Issues with Premium On Demand

[redtide2012]

They seem to rotate the same films every few months. There are thousands of films I have forgotten about that never seem to make it on HBO or Showtime or any of the other premium networks. Sometimes the Free O/D are better then the paid channels. I got a package deal with all 6 premium stations (max, hbo, sho, tmc, encore and stars.). They seem to pass the same dang movies to one another. Comcast used to claim it had 10,000 films in archive to chose from but I was bored one day and counted all the films on all the premium and free and it was less then 800. Maybe another 200 episodes of TV shows you can watch as well but no where near the 10,000 they claim. I noticed they don't air that claim in their commercials anymore. I know it's not comcast's fault what HBO does but they should represent us and demand more new releases and some old stock of block buster films and not all these cruddy low budget films that seem to end up in the archives. I only have comcast because my kids love the on demand. It's really more for them.

 

[illini1]

I agree. My wife and I watch On Demand quite a bit. It's not often that suddenly a movie comes up that we haven't seen on there at one time or another. I will say the TV entertainment category is expanding quite a bit, which helps.

 

[O-O]

I agree. My wife and I watch On Demand quite a bit. It's not often that suddenly a movie comes up that we haven't seen on there at one time or another. I will say the TV entertainment category is expanding quite a bit, which helps.

Do they have TV shows available on there yet?

<-- Soon to be ex-DirecTV customer

 

[Lurker Lee]

I've started using the OD TV entertainment quite a bit lately. There are times when I want to record 3 things at once on a dual tuner dvr. Used to be a problem, but now I can more often find some of the shows on OD, so I'll just record the non-OD shows. CBS has a fair number of the shows I would have recorded, like Good Wife, Survivor, Numbers, NCIS etc. Those are free. NBC has fewer shows available; they used to charge for them but I just looked and now those are free. There are other networks too like AMC, Lifetime - all with shows that I watch.

 

[O-O]

I've started using the OD TV entertainment quite a bit lately. There are times when I want to record 3 things at once on a dual tuner dvr. Used to be a problem, but now I can more often find some of the shows on OD, so I'll just record the non-OD shows. CBS has a fair number of the shows I would have recorded, like Good Wife, Survivor, Numbers, NCIS etc. Those are free. NBC has fewer shows available; they used to charge for them but I just looked and now those are free. There are other networks too like AMC, Lifetime - all with shows that I watch.

Thanks Lee. :usa2: One more question if you get time, how soon do shows become available on Premium on Demand after they've been shown on TV? I'd be most interested in seeing shows that I missed during the current season.

 

[Lurker Lee]

I only watch the regular (non-premium) shows on demand. At least on CBS which I use the most, they seem to appear within a day or so of when they are broadcast. Biggest drawback is that they don't make all of the episodes available. For the CSI type shows, they only seem to keep the most recent four shows on the list, so each is available for about a month. I'm also getting fond of watching these shows OD because there are very few ads and what there are seem to be mostly promos of other shows. So I can watch a 60 min show in 45 min w/o fast forwarding. There are definitely more TV episodes available now than there were a year or so ago. Interestingly, even our local stations' news broadcasts are available OD.

 

[Orrymain]

The only premium channel I carry anymore is Encore. I don't get HBO or any of the other big premium channels. I do utilize On Demand, and like someone said, I'm starting to be okay with watching my favorites OD. My TV input is shot so I can't use my VCR anymore anyway, so it's changed how I view things. The drawback is that not every show is OD, like Ghost Whisperer is not.

Okay -- now someone just said NBC isn't charging anymore. I'm gonna go check right now to verify because just last week I checked and they were -- one moment, please... nope, they are still charging 99 cents an episode here so I am not watching any NBC shows. It's really stupid for them to do that because I am interested in some of those shows, but I'm not going to stop watching a show I like for something that is an unknown.

 

[Lurker Lee]

Okay -- now someone just said NBC isn't charging anymore. I'm gonna go check right now to verify because just last week I checked and they were -- one moment, please... nope, they are still charging 99 cents an episode here so I am not watching any NBC shows. It's really stupid for them to do that because I am interested in some of those shows, but I'm not going to stop watching a show I like for something that is an unknown.

When I checked a few weeks ago, NBC/Comcast was charging for all of their shows. I just went through and almost all of them are now listed as "complimentary"; only exception is Mercy, where they are charging 99cents for episode 5, but 6-8 are listed as complimentary. Maybe it varies by market, but like I said until a few weeks ago, they were charging for the various shows I checked. (I never watched any for the same reason, not wanting to pay for them).

 

[Orrymain]

Well, it just so happens that Mercy was the show I checked. I didn't go any further, so hold on, this will only take a minute and I promise, you won't even notice <g> ... checking .... Okie badokie! I stand corrected! I checked about 4 different series, all free, and when I went back to Mercy, only ep 5 was fee based and ep 6 was free. Now -- I wish they'd do the reruns because I don't want to go in mid-season and try to figure out the story, but at least they finally came to their senses!