edgedrv Posted August 5, 2005 Share Posted August 5, 2005 A few days ago I switched to DirectTV, and one of the benefits is getting FMC. In the past week I have viewed such favorites as PRISONER OF SHARK ISLAND, FANTASTIC VOYAGE, THREE LITTLE GIRLS IN BLUE, MR. BELEVERE RINGS THE BELL and **** GIRL. Just like TCM, movies are uncut and letterboxed and next to TCM the Fox Movie Channel is fast becoming my second favorite channel. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnnyweekes70 Posted August 5, 2005 Share Posted August 5, 2005 The Prisoner of Shark Island is probably my favourite John Ford film. It features a terrific performance by Warner Baxter and superb cinematography by the always reliable Bert Glennon. It's tight and absolutely riveting. It's sad other Ford films have overshadowed it due to its unavailability, other than the occasional FMC airing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
feaito Posted August 6, 2005 Share Posted August 6, 2005 I saw "Prisoner of Shark Island" in the 1980's as part of a John Ford Festival and I also enjoyed it very much, if I'm not wrong, the lovely Gloria Stuart starred opposite Warner Baxter. I'd like to see this movie again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nsallieharding Posted August 6, 2005 Share Posted August 6, 2005 The Wide Screen version of "Hello Dolly" aired on FMC a couple of weeks ago. They also aired the pan and scan version a week after, but I didn't waste time on that one. I guess that the nice thing about Directv is that it is easy to go online and change your programming choices, I do it alot, when I see something good on Shotime Unlimited or the HBO channels I pick them up or change one for the other and still keep the same monthly pricing. The weak thing about them is that they are limited on their premium channels (no HBO Comedy, Showtime Beyond). What did you have before, Dish Network or cable? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edgedrv Posted August 6, 2005 Author Share Posted August 6, 2005 I switched from Adelphia cable to DirectTV since its a better deal and cheaper! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FredCDobbs Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 ?I guess that the nice thing about Directv is that it is easy to go online and change your programming choices, I do it alot, when I see something good on Shotime Unlimited or the HBO channels I pick them up or change one for the other and still keep the same monthly pricing.? How do you do that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JackBurley Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 I switched to DirectTV from cable last April. That's when I finally got TCM. But I noticed last week that FMC is no longer available to me (unless I upgrade maybe?)... How curious. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patful Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 Jack, I believe FMC might be a premium channel, or at least a second- or third-tier option, as it is on DISH. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nsallieharding Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 This is an old post back when I had Directv. But to do it go to the Directv Home page and log in with your username and password and then click on change programming. http://www.directv.com/DTVAPP/index.jsp After that click on Premium Channels, what you now have will bechecked so unclick what you have and click on what you want to change it. Say you had Showtime Unlimited for 3 weeks and you want to change to HBO. Unclick Showtime and select HBO. Beware though because you can not downgrade the level of the programming that you have without being charged a $10.00 fee. You can switch from one to the other though which means you are not downgrading your service. On your next bill they will reimburse you for the time not used on Showtime and add it to HBO. After that you click on except changes and in a few minutes you have HBO and not Showtime. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markfp2 Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 FMC is not a premium channel on DirecTV. It's part of two of their three programming packages. Total Choice Plus and Total Choice Premium. It isn't in the Total Choice package which is the cheapest one. If you switched over in April, they most likely gave you the extra channels on the "Plus" package as a sample for the first six months. I believe you can upgrade for about $5.00 a month and get 30 additional channels including FMC. As for FMC, after you have it a year or so, you'll find most of the classic titles are repeated over and over. It's a shame that with the hundreds of early Fox films they have in their vault they don't show more of them. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy FMC, but it sure doen't come close to TCM. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sugarpuss Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 This has nothing to do with getting the Fox Movie Channel, but I must vent: 1. They changed their website. What took a few seconds to load up on my crappy dial up connection, now takes about five minutes. 