Slashdot Mirror
AOL will launch TiVo-like Mystro service
Jason1729 writes "According to this article on Yahoo, AOL is launching its on version of a PVR service. The content will be stored at the cable provider and not in the local hardware. That seems to be a huge disadvantage because it will use a lot more cable bandwidth transfering the content for a single viewer. It sounds like they're doing it that way so they can restrict which shows you can use the service with (like lock out new episodes of network shows)."
If AOL truly does it right and makes it 100% server-side, what do they put as a "decoder box" in your living room? Why not offer PC software so that you can access your Mystro account from anywhere, and watch your shows? I'd be all over that - being able to set up my laptop on the road in a hotel with high-speed internet and not have to suffer with the hotel's lousy cable.
What's your damage, Heather?
It's interesting to note that this is where TiVo started out - the original project the TiVo pioneers worked on was the HSN cable network which offered exactly these features.
Meanwhile over in the UK we were promised similar features years ago but because our cable providers are cash strapped at the moment they've not yet appeared.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Seriously, other than the waste of bandwidth, how is this better than a Tivo?
Just like spam, they only have to hit 1% of they're target audience to call it a success.
And with the # of ma and pa's far outnumbering kiddies and in the know professionals who will avoid this like the plague, they're destined to be a beacon to any large distributor who doesn't want they're movie Tivo'd....err PVR'd.
Distributor: AOL, please don't PVR our show, it's under "special" programming
AOL: That will be 50 Million.
Distributor: That's hiway robbery! Forget it, I'm not paying.
AOL: Fine, we just "automatically" PVR'd it for all our customers and provided live feed for all our Internet Subscribers
Distributor: You Can't do that!
AOL: We can't? Who ya gonna call? SLASHDOT! HAHAHAHAHA!
Distributor: No, they don't have any real power except the occasional network bandwidth block. Here's your money.
AOL: Yeah! We get to show better than expected Earnings!
Bah.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred (AOL FREE) with American Buttering.
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
i realize that disk space is cheap, but this could be interesting! if a user (viewer?) is allowed 6 hours (i say six because you have 6hr miniseries) and this takes (a guess!) 10G and you have 10,000 viewers.... thats's 100TB! damn.
it seems like the tivo model is a wonderful example of distributed computing here!
eric
That seems to be a huge disadvantage because it will use a lot more cable bandwidth transfering the content for a single viewer.
There certainly is a disadvantage in terms of bandwidth, but there is an advantage in terms of storage -- by storing everything centrally, they only need to keep one copy of each program instead of having millions of copies spread around the network. (Ok, they'd actually have more than one copy, but it would still be far less than the millions otherwise needed.)
This also means that people wouldn't need to program in advance what they wanted to record, since AOL could proactively store everything.
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
It sounds like they're doing it that way so they can restrict which shows you can use the service with (like lock out new episodes of network shows).
From the article:
The New York Times, which was the first to report the details of AOL's Mystro project, said it would allow networks to determine which shows could be rescheduled and to insert commercials into replays.
There's your answer. They don't want people skipping commercials, and they want full control over rescheduling.
"I'd rather have a full bottle in front of me than a full frontal lobotomy"
The reason that all the equipment is going to be at the cable provider is because of the fact that with this new service, you will not be able to skip commercials like you are able to with tivo. Most of the same features are there, pausing live tv, skipping shows, etc. But, from what I have heard, you will not be able to skip commercials, and there will be commercial pop-ups when the tivo is in a freeze frame. Companies that advertise don't like tivo for the fact that nobody sees their ads anymore.
Alcohol & calculus don't mix. Never drink & derive.
Comcast already has this too. AOL is playing catchup.
You don't need to pay for service. I built a mythtv! And the programing info is generated by
xmltv! For $0.00!
Check out mythtv.org
Giving the public more control over content delivery is what makes a successful product. MP3, Tivo, internet, etc. Restricting content delivery is doomed to failure (Divx (not the codec, the DVD replacement)).
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
When a perfectly usable product is crippled and destroyed, and then remarketed as new and improved, don't you?
The only stuff I would want to record is new episodes of network shows. And they expect to sell a service that doesn't do what the consumer wants? These guys haven't finished Economics 101. Send em back to college.
Seriously, why would AOL care anyway? They don't own NBC, CBS or ABC do they? Whatever happened to laisse faire?
I'm told that somewhere between 95% and 93% of the fiber-optic 'net backbone is unused; sounds like AOL is trying to light most of it up!
