We’re sort of persistently on the edge of kicking any sort of bulk TV provider to the curb here at Heathen World HQ. We probably don’t watch enough shows to justify the $90 or $100 month DirecTV costs, and could probably get 85% of what we want for cheaper just buying it from iTunes, and fill the gap with an antenna or torrents, but right now that’s just a bit too much fiddly for us to make the leap. Wide online streaming availability and occasional $1.99 single-ep purchases have already made it completely unnecessary to hook up the 2nd tuner on the Tivo. It’s only a matter of time before such things obviate the first one, too.
But we’re not quite there yet. Fiddlyness aside, we’d also be screwed on (a) sports on cable (ie, college football, which admittedly won’t start again for 8 months) and (b) HBO, which is the one consistently bright spot on the dial. We would pay HBO $15 a month directly in a HEARTBEAT to get access without having to go through a middleman. Probably $20. Near as we can tell, nobody in the “channel bundler” business — not Dish, not DirecTV, and sure as shit not AT&T or the incumbent terrestrial cable companies — is really doing much of anything to justify their cut of the price. (To be perfectly honest, we feel the same way about pretty much everybody between us and the actual programming providers — local network affiliates could wither up and die for all we care, as long as we get national feed. (Frankly, we feel the same way about KUHF and NPR, but that’s a whole ‘nother thing (HDANCN?)).)
Anyway, the aforementioned Mr Zawinski (a famous-to-nerds Internet person, programmer, and Netscape millionaire cum night club owner) is in more or less exactly the same spot we’re in: standard definition service from DirecTV using a now-nearly-extinct version of the DirecTV-Tivo combo box that was the new hotness in 2002. It really is a nice way to get your TV, but they keep raising the rates for no good reason that I can see. The promised HD Tivo is still a pipe dream, at least in this market, and I will ditch DirecTV altogether before I use one of their bullshit braindead DVRs. And don’t even ask me about a bundled pile of crap from ATT or Comcast.
I think the answer is still, basically, hand on like we are for a bit longer. Bundled programming is a model that is under direct threat from other providers (Apple, Hulu, NetFlix, Amazon). Either DTV will figure out how to provide value in a post-scarcity world, or we’ll ditch them. But right now, the real sock in the face is that all this horseshit JWZ describes is being done by the clear frontrunner in terms of customer service.
That should tell you a LOT about TV service.