Apple TV...

I have the sports package (including Red Zone) and HBO on whole-home DVR with three set-top boxes, along with 75 MBPS internet for $175/mo on FIOS. Also got a $300 Visa gift card on signup. The rate will expire in about a year and half, and I presume I'll switch to Cox with whatever promotional rate they're running at the time. Then I'll switch back to Verizon two years thereafter and so on ...

 

Right now, I'm playing about $165 a month for DirecTV during football season (I'm getting Sunday Ticket Max for the price of the standard ST package because a DirecTV representative pissed me off during a phone call and this was one of the ways the supervisor got me to not cancel). We get the internet at no cost from Cox because my roommate works for Cigna out of the house and we're allowed to use it for ourselves outside of her business hours. When football season ends, I think the DirecTV bill will be $120 but we get more for that $120 than we'd get from Cox.

 

Wait, what?

Why would you pay her a couple grand a year? Just split the cost of the entertainment package.
You should be in for $1,000 or $1,200 a year if you've got a crazy hefty entertainment package such as those discussed above.

We have DirecTv, with which we are well satisfied, and pay $100 per month.
We pay something like $17 or $18 a month for Netflix.

 

Some of it is also for electricity, heat, water and services rendered.

 

That's crazy. If you spend that much time at her place that you need to pony up for utilities, you two should just share a place.
And sharing a place with a woman is infinitely better than marrying her.

 

SFIND, no technical problems with Sling TV? I was getting really gung ho to drop DirecTV and switch to Sling TV and save about $100 a month. Then I read reviews of Sling TV on a cord-cutting site and they were savage. Constantly freezing, drops in service that last for hours, etc. I know people are more likely to write a review if it's a bad experience, but what I saw scared me off.

 

I have a feeling people need a strong internet feed to stream Sling, and if you are running at 15 MBPS, you are going to have problems.

 

I pay $201 a month for U-Verse 300 and mediocre internet. Have to have the 300 level to get the channels I actually watch. Wish I could cut loose the SHO, ESPN and a few other useless channels to save some cash.

 

That speed is fine. Other factors at play, including the amount of bandwidth available between your ISP and Sling's Content Delivery Network. Look up Netlifx's battles with ISPs.

Speed: You can get a much better deal if you tell an agent what the cable company is offering.

 

I've been privy recently to some interesting conversations with cable provider executives.

All TV networks lost more than 2-3 million subscribers a year in 2015, with that many expected in 2016 as well.

Fios is transitioning almost completely to an Internet delivery company (meaning, they are going to shed dozens of their TV networks they carry; instead, they want to be the conduit for cord-cutters accessing Netflix and Hulu, etc).

Comcast is on the verge of doing the same, but in tiers -- meaning, they would promote the networks they own, but downgrade the nets they don't, and instead become more focused on Internet delivery.

DirecTV and Dish are looking to double down on content -- so they will continue to offer hundreds of cable channels.

 

I've had very few issues. A couple of times there has been some buffering issues on channels, and the app crashed once a few weeks ago and I had to restart it. But those are it so far. I'm not a heavy user though, basketball season is the busiest time of year for me. I probably watch about six hours a week. HBO and ESPN look the same on my 42-inch 1080p Vizio as they did on Uverse. I don't think I've watched any other channels excepting flipping through to see what was there.