Slashdot Mirror
Pay-Per-View Downloads of TV Shows?
An Extremely Anonymous Coward asks: "I've been thinking about the mass downloading of TV episodes. The TV companies appear to not be so desperate to sue people into bankruptcy for watching an illicit episode of _Friends_ or _The OC_. Does this mean they really are wondering about using this new media, rather then foaming at the mouth and suing twelve year olds? Will TV show production companies be the first to show some sense and offer their own downloads on a pay per view basis?"
"I'd be happy to pay a monthly subscription of around ten dollars, so I could get access to tv shows without being branded a criminal.Alternatively, I'd happily pay around a dollar a show, if the quality was good. The argument that this would give no incentive to buy the series DVD's can easily be dealt with, since the sales from downloads might easily replace the revenue from the DVD box sets, and there are some people (myself included) who'd still like the higher definition versions and box sets of a few shows.
Adverts in the deal would change the amount per episode I'm willing to pay. Perhaps options like a free stream with unavoidable adverts, or a subscriber download with either very few, or no adverts, with price determining the amount of adverts included might help entice more users to use the service. A free stream of a popular show with adverts would probably stop most illegal downloaders, simply because their aim of watching the show would be achieved.
DRM is inevitable, which may be why it's taking so long for the executives in control of such things to pull their fingers out. The fact that it's essentially pointless doesn't seem to have stemmed their lust for it. I own lots of DVDs, and yet curiously I've never once had the urge to copy them, making their included anti-copy technology pointless. Also those who do want to copy them seem perfectly able to anyway, but that's another issue.
I find this delay in legal downloads of TV shows surprising, it seems to me that legal downloads of TV media could be the Internet's next gold-rush phenomena, but maybe that opinion isn't shared by many.
If any kind of service were offered I'd join it, even if only to encourage it. How much would other Slashdot readers be willing to pay? And on what sort of terms?"
Adverts in the deal would change the amount per episode I'm willing to pay. Perhaps options like a free stream with unavoidable adverts, or a subscriber download with either very few, or no adverts, with price determining the amount of adverts included might help entice more users to use the service. A free stream of a popular show with adverts would probably stop most illegal downloaders, simply because their aim of watching the show would be achieved.
DRM is inevitable, which may be why it's taking so long for the executives in control of such things to pull their fingers out. The fact that it's essentially pointless doesn't seem to have stemmed their lust for it. I own lots of DVDs, and yet curiously I've never once had the urge to copy them, making their included anti-copy technology pointless. Also those who do want to copy them seem perfectly able to anyway, but that's another issue.
I find this delay in legal downloads of TV shows surprising, it seems to me that legal downloads of TV media could be the Internet's next gold-rush phenomena, but maybe that opinion isn't shared by many.
If any kind of service were offered I'd join it, even if only to encourage it. How much would other Slashdot readers be willing to pay? And on what sort of terms?"
now tv shows? sure what else, tv-ads.
Will TV show production companies be the first to show some sense and offer their own downloads on a pay per view basis
They'll have to. Don't underestimate the bandwidth of Netflix, Blockbuster, and Walmart via mail truck bouncing down the road. One day the download scene may over take the mail truck bandwidth but the market is going to have to adjust. Distributors will have to figure out a way to make a profit that companies and consumers accept.
I bet the TV show 24 has done almost as well in rentals as it did during original airing. People aren't tied down to show times anymore. Tivo turned on a bulb and the shinning light has freed people to watch what they want when they want. With the FTTP arriving, the bandwidth is getting there now the companies have to get inline.
No, it means that it's still only nerds and geeks that are downloading everything. Once RSS & Bittorrent become mainstream, easy to use and/or standard features on HD Recorders, THEN the shit will hit the fan.
Think about it, you catch show #10 of '24' and realize "Hey, this show looks damn cool!". Now, if you could PPV rent the firs nine shows of the season that you missed - wouldn't you?
DAMN YOU OCTODOG! DAMN YOU TO HELL!
Before you flame me - could something like Allofmp3 (that pays royalties) work. Variable quality rates, price per MB, included comericals with lower prices.
I think it would be great!
I've downloaded and watched every episode of The OC, Desperate Housewives, Everwood, Mad About You, and Deadwood... all commercial free and usually available the day after the episode airs. Its better quality (I dont have an HDTV), more convenient, and I can backup all my shows on DVD+Rs for later viewing. I would definately cancel my cable provider if it wasnt for my roommates :P
-Bill
I've been thinking about it too.
Congratulations, thanks for sharing. It's good to see submissions like this get accepted, whilst my newsworthy sumbissions get bounced.
The TV companies appear to not be so desperate to sue people into bankruptcy for watching an illicit episode of _Friends_ or _The OC_.
Which "TV companies?" Are you referring to broadcasting networks? Given that broadcasted networks do not sell TV programs yet, program piracy has yet to impact the "market". But try stream a live event, such as SuperBowl, over P2P and you'll likely get sued. Especially how the NFL grants no unauthorized individual the ability to reproduce or rebroadcast the show, included "verbal descriptions" of the show.
Does this mean they really are wondering about using this new media, rather then foaming at the mouth and suing twelve year olds?
The networks discovered that suing 12 year olds reduced the effectiveness of commercials against said individuals.
Will TV show production companies be the first to show some sense and offer their own downloads on a pay per view basis?
Hopefully it will be before they allow the customer to skip past commercials.
Will TV show production companies be the first to show some sense and offer their own downloads on a pay per view basis?
Pay per VIEW basis is the holy grail of the entertainment industry -- they would *love* to charge you every time you glance in the direction of a copyrighted work...
However what most people seem to want is pay per DOWNLOAD and then be able to view the show whenever they like. For some reason this presents a problem to media execs.
But anyway, it's not like it's hard to buy a DVD (or get it from Netflix) and rip it...
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
*ROFLMAO* The TV Production companies doing the right thing? Aren't these the people who are trying to implement broadcast flags for HDTV? Trying to heavily DRM TiVo devices? Amongst other stupidities I can't even count. While pulling gimmicks like announcing Star Wars trailers will be featured in "the OC?"...
Sorry Mr. Extremely Anonymous Coward, but I have no hope for the TV industry as a whole. Sure they produce a few gems (Whose line is it anyways and The Simpsons come to mind for me), but they're really just like the **AA organizations. Mostly interested in fighting piracy and hardly interested in innovating.
But your idea is a good one though! I'd love the day when I can go to their website and pull down an episode of the Simpson's for a few bucks and watch. I don't think I'll live to see that day, and the only downloadable episodes of the Simpsons will be Torrents/p2p downloads of whatever flavor.