However, there is the obvious (at least to me) problem of bandwidth to the home. The vast bulk of homes that do have broadband are sharing reasonably limited bandwidth with other homes. Streaming high-quality video to many people at once who are sharing moderate bandwith seems like a no-go. In otherwords, it seems to me that if the service catches on, they're dead; they'll have to strive for mediocrity.
Unless we put fiber into everyone's home. Yeah!
I'll keep my Tivo for now. One of the best things I ever purchased.
They're not putting it at the head-end so they can restrict content, nor is it a bandwidth problem - just the opposite. They're putting it at the head-end so that cable networks can make it a revenue source.
Cable companies are spending their biggest fortunes at the moment installing Video-on-Demand systems, many of which already have PVR functionality built in. Bandwidth is no more of an issue with stopping, starting, and feeding a PVR stream than with a VOD stream. The only difference is disk space and where it gets its content from.
A much more core issue (and one that would be much for fun to stir up /. with, IMO) is that of content rights. Selling a box that allows consumers to record and play shows at home is one thing, but getting large cable companies into the business of caching broadcast content and then essentially 'reselling' that cached content without complex revenue-sharing agreements is a can of worms indeed.
They seem to adress this here:
"For example, if Mystro TV is successfully developed and the appropriate rights secured from owners of video programming, a subscriber could use the Mystro TV service to watch a program that aired the previous day, or to begin watching from the beginning a show already in progress," AOL said.
So to me this sounds like a VOD product that gets its content from broadcast television. iN DEMAND has made a decent business aggregating Hollywood studio content for distribution over VOD and taking a cut. Looks like AOL wants to make a niche out of re-distributing older (or very slightly older) television content. Pretty much what the networks are doing now with things like the re-broadcast of "Late Night w/ Conan O'Brian" on Comedy Central, except they get $x per play over VOD.
Not a bad niche - just might work.
------
Believe me, I'm as surprised by my comment as you are.
Storing each TV show on a Tivo for each user who wants to watch it is very inefficient in terms of total storage space used over all the Tivos in the region. By storing each show once, and piping it to users from a central server on demand, the total storage requirement is vastly reduced, and the bandwidth requirement grows possibly linearly with the number of users. Unfortunately this is exactly the opposite of what the world needs right now.
If I seem short sighted, it is because I stand on the shoulders of midgets
So let me get this straight...
AOL is planning on sweeping into a market with an obviously inferior product that gives consumers less control than products that are already on the market, they'll probably charge more for it (wild guess there), and they seriously expect this to be a profit-making venture.
AOL is dumber than Enron.
There's TONS of bandwidth left on cable. Thanks to digital boxes (which take 1/100th of the spectrum that a broadcast channel does), most cable companies are at a small fraction of their max bandwidth.
Cable's such a great solution...it's big, thick, has high potential and is well insulated. It's got less noise than power lines and better range then telephone while being less expensive than copper.
Of course, there's also the matter of the supply boxes at the head end. VOD suppliers are like massive DVRs that operate in parellel -- and they're not perfect yet. There's still a lot of lag when they get loaded and many companies have yet to scale the number of their VOD boxes to match the number of digital subscribers.
I kind of worry that this is intended to replace the really cool DVR devices TW has been testing. The menu system is great and they go a beyond Tivo and the like by allowing your to record almost all pay channels and PPV material (first run stuff is black of course), and by having simple native support for watching one channel while recording another. Sure, Tivo can do this, but it's complicated as hell...my mom, who never even figured out her VCR, uses the DVR without trouble.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Unfortunately, this is a well thought out strategy that will likely hijack the cool technology of Tivo and ReplayTV and wipe them out. It's typical of the corporate mentality today...if someone comes up with something that impinges on the media, first sue them and then when that fails, take away their toys.
Of course, their implementation is never as good or as free (in the liberated sense) but they've got the muscle to make it happen. Want Tivo? Well, it'll cost you $250 for the iron and $10/month to keep it going. Oh, wait a second, here's this great online service from the cable company...no iron, $5 a month. Yeah, it's not the same thing, and we take control of your viewing habits (forced commercials, can't record certain shows, we keep a record of the crap you're watching and sell it, etc) but come on, it's cheap and easy.
And, sadly, in the America of today, that's likely the product that will succeed.
