As long as your paying who cares. By putting subscriptions on the website they gave choices fast and easy. They are still making money.

DMHinCO: Now all you need is to get someone to whip up a TiVoWeb (See TiVo Underground forum if you have not heard of it) module to interface with the DTV website to automatically turn on/off the correct premium channel at the right times.

To those of you who don't see a problem with it, I'm not suggestion that it is illegal, just not what DTV and/or HBO intended with their pricing structure, and there will likely be measures put in place to prevent this if they feel it is taken advantage of. Their pricing structure is based on what they have to pay for the programming vs. what they receive from subscribers. If EVERYONE only turned on HBO during the show they watch, their subscription income would plummet. If you say the average subscriber watches 20 hours of HBO a month, that's less than 3% of the total hours available. Do you think they can survive with a 97% loss in revenue?

This is simply a loophole in their activation procedure that I expect will get plugged if they detect widespread abuse.

Darin I respectfully disagree and submit there is a possibility their profits would actually increase due to the money they would collect from people who pay them nothing now. I suspect the average HBO subscriber or at least the majority of them would remain as subscribers and not go through the hassle of subscribing and canceling several times a month then add on the large increase in revenue from people who tune in a couple of times a month and they lose nothing. I’d think at worst it’s a wash instead of collecting $10 a month from 1,000 subscribers they collect $1 a month from 10,000 temporary subscribers. I think this could actually be a great marketing tool. Imagine how many people across the world would have tuned in to see that “In Memoriam” show if they new it would only cost 42¢. HBO could easily have pocketed an extra million that night and that’s a very very conservative estimate although I am assuming this option would also be available via cable as I don’t know the size of the Satellite install base. Anyway it all depends how you look at it.

Rick In PA

You may be right.

Talk about putting the squeeze on PPV channels. I know I'd buy PPV movies if they cost me ~$0.50

Is it legal ? Yes
Is it moral ? Maybe

Will everyone whine when they plug the loophole ? Absolutely

Come on, it's only $12 month for your first premium package and $10 month for your second. If you cut out one can of Coke per day you're ahead of the game. There must be a hundred different ways to save 40 cents a day. Your time is more valuable than that.

And you know this to be fact because...?

The terms and conditions do not seem to prevent it (please correct me if I'm wrong - I am not a lawyer) and the web site allows it.

Now if we could just pick and choose what channels of TC we wanted to pay for...

Oops...I thought it said illegal...I'm a moron. Sorry!

I asked em' about it, and here's what I got back in reply:

Thank you for writing to DIRECTV. We do have a change of service fee
that may be applied to your account for each transaction if it is found
that customers are using the services available in a manner that is
intended to circumvent the programming charges. We apologize for any
inconvenience that this situation causes you.

Mike
DIRECTV Customer Service

heay! sounds cool! pay by the day movie channels? you say it'll work if I do it on the web and don't call them?

I think I'll call them and ask......

500 calls to dtv like that, no more pay per day movie channels

Seriously. You've never heard of leaving well enough alone?

Just an update to this aged thread. It appears you are allowed only one change to your package per day. I haven't determined if that is website calendar day or DTV programming day (starts 6AM Eastern). So usually you'll need to pay for two days of programming. Still....

David, NOPE. If you add HBO on Sunday morning and turn if off on Monday evening you pay for only ONE Day, 40cents AND you get to watch HBO for up to 48 hours. You can do this several times a month.

If you want the whole weekend, turn it on just after 00:01 on Saturday and turn it off before 23:59 on Monday and enjoy 3 days for 80 cents!

If the technology is there to do the billing and receiver activation automatically, which we know it is, I don't understand why the movie channels don't do an a la carte option. I think many people would pay much more to only use it when they wanted it. Hook it up the the PPV "authorization" function, so folks only have to hit a button on the remote. Also charge $2 for per day pricing. For HBO it would enable all the HBO channels for a 24 hour period. Not only would they get extra revenue from the inflated per-day charge ($60 a month for per-day vs $12 for whole month pricing), but they would gain subscribers that would be looking for cost savings.

Can't you hear the slogan now?
"If you watch 6 days of HBO a month on per-day, you could get the entire month for the same price!"

This would not compete head-to-head with first run PPV because it is geared toward folks that don't want first run high priced movies, but for folks that would go to the video store and pick up a 99 cent "favorite".