...in bed
Actually the best testing bed is mini-series, where the production cost is pretty low and the show usually ends in 4-6 episodes.
If someone can channel few million dollars donation to make a short film, and make it exclusively internet only, we will be able to better judge the public acceptance of pay-per-view tv.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
The TV companies appear to not be so desperate to sue people into bankruptcy for watching an illicit episode of _Friends_ or _The OC_
This is because there is no "TVAA" piracy division, because historically there has never been a TV piracy problem until a couple of years ago.
Don't be impatient. Just wait a couple of years and they'll be a new member of the *AA class ready to shoot first and ask questions later.
sci-fi's been offering episode 1 of their new battlestar galactica series on their site. doing this on a PPV basis does make sense. a monthly, per network fee would probably be the result, IMV, and i agree that this would go over well. after a while, perhaps a few parties would get together and create a single method whereby you could do that with a single source.
but i think the real key here is gonna be price point.
ed
Isn't one of the ideas behind on demand television to pay a subscription fee and then be able to watch any of the television shows whenever you want?
I'm pretty sure thats the idea, which would be great. Say you want to see an episode of the OC from last week, you just watch it using On Demand and then you don't have to download it. I think that the reason people download the TV shows is because they miss an episode and want to catch up, and don't want to record it on Video.
Just my opinion...
Free Flat Screen
Similarly, local networks get a specified amount of revenue from showing these shows. Take the distribution method out of the loop by allowing the end user to directly access the media content and you'd have some pissed off affiliates.
Furthermore, allowing off network viewing of a show would not only hurt a network's bottom line, but also its brand image. People know FOX is channel 7, or 11, but what channel is it when you're downloading from a website? Even if it is fox's website.
When you buy a DVD series, the per episode cost is usually around 1 - 3 bucks an episode. I would imagine that the studios could charge 4.99 for NTSC/PAL and 7.99 for HDTV and that would be acceptable for most people. especially if they released at the begining of the week. Maybe they could release a version with the commercials still embedded for $.99/1.99. Either way, there is more profit potential than dvd series releases. It becomes more of an impulse buy, which taken on the whole should come out to more than the deliberate descision of waiting for the DVD box set. ( which the diehards would by anyway for the 'special features' )
Broadcasters aren't as concerned as the RIAA because TV shows are expected to have a limited number of viewings, unlike the last music hit from *INSERT GROUP* where it's listened to over and over and over....etc DVD set mainly offer a viewer the opertunity to catchup on a missed episode... a download service could certainly fill that void as well. Keep in mind that the Broadcasters created a model where they expect everyone to have "free" access to the product.
I'm more all about On-Demand TV. Keep a large back-catalog of your shows. This way, when I stumble onto something like Battlestar Galactica in the middle of the season, I can immediately go grab the episodes I missed on my TiVo so I don't have to pray and worry about the series getting cancelled. See Firefly.
I don't think DVD sales will suffer much because I've seen all kinds of quality rips on *torrent, which is nice when I want to "preview" a show to see if I like it. But I'll still buy the DVD set, just as I still buy CD's after checking out stuff via limewire or whatever. But that's entirely an unqualified/uneducated guess.
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
They will charge people $2 per episode to view it only once. That would mean there would'nt be many people that would use the service, and the members of the MPAA will say "See, people don't want watch the TV shows legally, there's no market for having TV shows online. That would give them power to revive the Induce act, this time, all Republicrats will be for it.
There is no way each show would cost a dollar, or only 10 bucks a month. Mp3s cost more per song and they are trying to raise the price, and Napster charges 15 bucks a month I believe. Look for it in the 5 bucks per and 40 bucks a month range. (Kinda the same as it costs to get TV anyway.)
Granted he is also offering all the TnA you can stand, but the idea is already there. I would hope he is making money off this as it would allow more "content providers" to place their stuff on the web for pay-per-view.
Sometimes I wish computers were less friendly.
I have a friend who is an expert bit torrent user and has some sort of massive switch that can record from any source to any format. He gave me a copy of 'The Office Special' that he recorded off cable. The quality wasn't the greatest, and there were no subtitles available, so it was hard to catch all the dialog. If there was an easy way (like iTunes) to get these shows, I would pay for the quality and features.
They will fight it tooth and nail just like the RIAA. They don't see the way the market is going, end up fighting until they are forced to adopt it.
The most interested is the porn industry. They WANT you to spread their videos. RIAA & MPAA & whatever the tv show makers are called don't get it. It is what people want, just not what they want. They will eventually, they could make a fortune now, but no, it is easier to fight the whole way for them.
It is about convenience for most people, i don't mind using iTunes because i don't feel like searching the net 20 minutes if there is a song i MUST have.
Tivo turned on a bulb and the shinning light has freed people to watch what they want when they want.
Video recorders were invented in the mid-70s. Tivo may be a nice usability enhancement, but the "freedom" to record and watch later has been around for decades.
What you are talking about here is, basically, TV on demand. It is coming and in some markets it is already here.
Why would they care about downloads? They get money selling advertising.
The music companies should do the same.
I'd be happy to pay a monthly subscription of around ten dollars, so I could get access to tv shows without being branded a criminal
And this is where AOL / Time Warner really missed the boat.
Can you imagine how many new AOL Broadband subscribers there would be if your $20 / month fee included the ability to watch all of the previous seasons Sopranos? or Carnivale?
Well, it all has to do with the business model. While I certainly see a niche market for pay per view downloads, is it really possible for a massive shift to user-supported content? Well, someone will object "offer the content on TV, with commercials and then offer commercial free online for a nominal fee". But as the shift towards people paying for commercial free content grows, the advertising dollars would diminish. So really, the fundamental question is, could a show sustain on direct user paid fees? I say no. For reference, in an odd way, look at the Slashdot article and hubbub about the latest Star Trek. They are in effect, raising funds from users, and the millions it takes is astounding.
Now granted, a perfect example is HBO. Completely subscription based, and it survives if not thrives. However HBO has very little original content in the grand scheme of things. Also, there are only a handful of those types of channels. And comparing that to an internet-TV-subscription model doesnt translate perfectly.
Personally, I hope it can happen, but I just do not see it as likely.
...they can't enforce their copyrights as aggressively as Hollywood can. In the US you are allowed to tape a television broadcast and give that tape to a friend. The US Supreme Court said that like 20 years ago.
You're not allowed to do that with a motion picture DVD you bought or rented.
In other words, they have very little to gain from going after people who are taping TV shows.
"Will TV show production companies be the first to show some sense and offer their own downloads on a pay per view basis?"
Not for any reasonable price no. All studios these days are scared silly about pirating because people like the RIAA have convinced them the losses will eventually bankrupt them. Instead of it being the same problem it's been for years. So when they do offer downloads (and they will, just to see) it'll be at some outrageious price I'm sure.
