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Cable TV A La Carte Part 2
Ravi Swamy writes "Here's a followup article in Business Week to the Cable TV A La Carte story from last month. For those who actually read the story it was only A La Carte if you wanted to add HBO. Apparently cable companies don't know about the law or are going to reclassify HBO as a 'tier' instead of as a channel to get around the law."
I own both a VCR and a DVD player, but I don't have cable. It's just not worth it to me; all the global news coverage I could possibly want is available online (in fact, I rank many blogs far higher than most mainstream media outlets), and I can rent tapes and DVD's when I'm in the mood for a movie. If and when cable (or satellite) companies decide to offer true per-channel subscription, I might be interested in getting HBO or an independent movie channel say. Until then, I think I'll hold on to my money.
Thankfully many stations (like showtime) are putting their more popular series out on DVD after each season (Queer as Folk season one has been out a year and season two is set to come out in a month or so just in time for season three to start up). This is competition to the cable industry, and it is only going to increase. DVD's are cheap to stamp, mpeg-2 is cheap to make (esp since 99% of all editing now is done digitally on nonllinear systems, mpeg-2 is just an option!). And the internet means that it is cheap to ship, sell only 10,000? Stamp 10k, ship and then forget about it. The only thing that I think would be better would be if I could download everything (say pay 50 for a season and download eps after they are aired). But the cable paradigm is beginning to fade in the wake of new and more diverse, more specific techs.
Secondsun
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Nope. Nope. Nope.
The problem is not the distributors, but the content makers in the first place. In order to carry the popular broadcast stations and cable networks, you must bundle in that company's less popular cable networks, some of which are upstart no-names nobody would pay for if they didn't have to.
There has to be a law unbundling networks at the wholesale layer before content distributors can have packages that reflect what you want to get and nothing more and nothing less.
What we need is COMPLETE de-regulation of a terribly over-regulated industry. It's regulated for the industry and it's regulated for the consumers -- regulations that often baffle the mind and battle each other!
If we could completely deregulate the industry, including the LOCAL regulations that decree that a cable company shall be a monopoly ("common carrier") and that satellite dishes could be placed on anyone's private property without regulations, I think you'd see many more providers popping up. Why should a town only have ONE cable company?
In a truly unregulated market, competition WOULD provide for what the MARKET wants. No, you can't just get HBO for $2.99 a month and EPSON for $1.99 a month because there are many fixed costs for cable. The premium packages are the best value because they subsidize the costs of smaller packages. Just like airplane companies make all their money off of first class full fare passengers, with coach passengers only giving them tiny incentives when the plane is full, cable carriers make their money off of the people who get the whole ball and chain.
Honestly, all these regulations "for the consumer" only end up making government have to offer incentives "for the provider." They don't work. The Austrian School of Economics shows time and again that there are no consumers and no providers -- we're both just trading items of value for what we think is more valuable. If you completely deregulate the markets (COMPLETELY) you'll allow competition in, and competition will ALWAYS offer what will make both sides happy at the lowest level.
If you think you can offer better service to people who want it, in a deregulated economy you can! But today, how can I offer cable to you a la carte, at a price you want, if the cable provider in your area is a government imposed monopoly?
Study the realities of further legislation -- you'll only see that more government introduced "rights" for the consumer will hurt us in the end.
dada
A few days ago a wage-monkey came out to uninstall my telephone interface. After he let himself into my backyard, I politely went out and asked him what the hell he was doing. He explained and then asked me which of the three cable jacks in the house my modem was plugged into. My first reaction was that I didn't have time to trace which line terminated at the appropriate wall jack. Then I realized that he aimed to disconnect two of my three jacks, since I 'obviously' didn't need them. I regarded this idea with disdain, since I wanted the freedom to move my cable modem to a different jack if I were to rearrange my house (and such an activity *is* planned). I told the monkey as much, and he finished his work without disconnecting any jacks.
A few days after that, I accidentally turned on a TV that was still connected to a cable outlet. I saw a picture! I scanned through the channels, and behold, I now had more active channels than I did with the 'digital' service. I wasn't looking to break the law; I simply stepped on the damn remote control.
My suggestion: lose the cable service, keep the cable modem service. Watch TV. Oh, and one more phrase: at your own risk.