I'm a 2 1/2 year Tivo user and it's the best thing ever created for television, and I tell anyone who asks that. However, the startup costs were inconsequential for me and I recognize that's not always the case...despite my evangelizing the product, a grand total of zero of my friends have Tivos. But I bet more than a few of them will opt for something like this.
Also, for all of those sooo proud of your homebuilt's: You've reinvented the VCR, just more awkward, more expensive, and without cheap media.
Does your whatever adjust for scheduling changes, support wishlists, do smart scheduling that'll ignore recently recorded programs, re-runs, etc? Does it do this all automagically or do you need to rely on screen-scrapers or poor quality listings?
I don't mean to bust on folks, and all props to homebrew, but don't go calling something TiVo-like unless it really has the TiVo feature-set. If you've just managed to turn your couple-hundred-buck PC into an awkward thirty-buck VCR then call it what it is...
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
... that tivo and others are getting popular. In my area they are pushing their PPV-on-demand services -- as well as HBO/Showtime on demand -- very heavily. I did order a movie using the service and found that I could, indeed, pause it, fast-forward, rewind, etc.. but seeing as I already have those features on Tivo, it's not as much of a draw for me as it might be for a brand-new subscriber.
1) As evidenced by Lotus Notes' "shared message", it'll never go away. SOMEONE will want to keep it, indefinitely. And be ultra-pissed when it vanishes. So you're going to wind up holding a lot of programming forever. What are they going to say? "content only available for 1 year" and you can't tape it on your VCR?
2) I think this may be doomed. I've said in the past that Free as in Beer trumps a lot of things. But if you can't tape tonight's Friends, what's the point? Then Joe Consumer has to say "well, I can't watch that on the cable box, so I have to tape it? Why am I paying the money?". More confusion will trump Free Beer.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
Yeah, it just might work. But you don't want it to. Here's why.
Today, if you want to watch a TV series, or a movie, over and over at your leisure then you can buy the DVD. When you buy the DVD, the publisher makes some money. If we're talking about a $20 movie, then the studio might make $5-$10 from the sale, once the retail markup, distribution, production, royalties, marketing and other costs are considered.
But once you've bought the DVD, the publisher will make no more money out of you for that particular title. Yes, if you've got more money than sense (or if you really, really want it) then they might manage to sell you a director's cut, special edition or whatever but the bottom line is that the publisher will only make a fixed amount from you no matter how often you watch the product.
However, if they could keep the movie, but sell you access to it, at $3 per viewing, then pretty soon they'll have recouped the same amount of money if not more from you. Let's face it, any movie that you like enough to go out and buy on DVD is one that you'll happily sit down and watch at least two or three times, and at $3 a time that's $6-9 already. Then you get your Star Wars devotees and Titanic nuts who'll watch their favourite movie at least once a week. Now your talking about at least $150 per year from just one movie.
Now let's consider how else those customers could be milked/revenue streams maximised. Well, for one thing you could charge different customers different prices. Charge Titanic nuts who'll pay $4 per view that amount while charging those that'll only pay the basic $3 "only" $3. Charge a premium for watching Disney movies on Sunday afternoons, or whatever else you want.
Charging different customers different amounts for the same product is nothing new and it's certainly not something that companies are embarrassed about - Amazon does it, and so do mobile (cell) phone providers. So you can bet that AOL (or whoever) would do it too given the chance.
This isn't going to happen tomorrow, or next year, or in five years but it is coming. It's just to attractive for the publishers and broadcasters to ignore forever.
So, while a broadcast/cable provider-end storage solution Tivo might not sound like a big deal on its own, it does sound like a pretty big when you take it to its obvious conclusion.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
There is an easier way for networks to prevent commercial skipping - the ad crawl. You already see those animated cars promoting some show roaming across the bottom of the screen, or the little show "window" surrounded by sports or stock info. I have no doubt that it will become the standard method of advertising, with 1/4 (or more) of the screen dedicated to advertising constantly. Commercial breaks will disappear. A law could be passed to prevent automated blockage of that part of the screen, and the ads will rotate from the bottom to the top and sides to prevent someone from just taping a piece of cardboard to the bottom of the screen.
Sorry to be so negative, but if I were in charge of a network it would have already been done. And as soon as one does it, the rest will rapidly follow.
What you forgot is that AOL is really AOL-Time Warner, and they own most of the content providers!
