Hulu drops the price for its streaming service to $6 per month, but raises prices for Live TV

I may have to check it out. I just canceled DirecTV as for some reason AT&T thought they were justified in raising the price to $98 per month. That said, it was over 3 weeks ago and I don't really miss TV.

 

I believe ISP's will lower their prices if they see that more and more people are cutting the cord. But I still prefer cable TV because of the convenience. You just plug the TV + DVR into the wall in any room and it works, no need for Ethernet cables, power line adapters or WIFI. Problem is that the stupid cable companies are making a shift to IPTV, so then I might as well start to stream via Roku or Apple TV.

 

Whatever their reasons to increase charges they're rightly theirs, as are mine to not use their service. I do have Amazon Prime because of Prime's overall feature-set, but otherwise haven't had TV for a few years. To me, the price for TV, including the attractive streaming options (I can't get OTA), has far exceeded its value. Full TV a la carte still isn't viable, don't know that the economics of it ever will be, but streaming services are inching closer. If I liked what Hulu offered, $6.00 would sound attractive.

 

Now if only it was usable in Europe.

 

I don't believe they will lower their prices. I think they will raise them. Once people cut the cord they will hike the price of whatever alternative attempts to replace it. They intend to get their money one way or another.

 

Yes but that's the thing, how much can they charge for internet + VOIP? If I were them, I would give people the chance to select let's say 50 of their favorite channels, and charge less for it. We don't all need 200 channels with mostly garbage.

 

It sounds great to us. But they aren't going to do it. People have been complaining about 200 channels with 3 or 4 of them having watchable content while paying for all of them for many years. They have no interest in changing their business model, it makes them billions. I'm having the same problem with the satellite radio in my car. They keep charging a higher and higher music royalty fee for the music channels when the sound quality of the music is so poor that I avoid them. I have kept it for the talk and comedy channels, which are loaded with commercials. It's going to get dumped too. Our only option here is to cancel service to the point that they finally get it.

 

Well, cord cutters are going to make them rethink. People won't pay 80 to 100 bucks only for internet + phone. Actually, I just saw that in Holland you already have ISP's that offer all in one (internet+phone+TV) for only 44 euro. You get 45 TV channels, only 4 with HD quality (which is ridiculous) but it doesn't matter much if you only care about online streaming. And 40 Mbps should be enough for 2 people.

 

It would be nice to think that cord cutters will make them rethink. In the way we hope. But I expect that it will make them rethink... their pricing. I am paying just over $55 per month for 50 Mbps internet and almost $140 per month for 2 cell phones. The phones are paid for, this is just service. If they don't get their money from one service, they will jack up the price of the others. You say people won't pay the 80 to 100 bucks a month. They will if that becomes the price and there is no competitor with a lower price. If cord cutters move to steaming video, they will increase the price of internet by an equal amount to make up the loss because you are still watching shows, and they are still providing them. I'd like to agree with what you are saying, and I'm certainly not trying to be argumentative with you, but I expect we are hosed from here forward unless/until we are willing to go without ANY of these services long enough to make a point. This is why these service providers are getting into multiple formats (TV/Internet/Phone) so that you cannot escape.

 

Last November I got a one year deal for Hulu for just $.99 per month - $11.88 total.

 

Yes, this is true of course. This is what I'm afraid of, but on the other hand, they can also attract a lot more customers if they lower prices. In Holland, one of the biggest ISP (Ziggo owned by Liberty Global) is now forced to open up its cable network for competitors, so I'm guessing they will simply offer lower priced bundles. Another thing that ISP's can do is to simply offer alternatives to Netflix, they should start their own streaming services.

I found this great site which compares the various streaming services, and I'm jealous of you guys in the USA. I think I'd probably choose services like Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Starz and Shudder over Netflix. They simply got better content. Why all this hype over Netflix?

https://www.justwatch.com/us
https://www.justwatch.com/nl