DirecTV Now plagued with faults, but uptake not slowing AT&T's freshly hatched DirecTV Now OTT streaming service is forecast by most industry analysts to hit around 1 million subscribers after one year, following its launch at the end of November, but here at Faultline Online Reporter we believe the service has the potential to take off on a much bigger scale – providing it can …
Early adopters of the service were given a "free" AppleTV with 3 month subscription of the $35 plan. It was cheaper to subscribe for the ATV than buying a new ATV directly from Apple. In addition, streaming DirecTV Now data over LTE/3G used zero data if you are an AT&T user.
For the cons - there is an issue where the streams you watch are continually crashing. One "official" fix has been to delete the app and - wait for it - reinstall the app. This didn't work. So you might be seeing inflated downloads from this process. Finally, if you're streaming at home over your AT&T U-Verse account, data IS counted. Helpdesk says this is normal as AT&T can't tell that you're streaming over their pipes... Naturally this is bogus, of course AT&T can tell. They had just implemented hard data caps at $10/50gb overage only a month before releasing Now.
We watched DirecTV Now for a few days and blew through 20% of our terabyte allotment, which is a problem.
Directv distributes HD channels on satellite via MPEG4 at an average bit rate of around 7 Mbps (some channels are more if they need it, like ESPN, that's just an average) Let's assume the same is true for Directv Now and round it up to 8 Mbps for easier math, i.e. 1 MB/sec. That comes out to 3.6 GB per hour, or about 60 hours to reach a fifth of a terabyte.
Did you actually watch that much in just a few days, or did you leave your ATV tuned to a channel on Directv Now and simply turned off your TV when you were done watching? Presumably the stream would keep going, you'd need to quit the Directv Now app, put the ATV into standby, or the app and ATV would have to be able to tell when the TV is turned off (it should be able to, at least with TVs that support HDMI-CEC)
I was off work for a few days and specifically wanted to check it out, because AT&T stores and tech support were giving me conflicting answers on home data (they would both say yes and no to "will it count towards home bandwidth", depending on who you talked to). Before the test ran I killed off all other streaming devices and unplugged them so they were literally unpowered. After the test, I left the devices off and usage has dropped to nearly nothing. I am highly confident if I switch on DTN and let it run, I'll see the same results.
Even if Centurylink did compete in the same markets for internet, they'd still be interested in selling Directv Now. They've had deals to "bundle" Directv satellite service for years, but unlike bundling where both services are owned by the same company, you save a pittance so it is something you'd really only do if you were doing to get Centurylink and Directv service anyway.
Centurylink's Prism TV is only offered where they have fiber, so its low number of subscribers would mean pretty high pricing from the networks. According to Directv, when comparing similar channel packages between Directv and AT&T Uverse TV, it cost AT&T $14/month per customer more for Uverse TV, because of Directv's better deals - presumably partially because of their size/clout and partially because delivering TV is their only business while Uverse TV was just a sideline for AT&T. That's why AT&T tries to steer all new customers to Directv rather than Uverse TV, which I'll bet is shuttered by 2020.
Since republicans will now control the FCC, net neutrality will go away and Centurylink could make a deal with AT&T to offer Directv Now to its customers, and not count the data against caps. They could do QoS through their network to insure there are no hiccups so the service would be great. The only problems from my perspective - lack of locals in many markets (a contractual problem that affecting all streaming providers that should eventually be resolved) and no DVR.
Watching DIRECTV now for a few days.
The Apple TV app is not happy in the evenings, streams seem to stall especially 8-9pm where it's unwatchable.
However, in the last two weeks it's definitely improving.
What is odd is that the iPad app seems a lot more reliable and it's sometimes easier just to stream to the tv from the iPad.
Really want this to work as we can get rid of another box in the house, and lose a few more cables, especially the cables nailed to the outside of the house.
When Netflix was scaling up several years ago, they launched a misleading and cynical campaign against the ISPs. It seemed to be a negotiating ploy to get better terms for collocation CDN agreements (as far as I could tell). All sorts of misleading nonsense being bandied about.
So what AT&T needs to do is go after AT&T in the same manner. ... ... ...Oh.
Forget it.
I don't have to pay anything extra for my DishAnywhere service. I have 3 dvr's in house, and can watch content from any of them on line, inside or outside the house. Inside, of course, doesn't use up as much bandwidth, it still tracks and does some content monitoring metrics to their servers even though the boxes and the computer are inside my house, I know because I see the network bandwidth graph on my router tick upward of 400k when I start streaming inside the house. And yes that means the content I want already has to be part of my regular Dish Network packages, but being able to stream live TV outside the house when I'm on lunch in the evenings (3rd shift) or access content from DishAnywhere itself, is a billion times better than what Directv had with its "PC2TV" app (it blocked almost everything I'd recorded from streaming)
That said ... DishAnywhere is far from perfect, especially after their forced software upgrade on all the DVR's and Joey (client boxes that playback DVR or live) ... one example of the stupidity .. is that even 1.5 years into the new software (its "hand me down" from their hopper 3's software) you still have problems with the interface, like you can't sort their PrimeTimeAnyTime and group them by network or you get ZERO shows to watch from PTAT.. but leave PTAT in the default "ungrouped" and "by time recorded" and you get all the content on one crappy screen.
But .. having been on the competitor for the 2 years prior and having their non-existent offering .. I welcomed Dish Tv back.
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