2. If you take a peek at their upcoming schedule, they're CUTTING OUT THE CLASSICS! About a year or two ago, they used to show their movies twice a day. Like my favorite, Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte would be shown at 10 am and then 2 am. If you missed one viewing, no problem. Then about a year ago, they switched to some cockamamie scheduling where they only showed the classic movies in the morning and afternoon (from 6 am to 8 pm) and put on the modern JUNK (and I mean junk) twice a night. They they started showing half hour programs for their tv shows on FX. They also used to show old trailers and featurettes between the movies as well as information about each movie beforehand. Now, they show you red carpet premieres for their recent quality movies (read, even more JUNK.) 3. Now if you look at their schedule, classic movies are in the time slot of 6 am to 2 pm, and they're showing things from the 70's through the 90's from 2 pm to 6 am. On the weekends, classic movies are even harder to find as I was recently treated to multiple showings of Hot Shots Part Deux and Wall Street. Not to mention their brilliant idea of showing a movie three times in a row on Friday nights. They show the letterboxed versions of their movies every other month (For instance, "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man In the Moon Marigolds" was shown Panned and Scanned in June and August, while the letterboxed version was shown only in July. The hell? Who wants to sit and watch the scanned version?) If the Fox Movie Channel had a message board, I would be writing ticked off messages left and right. They have SO many classic movies that are just sitting in their vaults, rotting away. Yet they keep reairing the same crappy modern movies over and over and over. Even if TCM is changing a little bit, I'll take Dick Cavett shows, IFC style shorts and Ben M. (who I actually like now and honestly, I look forward to the guy. I don't know when this change of heart happened!) any day over what Fox Movie Channel has to offer. Uh, sorry. I went a little nuts there. Carry on! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sugarpuss Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 Also, I forgot to mention this in my rant, but instead of Fox Movie Channel, my other favorite movie channel (besides TCM, of course ) is the Flix Movie Channel. I think it's a subchannel of Showtime. They do show a lot of modern junk, but if you look through their schedule, they show an awful lot of rare, odd movies. Just recently they had on a whole slew of Louis Malle and Francois Truffaut films, letterboxed. This month's theme seems to be movies with 60's rock stars. They also show a lot of foreign films, as well as really hard to find oddities (they recently aired Marianne Faithful's, "Girl on a Motorcycle".) Every now and then they'll show some true classics, but they're good if you're into those rare, cult movies, like I am (not gore and horror, just weird stuff). Still, nothing holds a candle to TCM. Nothing! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonParker Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 Oooh, that sounds good. I don't get FMC. It used to annoy me quite a bit since they were the only station that showed "Call Her Savage" with Clara Bow, but I got a friend to burn a DVD for me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FredCDobbs Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 ?FMC is not a premium channel on DirecTV. It's part of two of their three programming packages. Total Choice Plus and Total Choice Premium. It isn't in the Total Choice package which is the cheapest one.? I don?t think $47.00 a month (with taxes) is ?cheap?. I?ve been getting FMC for years as part of my Total Choice Basic, which costs me $44.99 month now. Just this past weekend they dropped FMC and now they want an extra $5 a month for me to get it. Just a few months ago my basic package jumped up from about $42.00. So now they are charging me more and giving me less. I started out with a different satellite service about 8 years ago, when a different company owned it. That cost me about $26.00 a month. Then I went up to their second level, which cost about $10 more, so I could get TCM. I also got FMC with that higher priced package at about $36.00 a month. Plus, they sent me a full TV guide directory of all their channels and all their shows every month. Then Direct TV bought that company and immediately went up on their prices and stopped sending out the directory. Then they started going up on their prices about $3 or $4 a month, every two years. Now I?m up to paying $47.00 (with the tax), and they just dropped FOX, which I was already paying for as a premium channel with my original package. FOX is certainly not worth an extra $5 a month. This is why I?m burning as many old-movie DVDs as I can, in case they drop TCM from their basic package and demand $5 more a month to receive it. As far as I?m concerned, I?m already paying $10 more a month to receive it. My electricity and gas heating bills have doubled in the past year, and I can?t keep paying higher prices for the non-necessities. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pktrekgirl Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 Well, as a person who is unable to get FOX movie channel (I can't get satellite TV here - I live in a place where the reception is really bad - in a valley and in a house surrounded by giant trees), I really thought I was missing something. For whatever reason, until this minute I was under the impression that FOX was just like TCM, only showing only FOX studio classics. But if it's only two films a day or less, than I don't feel so bad about all the wonderful films I've been missing. However, I will say this - as best as I can determine, this channel is not available on any cable services in my area. It's really too bad as I would suspect most folks around here have cable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sweetbabykmd Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 I'm glad I have FMC in my basic package. Although they do focus on the awful mainstream movies afternoons and evenings, they do still show some great old classics in the mornings, movies that we won't see on TCM. You do have to remember to immediately turn down the sound or change the channel as soon as the classic movie is over and it's time