DirecTV Now Lost 267K Subscribers Last Quarter, Partly Due to End of Apple TV Offer

[kuwxman]

I’m generally happy with the service. It’s saving me a lot of money. I just don’t like the fact that I have to login every other day.

You should not need to log in every day. I can count on one hand how many times I've had to log on in the years we've had the service.

As far as the service goes, we've been a DIRECTV NOW customer since the very beginning. Have tried every service out there too. All have their pros/cons...one is not better than the other, honestly. For us, though, we're getting 100+ channels including HBO for $40/month. Can't beat that.
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zilch. they're launching their own hardware.
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how is it?

It's OK. Personally, I prefer using the service through our AppleTV. Haven't turned on the beta box in well over a month.

 

[gugy]

I tried DTV Now for 3 months when they first offered the ATV deal. Honestly I did not like it. So I canceled it after the initial 3 month trial.
DTV keeps offering me good deals on their satellite plan, so right now I see no point on cutting the cord.

 

[macjoshua]

I've tried all of the streaming services, and settled on DirecTV Now. It had a lot of buffering/connection issues a year ago, but for the last 6 months or so, the service has been super solid and I haven't had any issues. The picture quality is better than Hulu, Sling never appealed to me, and the prices are better than PS Vue.

 

[ovo6]

Bet a lot of them cuz of not having bein sports . I’m leaving soon uverse also **** them

 

[cocky jeremy]

Their service was terrible. Tons of channels, but it buffered nonstop on all devices. Wired to my TV (gigabit service) and it STILL buffered constantly. I switched to YouTube TV.. I never buffer. Literally never.

 

[CrzyP]

I signed up for the free Apple TV and even stayed on a few more months. I left DTVN for PS Vue for the reliability, single sign on, and TV app integration. I miss the 1080p video and Dolby 5.1, but PS Vue is still pretty good.

 

[freddiebarnes]

That’s how I got my Apple TV last year by prepaying $105 for 3 months. I canceled DTVN shortly after I got the Apple TV.

 

[jfischer]

I prepaid the 4 months @$40 last fall, so $160 but got a 4K Apple TV out of it. The problem is my wife watches it 8-10 hours a day and there's no quality setting on the AppleTV app for DirecTV now so it streams at a very high bit rate.

She would have easily blown past my 1TB Xfinity cap at that rate. I had to put DD-WRT on my router so that I could enforce QOS on the Apple TV down to 3Mbps, which now keeps me well under the 1TB cap, and she can't tell any difference in the picture quality

Have not had many problems with the service, seems pretty reliable for watching TV. Was annoying during football season, when they'd occasionally slice in their own commercials that were 10dB louder than the rest of the content though.

EDIT: Just read this. If they raise the price above $40, or cut content, then I'm out.

But at a conference in December, AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson suggested a new price point of $50 to $60 per month and said the company needed to “thin the content."

 

[Apple_Robert]

I took advantage of the deal 4 times and am still a subscriber. The DVR works as does the iOS app. I am grandfathered in to their "Go Big" package. I intend to keep the service unless something bad happens.

 

[bigrustyjc]

I took advantage of the 4K Apple TV offer as well. I tried the DTV Now service alongside my typical cable service. The UI on DTV Now left a LOT to be desired. Searching, guide, and DVR were all very difficult. And the cost of the DTV Now service plus internet only bundles was about the same I was already paying.

It's not worth it to have a harder UI for the same amount of money.

 

[cerote]

I was one of them also. Did enjoy the channel lineup for the price. It had pretty much all the channels we watched for less than cable. I will probably go back in the future as long as prices stay right.

 

[0970373]

I've wanted to ditch cable but with Spectrum's new pricing, there's a bit of a wash for my needs in terms of pricing. And maybe that's just for the first year or so. To me, it's not worth the hassle of buying Apple TVs or Rokus for all the TVs and have them suck up my bandwidth just to have 2.5 Men streaming in the background while I cook supper.

Also, not counting Hulu Live, Spectrum is the only way I can catch local channels. And Hulu was just added a couple of months ago.

Well, you can watch local channels OTA. They are free. An antenna is like $40 these days. But I get what you're saying.

The only reason I'm still on cable is for baseball. Unfortunately, very few streaming services offer YES Network in their package the the ones that do, are often missing other things I want in smaller packages. And so one would need to bump up to a larger package. But then if you add that to what the Internet only service costs, it's basically the same cost for more hassle. FiOS told me that an internet only package would be $75/mo. So I guess I'll just keep cable. I did try though. I did a whole grid of comparisons and ultimately, cable won.

 

[npmacuser5]

If I have to deal with a customer service rep to add or cancel anything on a service, not for me. The only time I want to chat with customer service, a problem. If too many chats with customer service, not for me. Narrows down the field of providers I will do business with.

 

[ck2875]

zilch. they're launching their own hardware.
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how is it?

It’s alright, but a downgrade from them offering an Apple TV. You have to have an active account for the device to work, so you are left with a brick if you ever decide to cancel the service. At least with the Apple TV you still have a usable device if you leave.

It's almost identical to the Apple TV app interface and that’s its entire UI. Basically just imagine if Apple TV auto-launched the DTV Now app and you couldn’t leave it (but it still allowed you to access some apps you’ve downloaded by going through through a list in the menu).

