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Cable Companies Despise PVRs
My position that I expressed in my speech and that was inaccurately portrayed: PVR functionality should be provisioned from the headend for the following reasons (which ultimately will benefit consumers):
-
VOD servers cost much less
- If video servers @ $350/stream (Soon Component cost declining 40%/year
- @ 10% simultaneous use, costs $35/sub.
- PVRs cost >10X more
- When simultaneous use = 50%, server costs will have declined >5X
- Disk noise wakes my wife
- Replay box hot enough to fry an egg -- Is that a feature?
- Disk size limitations mean obsolescence, esp. with HDTV
- Available on every set-top in house Average of 1.7 PVRs/PVR household
- No pro-activity/anticipation required
- Records multiple concurrent shows
- NW storage could always have max. res.
- Uses existing deployed base
- Moving parts break more often
- Box complexity means more crashes & customer support costs
My basic thesis is that PVRs + Satellite will eat cable's lunch, and since it's unambiguous that cable needs to get the copyright clearances to offer programming from the head-end, they should start now. It is the case that I suggested that if a Supreme Court case was brought on the legality of each feature of PVRs were brought, some would lose. I also suggested an alternative business model to make everybody happy to avoid the all-or-nothing result that has been occurring in the RIAA vs. Napster wars.
I suggested that consumers pay 1 cent per commercial skipped (which is about the same as what advertisers pay). That would be equivalent to $10/thousand commercials skipped. I think that's reasonable. I also suggested that targeted advertising could be a win-win for all involved by delivering ads in areas that are of greater interest to the viewer so that there would be less incentive to skip and fewer ads would have to be delivered due to the higher prices paid for the targeted group. I also predicted that this dynamic combined with competition between satellite and cable would ultimately make both services free."
What I don't understand is if I pay for cable programming, why the hell am I double-taxed by having to watch ads?!!!
They've been ripping me off for years, even before PVRs existed!
BASTARDS!
Hey, I'm only applying the same specious reasiong the media companies use to call me a pirate, a criminal and an ingrate!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Man, cable companies really have their heads planted firmly up their ass. From the day that I got my TiVo I saw the potential of the PVR tailored for their market that would allow all kinds of value adding services. For instance, build a cable box where some of the storage capacity is used to store PPV moives. Instead of tying up cable channels with a limited set of monthly PPV moives you instead pipe down any movie they have in a catalogue down the TCP/IP data pipe and store it on the PVR. Thus, folks can stop, FF, RW pause a movie (just like a VCR/DVD), watch it multiple times over the course of a few days (or however long you allow them to view the movie) and allow subscribers to download any number of movies, not just the new releases. And it frees up cable channels to boot. If I ran a cable company I'd LOVE PVRs, and would be working with SonicBlue, TiVo, or Moto. design me a box and a back end post haste.
This is especially interesting now that ATT Broadband is owned by Comcast, and the president of Comcast is the one bitching about PVRs.
I would assume the cable companies would love PVR's. I got HBO only after I got my TiVo, b/c now I can watch the Soprano's when it fits into my schedule, not theirs. It's not quite on demand programming, but the benefits and features cost the cable industry nothing.
Because AT&T Broadband, despite all of their insipid customer service issues, doesn't have the paradigm block that Comcast apparently has. Either that or they recognize that despite objections, PVRs and PVR technology is the way consumers will want to view television in the future.
The other issue is cable companies losing the ability to sell/rent their own crappy boxes to their customers. Their revenue stream from these boxes can be two-fold--ads and sales/rentals.
I know that when I visit my parents in Miami, and use their shitty digital cable receiver box, I get big ads and huge banners which obscure the picture on the television. If my parents didn't live where the HOA frowned upon it, I'd tell them to get DirecTV.
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
Is it just me or have other people also been noticing a lot of anti-TiVo news stories lately like this? I feel like there has been a big uptick in the number of "TiVo is Big Brother" articles lately. Since many publishing and news agencies are in bed with cable companies, I wonder if they are trying to use the media to promote a negative image for PVRs.
When violence rules the world outside / And the headlines make me want to cry / It's not the time to just keep quiet
If cable companies would just learn to work WITH PVR's, they would actually make MORE money with their pay-per-view/VOD offerings. It's simple. The advertisement for it would go like this: "Order SuperBowl ZZZZ now on pay-per-view, and we will program your TiVo/ReplayTV to record it for you automatically!" They could then extend that to say "you can now order your cable TV BY THE SHOW instead of by the channel. The cost is $XX.XX per season, or $X.XX per show." Then they wouldn't have to worry about commercials as much since they have people only paying for what they want to watch. But then again, cable companies are too lazy to be creative, being too interested in maintaining current business models and not finding new ones.
