Many non-Disney owned channels will cover the debate….

I did, went to YouTube TV and have all the channels:

The YouTube TV Base Plan costs $72.99 per month, but new customers can get a promotional rate of $52.99 per month for the first four months.

Four years now without the dish - much cheaper (if you're already paying for internet) and no worries during thunderstorms.

My 83 year old mother lives with me, and I keep regular TV for her. I don't watch much of it at all myself. She doesn't have the patience to deal with the way streaming would work at our house. (our internet is not all that great, but it is the only one other than Starlink - we are very rural)

I'm also rural and had slow internet (only 20 mps for a whopping $120/mo) but was able to get Verizon's LTE (no 5g here yet) Internet gateway for $35/mo.

I've tried Verizon, AT&T, and now mom and I are both on Consumer Cellular (who uses ATT/Verizon systems I think). So that wouldn't work. We did try satellite at one time (Hughes), was barely better than Dialup. We do have a 'line of site' Connection to a local provider "Valley Internet", and for 80/month we get a whopping 10mps for download, and if we get 5 for upload we would be lucky). Valley internet has 3 tiers, the next one up would give me better connectivity, but it costs over 300/month I think.

My cousin did get Starlink. Both his internet and TV use it, and he pretty much loves it. But then Elon Musk turned out to be a bad guy, and I just couldn't stomach paying him anything for service. So that is a no go.

Valley Internet seems to do OK with just mom and me. We did have a guest staying with us for a while, and so it was able to handle 3 people streaming without too many 'buffering' issues.

I used to have Verizon on my cell phone (my work phone), but I would be lucky if I got one bar (and not even LTE)

Thanks for the info, it would be helpful if it was offered in my area (which it isn't).

Keep checking!

My previous internet was also "line of sight" and, like I said I got a measly 20 mips for $120.

We'd quit cable before that.

Since then we watch DVDs and subscribe to two or three commercial-free streaming services at any given time.

That saves a lot of money and is probably good for our mental health too.

You've got twice the internet speeds we do. Ours is advertised at 10 Mbps but that seems to be an aspiration rather than a base speed. If we had better eyesight and we weren't accustomed to watching everything at 480p DVD resolution then that internet speed would probably irritate us a lot.

I could get faster internet but I won't do business with Comcast and won't pay for more expensive options.

My father-in-law, who lives in rural California, has satellite television because, I suppose, television has always had channels in his world. He flips through the channels to see what's on. My wife and I pay for higher speed internet there. Previously his internet would be useless when the house was full of family.

Our children, nieces, and nephews pay no attention to cable, satellite, or broadcast television. To them it's old people stuff. All they care about are their cell phones and their internet connections.

I grew up in a household where having a working television, let alone a plethora of channels to choose from, wasn't anything we could count on, which possibly colors my perspective.

I, like many sports fans are missing most sports channels and games here in prime college and pro football season.
Getting sick of the constant increases in Direct packages.
I got fire stick recently and just realized one of my TV’s has fire TV Built in.
Never knew after a year and a half.
YouTube TV is something I wanted to switch to.
I did not know their package carried so much other programming.
Think it’s time to tell Direct and AT&T to kiss my ass.
Hundreds of Jesus channels and mandated Fox for what they are charging and we know Disney hold out will cause price to raise the cost again.
Does YouTube carry sports?

...but you can check what's available here.

He is a huge sports fan, and this box, it is called SuperBox Elite Ultra, and it has a bunch of apps on it, one of them includes LIVE TV from every channel available! (Now he can watch sports from the local affiliate channel), but he had to get a VPN installed for that, which I helped him do a couple of days ago. Now he can use the new Superbox and he is thinking of cancelling Fubar (what he was using for TV). You definitely need a VPN for this kind of setup.

Yeah, I had gotten my DirecTV bill down closer to $100 (they gave me some free stuff, but that was only for a few months), now I'm back to paying $170/mo for something that I don't watch much. I'm going to be looking into doing things more like my cousin, IF I think my mom can handle it. Might be too much for her. We will see. She does happen to live with her very own IT Support Specialist and I can help her, but she has a mental block for technology and doesn't retain stuff I try to teach her.

Gonna get to researching and make some changes.

Last edited Sat Sep 7, 2024, 05:33 PM - Edit history (1)

I not only have DirecTV, but we pay for streaming service for lots of other things. It all adds up. Sadly, for me (retired) and my old mom, TV is our main entertainment (my other main entertainment is feeding the deer and birds, so I do spend a lot of time outside. It is very beautiful where we live). Anyway, we also have Acorn, Masterpiece (mom loves her English mysteries), and Hulu/Disney+, Netflix, and I keep forgetting to cancel Paramount+. They all really add up. This is a good way for me to get mom used to Streaming things (vs the TV). So this dispute between Disney and DirecTV might just lose a lot of subscribers.

At any rate, I thought that since I pay for Disney+ I could use that app (or go online with my computer) to find ABC programs, and I did find the World News Tonight with David Muir (but it is a day late. Not exactly great for NEWS, you know?) but it is something.

But NOTHING for General Hospital on Disney+. (No teasing, General Hospital is my guilty pleasure of 45+ years).

HOWEVER, if there are any other GH fans who have DirectTV, I was able to go to the abc.com website, and log in with my Disney+ credentials, and voila! I get GH (without commercials!!), so I have found a work around. Hope this might help other folks facing a similar dilemma. I think that these are also posted a day after airing, but that doesn't bother me. I usually have 3-4 episodes to watch as I don't watch it every day.

Edit:
Correction: I was /not/ able to watch anything on the abc.com site if it posted after 9/1/24 (the cut off date). However, all is not lost, I tried to see if it was on Hulu, since I pay for that already, and it is! So logging into Hulu using my Disney+ credentials is what did the trick for GH for me.

I'm in the same boat as you.

I record certain shows during the week and then watch them on the weekend (such as The View). I went to watch this morning and the notice was up. I rarely watch anything on network T.V. anymore.

I'm going to watch the debate at a friend's. She normally likes to watch on CSPAN and I normally like to watch on MSNBC. Since we'll be a her place I'm assuming we'll watch on CSPAN....

I switched back and forth between C-SPAN and MSNBC (for the convention). Especially when the talking heads are talking over something that is happening on the stage.

I think there will be even more people upset over the removal of ESPN sports stuff.

Definitely a bad move on the part of Disney (in my opinion). Perhaps they want more people to subscribe to their streaming service and are basically charging DirecTV more as a ploy to achieve that. I don't know if there are many people like me who was already paying for Disney+ /and/ DirecTV

The one thing I've missed is Jim Cantore. I loved The Weather Channel.

There are so many options now. One day, DirectTV may see the wisdom in a la arte channel system before they are out of business.

Honey Boo boo, Duck Dynasty and Kardashian garbage did not belong on The Learning Channel. They need a white trash channel to place this garbage in.

This issue also involves ESPN and ESPN2.

If this goes on very long, I'm dumping Direct TV, they are already waay overpriced.