Time Warner owns The WB, CNN, CNN Headline News, TBS, TNT, TCM, Cartoon Network, but not much else that I surf past on basic cable. Time Warner does not own CBS, UPN, MTV, Nickelodeon (all Viacom), or ABC, ABC Family, ESPN, Disney, Toon Disney (all Disney). None of them owns NBC, MSNBC (Gen Elec Co), A&E, The History Channel, The Biography Channel (A&E TV Nets), Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet (Discovery Comms), BET (BET Nets), E!, style. (E! Ent Nets), Fox, Fox News (News Corp),
Will I retire or break 10K?
Now, although obviously I am not every consumer in America, I am unable to see what this service has to offer, and what they honestly believe will make people choose their service over something else the consumer can have much more control over.
I used to think Peter Shipley was cool. Then I aged past 16.
Myth 1: Viewers always skip the commercials when watching a record program. This isn't true and anyone with a DVR/PVR can verify this fact. You watch commercials that interest you or perhaps even just plain forget to forward through.
Myth 2: Advertisers automatically hate DVRs/PVRs because of Myth 1. As recently reported on Slashdot, there is at least one study to show that retention levels are just as high for viewers who fast forward through commercials than those who watch them at normal speed. Of course, everyone's gut reaction is that DVRs/PVRs are bad for advertisers because they have the capability to fast forward.
Myth 3: Hot women are great in bed. I'm not suggesting you start sleeping with ugly women, but don't assume anything.
Myth 4: Media companies are smart. Ok, that's not a myth but it is a point I want to make. ReplayTV was sued because it allowed users to email shows and had a "instant" commercial skip function. Besides the fact that emailing the show is no different than recording it on a VCR and giving the tape to a friend (which is completely legal under the fair use doctrine), the media companies just want to treat anything in digital form different because it lets them fight a battle that they already lost 20 years ago. Their argument is essentially that any device which COULD be used for illegal purpose is inherently illegal. Their goal is to continue their business model of reselling content. Take a movie. Pay to see it in a theater. Buy the video or DVD. Purchase it on PPV. This is because they truly feel that the content is licensed and not owned (in a limited fashion) by the consumer. As long as they can resell it, the economics make sense because they get multiple returns for the production. DVRs/PVRs and the change in behavior are one step in the process for destroying that model. Record a digital version of a movie on PPV and then burn it to a consumer DVD burning device. Then loan the copy to a friend. Each step is removing a revenue stream from the media company. And they don't know how to stop this.
CmdrTaco on Tuesday March 11, @01:53AM
from the now-here's-where-it-get-interesting dept.
admiral2001 writes "Here is is a NYTimes story about AOL-Time-Warner's plans for a TiVo-killing 'Mystro TV' (nytimes annoying free registration required). They plan to begin rolling this out sometime in the next two years. Their major features are the simple pause, rewind, and fast forward that all PVRs have. However, they've taken the obvious stance to "let[s] networks set the parameters, dictating which shows users can reschedule, and it also creates ways for networks to insert commercials." The article even mentions how they could get an advantage in pushing their product because "viewers could try out Mystro TV by pushing a button on their remote"."
I have a TiVo. I just sold it on ebay. I'm switching to DirecTV because I want to get the integrated DTV receiver w/TiVo builtin. It has a huge number of advantages over a standalone TiVo. But that's not the point.
The point is that it's fully supported by DirecTV. And it's highly unlikely that DirecTV will ever go to some centralized server like the AOL/Mystro solution because Sat TV is (for the most part) one way. So for DirecTV the best solution is a distributed solution like TiVo, rather than a centralized solution like Mystro.
And I know at least one person who, when their DirecTV receiver broke, decided to replace it with a TiVo enabled receiver.
So I don't think TiVo is going away. It may not replace the VCR as a consequence of being effectively locked out of the cable market. But it isn't going away. It'll just be a different upgrade feature for DirecTV. They'll advertise it as Mystro on steroids, and they'll let AOL do 90% of the marketing.
$.02
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
"For example, if Mystro TV is successfully developed and the appropriate rights secured from owners of video programming, a subscriber could use the Mystro TV service to watch a program that aired the previous day, or to begin watching from the beginning a show already in progress," AOL said.
If your Tivo does not record a show, its gone - with this it appears that in some cases you can watch the show without waiting for repeats.
I have a TiVo as well..
...
I watch *more* television shows/programs in *less* time than I watched before.