Hell even discovery (which has some great shows) wants like $24.99 for an episode on DVD. What would be the price to download $20.99?
-- I have fans? Wow.
Is that supposed to be pay-per- view or pay-per-download? I mean if they expected us to pay them everytime we wanted to watch our favorite show of say Family Guy or 24 that would cost hundreds of dolars a month (ok tens of). Wouldn't a pay-per-download of an episode be a much better (say easier) buisiness model.
And on another note would the episodes we download from the TV stations have commercials or could the cost of producing and such be covered by the revenue of the downloading?
What are you expecting to find here?
The copyright law is the same, but actively prosecuting (or re-selling) something which has been previously distributed without cost will simply be more problematic than doing the same for movies or music.
I've always thought that time-shifted programs were ok. I understand that the company wants the ads to stay in, but the truth is that if I could download a show with ads I would put up with them. Hell, DRM them I don't care. The truth is that I can't always watch TV shows when they are on TV, I don't have a TIVO or the equivalent, but I want to be able to watch certain shows. So, let me download them, I'll watch the ads, and they can still get ad revenue. My $.02!
This Wired article has some great insight into the difficulty of licensing the music that occurs, even fleetingly, in TV shows. David Pogue also commented on this in his NY Times blog recently. He was told by a TV producer that segments that air only once, such as news shows, couldn't be offered for download because of the licensing nightmare to clear every visual and audio element of the broadcast that may have licensing restrictions. These issues might not be insurmountable but they sure represent a huge hurdle for an industry that's not inclined to embrace the Internet as a distribution method in the first place.
At 1 dollar per show would cost primetime tv addicts a fortune. Most people have at least 1 show they are addicted to. If you wanted to watch shows like this your bill could run really high at that price model. I wouldn't pay more than 0.25 maximum.
$2... No, perhaps $3? Even $5 doesn't seem too steep.
$5 (per week/episode), to download the latest installment of my favourite show(s). Of course, it would have to be a fast download, HDTV plus 5.1 and <blink>*no* *effing* *DRM*</blink> .
I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.
Film companies get pissed off at pirates because they make their money from people buying tickets to see the film or the DVD.
:-)
TV shows are already paid for by the networks, and even if you download the occasional show, chances are you still have a cable / satellite subscription. Hence, no money lost, although I guess DVD sales might not be so good in the long run.
I've used Bittorrent to keep up to date with Stargate while I've been away from home. My parents have a Sky subscription so we have "sorta" paid for the ability to watch. After all, it's no different from my dad recording it and posting a tape up.
Mind you, we're putting a 250GB disk in our Sky+ box this Easter so we can just record all the shows I want and watch them once a month.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
I would say, if anything, it provides them of a way to see what shows are successful (Maybe it's not a fair test, more of a computer geek statistic). But the music industry has used the songs that have been popular in downloads (illegal&legal) to inform them on what the people want.
He is set to land in Kansas within the hour.
I too would ditch my cable TV in an effort to select shows to watch.
... the message isn't the shows content. the show is merely a medium to deliver the real message: advertisements.
It seems like a business model could be setup by the broadcasters, but we are forgetting one thing...
The advertising model currently used is in trouble if shows are delivered as downloads. Advertisers ran scared with VCR's and now with DVR's - this would make things much worse for them.
There needs to be a shift in the revenue models for broadcasters - their customers are not their viewers, but are their advertisers.. what you suggest may seem simple and obvious, but it is really a VERY big change - you want the viewers to be the customers.
I would say broadcasters are reluctant to give the viewers much more control than they already have under the current structure of things - they need to keep their customers (advertisers) happy.
..mork
What, you mean production decisions made based on the actual value to viewers?
The only problem is that the only things left on TV will star 20 year olds playing the parts of teenagers who whine about their parents and sleep with their best friend's S.O.'s.
Then again, it could save Enterprise.
(I'm not sure that that's any better.)
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
But there are a few shows I would still like to watch occasionally. I can borrow DVD series from friends or I can download them via bittorrent. I wouldn't mind paying a small monthly fee to download a limited number of TV programs legally. Although, I am realistic and know this WILL NEVER HAPPEN!
Meh.
Somewhere thousands of lawyers are sharpening their pencils
The stations make their main dollars from advertising by charging based on viewership. It does not really matter that people get up during the ads to get another beer/take a dump etc. Anything they can do to hike the viewership numbers is considered a GoodThing. If they can do this through counting downloads then they win.
Pay per view is a barrier to hiking the viewership numbers.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I'd gladly pay for show downloads, especially if I could get on-demand anything. I'd like to see an "interspersed ad", "no ad", and "frontloaded ads only" version (traditional, ad-free, and maybe an ad or three at the start but then uninterrupted), so I could choose the level of marketing.
You know, while we at it, this leads to far more POWERFUL marketing. Imagine a fully interactive system where you got showed 6 ads, at the start of a program, each 30 sec-1 min. You could choose to watch any/all of them, but you had to watch 1 before watching the show. You pick, you watch it, you're back at the menu, and now you can continue to the show.
I'd probably be watching ads for stuff that interests me - movies, books, maybe music, computer-related things, PSA-type things possibly, etc. And I wouldn't be force-fed the same obnoxious commercials over and over.
On-demand pay media could not only become a big improvement, it could become a far more effective marketing channel than it is.
... but it'll have the same issues as online music stores. Some people pay to get their content in a legit way, but most still prefer the free route.
Problems? How bout bandwidth? Effective DRM? Who would be licensed to sell it?
How about demand? Online music stores took off at the same time as the iPod and iTunes. There is still no viable option for effective and efficient storing and viewing of video (not for the average consumer at least).
Don't misunderstand me though, I hate TV and commercials and would be more than happy to see a move away from the current system.
This case could represent the first step in delivering TV to a whole new audience (for instance, as a university student, I do not own (or want) a TV, so I only watch what I download).
Customers matter in the end, so if you want to see downloadable (or streamable or whatever) television, contact the people in charge: Fox Broadcasting Company 10201 West Pico Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90035 Phone: 310-369-3553
The toad can't burp - and for some reason can't fart either, so it swells up and eventually explodes. --Anonymous Coward
I only subscribe to the cable internet service, but I wouldn't mind having access to downloadable TV content.
The only reason I don't watch TV is the amount of chaff vs the number of shows that would interest me...
Plus the fact that the current system does not allow anyone to watch much TV from overseas.
Everytime my cable ISP calls me to ask me if I'm interested in their new TV cable deal, I ask "do you have any channels from Japan?" The guy always says no, so I tell him "call me back when you offer access to *all* tv channels on this planet. You have the technology, but until you make it happen, count me as not-interested."
