The Economist On Television Over Broadband 220
zxjio recommends a pair of articles in The Economist discussing television over broadband, and the effects of DVR use. "Cable-television companies make money by selling packages of channels. The average American household pays $700 a year for over 100 channels of cable television but watches no more than 15. Most would welcome the chance to buy only those channels they want to watch, rather than pay for expensive packages of programming they are largely not interested in. They would prefer greater variety, too — something the internet offers in abundance. A surprising amount of video is available free from websites like Hulu and YouTube, or for a modest fee from iTunes, Netflix Watch Instantly and Amazon Video on Demand. ... Consumers' new-found freedom to choose has struck fear into the hearts of the cable companies. They have been trying to slow internet televisions steady march into the living room by rolling out DOCSIS 3 at a snails pace and then stinging customers for its services. Another favorite trick has been to cap the amount of data that can be downloaded, or to charge extortionately by the megabyte. Yet the measures to suffocate internet television being taken by the cable companies may already be too late. A torrent of innovative start-ups, not seen since the dot-com mania of a decade ago, is flooding the market with technology for supplying internet television to the living room." And from the second article on DVR usage patterns: "Families with DVRs seem to spend 15-20% of their viewing time watching pre-recorded shows, and skip only about half of all advertisements. This means only about 5% of television is time-shifted and less than 3% of all advertisements are skipped. Mitigating that loss, people with DVRs watch more television. ... Early adopters of DVRs used them a lot — not surprisingly, since they paid so much for them. Later adopters use them much less (about two-thirds less, according to a recent study)."
Re:I guess I'm at the far extreme (Score:3, Insightful)
No, socialism is bad, it's what got us here in the first place. Gave the telcos $200B for a 46mbps pipe to the home by 2008 (? might have been 2006, I don't recall). As is typical with government, there was no oversight, or checks to make sure what needed to be done was being done...the money disappeared.
Re:I did it. (Score:2, Insightful)
I wonder how long TV on the internet (for free) will work out. Right now all the cable/sat subscribers are funding this. If everyone starts viewing TV online only...it will start costing $$$.
IPTV has been ready to go for years and years...the content providers are the ones holding it back. If you think TV on the internet will be the next big thing...well... I think it will be too, but magically it will still cost the same as cable TV is today.
The content guys will always get their $$$.
tv is background noise (Score:4, Insightful)
in my house its usually on cartoon network or the news and its just been sitting there playing while we are online, gaming, or doing things around the house. we watch important shows on hulu if we care about it, or we look through ovguide.com, so we can start and stop and go back to previous episodes. we have a tivo someone gave us but never saw justification for the subscription fees.
shows that we really care about and want to keep come in from netflix and copied to external hard drive.
we search for the ultimate device to make use of this collection. that device would read through all the episodes of each show we have and play them back like itunes on random and broadcast those to all the tvs in the house on our own custom tv channel. we dont want to have to pick a show to watch, we just want them all playing on their own and we can either sit down and watch if were interested at that moment or not.
my younger sister lives in an apartment but is rarely ever there because of work or social activities. she just has her laptop with her always and a sprint card. this is how she watches her tv shows and gets her news. if that device gives her whatever she needs, why pay the extra money for something that only works when she is in one particular spot?
the people i know that care about the tivo are older, they are settled into houses, have a big entertainment center hooked up, and do not spend alot of time buzzing about. like my dad, he loves tivo. the difference i think is he specifically spends an hour or more sitting in front of the tv and thats all he does, his purpose is actually to just sit there and watch... just sitting and watching tv would drive me nuts.
Re:I guess I'm at the far extreme (Score:5, Insightful)
That was not socialism. If it had been socialism the government would have put some oversight in place to make sure that the telecommunications companies actually rolled the fat pipes that they promised to. There would have been regulation and some control over the companies that received this money to make sure that the money did not just vanish into shareholders' pockets. What happened in telecommunications in the US in the 1990s and 2000s was a classic example of what happens if you just let private companies do whatever they want with public money.