You know what is always interesting to me is the emphasis "on paying for what you are watching" What about NOT paying for what you are NOT watching. Both cable and Sat have the biggest scam going by restricting there programming to packages. I just got an HDTV and since Direct TV can't provide network HD, I called the local cable company. I only want to watch about 3 or 4 shows in HD on the networks but because of their pricing structure I would have to pay $60/month for these! This comes down to paying about $20 a show that I actually watch (no OTA where I live), THAT MY FRIENDS IS WRONG. But we all accept it as fact of life, and then others critisize people for NOT paying for what they watch. I say, don't make me pay for what I don't watch!

Mystery,

Perhaps someday. But right now it is not the way HBO and Cable Companies do business.

So be happy! Take advantage of this little quirk in DirecTV.com, save a few bucks, and enjoy your premium channels on just the days you want them. In a way, you'll also be voting with your feet. Why stay "hooked up to HBO (or Starz or ...) for 7 days a week when they only put the "good stuff" on once or twice a week and fill the rest of the schedule with repeats?

Bob, I can guarantee I will be using the pay per day method of the premium channels. Thanks for the further update that resurrected this thread.

gsxrpilot, I know what you are feeling, and I felt the same. You are probably misinformed on a couple points. I was too. I subscribe to TC and get about 40 or so real channels. I watch maybe 10. Why should I have to pay for the 30 channels I don't want.

The answer is channel bundling. Everybody wants it, even if they don't know it. Channel operators live and die by bundling. Lets take TechTV for example. The primary source of revenue for TechTV is fees they are charging cable and satellite providers. Yes they make money on ad space, but for a channel that only boasts a few tens of thousand of viewers, they can't ask for much from advertisers.

Because of bundling a cable provider can buy several channels at once and spread the gains and losses to have variety and quality. In this way Tech TV is able to list itself as being in 39 million homes .

In the current market, without bundling, we could kiss goodbye many of the smaller stations that we enjoy like Sci-Fi, History Channel, Oxygen, etc.

The quality of programming is better than you think? C'mon, they replay the same things over, and over, and over, and over... that really provides no value for DTivo users.

What they ought to do is make certain shows available for a nominal charge, maybe a buck to watch the sopranos or something.

Hey, why doesn't someone start a petition to bring back SelectChoice??? That was a bundle that was worth 18.99 per month.

Does anyone know if this would work with the sports package? I assume it would since the sports package is sold like HBO, Cinemax, etc. If so, I will DEFINITELY be utilizing this feature in the fall every Saturday when there are college football games on that I want to record!

Meat, Since the sports package is in the same list of online selectable options like HBO, SHO and other premiums, I would guess that it works. Try it and let us know for sure!

Trojan, heh ... sssshhhhh.... Why offer a buck for the Sopranos when you can watch the whole Sunday lineup for 40cents? If DirecTV and HBO object, they will "fix" the system.

It does work for the sports package too. I ordered it for a weekend in order to tape the men's NCAA volleyball conference tournaments on CSTV for my brother (all using the directv.com interface) and only got charged for the weekend.
Somehow though, it never occurred to me to try it with HBO! Duh!

Does anyone know if you can still add/drop like this on the D* website? I was thinking of doing this for the Sopranos tonight.

I did it no problem a couple weeks ago... Actually over the span of two weeks I changed programming packages about 5 times. The proration all seems to add up.

-matt

If the website still has the option of changing your subscription, then give it a try. I would give this a try even if they had a minimum of $1 charge to such activity.

You have to ask yourself, how would I feel about it if someone else was doing it to me. For example, your employer might figure out a way to pay you $4,000 for something he was paying you $40,000 to do before. It's legal. Does it make it O.K.? Legally, sure, but I bet you'd be a little irate about it.

I'm sure this isn't a compelling argument for most people, after all, HBO is a big faceless company with deep pockets, right? I suppose if you weren't watching the shows, taping them, and then passing them on to orphans then you'd be Robin Hood. ; )

What I'm saying also is that HBO can afford what you're doing because the rest of us suckers who are paying full price are subsidizing you. If it were me, I'd skip going out to lunch once a month and just pay the full fare.

I know I sound like a jerk, so I'm sorry about that, but I was just putting in my 2 cents. Everyone else seems to support you (and, in fact, are looking for ways to do it themselves) so take this with a grain of salt.