Let's take the inaction of an entire industry, twist it around, and make wild baseless assumptions based on it!
I stole movies. Then they gave me Netflix, and that was more convenient and reasonable, so I don't download movies anymore. I stole music. Then they gave me iTuenes music store, and that was more convenient and reasonable, so I don't do that anymore. Now I download TV shows. Charge me $5 and episode for good quality, everlasting rights, and I'll happily pay for that.
Maybe im a little un-informed, and i probably am....
but last time i checked, Prime Time TV doesnt cost me a dime. Yeah you could say you pay monthly for cable or satallite access, but you dont NEED cable or sattalite to watch the fox network, or NBC or other local channels, its still broadcasted over the air, and from what i know, the only thing that cost me is the cost of the TV. Sure i dont have the HDTV, but, the downloads ive seen off the net of TV shows, (the ones i have seen remember) are just as good of quality as what i would get on aired TV.
so my question is, if its free to watch on a tv, why is it illegal to download and watch on a computer?
is it wrong for me to compare TV shows to open-source?
I've thought, boy, wouldn't it be great if I could just download some Sesame Street for the kids or NOVA episodes for myself? Well, there is an entire industry around selling DVDs and videocassette tapes. Even PBS is in on this racket . They sell Nova episodes for $20 a pop! You can watch some of them online for free, but they try really damned hard to control the content and prevent users from downloading the shows.
It is a racket, and people buy the stuff. Go to a library or a children's hospital. Look at how many videos they buy of shows that could be taped from the television. This stuff obviously sells. Why should these stations go through the effort to make their content available online for $1 an episode, only to have it traded on P2P networks? People are spending the big bucks on the prepacked stuff.
There is no way to get around that we will eventually have DRM-protected Video on Demand. Most likely it will come (in the US) in the form of cable PVR set-top boxes with DOCSIS 2.0 modems in them, as well as MPEG2/4 hw encode/decode, and probably a web browser of some sort.
I've seen numerous boxes that had most of this stuff that were actually in production. It's only a matter of time. There's money to be made, so it shall be done. The box will also be your router/gateway box, and probably have either 802.11g or a slot for same in the back. Many of the existing units have a smart card slot, which would be a good way to manage the encryption.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Perhaps they're playing wait and see with a target audience. You can already watch episodes of popular soap operas on Soap City
Suck it Trebek
As reported in BBC Technology News last month, UK net users lead TV downloads. Everyone here is desperate to watch 24, The OC, Desperate Housewives, Battlestar Galactica. These 'shows' are typically broadcast month(s) later here.
.ra over RTSP. You can't right-click and save them to your computer, but with the right software you can save the stream (at several times real-time) and listen to them wherever/whenever you like (once you have re-encoded to mp3). Good enough, although the streams aren't great quality (better to use optical out on DAB radio and direct encoding on iRiver). Of course the BBC want to introduce podcasting (legal issues to sort out), so that should make it a lot easier.
This is great for TV-watching geeks (we don't all play CS (ugh) - contary to some studies). Catch the first episode here, decide you like it, and you can download American bootlegs of the next episodes (DVDs aren't usually out).
Any net-based download system would want to be able to prevent users from countries where the shows had not yet been broadcast, otherwise it could catch on where it's not supposed to and some TV channels here could get angry. Of course, it's a similar problem with delayed DVD releases. Multi-region players and cheap shipping mean anyone import DVDs from abroad.
Also, steps would have to be taken to stop people saving the streams and redistributing them over p2p. Think how easy digital CDs and DVDs made it so easy to distribute music and movies (compared to copying tapes). No need to plug a cable from an analogue device into the PC and record in real-time. Just let it rip.
Think of the BBC's Listen Again which lets you listen to all their radio programmes for up to a week after broadcast. They're transmitted in
...I don't know how many people have noticed this, but some DVD releases of Television shows don't include the title music, or include "new" and different title music. This is because when the show was made, the license purchased from the music's creators (...which translates sometimes into a deal between the television show producers and the RIAA...) were sometimes short-term or included certain restrictions that required royalty payments per airing of the show for the title music or soundtrack.
So in comes the DVD, and the television industry sees it as a great opportunity to get a few more bucks but then run into a brick wall with all of the licensing of the content that doesn't directly belong to them.
IANAL, but I can imagine this same situation will happen with any subscription based or pay-per-download model. Depending on how the "deal" is setup, a subscription based model would not be cost effective because every time a person viewed that episode, the provider would have to pay a royalty to the band/RIAA/song writer/actor/actress, etc, etc, etc. The costs to the producers would go up each time a show is viewed while the price paid to them would not change.
So even though it may seem that the television industry isn't controlled by the MPAA/RIAA et. al., in the end...they are still accountable to them. And we all know what their position is on "new distribution models."
"God is dead!" - Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead!" - God
I think Rooster Teeth Production has a great method. DVD sales and subscriptions for the really extra stuff is the way to go. I have acess to all the shows whenever plus I get the new show when it comes out.
I would pay a subscription fee to SciFi and TechTV for a streaming video feed to my computer. I want to have TechTV and SciFi but I don't want to pay for a $50/m package to get them. Why don't they bypass the cable company and sell directly to the viewer? Then more desireable chanels would not be pushed into an expensive package. They could the traffic more managable by having something like P2P-Radio(http://p2p-radio.sourceforge.net/).
To watch their cranial bubble gum. $50 a month doesn't seem too steep. I'd even leave commercials on while I'm out to take a leak.
Hey now, don't knock it! Many people would pay good money for a socially acceptable way to avoid awkward conversations with their family members!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I have access to several channels of VOD content, as a benefit to subscribing to premium services that are actually worth it (such as HBO). And the VOD channels that supplement the premium services (like HBO VOD) don't cost any extra over the premium subscription charge. There are also several channels of PPV-alike VOD content, where you pay $X and get Y hours of viewing (usually Y=48).
so my question is, if its free to watch on a tv, why is it illegal to download and watch on a computer?
While you are not directly paying to watch the show, you are subject to the advertisers who are paying for the show.
Lots of VOD (Video on Demand)opportunities already exist. Scripps Networks (Food, HGTV, etc) already have robust VOD offerings on Comcast's service. Best part? They are free. There's a :30 spot in the beginning, the show and then a :15 or a vignette at the end. That's it. Quite brilliant actually. As VOD matures, this will become more and more commonplace.