Lauder slammed his Replay box, 'it's too hot,' 'my wife doesn't know how to use it,' and he even tried to fry an egg on his PVR.
So, he doesn't like them. He thinks they are for copyright violation. He thinks cable companies should sue the PVR manufacturers. So, why does he own one and why is he pissed that his wife can't operate it.
Hey Gary, can she set the clock on your old VCR?
I don't think every cable company hates PVRs. In fact, Time Warner Cable is rolling out their own PVR, called iControl. It has basic PVR functionality, but it's main purpose for the cable company is pushing on-demand movings that you can pause, etc. as if you rented it.
Ironic that Time Warner Cable would do this, as it's part of the much larger AOL Time Warner which seems torn between the content provider and the content producer mode - the company owns lots of record companies and movie studios. Yet AOL and Time Warner Cable seem to be doing things the content part of the company doesn't like. It's like watching Sony make mp3 players and yet be distributing copy-restricted CDs.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Cable companies, on the other hand, have to deal with advertizers who are seeing their dollars, potentially, go to waste on PVR users.
P.S. I love my TiVo, I am watching a lot more TV than I ever did before, and a lot fewer ads.
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
At least it's not a perfectly clear-cut issue of right and wrong.
Back in the early days of broadcasting, there was quite a bit of debate as to how broadcasters should pay their expenses. Right or wrong, the system that emerged had broadcasters selling air time to advertisers. Thus, consumers get the content "free" on the assumption that they will hear/see the ads and go spend money.
The television delivery system has now evolved to the point where most people pay a third party (cable company, satellite company) to deliver a high-quality signal straight into their home, negating the need for an actual broadcast signal. So now consumers pay the third party, the third party has a financial arrangement with the "broadcasters", and the "broadcasters" still sell ad time.
The question is now, what do the consumers owe the broadcasters? Are all the monthly cable bills enough to cover the expenses of the cable companies and content providers? If so, there's no need for ads. If not, would you pay a higher cable bill to have ad-free content?
In the beginning, broadcasters sold ads to pay for content. Now, broadcasters work on content to sell ads. Personally, I figure once the signal I've paid for is in my home, it's mine to do with as I please, so long as the use is strictly personal.
The cable monopolies are just like any other service provider monopolies - terrified of change, and totally freaked out when people don't buy %100 into their latest revenue generation scheme.
I find particularly funny the latest "don't get a satellite dish!" ads (even though IMO dishes offer much better service) There's one in particular playing here in Boston (On broadcast TV mind you) where these two parents say how "they have 5 kids and going 5 minutes without TV would be worse than cancer"
Fsck the millennium, we want it now.
Millennium Crisis Line: 0890 900 2000 [calls cost 50p/min]
HOA have no legal right to prevent you from installing a small dish if you own the property. Now there are a few other limiting factors, like having a mounting location with a clear line of sight to the satellite, but an HOA by law is not allowed to prevent this.
"Satellite Consumer Bill of Rights, a regulation released by the FCC on August 6, 1996. This regulation PREEMPTS area zoning ordinances and Homeowner Association covenants and restrictions on DBS dish antennas. This rule was required by Congress in the 1996 Telecommunications Act."
Link to FCC fact sheet about this subject.
FCC Fact Sheet
The fact of the matter is that watching more TV doesn't actually help the cable companies. If you never turn your TV on but send a $60 check to the cable company every month, they are pretty ecstatic. The advertisers might be happier except that, along with the PVR, comes commercial skipping, which means that their marketing may be adversely impacted even though more people are watching.
It might benefit cable companies if the usefulness of the PVR increases the desire of viewers to upgrade their subscriptions. If by getting Tivo, HBO suddenly becomes very valuable for me, then that's a big bonus for my local cable company. I'd be curious to see if the statistics support that conclusion. My thinking would be that a Tivo would allow somebody to make more effecitve use of less channels. Why get the premium channels when you can keep your TV schedule filled with all of the obscure programs from non-premium channels that you didn't know were on before.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
So enjoy it while you can. I do. I watch (some) commercial TV and I don't watch the ads. Many execs would have you believe that this is some sort of theft. But as Robert Heinlein said:
"There has grown in the minds of certain groups in this country the idea that just because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is supported by neither statue or common law. Neither corporations or individuals have the right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
After reading and hearing so much about PVR's, I decided the time was right to try one out. The main problem was that I only had a cell phone so it looked like the replaytv was my only option. After doing some digging, I found that the Tivo series 2 works with a few USB network adapters. I decided to go with Tivo since I preferred the interface, plus it is the stronger of the two companies.
