cord-cutting

It's tempting to think you can ditch your cable subscription, relying instead on a hodgepodge of content sources like Netflix and iTunes, but live TV is harder to replace. Many cord-cutters (including myself) get their live TV using free, over-the-air TV signals, but the hassle of dealing with an antenna and limited DVR options have left over-the-air TV as a niche (albeit seemingly growing) market.

Aereo is a startup looking to make over-the-air TV easier and in February the company announced its $12/month service that lets you stream live and recorded over-the-air TV using an iOS device or … Read more

Looking to cut the cable-TV cord? PlayOn is one of the services that can help ease the transition.

It slings shows from your Windows PC to various devices, including tablets, smartphones, game consoles, media center boxes, and the like. It's akin to Roku, with your PC filling the role of "the box."

Through the end of January, you can get a one-year PlayOn subscription for $19.99, a savings of 50 percent. And the service costs $19.99 per year thereafter.

Of course, you'll probably want to take it for a test-drive first, which you can … Read more

Note: Sorry about the newsletter snafu yesterday! Still working out the kinks, so stay tuned.

Ah, Hulu. For anyone looking to cut the cable-TV cord, the service is pretty indispensable. Unlike Netflix, it lets you watch many, if not most, current TV shows the day after they air.

But here's the thing: If you want access on your Roku box, game console, Android phone/tablet, iOS device, or whatever, you need to subscribe to Hulu Plus.

Normally that costs $7.99 per month, but right now you can get Hulu Plus free for three months. (Note that if you'… Read more

May as well kick off the new year by restarting the cord-cutting debate: are people really dropping their cable subscriptions in favor of the Internet and some combination of Netflix/Hulu/iTunes/YouTube, etc.? Or is it something that will happen?

Or (and this is the cable guys' favorite answer) is it something that people like to talk about, but won't really do?

Today's installment comes from JP Morgan's Imran Khan, whose 2011 forecast is chock-full of interesting data (see these amazing Facebook numbers--and plan on getting at least one more of these today or tomorrow). … Read more

There's been a lot of talk about people canceling their cable TV subscription to stream video on their TVs over the Net, but consumer research firm Nielsen says the number of people actually doing it is still very small.

Cheryl Idell, an executive vice president at Nielsen, told the blog PaidContent earlier this week that many people may be talking about cutting the proverbial cable cord, but few are actually doing it. According to Nielsen data, only 6 percent of broadband households have already stopped using cable in lieu of cheaper Internet-based TV. Idell admitted that consumers may one … Read more

Time Warner Cable saw bigger profits on increased revenue during the third quarter of 2010 even as it lost TV subscribers.

The second largest cable operator in the U.S. reported a 34 percent jump in profits for the three-month period. Earnings increased to $360 million, or $1 a share, up from $268 million, or 76 cents a share, during the same quarter a year earlier.

Revenue increased 5.2 percent to $4.73 billion. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had predicted earnings of 89 cents on $4.72 billion in revenue.

Just like cable giant Comcast, Time Warner Cable … Read more

Americans, little by little, are cutting the proverbial cord on cable television. But that doesn't mean they're breaking up with their cable companies.

In addition to controlling most of the paid TV market in the U.S., cable companies are also poised to dominate the broadband market. This means that even when people drop their pricey cable TV packages, they're still likely to pay the cable company for access to the Internet, which is used to deliver the video streams to their TVs. For cable operators, it's a "heads we win; tails we win" … Read more

Netflix finally knocked off Blockbuster yesterday. Leaders of pay TV services might be wise to start doing the business equivalent of digging foxholes and manning the battlements, or the same thing could happen to them.

There's a growing body of evidence that pay TV services--that is, cable, broadband, and telephone companies that offer films and TV shows--are ripe for a smackdown. Talk of cord-cutters is all over business news and the momentum in home-video distribution appears to be with companies that do it over the Web, such as Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV, and the upcoming Google TV.

Skeptics say … Read more

Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg just confirmed what many industry watchers have suspected: cord cutting is a problem.

All Things Digital's Peter Kafka reported that Seidenberg told attendees at a Goldman Sach's media conference in New York that future generations of consumers won't have any interest in buying service bundles, which can include Internet, pay TV, and telephone.

"Young people are pretty smart. They're not going to pay for something they don't need to," he said.

Seidenberg noted, though, that bundling isn't going away immediately.

It may happen sooner than he thinks. … Read more