VOD from the major networks will probably have a slower adoption rate. Their biz model is busted, but they have a lot of inertia. It takes them a long time to move, but when they do it changes the industry. See TV sets of DVDs. Before there was no way you'd see any sort of compilation before a show was sold into syndication (that's where the real dollars are), but the networks and the studios realized that releasing the DVD sets could capture even more fans and therefore drive higher ratings in subsequent seasons. As a result of the higher ratings, they can sell the shows into syndication for more money. It's a very nice circle.
It'll come. Just not as soon as you'd like. (Isn't that true about everything though?)
How do I know this? It's part of my job.
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
If they did implement something like this, they would probably continue to hold off until they released the DVD's as well. They want to make sure they still make their advertising revenue from commercials when it's aired. IMHO unless it's significantly cheaper than the DVD (which would probably mean lesser quality than the dvd content) there wouldn't be much incentive for consumers not to buy the DVD.
TV shows exist as an advertising vehicle for TV stations. TV stations affiliate themselves with the networks because the network allows them access to shows, scheduling, branding, and marketing - all things you want when you're basically an advertising vehicle.
The TV shows themselves are somewhat independent of the TV Network that shows them - depending on the deal. It all depends on the deal.
An independently produced show (unlikely) could theoretically distribute itself any way it chose. There aren't a lot of options, but it could theoretically syndicate itself to independent stations. That's unlikely, because the draw would be somewhere near 0.
Today, well, it's unclear if providing downloadables would be a viable business, but I doubt it would conflict with the post-season DVD. The post-season DVDs have a lot of extras, and come in a nice box. For the general public, that's hard to beat.
Bandwidth costs alone would make downloadables a losing business. With Bittorrent you're piggybacking off of everyone else's bandwidth, but a real ("official") provider would have brutal bandwidth charges.
Well...some people are willing to pay up to 4 million to watch a season of Enterprise. It's hard to imagine that people would not want to pay a couple of bucks per episode.
Maybe a subscription fee for the entire season?
I have been saying for about the last 10 years that this is the future of TV. Today its looking at lot more realistic than it was 10 years ago. I don't see any technical or financial reason for TV networks not to do this. With the advent of broadband connections the bandwidth is there, if you pay-per download or have a monthly streaming subscription then the networks still get their money. It could also give everyone much better access to content from abroad (presuming the networks aren't so stupid as to only allow domestic users access) and thus give the networks more money. Only problem might be that nobody bothers to watch foreign programs when their domestic networks show the program 6 months after it was made.
I would suggest that there are concerns that by releasing episodes they damage syndication value. I don't know for sure, but I assume that unless a show is wildly successful (read Friends) they will shop syndication and only release DVDs when syndication opportunities are exploited.
4 1&tid=214&tid=129) to generate interest in shows before you see every episode available.
By helping people access episodes on demand they could possibly erode the market value of the show. Re-runs of shows, have a market because people want to watch a show. I would suspect, based on my personal experience, that most of that market is driven by people who have missed episodes and watch regularly to catch what they have never seen.
Everything the entertainment world does is based on specific formulas to generate the greatest amount of revenue. I am sure that if selling access to episodes generated enough money to change the formula, they would do it.
I suspect that you might begin to see more promotions-based downloads (see: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/26/15552
Just my $0.02,
"Perhaps most amazingly, votaries of 'diversity' insist on absolute conformity." -- Tony Snow
Not meaning to sound cheap, but why should we pay for this? Why can't it be advert supported. When the article was recently posted about the UK bittorrent downloading of sites being the highest in the world, I commented that it was the perfect forum for the TV companies to distribute their shows complete with adverts intact. They can then draw the money from advertisers to pay for it (and bandwidth wouldn't be so enormous, they'd just have to seed and catch the slack).
:)
On the other hand, they could probably add a smaller revenue 50c, $1? per show if they offer them on the day (or following day) of original broadcast. That only leaves the problem of the rest of the world!
We get things 6-10 weeks after the US originally broadcasts (in the UK). That gap would have to be closed or the networks over here would complain (and not pay!).
In the end, as I mentioned in reply to the previous article, if there's any TV Execs out there that want this, let me know, I'll set it up for you
10 years ago (95-96) my family tested Bell Atlantic's VOD service called Stargazer. It was MPEG-1 video streamed over a DSL connection that was tied into a settop box (We also were testers for their DSL service -- we had two DSL lines coming into the house over two phone lines at a time when you couldn't get DSL regularly :-p). At the time, they had recently released to video movies available at 3 to 4 bucks, and older TV shows available at about 50 cents a pop. This seemed to be a totally reasonable price for the convenience factor. However, it was generally older shows that were in syndication (think Giligan's Island and I Love Lucy) and not first run/new shows. It seems that this is what companies should be doing with newer shows now that VOD is becoming a market reality...
I'll turn into a supernova and burn up everything. Well I'll turn into a black little hole and you'll turn into string.
I can personally see an online movie store where people can download copies of movies with broadband becoming available practically everywhere.
And I predict that Apple is already looking into this and might release something very similar their iTunes music store. I was surprised how easy iTunes is to use, they just have to put that same philosophy in Movies ( after they have all of the infrastructure to handle the increased load ).
I would gladly pay $1 to download a commercial-free episode of Top Gear, or maybe 50 cents for an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond if they can give me a good download speed ( 200KB/s is good enough for me ). They could even sell movies, DVD quality, but $10-$15 and without the fancy DVD cases and inserts.
It may not be well publicized, but the studios threaten movie swappers just as much as they threaten television show swappers. Paramount routinely sends DMCA violation notices to my university's help desk, and about half of those are people downlaoding shows like Enterprise.
Some TV truths:
1) TV exists due to commercials. The idea is for networks to broadcast free programs, but then to get you to watch the advertisements. They only care that you watch the ads. Everything that doesn't affect you watching ads is not a problem, but things that do are a big problem (like VCR recording and timeshifting).
2) TV networks are experts at fudging the numbers. Big companies like numbers. Networks like numbers. If you can prove that you can get big numbers for a show, you can charge big money for your ad spots. Best Buy won't pay for an ad spot on CSI? Don't worry, Circuit city would love to steal Best Buy's time. Someone will pay the premiums if you can prove in some way they are worth it. Even with declining viewership networks are still charging big bucks for ad slots.
3) If TV networks could find a way to keep you captive on your computer, in order to watch an add, they would do it. You wouldn't be allowed to fast forward or even rewind, except maybe to certain predefined positions in a show.
ESPN is experimenting with a type of set up exactly like this. ESPN offers video news clips on the side bar of their main page. The format appears to be proprietary on the surface, you have to use their in-browser player, and you can't fast forward or rewind. You can select the clip you want, but many of the clips are prefaced by an add that you must watch to see the clip. The quality isn't great, but the idea could be easily improved on and scaled up.