I received my Tivo a week ago today, and I can not stop watching television. The amount of TV I watch has doubled because with the Tivo. I can find interesting programs to watch, where before I would only have a small chance of stumbling on the program accidentally. I FF through probably 1/2 the commercials , but there are plenty of times when I don't.
My potential exposure to advertisers has doubled since purchasing my Tivo. I'm watching programs I normally wouldn't see because of the time-slot. With the scheduling features, I'm catching many live programs that I would not watch if the Tivo guide wasn't available plus I can't FF the commercials. The short sidedness of established industries to recognize the value of disruptive technologies has been well documented, and the cable industry's aversion towards the PVR is a classic example. The companies that are first to embrace the PVR will succeed.
I'm not sure if anyone else feels this way, but I would say in the next 3-5 years, maybe a bit sooner, maybe a bit later, there is going to be a showdown of sorts between the media industry (music and video) and the public masses.
Unless the record companies, the cable companies, and all the rest of these multi-billion dollar industries can figure out a way to keep their revenue streams at current levels or at least something they're happy with without trying to hold back technology or control how it is used, something will happen. Technology - better said 'invention' - is just like nature: you can't hold it back. Once something is available, the public, and not a select group of high-riding jerks, control it. The only way to keep technology from taking on a life of it's own is to keep a lid on it in the first place, and that option never existed/is already past.
What the showdown will be, or what will happen is beyond me. How the unthinking masses (those who listen to N'Sync; those who could care less how much control Microsoft has over what they do with their own computer and the things they create with it; those who don't mind watching hours upon hours of crappy commercials - and they're not all bad commercials, just most - during their days/weeks/months/years) will affect this, I don't know either. But even they will eventually see the light.
And just like technology and nature and all the rest, there's no stopping public opinion/demand.
Ack!
And if so... do they REALLY think we're that stupid?
I happen to have worked in the cable industry. Video on Demand, or VOD, is a sort of "instant" Pay Per View (PPV), or more accurately DVD rental without having to go to the store.
Rather than calling the cable company and telling them you want to watch Movie X when it comes on at 12:00pm, you press a button your cable remote and the movie is streamed instantly to your cable box. You can pause, stop, rewind, or fast-forward, and you get a certain time window (48hrs or something) within which you can watch your selection as many times as you want.
The cable office has racks of servers packed full of disk space and bandwidth that can singlecast video streams to hundreds of subscribers. Companies are currently working on getting all the DVD functions like different audio streams and camera angles as well as special features into the VOD package, and the eventual goal is to make Blockbuster obsolete.
So it's more than PPV rebranded, but I'd guess they still think you're pretty stupid.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
The problem for cable companies isn't that they're afraid you'll swap programs, or even that you won't watch commercials. They don't really care about that.
The problem with a standalone PVR is that you've gotten features from someone else, and the cable company won't be able to get ahold of that money.
For example Cablevision's digital product includes video on demand. They've got a bunch of series available for that... and to get a certain channel's programming on demand, you pay an additional fee. If you have a PVR, you probably won't be buying their VOD entrees, since you'll just tell your PVR to grab them for you.
The bit about satellites is also telling. Cable companies can do VOD, because they've got a nice fast low-latency pipe between your house and their systems. CV does VOD by shipping the video over their cable-modem network. When you pause it, it stops coming at the other end. Naturally, that's not very feasible with a dish. They'd like to hype that as something that makes them better than a dish, but DirecTiVo is their worst nightmare, because it gives you the benefits of their VOD service, while giving you two tuners so you can record anything you like, instead of the selection of shows the cable company has available.
"If my parents didn't live where the HOA frowned upon it, I'd tell them to get DirecTV."
Tell them anyway. The FCC has ruled that homeowners' associations cannot stop people from installing satellite dishes of 1 m diameter or less (among other things, like wireless broadband antennae.)
Make me aerodynamic in the evening air
AT&T Broadband was acquired by Comcast in what was essentially a hostile takeover. AT&T had been considering spinning of the Broadband division, but decided not to. Comcast put together an offer that the AT&T board, under pressure from shareholders, felt they could not afford to refuse. Comcast as a result become by far the largest cable co, with a near monopoly on the East Coast (aside from NYC). Much of AT&T Broadband's staff is about to be fired, btw. Comcast wanted the customers, not the employees. They have no reason to embrace AT&T's attitude towards PVR; they'll be happy to scuttle it.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Aren't they going to create a bandwidth crunch with 90% of the video being "demanded" in prime time?
Why wouldn't it be very much more to their advantage to have "offpeak pricing" for customers with PVR's that were willing to record content at times convenient for the cable company? And have the PVR owner pay for the storage facility?
Seems to me that if video-on-demand takes off cable companies will be faced with either expensive infrastructure costs... OR ticked-off customers trying to explain to their kids why they can't watch "Lilo and Stitch" tonight.