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
Wireless cable
Uh... you mean like broadcast TV?
telco delivered video on demand
I predict that this won't happen until we come up with a DRM system that actually works. Content providers want to protect their media, and the law says they have that right. We as a society would be better off-- in the purely lazy, couch potato sense, of course-- with a good DRM infrastructure than without one. I will, of course, get senselessly flamed for this by people who wouldn't recognize a good DRM system if it bit them on the DVD player. Here's a hint: a good DRM system will protect consumers' rights just as much as it protects licensors' rights.
streaming video over IP
How do we fix the fact that this simply doesn't work very well? I've been of the opinion for some time that the best video-on-demand system would be a store-and-watch one. You request a movie or show and your STB/TV/player/whatever starts downloading it. Depending on your bandwidth, the program might take a minute to download or it might take a day. When it's downloaded, you can watch it.
Those of us who own TiVos kind of have this system already. I look at the list of programming that's available over the next several days and decide what I'd like to see. When it comes along, my TiVo records and caches it for me. I can then watch it at my leisure, as many times as I like until I decide to delete it. Couple this mode of operation-- particularly the "season pass" feature that lets you specify repeating program events-- with IP-based content delivery and we might have a winner.
Ultimately this loops back to DRM, though. I don't think content providers would be too excited about this idea unless they knew their rights would be protected, and obviously consumers won't be happy unless they know that their rights are also protected. Ergo, we require good DRM.
I write in my journal
I used to think that it was a way for content providors to extort money out of their customers, until I worked at an unnamed Satellite TV company's call center.
Now I see why there is no a la carte.
It would raise rates all over the place. People who think that they'll get a better deal by only paying for one channel will quintuple call volume at call centers. By calling in several times per day to change programming.
HBO in the morning, ABC in the afternoon, NBC at night, HBO again the next morning. Rinse, repeat.
In order to keep the call center staffed, companies will need to increase the number of operators on the line at any given time. People don't work for free. And the effect of a la carte will be instant. Meaning overtime for countless employees. That is a higher cost. Higher operational costs equal higher consumer costs. Those cheap bastards who are trying to get over on the system will cause everyone else's prices to skyrocket.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The notion of streaming VOD is retarded, which is why we've been promised it for 7 or 8 years... Tivo gets close. Right now, PPV movies tend to cycle so each movie is on four channels, starting every 30 minutes. If your STB recorded the first 30 minutes of each PPV movie (sent on a separate, hidden channel, so you would have it before the movies started showing), then you could VOD them for free. Think about it, at any point I am no more than 30 minutes away from the beginning.
:)
And, to make it proper VOD, it should grab from all 4 channels (feasible even on DBS, as long as they are on the right transponders so that it can all come off one LNB), so 4 minutes fill in each minute. You have the first 30 minutes queued up (so you can rewind fast foward, etc), and within 30 minutes, the entire 2 hours block is recorded.
I would expect an HD Tivo (DirecTivo model, maybe an HD Tivo cable version when the open cable really happen) in about 6 months, gauging us early adopters. Once that happens, we start moving into Tivos w/ really big hard drives. The HD channels may always be limited, but the 480p spec allows streaming DVD quality films, which is probably "good enough" for PPV, etc.
Give it 2 years, and DirecTV and Dish release a killer VOD system on top of their time-shifting PVR boxes.
TV tech is finally getting good.
But yeah, DRM is necessary. However, the studios need to realize that the stuff will get out, but they can keep it out of mainstream. Downloading TV/Movies won't occur unless convergence happened, and its a dying fad. People don't want interactive television, most people don't want PVRs. People watch TV to vege, and that's the reality that all us gadget freaks miss when we wonder why something isn't there yet.
However, at least w/ the tech, hopefully they will make new and exciting toys for those of us willing to pay a premium. VHS took off, S-VHS and Laserdisc never hit mainstream, but DVD got HUGE fast. PVRs didn't take off, VOD isn't taking off, maybe whatever comes next will.
Personally, I think that DTV + PVR could do it. I have the Sunday Ticket demo package (4 months w/ everything free), and I was planning to keep all the channels. Currently, I barely take advantage of them, because the ReplayTV doesn't have enough space to store movies. Give me an 80 hour PVR that will find movies for me, and I'm willing to pay for all the movie channels.
If you could find movies for me and I could have 30 movies (plus all my weekly shows), constantly rotating, of which 5 could interest me... Good bye Blockbuster, and I'm happy to send ~$100 to DirecTV each month.
Alex
So why not make these channels optional too, but with a negative price, i.e. get QVC and take $0.50 a month off your bill? I expect most people would just program their TVs to skip over these channels anyway, just like we do now, but with a bit of a savings.
I have a DVD player, and don't mind buying movies. I have walls of books. But broadcast TV? Why?
What about billing by the minute for whatever channels you watched last month? Could be variable on a per-channel basis.
The concept is doubtless rife with problems (such as, the cable company can't bill you in advance and make money from the interest on your advance payment) but anyone here care to take a stab at making it a workable concept?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?