Re:I guess I'm at the far extreme (Score:5, Insightful)
The fat lady is just getting warmed up (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I dodged the expensive DVR (Score:2, Insightful)
And lots of cable providers are trying their best to kill off anything that doesn't require a monthly rental box. So far as I can tell, there aren't any clear QAM channels available from my provider where I live (they do have them in other places, but my city is often used as a testbed for the provider.
Sadly, I haven't found a tuner card nearly as good as even my free DTV converter box. Certainly none as good as an ATSC tuner in a modern TV.
My DSL provider pulled the plug on its IPTV service a few months ago. I could run three SD streams without too much of an effect on DSL performance (each mp4 stream seemed to eat ~1.5mpbs). But still not enough bandwidth is available to service most of their customer base for HD content, which is why I think is part of the reason they decided to ditch it (in addition to the STBs being incredibly flaky).
Overall, I think maybe people might be more amenable to a pay-for-play system if it didn't cost too much. But at $1.99 an episode from iTunes, plus the fact that I effectively only pay $25/mo for my TV signal (difference between my cable bundle pack and just the cable modem), doesn't give me much leftover to buy TV episodes.
Re:I did it. (Score:3, Insightful)
Broadcast TV isn't free, it's just the currency isn't one you are trained to recognize as such, advertising. Why do you think broadcasters fight so hard to prevent PVR's from cutting out commercials, why even the companies that formed Hulu fought to keep it off Boxee. Because these things hurt their ad revenue. If you aren't willing to pay for broadcasting with your time and eyeballs in 'ad dollars' then eventually it'll either not be produced or it'll be paid for some other way. For instance, by the government, and by extension, under the government's watchful eye that nothing 'offensive' is produced. Or by you directly.
Re:USA only (Score:4, Insightful)
Just really, really difficult to do legally.
Re:I guess I'm at the far extreme (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to avoid both at all costs.
We do not need government owned or operated businesses. This never ends well. We do not need a government that has its strings pulled by big business. This never ends well either.
What we need is government protecting an environment that fosters competition, and businesses competing. It IS the hard way... requiring the most work and diligence.
Re:Mis-Informed Article (Score:2, Insightful)
Channels that are unpopular should die, not be subsidized by other consumers. We already have public television to fill that gap.
Re:A common misunderstanding.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone thinks they want a la carte programming, but the reality is that if it ever came to pass, most folks would pay pretty much what they pay now, except they'd get fewer channels in exchange
Nope, not buying it. You can't convince me that having a choice is worse than having no choice.
I have some friends who used to live in Japan. When they moved to the USA, I checked to find out how much it would cost to get them one channel of Japanese TV programming on Comcast cable; it was heinous. They would have to buy a complete package of stuff they didn't want, plus pay something like $30 for the Japanese channel. It would have been $60 or $90 per month (I don't remember exactly how much, but I just remember my feeling of shock over how much Comcast wanted for this).
I have to assume that some company in Japan could stream TV shows over the Internet for way less cost to the user.
As another example, I'm interested in bicycle races. The "Versus" cable TV channel will have the Tour de France, but no cable channel will carry the Giro d'Italia or several other bike races I could name. There just isn't enough interest in most of the customers in America. If I could get TV shows a la carte, I could get the Giro.
I think you are partly correct: it may be that buying a bundle of channels will allow customers to save money compared to buying every single channel one-off. And people will probably still buy bundles for the convenience. But the current situation lets the cable companies dictate terms to their customers; when the customers gain the power to end-run the cable companies, that will put downward pressure on the cable company prices. Which can only help bring costs down for the consumers.
Re:I guess I'm at the far extreme (Score:2, Insightful)
Why do you think that the Democratic Party is fascist
Because everyone points their fingers at everyone else when it comes to fascism. It'd be the most overused hyperbolic epithet of the current decade if only it weren't so often true.
