The Death of 99 Cents

We sometimes get so hung up on not paying one cent or a few dollars more for a service that we don’t see the forest for the trees. As we make more use of technology for our business and personal lives, it’s helpful to put the economics into perspective.

We have some truly amazing technology available to us, and we’ve grown to appreciate it as we spend more time at home. But we sometimes get too hung up on keeping our costs low, and in the process, we lose performance or entertainment joys because we didn’t want to spring for more RAM, a bigger hard drive, a newer phone or better TV or content streaming plans.

The time I spend discussing the benefits of a 99-cents-per-month iCloud storage plan – at an hourly rate that’s a lot more money – is sometimes mind-boggling. That said, the plethora of choices always boggles the mind.

A lot of our consternation comes from the marketplace. Within most of our lifetimes, we had cable TV, which was provided by a carrier that won the right (or franchise) to serve a community. It was that or watch over-the-air, which in metro New York was mostly seven VHF channels and a handful of UHF channels. Cable gave you all those channels plus others, such as ESPN, CNN and a host of out-of-town TV stations, especially those that carried local baseball teams. The Atlanta Braves became “America’s team” because Turner Broadcasting System was ubiquitous. You also could add two premium services, HBO and Showtime. TV was separate from your telephone service. Your local phone company provided your internet service.

Through regulatory changes, phone companies entered the cable TV market, and cable companies entered the phone market. Satellite TV entered the market, and then the cable and phone companies each offered TV, internet and phone service, followed by home alarm systems. That led to the “triple play,” which offered bundled services at “discounted” prices. Even with packages, prices continued to rise – and keep that in mind as we go along.

When package prices rose, customers questioned the concept of paying for channels (or content) they didn’t want. At the same time, it seems like content providers decided to start their own premium channels, and many services have popped up to offer some of their own content plus “skinny bundles” of channels offered by the cable companies.

Now, you need to be selective about these factors:

  • What content do I want to watch?
  • What content can I give up?
  • What quality levels am I willing to pay for?

Let’s unpack and repack these questions.

There is a lot of programming overlap. You need to look at what each content provider offers – and that’s an exhausting search – to see which providers have the most of what you want to watch and when you want to watch it. You can keep your cable either as a service or as streamed content, or you can subscribe to services that offer combinations of live programming, including TV programs, news and sports in addition to their own premium programming. You could wind up paying more than you pay for your cable service, and you may or may not have the same choices within your budget.

You can save some money if you are willing to give up some of your choices. If you never watch sports, for example, you can find packages without them. But if you’re getting Disney Plus, you’re likely going to need to take the ESPN package as part of it. If you want sports, that’s good. But you may also be paying for it as part of another package, such as YouTube TV or Fubo TV. You can research all the combinations until you drop, or you can just jump into the water. Most every service offers a trial period, and the best advice we can offer is sign up, try it and make sure you cancel it before recurring charges start.

Then, there’s quality. Netflix, as you know has three levels: $8.99 as of this writing for a single device, $12.99 for two devices and $15.99 for four. If you want HD quality, you need the $12.99 package. If you want 4K, you need the $15.99. If you just bought a new TV with the latest bells and whistles, why would you not spend an extra $4 per month?

Along with programming quality, remember, too, that you need to have adequate internet service to handle the bandwidth you’ll require to enjoy your content. And, you’ll need to have a good network infrastructure to handle it all, whether it’s strictly for entertainment or for business and school, too.

We’re happy to educate you about the economics of technology to help you make a smart decision. We’re also happy to work with you on the installation and configuration of whatever technology you choose. But ultimately, it’s up to you to decide on your comfort level with whatever you spend. Our advice is don’t cheap out on the hardware because it’s much more expensive and difficult to change.  For online photo and video storage and TV or streaming content, you can adjust up or down as you see what you need. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to help make sure you have the technology you need to enjoy life during these tough times.

Streaming in the Cord-Cutting Era

A lot of people have been cutting the cord from cable TV and satellite providers to get more flexibility in choosing their content and not having to pay for content they’ll never watch. But the plethora of streaming content providers could create an environment that’s not a whole lot different from the cable/satellite experience. And, you might even wind up paying just as much money, if not more.

We came away from a recent Disney conference with the distinct feeling that Netflix is destined to go the way of Blockbuster, at least in terms of being the only source for content. Remember them? They’re the company that basically had a lock on the videocassette rental market until the worlds of Netflix and On Demand made video rentals as easy as pushing a few buttons on your remote. If you want to rent a DVD, you can order it from Netflix or find a Redbox machine.

Most people, however, prefer to get their video content via the internet, cable or satellite, and those who hold the rights to that content are getting ready to scale up an access war. Netflix, in addition to producing its own content, has also provided feature films and old TV shows to its own base of subscribers. They pretty much had the market to themselves, but that’s changing.

In case you weren’t paying close attention, Disney, which makes films, owns the ABC network and provides sports programming through ESPN, recently bought Fox’s movie studio and many of its non-news TV assets. That means Disney now has a huge library of content, and they’ve already started to move some of into “+” Channels, such as Disney+ and ESPN+. This allows them to stream selected content for a few bucks a month more, and you can’t get it anywhere else.

Disney is not alone. Netflix, Amazon and Hulu all have exclusive content in addition to hours upon hours of movies of all ages and genres. And each has its own subscription fees. HBO, Showtime and a few others still offer movies and original programming, and YouTube and Sling offer packages of TV content now found over the air (remember broadcasting?) or offered by various cable and satellite companies.

Finally, the field is getting more crowded with the entry of Apple TV+ and its original shows and movies.

Regardless of whether your content is delivered through a cable box or streaming internet or both, there will be a lot of hands out there for your money. And in all likelihood, you’ll pay for more content than you want unless somebody decides to offer single events, single movies or a single series of programming.

You’ll have to decide whether to cut the cord based on what you perceive will be your best value. The cable companies have an incentive to keep you because they can sell advertising. They also provide your internet access in most cases, and that gives them leverage in controlling what you pay for it.

The Triple Play packages (TV, internet and phone) are a staple of their business, and many subscribers find their balance of TV content and internet speed. One selling point for the packages is that you don’t use any data to watch the content delivered over the cable. The cable also provides better quality in most cases than high-def content streamed over a Wi-Fi network, though you can build a network to handle almost any need.

Cutting the cord but keeping the internet service could raise costs in two ways. First, if you need more bandwidth for streaming, it will cost more as a stand-alone service. Second, you’ll likely face data caps, which could limit how much streaming video you can watch or the speed at which you can watch it. Of course, more money can mitigate the cap issue, but don’t forget, the content providers are looking for more money for what they bill as premium content.

If you’re highly selective in the premium content you watch, cutting the cord and finding the right internet service may pay for you. But if you need the wider range of choices, you just might want to keep that cord connected.

We can help you make a decision by looking at your Wi-Fi network and the internet capacity you’ll need to support your viewing. Call us – 973-433-6676 – or email us to discuss your needs and set up an evaluation.