Photo Credit: Josh Hall

Because everyone in our family, including my two grandaughters, wants to be able to record their own TV programs, we subscribe to DirecTV where each additional receiver only costs $5 extra per month.

So in our home, with me, my wife, my two sons, my two daughters-in-law, my two granddaughters, my grandson, and my nephew, we have a DirecTV receiver in each of the 6 bedrooms, in each of the 3 living rooms, in one kitchen, in one exercise room, and in the main TV room. We have the cabling and outlets to put TVs in each of the bathrooms but have put off doing so for now.

The only package we do not have is the sports package, but we do get everything else and the total cost for the whole house is $210.00 per month which is a lot cheaper than cable.

One of the great things about everyone recording their favorite shows is that we can all look at the saved recordings on any of the receivers. I can watch a Fox News segment that my wife recorded on her receiver, an animated film on my granddaughter's receiver, the TV show House recorded by my younger son, and a recent episode of The Office saved by my older son.

In addition, we have downloaded over 1500 films onto a main server from DVD's that we purchased over the years and anyone can scan through a list and watch any movie they wish. Before we loaded them unto the server, if anyone wanted to watch say, Armageddon, he or she had to go down to the TV room and get the DVD from the Film Library shelf.

We also subscribe to Netflix and stream videos over the Internet through our media servers.

In every regard except one, DirecTV sets the price for their services well. Where they screw up is in charging too much for watching films on demand: $3.99 per movie even for many older films. For less than ten bucks a month I get to see tons of movies on demand with Netflix (up to six devices on one account). If DirecTV charged 49 cents a movie or a monthly subscription of $9.99 per month plus say a buck per month extra per receiver, they would get a few hundred dollars of business every year from my family because we love to watch movies. At $3.99 per movie I do not allow anyone to rent a movie. I would rather buy the DVD and put it on the server where we can watch it as often as we like.

Because of the price, they get zero dollars from us for movie rentals. Zero. I have no doubt that the majority of DirecTV customers do not rent movies from them.