The "right" insists that they're not fascist, only the left can be fascist because the left wants to control what you think and do on a daily basis. By forcing conformity and compelling everyone to march in lockstep... this is indeed a part of fascism.
The "left" insists that they're not fascist, only the right can be fascist because the right wants to give corporations unlimited powers and money. Government and corporation marching in lockstep... this is indeed a part of fascism.
The fact that the right also wants to control what you think and do or that the left also wants powerful corporations... these facts are lost on the supporters of both sides of the argument.
Re:Mis-Informed Article (Score:3, Insightful)
> The reality is that most of the content that offered on cable today
> won't make its way to the web for free under the current revenue
> models of content providers (not cable cos). Currently half of the
> revenue that channels like TLC get is from cable subscriptions. The
> other half is from advertising. These channels aren't interested in
> cutting their revenues in half on the hopes that on-line advertising
> somehow doubles in profitability. This is especially the case when
> it's currently only about 10% of what the same ads get you on TV.
Any channel that needs to squeeze money out of cable providers
as well as spam us with advertising is already living on borrowed
time. These are the sorts of channels that need to be put out of
their misery by the march of technological progress. If you are
extracting subscription fees out of me or out of me indirectly
through my cable carrier then your content better be commercial
free or else you are trying to steal my time.
Hulu or something similar is probably the wave of the future. Any
"channel" that can't deal with this sort of model probably should
"start getting their affairs in order" right now.
Re:socialism is bad, (Score:3, Insightful)
As for Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security I think it would be better if they were privatized or opened to a free market.
When the Bush administration started just over 8 years ago, one of its major goals was to privatize social security... everyone would get their own account... in the stock market.
Now consider what has happened in the stock market since then. What happens to all the people who depend on that "fixed income" from social security when it would now be easily cut in half?
This analysis doesn't require any sympathy or consideration of the plights of individuals (some would argue that they should have provided for themselves). But what happens to the economy as a whole? A bunch of people lose their houses because they can no longer pay their mortgages and taxes. We already have a glut of houses on the market, adding more houses only makes the problem worse.
Then consider the hoards of homeless old people. Now, again, we don't need any compassion for this analysis... we don't have to care about the individuals and their suffering. But do need assess the impact of their homelessness on society as a whole. Some will turn to crime and some of those will be caught and we'll need to more spend money on trials and prisons.
This exercise in identifying systemic costs due to a lack of a functioning social security system can go on for a quite a while. But what you end up with (again, without taking into consideration compassion or emotional arguments) that no matter what choice you make as a society, there will be a cost to the decision. You can have the direct costs of a social security system or the many indirect costs of having hoards of criminal or sick grannies wreaking havoc on society.
Once you realize that every choice for a system has its own costs, then it's a matter of maximizing or minimizing the the things that are most important. THAT is a judgment based on the values and priorities of a society.
It's easy to say that everyone should provide for their own retirement, and it's a great "value system" and sentiment. But the fact is, not everyone can or will (there are plenty of ways even the most perfectly planned "life" can be derailed by life events). The hard reality that has to be faced then is "what do do about them". The world isn't so "neat" that they simply go away. Our society, as a system, will incur the costs of their lack of a retirement plan in one way or another.
Because of a disability and being turned down for health insurance I collect SSI and have Medicare and I don't believe hard working taxpayers should be paying my for disability or health care.
You're welcome. I work hard and pay taxes and I'm glad we have a safety net in place for people who need it. I do realize there are some people who abuse that safety net, but even then, I feel we are better off as a society with it, abuses and all, than without it.
You don't have to look very hard to find societies that are failing because they have no safety nets and people are driven into poverty and crime. Somalia with its pirates and Mexico dominated by drug cartels are easy examples. In fact, look at most places that are laissez-faire, low regulation, have minimal societal safety nets, and they're generally unpleasant places for a majority of the population to live in. The rich will be comfortable wherever they are, but since most of us won't be rich, I opt to live in a society that has some safety nets and regulation.