and ESPN2 + Sports Extra ESPN3 and ESPNU

That would be awesome. Every Tech game for $25/mo.
 
hoping google fiber comes here and that will allow me to make some changes
 
I would pay 5-10 per month for watchESPN during football season. Since my only option is Time Warner, and they don't offer watchESPN withoutTV service. So ESPN and TW lose easy money.
 
WracerX said:
I would pay 5-10 per month for watchESPN during football season. Since my only option is Time Warner, and they don't offer watchESPN withoutTV service. So ESPN and TW lose easy money.
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Yeah, I bet they're real worried about your $10/month. :rolleyes:
 
gtzulu said:
Most cable company data limits are 100s of GBs, which should be plenty to watch tens of football games a month.

Data limits aren't bad because they are non-discriminatory. You get what you pay for.
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The said its set up through internet on your TV. I have one of those vizio smart TVs with Netflix on it, and our first 2 months of using it, we used over 500GBs of data. It sounds like it'll be streaming, so data usage will rack up very quickly
 
eneq said:
The said its set up through internet on your TV. I have one of those vizio smart TVs with Netflix on it, and our first 2 months of using it, we used over 500GBs of data. It sounds like it'll be streaming, so data usage will rack up very quickly
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You used so much because you had the video quality at 1080i. If you drop it down to 720p the consumption goes down considerably; from 1.1 GB/hr to 0.4 GB/hr. I got a warning letter my first month after cutting the cord but after I dropped down the video quality I never even encroached upon the limit again.

BTW, the usage cap for Comcast is 300 GB. You can pass it twice in a calendar year without incurring a fee. After that they charge a fee in chunks of GBs similar to what cell phone carriers do.
 
GTBJW said:
You used so much because you had the video quality at 1080i. If you drop it down to 720p the consumption goes down considerably; from 1.1 GB/hr to 0.4 GB/hr. I got a warning letter my first month after cutting the cord but after I dropped down the video quality I never even encroached upon the limit again.

BTW, the usage cap for Comcast is 300 GB. You can pass it twice in a calendar year without incurring a fee. After that they charge a fee in chunks of GBs similar to what cell phone carriers do.
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I'll be the pedantic ass like I usually am, but isn't 1080i roughly the same data transfer rate as 720p? 1080i and 720p both have transmissions of 60 frames per second, but 1080i transmits every other line, switching between even and odd. Then the even and odd lines are spliced together for the "interlaced" part of 1080i.

1080p is 60 full frames a second and would be around twice as much data transfer. This is all horribly pedantic, but I just recently figured out the true difference in i vs. p and so it's bothering me.
 
The biggest change to TV will be when we can choose channels a la carte. 1/2 of the TV channels will go out of business and the other 1/2 will start charging more, allowing them to produce better shows. No more watered down reality TV.
 
floridajacket said:
I'll be the pedantic ass like I usually am, but isn't 1080i roughly the same data transfer rate as 720p? 1080i and 720p both have transmissions of 60 frames per second, but 1080i transmits every other line, switching between even and odd. Then the even and odd lines are spliced together for the "interlaced" part of 1080i.

1080p is 60 full frames a second and would be around twice as much data transfer. This is all horribly pedantic, but I just recently figured out the true difference in i vs. p and so it's bothering me.
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Your definition of 1080i vs 720p is definitely correct, and your analysis would also be correct for uncompressed video.

However, presumably any streaming over the Internet would use a codec to compress the video. It's reasonable to think that whatever GTBJW's streaming service used was able to compress 720p at a far greater rate than 1080i, thus resulting in the decreased streaming rate.
 
WracerX said:
I would pay 5-10 per month for watchESPN during football season. Since my only option is Time Warner, and they don't offer watchESPN withoutTV service. So ESPN and TW lose easy money.
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If that were to happen then ESPN would have no incentive to run their content through TW. By running their content through TW they get a lot more "subscribers" that may never actually watch their channel. The scale doesn't work like you think it would. 5-10/month is likely not enough for ESPN to lose those "subscribers" that don't watch their network if they decouple from the distributors.
 
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