Or are the cable companies planning to build special you-don't-control-it-we-do PVR's? In which case you'd think they wouldn't want to make the PVR companies angry, unless the cable companies want to do all their own R&D...
Or are the cable companies just planless and clueless?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
People think Microsoft is the answer. Microsoft is just the question, "No" is the answer.
I think the point is that he is signing up for premium channels (and he might not without a PVR). The cable companies does make money on premium channels. I guess not 100% of the premium fee goes to the premium company.
"I am willing to bet that most people don't like their cable company..."
Personally, I rather like my cable company.
For a nice low fee they provide me with telephone (at the cheapest rates in the country), my choice from their selection of TV channels, and a damned good broadband internet access (24/7).
They fulfil their part of the contract nicely.
Nope, I have no problems with my cable company's service or pricing, thanks.
I dunno, maybe we just have a better quality of company over here in the UK or something? *shrug*
People should not be afraid of their governments - Governments should be afraid of their people.
After testing PVRs in 2000, Comcast found that downloading programming to a hard drive in a consumer's home via a PVR such as TiVo, which satellite leader DirecTV uses, threatens the lifeblood of TV entertainment, Roberts said.
After reading this, one might walk away thinking that that Comcast invented TV entertainment. While nothing could be further from the truth, it's precisely this kind of arrogance that will lead to the demise of companies who, rather than seeking to understand what consumers value, work to shackle them with tight controls over how, when, and for how much various shows can be viewed.
Is it any mystery that consumers will attempt to minimize the level of harrassment by commercial entities attempting to sell them the latest and greatest of everything from the latest super-steam-powered convection oven to tampons? The reason that cable owners are concerned is that they assumed that they would be able burn the candle at both ends, charging for both content and ads, ad infinitum. PVRs enter the market, and now PVR owners, who maximize their enjoyment by skipping the cruft, are being branded criminals.
What can be learned here? For starters, there is no comparison between Napster users and PVR owners. Perhaps most important, though, is that there's a real honest-to-goodness clue here with respect to consumer interests. The issue is not that people are using PVRs, but whether or not the cable industry will have the foresight to adapt their business model, rather than force feed its 'content' - replete with all of the ad-gak - to its customers.
Cable companies, on the other hand, have to deal with advertizers who are seeing their dollars, potentially, go to waste on PVR users.
This may be discussed below, but I haven't seen it...
Here is what I don't understand. Let's say I tape all of my Monday night shows for 2 hours using my PVR. As far as my satellite company is concerned, I *watched* those shows and all of the accompanying ads. Chalk up another viewer with the other 10 million that watched the same thing. So where's the problem here? Just because my PVR recorded the show for me doesn't change the fact that the show was "watched". Unless the cable and satellite companies are reporting true viewers versus virtual viewers, in which case they're the dolts that are counting the viewship in a bizarre manner. Once the show has been aired, what do they care if I watch the commercials or not?
Another thing I notice is that the cable companies are the ones complaining. I don't see the major networks crying foul : NBC, CBS, ABC, Fox (here in the States, at least). Or are they raising a stink as well and I'm just not reading the right articles?
However you look at it, though, it just boils down to control. These execs are pissed that the public actually has a modicum of control over how and when they view their television, and the lack of their precise control is what they're truly pissed about.
Sarcasm on. Moderate accordingly.
Gary Lauder writes: PVR functionality should be provisioned from the headend for the following reasons (which ultimately will benefit consumers):
* Disk noise wakes my wife
That is your wife's problem, not the industry's. I've been in the same room as a Tivo, and never noticed any significant noise. If I were to say that cable TV prices keep me awake, is that grounds to have my bill reduced?
* Replay box hot enough to fry an egg -- Is that a feature?
I've never seen a Replay box... but I have seen a little thing called a TV. It gets pretty warm too!
* Disk size limitations mean obsolescence, esp. with HDTV
HDTV is making existing VCRs and TVs obsolete. Should we get rid of the whole "TV" concept?
My basic thesis is that PVRs + Satellite will eat cable's lunch, and since it's unambiguous that cable needs to get the copyright clearances to offer programming from the head-end, they should start now.
Translation: I'm a venture capitalist who didn't get into the PVR business when I could. Since PVRs are better than cable, let's ban them so I can make money! [All IMHO, of course.]
I suggested that consumers pay 1 cent per commercial skipped (which is about the same as what advertisers pay). That would be equivalent to $10/thousand commercials skipped.
That's a reasonable solution -- assuming that the TV, cable or satellite feeds, and other equipment are free. If I'm paying for cable, I should be able to handle the incoming data in any way I see fit, as long as I stay within Fair Use of copyright.
Sarcasm off.