Only $4 a day isn’t that much for cable or satellite television

Written by Glenn Thomas

Why are so many people complaining about the small fee (about $4 a day) that satellite and cable companies charge?

As a home entertainment engineer, this is my take.

Your TV is your window to the world. How long could you or your kids live with it turned off?

Could you live with no live football, baseball, basketball, or soccer games to watch? Could you live with no NASCAR, Indycar, Formula one, motocross racing, Moto GP racing, powerboat racing, drag racing, or the Tour de France? Could you live without QVC? No Ellen? No Kimmel? No Fallon? How about no live MMA or boxing events? No religious channels? No Turner classic movies? Heaven forbid … what in the world would you do if FOX news was turned off?

This is just scratching the surface of the hundreds of fantastic programs that the satellite and cable companies bring to millions of homes, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. For the best technology in the world with about 200 HD channels, Dish or DirecTV only costs you about $4 a day. Think about that! Only $4 a day to bring you millions of dollars worth of live sports, news, and entertainment.

The people that make this entertainment don’t work for free, do they? Pro athletes and actors make how much? The electronic equipment required to bring this to your home comes from multi-million dollar satellites launched into space, folks.

I hear complaints about satellite and cable television costs every day, and I cannot understand why so many people are freaking out over a measly $4 a day for millions of dollars worth of 24-hour entertainment. With the Dish Hopper, $4 a day gets you a 2-terabyte hard drive that you can record and store hundreds of shows on to watch on any TV in your house in HD, whenever you want to, and have it skip commercials automatically. Would you like to go back to using a 480i standard definition VCR and VHS tapes to record your shows?

Also, how much is your time worth to you? For me, using the Dish Hopper and not having to watch 20 minutes of brainwashing commercials every hour is worth well over $4 a day. The Dish Hopper records all prime time shows automatically for me, and when I replay them, I watch each 1-hour show in just 40 minutes. That saves me about two hours of time every night, 14 hours a week, 728 hours a year! I couldn’t be happier!

Remember, folks, nothing of value in this life is free, and your TV is your window to the world. Cable and satellite are very expensive technologies to build and maintain, and the licensing fees paid for the shows distributed are enormous!

We don’t like the way any big corporation treats us: the automated recordings that ask endless questions before they transfer you to a person in India that you can’t understand, the expectation that you can do their job and install replacement receivers when they fail, the four-hour service window that they give you if you finally get them to send a technician, and the deceptive trick of low new customer pricing that always turns into frequent price increases over time. This is a terrible way to do business, but unfortunately something all big corporations do.

Please try to accept the games and poor “big corporation” treatment you get from these companies. That’s just a fact of life. Then appreciate what a great value it is that you can receive all this magnificent technology and entertainment in your home for only $4 a day!

Glenn Thomas is the owner of REEL HOME Entertainment Systems.