By skipping commercials, I can watch 2 "1-hour" shows in 1.5 hours. Watching 10 "hours" of TV programming can be done in 6.5 hours with Tivo. I do a lot of things that interest me with an "extra" 2.5 hours of time!
If I want to go out to dinner, go to a movie, or go out of town, I don't have to worry about taping and/or missing any of the shows I *really* want to watch - this is especially handy on weekend nights.
Yes.. I skip commercials.. BUT, I would say that I have absolutely no interest in > 90% of the commercials being shown:
-I'm not looking to buy a new car
-I'm not looking to buy a new PC - "Dude! I'm NOT getting a Dell!
-I don't eat fast food
-I'm a guy and don't need make-up, feminine hygiene products, nor do I want to have an "organic experience" when washing my hair
-I am not looking to refinance a house
-I don't watch Oprah, Dr. Phil, or any of those other mindless talk shows.
-I don't care about commercials for other shows tha I have absolutely no interest in - I don't care what time they come on nor do I want to see whatever stupid teaser you're going to put in the commercial
-I'm 33 years old - I don't need senior citizen "supplemental insurance" and/or home delivery of drugs, etc.
Have I left anything out?
It's not my fault that the delivery model for television advertising is lagging behind the technology. Why should I waste my time watching commercials that do not apply to me or that I have no interest in seeing? Now.. there are a few commercials that I will watch - even on the Tivo -- Commercials for TV shows that I am interested in, funny commercials, commercials for other sci-fi shows, commercials for motorcycle stuff, some commercials for home remodeling/etc.
What I would like to see is more targeted advertising that gives me information that I really want to see. Have the commercials downloaded to the Tivo and insert them dynamically into the program at the commercial breaks. Maybe embed a signal in the broadcast that would indicate the start of the commercial break and how long it is to run.. Let me "rate" the commercials like I can "rate" programs on the Tivo - 1,2, or 3 thumbs-up or thumbs down and give me 85% of the commercials that I have said I want to receive and 15% of commercials that you think I would want to receive based on the ratings of my tv programs and commericals.
Just like with the TV shows, give me something tha I want to watch and I will watch it.
In other words, claiming bandwidth will hold you back is pure fud. You can put 10,000 people on a single line card and get speeds of over 5Mbps per subscriber if you feed that head end with a wide enough pipe. (Multiple GigE interfaces?)
I've been saying that they should throttle at their internet border for a long time (they being cable companies) and give you some more bandwidth to internal content, like NNTP. That would doubtless distract people from using the internet at large quite so much. It would also allow more traffic between subscribers.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Kingston Interactive Television have been doing this for over 3 years in the UK and each development has been submitted to slashdot only to rejected. (I wonder why ?)
Kingston are the world leaders in real Interactive DTV and nobody has come even close to duplicating the same range of services. As well as PVR, it is the only system in the world to offer user directed content, true VOD, DTV, Internet to the TV, Broadband Internet to the PC and webmail, all for ~£30 (50 USD/EURO)pcm.
As for the fact AOL have been developing this system in secret. Well I'll settle to call it an open secret in the DTV Industry. They tried to sell ourselves their system/technology and stated it would be ready for launch within months, however they had no STB, no content and few details; this was two years ago.
We then demonstrated our live system, already superior to what they offered and they went white, literally.
One thing I don't think anybody's brought up yet, and the thing that worries me the most, is that the real potential to kill Tivo (and the entire concept behind it) would be when Mystro eventually and inevitably becomes standard cable. Look at DTV - it's practically a requirement here in NYC now, and if you go to Time Warner's web site, I challenge you to find any information at all on their analog cable offerings. Mystro will eventually become the standard cable service which will render Tivo not just unnecessary, but useless. In order to use the two together you'd have to select a TV show to watch on cable, then manually record it on Tivo - which basically puts Tivo in "boat anchor" mode; the Tivo service itself does nothing.
And of course, along the way you lose any real choice about the TV shows you want to watch or when you want to watch them, since there may only be a certain window of time a show is available, for example (this is true of Tivo by default as well, though you can always tell Tivo to keep a program "until I delete it").
My problem is not with this service being available, as I see no reason to switch from my Tivo. But it's silly to dismiss this as an idea that won't work. All AOL has to do is make it part of the standard cable service and boom - no more Tivo for anyone. It's not as if there's any actual competition among cable providers. (There's satellite, yeah, but as I know first-hand as an unfortunately former DirecTV subsriber, satellite is not always available to apartment dwellers. And this is a city of apartments.)