Half the reason people I know use DIRECTV is to get out of network football games. They've had Sunday ticket on streaming for the past few years but it's like $400 up front and the streaming fucks up. $200 and YouTube live quality and I'll be damn happy.
That was me for 4 years. Just got out of my contract at the end of football season and it was a nightmare. Our bill was $300/mo during football season and I think around $240 outside of that. It was just too much to justify.
I was jerked around by their customer service on cancellation, which seems to be part and parcel of anything related to AT&T. I would love to see their entire business model completely upended.
> Our bill was $300/mo during football season and I think around $240 outside of that.
Holy hell I didn't realize service could get that expensive. It makes a bit more sense why my parents never got cable. I figured $80-100/month would get pretty much everything.
It's around $80/mo here for basic digital cable here, for just the service. Go ahead and toss on equipment rental and other "fees" (read: hidden BS so we don't have to advertise our actual rates) and it quickly gets expensive for even rudimentary service.
Quite honestly, I'm thinking about upgrading my PS Vue plan from the "Access" plan to the highest one that includes HBO and Showtime, at $65/mo it's still a hell of a lot cheaper than even the lowest-tier plan I can get from the local cable company.
Most streaming sites authenticate you before letting your client know the IP, port and path of the stream. Once that is known, you can turn off the VPN or whatever, and stream like normal, so it should stream at a higher bitrate.
Sunday Ticket got much better this year with the addition of the Apple TV app. I'm a happy subscriber. Also, it's billed monthly and works out to ~$300 for the lowest tier (which still includes all games).