to start showing the modern crap, because the volume goes way up when that stuff comes on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sugarpuss Posted September 19, 2006 Share Posted September 19, 2006 I don't know if you subscribe to them, but many times the same movies that pop up on Fox Movie Channel will then make the rounds on HBO and Cinemax (and all the sub HBO/Max channels as well) a few months later. I know HBO and Cinemax also show some Fox owned movies that FMC doesn't show, for some reason. Rings on Her FIngers with Gene Tierney and Henry Fonda, Two Flags West with Joseph Cotten and Linda Darnell and Mister 880 with Burt Lancaster and Dorothy McGuire have all been on the HBO/Cinemax channels in the past few months. Of course, they're always on at like, 4 am, so the dvd times certainly comes in handy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
msladysoul Posted September 20, 2006 Share Posted September 20, 2006 I been wanting FOX for so long. I think Comcast may carry the station one day. I would love to see the Alice Faye musicals, especially her early stuff lilke George White Scandals and King of Burlesque and see the Betty Grable and Carmen Miranda musicals and Linda Darnell, Gene Tierney, Dorothy Lamour movies. When AMC was showing Fox classic films I got a chance to see Alice Faye, Carmen Miranda, and Betty Grable but AMC changed and I couldn't enjoy their movies anymore and so for many years I put Faye, Grable, and Miranda on the shelf because about the time AMC went down, TCM was turned on in my area so I became obsessed with that but I'm ready for the FOX ladies again. Is there any hope for more classic movie stations in the future? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
decotodd Posted September 20, 2006 Share Posted September 20, 2006 Most of those stars and the more popular Fox films of the 30s and 40s are now available on DVD, including Will Rogers, Alice Faye, Betty Grable, the noir pix Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rickspade Posted September 20, 2006 Share Posted September 20, 2006 > FMC is not a premium channel on DirecTV. It's part of > two of their three programming packages. Total > Choice Plus and Total Choice Premium. It isn't in the > Total Choice package which is the cheapest one. If > you switched over in April, they most likely gave you > the extra channels on the "Plus" package as a sample > for the first six months. I believe you can upgrade > for about $5.00 a month and get 30 additional > channels including FMC. > > As for FMC, after you have it a year or so, you'll > find most of the classic titles are repeated over and > over. It's a shame that with the hundreds of early > Fox films they have in their vault they don't show > more of them. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy FMC, but it > sure doen't come close to TCM. I'm not certain where you live, but like JackBurley I reside in the Bay Area in Northern California, and until just a few days ago the Fox Movie Channel most certainly was a part of our Total Choice package (the "cheapest") and we've had Direct TV since 2005, so it wasn't a sample "add on" for the first six months as you suggested. The channel was there everyday, and then a few days ago I put it on, and there was no picture, to be replaced by that blurb at the bottom of the screen, "to subscribe, call ext. 721" or whatever. I called customer service today and was told (as I suspected) that Fox's fees increased so Direct TV had to bump it up to a higher level of subscription. Frankly, as others on this thread have so aptly stated, that channel was a frustrating experience anyway, constantly showing the same old movies over and over again (to say nothing of the same recent movies again and again; in the last five months they must have shown Die Hard about 25 times; meanwhile, as someone else has pointed out, they let their classics from the 40s and 50s (like Fallen Angel) rot in their vaults where no one can see them, unless of course you want to buy the DVDs.) My main concern, as Fred C. has pointed out, is that Direct TV doesn't decide to do to TCM what it just did to FMC. Of course, customer service played dumb about any such plans, but I'm very cynical about this. My wife and I got Direct TV just so we could receive TCM as part of the basic package because our local cable provider made you pay premium prices for it. Anyway, I won't miss Fox because that channel is grade D ground beef compared to TCM's sirloin steak! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
metsfan Posted September 20, 2006 Share Posted September 20, 2006 Sugarpuss, I've been angry at the same things recently. I loved the old site and now with the new one, you have to constantly go back and fourth between pages to read the excerpts on the films. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
markfp2 Posted September 20, 2006 Share Posted September 20, 2006 Well, I guess I'll stand corrected. I've been getting Total Choice Premium for a number of years so maybe they did move it and I hadn't noticed. I do know that except for local channels and a couple of restricted area channels like Turner South, DirecTV has the same packages nationwide. Having been watching FMC over the years, I'm not sure I'd pay the increase just for that channel. As I said in my previous post, if you've watched it for a couple of years, you've seen about all the classics they choose to show. I'd be really surprised if they tried to for that with TCM. Time-Warner has the clout to package it with their other channels when they negotiate their deal with DirecTV. Of course, if it ever did end up as a premium channel, I'd subscribe in the wink of an eye. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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