The networks would then have to find a way to prove that this type of advertising will work, and that they can charge a premium for the commercials that preface or are inserted into a "show." Otherwise, they won't even think about offering downloads. I have 100% control over all MPEGs, MOVs and AVIs on my machine, so I'd never see an ad. That's unacceptable in today's network TV philosophy.
And finally there's the money aspect. A $1 a download for a show that has 26 episodes a year and gets 10,000 downloads is nothing compared to one 30 minute prime time ad slot. I'll bet you that if you had all 26 million viewers of CSI download every episode this season, the amount of money at $1 a download would potentially only be about 10% of the amounts companies pay for ads for the entire season, for just ads run during CSI.
Raising the price is not feasible... it's too easy to watch TV for free these days that a higher price point would kill it the chance at downloading it.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
My view on this is that even if it is made painfully easy to pay for and download TV episodes most people are still stuck to watching them on a small computer monitor while sitting in a desk chair.
This is not the situation most people have in mind when watching TV, plus it makes it hard for more than one person to watch comfortably. Now this may be fine for nerds who feel comfortable only while they are alone at their computers, but for most people its awkward.
Clearly this is more the domain of On Demand/Pay per View setups already available in many cable boxes. Which of course would be good for TV companies and bad for nerds as that setup would allow the TV companies more control over its content and make copying harder.
For years, I said that if I could download high quality music files that were reasonably DRM free without a subscription for around $1 per song, I'd happily do it. Skeptics said it would never work, music companies and radio were horrified, etc. Now, with iTunes raking in ungodly amounts of money (or at least selling millions of iPods, thereby making ungodly amounts of money), I have all of that (except for the DRM part, but then I have an iPod, I can use the iTunes songs on all my computers, and it isn't really that hard to burn to CD-RW then re-rip to non-DRM'ed MP3 for my other MP3 player).
Now we're approaching the same idea with TV. If I could "buy" an episode of a show for some small amount of money, with decent quality and no commercials and without a subscription (except maybe for my digital cable if I got it through OnDemand or Pay Per View), I would do it.
The TV and cable companies are getting all upset that people are Tivo'ing or otherwise DVR'ing their shows then skipping through the commercials, well, as the poster said, if I pay a buck or so to watch an episode without commercials or have access to, say, a feed with commercials that doesn't have skip or even FF for free, then they're making their money either way and I can choose whether I want built-in bathroom breaks or not.
The hosting and management issues are beyond the local cable companies capabilities and just targeting computer viewing may not be enough. What we need is a cooperation between cable companies, STB manufactures, and networks to allow streaming of shows through your digital cable set top box to your TV from the network servers with payment going through your cable account. The same network servers could serve computers without as much overhead and without the cable co. skimming.
Then, every week if I wanted to watch, say, Battlestar Galactica, I could:
1) Watch it when it comes on
2) Tape or DVR it and watch when I wanted
3) Watch it in a forward only stream with commercials from my On Demand or PPV screen on my STB for free
4) Watch it commercial free on On Demand or PPV for $1.50 ($0.50 to the cable company, $1 to Sci-Fi)
or
5) Watch it on my computer for $1 (all to Sci-Fi)
or, to be honest, (6) download it from somewhere, but I actually don't bother doing that unless I've missed some once in a lifetime event -- it's too much hassle and I can wait for reruns.
If there any reason why this wouldn't work and make (almost) everyone happy? The cable company makes more money, the networks make more money, the advertisers might actually see lower rates and would know about how many people actually are being forced to watch the ads, and the consumer has more choices.
-- stream of did I lock the front door consciousness
The consensus opinion on Slashdot seems to be that Big Media does not like to 'give the customer what they want', (or, in other words, allow mass download of cancelled shows) because they are big jerks.
That is not the case.
This is unlikely to happen because television and movie rights are absurdly complicated, doubly so for defunct programs. I think a little education is in order. Let's use as an example a fictional show, "Blar Trak".
Now, let's say the show originally ran on NBC from 1966-1969. The rights are now held by Paramount, a division of Viacom. IANAEL (I am not an entertainment lawyer, but...)
Let's see how this would work:
- User wants to download the 1-hour episode "Sark's Brain".
Who owns it? Viacom, through Paramount. Just pay them, right? Nope. First, check to see if Paramount has DISTRIBUTION rights. These are distinct from ownership and/or PRODUCTION rights. Production rights let you make more episodes or spinoff movies. Distribution lets you put it on TV, in theatres, or on DVD. Different methods of distribution are often covered by separate contracts. In the film world, movies can be distributed by a studio that didn't produce the movie. "Master and Commander" had THREE studios working on it. "Titanic" on DVD is Paramount in the US, Fox in the rest of the world.
Production companies do the actual physical production of the show, they ALSO have contracts that may limit distribution rights or assign partial or whole ownership. These rights are transferable to heirs, if the show makes grandpa look bad, no show for you, sayeth the grandkids.
Paramount may also have a limited option or distribution deal for that particular episode, or a group of episodes, or the whole series. Ever wonder why DVDs go out of print? Now you know- the distributor has a LIMITED TIME contract.
That's not all. All of the actors and workers from that show need to get paid residuals. Yes, even 40 years after production. Many of them will have contracts that state they get paid FOREVER. The ones who don't may sue to stop distribution, they don't want Viacom to get richer off their work. VIacom may screw all the actors by claiming the contracts are nullified in this case because they do not specifically refer to the internet as a distribution vehicle.
Whoops. The ongoing litigation may take years. No episode for you. It won't be $1.00, that's for sure.
That dollar has to cover:
Production Contract
Distribution Contract
Actor residuals
Writer/Producer residuals
Legal costs
Pipeline/Delivery costs
Don't even get me started on what happens when Viacom wants to deliver content on Time Warner pipe, suffice it to say they have to pay Time Warner and devise yet another contract, too.
Oh, and if the show contains POP MUSIC, give up now. You need to clear EACH SONG with the music industry equivalent on the other end, or replace the music.
The short answer is: If there is money involved, it is very complicated. If no one wants to make money, distribtion is easy-peasy, rightsholders just sign off on it.
Problem: EVERYONE wants to make residual income, it requires no effort and is very lucrative.
Look, everyone who's used a DVR is pretty much hooked. In some cases this is because of the ease of catching TV on your schedule etc with an ease slightly greater than that of using a vcr. However, in a lot of cases this is because of the ability to fast-forard or skip commercials.
Many people find that the time saved by skipping commercials offsets the cost of buying a tivo or the effort of setting up myth tv etc. I for one own a TiVo for exactly that reason.. I don't have a ton of free time and every minute saved is appreciated. That said the shows I watch cost money to produce. Allowing me the option of paying for episodes without commercials or streaming a version with commercials for free makes everyone happy.