It’s a bit easier fast-forwarding with their remote, but still a pain to skip through commercials in comparison to TiVo. The Android TV software it is running is very limited (can’t install Netflix yet, but can install some other apps from Google Play like Hulu).

 

[Peace]

It sounds like you got some bad information - AT&T's most recent ad campaign for it even mentioned "no satellite dish" because of the confusion. Plus, I know four people who still have it and none have had DirecTV (I was the exception - moved into a location where I couldn't keep my dish, figured I'd wait out the two months until the DTV Now launch and then signed up).

Did you go to an AT&T store? I know there was awhile that there was a big push to get traditional DirecTV numbers up, so it may have been someone trying to "encourage" you into that product.

It even says so on the main page: https://www.directvnow.com/

Ya I see that now. I had looked into it a few months ago when the requirement for Satellite was still there.

 

[Plutonius]

I think it has much more to do with AT&T raising the price.

 

[fhall1]

Having satellite was never a requirement

 

[DogHouseDub]

If I have to deal with a customer service rep to add or cancel anything on a service, not for me. The only time I want to chat with customer service, a problem. If too many chats with customer service, not for me. Narrows down the field of providers I will do business with.

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I used to be able to tweak my DirecTV account ad infinitum, but now they make you call in for every change. The phone reps have little/no idea what is going on. They'll tell you one thing, hang up, call back, another rep will tell you the opposite.

 

[bruinsrme]

Stream free on ATT. I like the service

 

[Silence262]

DirecTV Now today reported that it lost 267,000 subscribers during the fourth quarter of 2018, causing the service to dip from 1.8 million subscribers in Q1 2018 to 1.6 million in Q4 (via TechCrunch). Despite the decline, DirecTV Now is still at the forefront of the streaming TV market, second to SlingTV as of last fall.

In AT&T's fourth quarter earnings report, the company attributed this loss to the closure of several discount bundles that were heavily featured on the service's website, and shared online. This includes the popular Apple TV bundle (which expired in June 2018) and a few Roku deals.
At its peak, the DirecTV Now deal for Apple TV required you to prepay for three months of the streaming TV service for about $105. Once you did this, AT&T would send you a 32GB Apple TV 4K at no cost. In essence, customers were paying $105 for a 32GB Apple TV 4K, down from around $170, and getting three months to try out DirecTV Now as a bonus.

Of course, you could still cancel DirecTV Now before those three months ended and not pay to continue using the service, and it appears that's what many people did last year. Although DirecTV Now has a large channel lineup, it also has numerous problems with its service, which also likely led to subscriber churn noted in this week's earnings report. This includes a barebones cloud DVR with low storage and unreliable recordings, various performance issues, outages, and more.

AT&T also raised the price of DirecTV Now last summer, increasing every tier by $5/month to stay "in line with the market." This increased DirecTV Now's "Live a Little" plan from $35/month to $40/month, matching rival services like Hulu with Live TV, which starts at $40/month, and YouTube TV, which also raised to $40/month to compete with Hulu.

Although many were hoping that the Apple TV offer would return in the fall of 2018 as it did years prior, AT&T never resurfaced the deal.

Article Link: DirecTV Now Lost 267K Subscribers Last Quarter, Partly Due to End of Apple TV Offer

[doublepost=1548899669][/doublepost]DirecTV is losing subscribers because it is non-competitive. In my area (Syracuse, NY) we get one local channel (NBC). The interface is lousy - you cannot directly tune a channel on Roku, and to go to the guide, the program you're viewing stops. You are also pestered every four hours to ask if you're still viewing.
There are far better interfaces. PlutoTV is FREE and has a superior interface.
To keep subscribers, an interface overhaul is needed first. Comprehensive local network programming is second. I had all my locals on DirecTV Satellite, why not streaming?

 

[burgman]

Their interface is terrible and they require your location in order to use the app. No thanks.

Oh please, if you own a phone that ship has sailed long ago.

 

[cyberspread]

I signed up for the service because I was trying to cut the cord. I never received my Apple TV. I even called and told them and they said they would ship it out and still never received. I also did not think the service was better than Xfinity. Blew past my 1 TB limit the 1st 2 months.

 

[iReality85]

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed DTVN. The base package nearly has every mainstream channel, with the larger packages offering sports and fringe channels. For $40/mo it really is among the best.

But it’s not perfect — I’m still waiting for them to add my local FOX affiliate here in upstate NY, and I wish it had Nat Geo Wild (although that’s nitpicking).

The UI isn’t the best. The channel list is fine, but trying to learn how to navigate around and access menus and functions is an exercise in frustration with un-intuitive swipes and clicks. A lot of it just comes down to Apple’s remote, which is woefully sub-par as a “cable” remote.

 

[puggles]

I tried it when they offered the ATV 4K after not having cable for about 6 years and remembered how much I hate commercials. There was nothing really wrong with the DTV Now. I just don’t want to watch content that way. Great deal on the ATV though!

 

[neliason]

I used the deal to get an Apple TV. I found I hardly watched DirecTV. I got rid of cable years ago and was not used to watching shows on a schedule. I also stopped the habit of channel surfing and just having the TV on. So DirecTV was of no value to me. The few times I did watch it I couldn’t stand the commercials. Not experiencing commercials for years has made them insufferable for me.

I’ve also found that I just can’t find much pleasure in most content out there. I have the same problem with Netflix. There is plenty of content but most of it is, as far as I’m concerned, garbage. Growing up my mom used to call the TV the idiot box. I think she was right.