As for the charge made in another post that the users who are willing to do this represent a different demographic, you are probably right... But any time you tighten up a demographic you allow the advertisers to develop ads that are tailored to that demographic. Some series are actually cancelled due to not hitting the demographics that the show intends to hit even if ratings in another demographic are doing ok.
Mike
I'd certainly pay.
;)
Two days ago I watched the 16th episode of Enterprise. Here in the UK Sky are going to show episode 1 next week.
The real killer would be the DRM. I download - record to CD/DVD and watch on my Divx compatible standalone DVD player. If I was a programme maker I would probably only allow distribution via a pretty austere method so that I could be certain that the shows were not being copied and distributed.
Unfortunately I can think of a rather large company who are already trying to muscle their way into our living rooms. I really don't want to have to use M$ media centre.
I would give Sky the money - a pound for an episode would be fine by me - I have the Sky+ pvr, so it can be broadcast on PPV in the middle of the night for all I care... They only charge you if you watch it... Hope somebody from Sky is reading
Does regular broadcast TV and pay-per-view TV have to be mutually exclusive?
Obviously, pay-per-view movies and DVDs haven't brought the downfall of movie theaters. I doubt that most people would stop watching regular broadcast TV in favor of pay-per-view, even if shows were available commercial free.
This would be much more attractive to networks than the current DVR technology, which allows time shifting and, with some ingenuity, skipping of commercials. Plus, the networks get $0 out of current DVR users. It would be added revenue(though it would cut into sales of DVD sets of a number of TV series and kill syndication) for the pay-per-view program.
But fewer and fewer ASs are at all interesting any more. For a long time, we've had those painfully dumb questions. Nothing wrong with asking dumb questions -- how else do you learn anything? -- but those belong on Google Groups or other party-line forums. And now we're starting to get "questions" like this one. Which isn't even a question, it's just an invitation to share somebody rage.
Hey, I despise the media monopolies too. But let's talk about them in some kind of useful context. There's too much aimless spleen-venting in the world already.
Have a player for (windows and linux) of course...and the player could fastforward but the commercial would still be on the screen during the fastforward or when you pause. Have Blipverts...commericals that last 5 seconds.
Advantage...the programs would be free not PPV. Theres no reason why you should have to pay for something the public gets for free if youre willing to watch the version with commercials.
There's a lack of a monopoly in network programming. While there is the RIAA and non-RIAA and MPAA and non-MPAA, the issue is that the only individuals that really lose, fret, or freak over downloaded movies or MP3s are those that work for these large groups/oligopolies.
Barring exceptions like Metallica's Lars Ulrich and the set-painter David Goldstein (The guy from the first MPAA ad against piracy), there's actually very little people concerned about the issue. Actors and artists get paid their worth and no more and no less. The big difference is the behind the scenes folks and the corporate BS'rs. Everyone knows this.
For example, Fox Group chairman Peter Chernin makes 14.6 million, 2.6 million in stock options. Goldstein (mentioned above) makes about $90,000. But wait a minute. Let's take a look at the gap between Goldstein and me: about $60,000. Isn't there something wrong here?
Ultimately, the RIAA and MPAA will just break apart as the true talent in copyright protection lies with the individual IT staff working at the various organizations.
There's nothing a RIAA IT technical staff member can do that a Sony/BMG techie can't. There's nothing a Miramax techie can't do that a MPAA tech can.
I love how we at Slashdot can be so narrow-minded as to suggest that doing "the right thing" is doing exactly what this small community of users wants.
You must realize that there are REASONS behind everything these organizations do. DRM doesn't stand for Dasodfi Rwo9w Maiaioso...it stands for Digital Rights Management, and these companies DO have a right to choosing what to do with their own content.
And "the right thing" from our point of view is NOT always the right thing from industry's point of view. What's economically good for us is not necessarily beneficial to them...we need to realize this.
We don't have TV, and we find that renting (netflix) a season of shows after the fact is much better than watching them tricle out on tele, anyway.
Except the daily show.
I'd pay money to see that "as it's aired" (or shortly thereafter).
I'll give you a hint... Fox TV is owned by 20th Century Fox, WB is owned by Warner Brothers, ABC by Disney... NBC is now under the Vivendi-Universal umbrella... Viacom owns both CBS and UPN, as well as Columbia Pictures and Paramount. And I'm not even going to list cable channels-- most of which are owned by one of the above parent companies.
And guess what? Most parents own major record labels, too.
There's no benevolence here. Every network and most production companies can be traced to the same handful of megacorps. TV shows are pretty much off the radar at the moment, but it's most likely because movie and TV piracy is a much more visible target.
$5 is outragious. Add up how much a season of your favourite show would cost (24 * 5 = $120 per show per season).
I figured out one time that they charge approximatly $0.50 pre viewer per hour in advertising.
Charge me that price and we'll talk.
I would also like to buy my favourite TV shows (Stargate) on the internet, even if I could get illegal downloads for free. They may even consider to optionally embed commercials and provide them for free or at least cheaper.
DRM protection would however not be an option for me as there can be no open source players and I am not aware of any company that provides closed source software that comes even close to OSS's reliability.
Even if the TV/Movie distributors wake up and start offering downloads playable in their own proprietary players (which is why Winamp is being developed for free--because eventually it will offer a proprietary DRM version) it's too late.
Sooner or later the distributors will try to develop a secondary market (for distribution after the original broadcast) because many people (myself included) would pay $1 a show.
It won't work.
As long as there is a signal that can be intercepted at the display, clever software guys will intercept it and put the content on p2p networks. And p2p can't be stopped outside of the US. Europe doesn't really give a shit about American production companies' profits. And in Russia and China and southeast Asia copyright law is either non-existant or not enforced.
Sorry media production and distribution companies. All your base are belong to us.
This is exactly what I've been waiting for. I don't want to have to pay 80 dollars a month to get the tier 3 channels that host the shows I like to watch. Especially when I don't want any of the channels in the tier 1&2 bundles. Cable providers used to talk a lot about a la carte service. To me that meant picking the specific channels you wanted. That never came about though. Instead I have peasant vision (basic cable), and the only reason I have that is because it comes with my internet connection. Until the networks provide me a cost effective option I will continue to use torrents to get my TV fix.
WURD!!
The TV companies most likely don't care that people download their shows for a number of reasons. One, since the shows are produced fairly rapidly, they don't need to worry about someone on the inside distributing the newest episode. And even if they did, it would only be out shortly before it was aired on TV, thus having no major impact on the number of views. The TV series has most likely received its payments from advertising well before the show is aired. sales from TV DVD's are mostly inconsequential to overall asset returns from shows, with the exception of a few of the more popular ones. If anything, its probably beneficial for shows to have their episodes downloaded. You can't get the newest one's much longer before they come to TV, and even if you do, the quality is always going to be lower unless you have the money for a really sweet connection speed. Most common folks not only dont have the speeds, but wouldn't bother with the effort. Constantly downloading shows, mp3's, and porn takes allot of effort. Sites are getting shut down, you piss off someone and they block you from some area to download. People are lazy, I'd love to see the age group for those who download the most. 10bucks says its highschool to college kids. they got money, and a ton of free time. For example, even though MP3 downloading has reached a very mainstream point, most people I know doing it, only use it casually to dl some random song, the ones constantly downloading the newest album of any particular band are either to poor to buy the CD, or have to much time on their hands. CD's are still popular because people are naturally lazy, IMHO. But that's a different subject entirely.
Induhvidual
While downloading specific shows would be great, I'd first like the ability to choose what cable/satellite channels I get individually. I don't want to have to subsidized 20+ sports channels just so that I can watch the Food Network.
I've seen my cable bill rise just so that some idiots can get a sports channel featuring a regional team. Fine, pass that cost directly onto the people who want that content. I don't.
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
SciFi is showing the first episode of Galactica online as we speak. FOR FREE MOTHER FRAKKERS!!!!
I think that there's alot of crap floating around about the idea of downloading TV shows.
Is it piracy if I am paying for the cable channels the show is broadcast on and I record it to watch when it's more convenient and I can fast forward through commercials? The Betamax decision says no (for the moment anyways).
So why is there anything illegal about me getting a copy of a broadcast I already paid for from someone else?
It's just time shifting. It think that thier panties are in a twist over situations like a UK viewer downloading '24' *before* it's broadcast over there (alternatly, the new 'Battlestar Galactica' series released in the UK first, downloaded by N.Americans before US broadcast).
Someone needs to wake up to the fact that there is demand for these shows and that regional distribution is not a viable containment method anymore. The people want to see it and are going to get it one way or another. Might as well make it widely available.
My ISP is the cable company. I'd gladly pay a fee if they would buffer, say, a month of broadcast on a 'groupTivo (tm)' that I could access at my convenince. Pay for what you view, watch alot pay more. Watch a little, pay a little. Watch alot, pay more.
Just my rant
Where are we going, and why are we in this hand cart?
Well, downloading a TV show is a little different then downloading movies. TV shows are already out there for the populace to watch for free and don't cost 8 dollars a episode. Networks make all of their money through Ad revenue's. Now what if networks started offering up the shows for download with commercials intact in the file. Sure people could still skip them, but TiVo/VCR's allow them to do this anyway.
I suppose then the new rating system to sell commercial time could be how many people download a particular TV show a month.
It takes about a two minutes for the postal worker in that mailtruck to deliver each package of DVDs to each address, averaging overhead, even in my dense NYC brownstone neighborhood. If each package gets 6 DVDs, at 5GB:DVD, that's 30GB in 2 minutes, or 250MB:s. Pretty fast, when considering my cablemodem gives 1MB:s, and even those lucky old Korean ladies are getting about 30MB:s max. But the mail comes once a day (by truck), so the latency cuts the overall bandwidth. Now we're talking about 30GB every 24h, which is about 350KB:s, or less than half my cablemodem - with no delivery on the Sunday, when I have more time to watch.
Maybe the bottom line is that DVDs are about 5GB:h, which means 120GB:d, or 1.4MB:s. So my cablemodem is already more than halfway to competing with the real bottlneck in video delivery: realtime consumption of the actual video, regardless of delivery medium. Since the cable company has doubled my bandwidth every 6-8 months over the past couple of years, I don't think it will be long before my cablemodem delivers enough bandwidth that a bigger truckload of DVDs would be more than I could possibly watch.
--
make install -not war
In August, after I watched a few episodes of Dead Like Me on Showtime, I wanted to go back and watch from the begging. I launched my bittorrent client and grabbed all of the first season. This was before Dead Like Me was available on DVD. A few weeks later, my Internet connection stopped working. Turns out MGM sent a DMCA violation notice to my ISP.
I was never sued, but I always fear that it will come back to bite me.
So why don't the advertisers scream for laws against people getting up to go to the bathroom and raiding the fridge while commercials are on?!!!
I live in saskatchewan, where the telco also has an digital cable service (adsl served). Just this month they started the phase in of somthing like this. For $5/month i can subscribe to a specialty channel on a PVR basis. That's right PVR.. I can to to the on-demand movie area and watch tv shows that have been broadcast on that channel. Right now during the test phase, it's only offering a couple specialty cahnnels, but the company has declared that in the future we will be able to PVR our shows/Serries in the same way.
Broadcasters were one of the groups lobbying the FCC for the broadcast flag. If I am not mistaken they've also filed an Amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the MGM vs. Grokster case in support of making P2P companies liable for the infringement of their users. Of course their is the possibility that they are more level headed than the RIAA and MPAA and realize that the quality of shows downloaded on the internet is severely lacking and it doesn't appear that the downloads are cutting into broadcaster's advertising money. There is still an incentive to watch the shows on TV (new episodes, better quality, and most people have a VCR to record the shows should they want to watch them again). Should one or more these change I am sure they're not above lawsuits against those who trade the shows.
Unless I can get Pinky and the Brain in this manner, it's useless to me. And given that there isn't even a hinting at a P&tB DVD set, that means that this won't happen for this show.
Or, in other words, even if they did it, if they don't have [insert your favorite show here] in its entirety, it'll be difficult to get the idea off the ground.
That green slime had it coming.
At cost it would only be profitable for a TV show to charge around 2.5 dollars for one episode. That takes into account a 500MB encoding download the rate they charge to distributors and loss of advertising. At least that's for Sci-fi Channel. Right now I would just be happy if I could watch my TV back at home here at college over the net.
This can be achieved by providing the shows online but not offering them as downloads.
This would achieve the same goals and even more then broadcast tv:
- the viewer sees the show in the browser, he can play, pause, and stop but will still be forced to watch the ads. When watching tv, it's pretty easy to channel surf and avoid the commercials, it's all a push of the button. That's a bit different with a browser. It's still easy but it's not as easy as with the tv remote.
- the provider knows exactly how many people have watched the show, and knows exactly when they watched. They also can much more easily guess when people tune out.
- since this is all in the browser, tie-ins to the commercials could appear in sideframes without interrupting the show itself. While watching the show the viewers eyes wander. These are the perfect conditions to get a persons interest and attention.
- People would not only watch a show once, it's possible that they would watch it again later.
- A network can only broadcast 24 hours of TV a day (per channel). But it can provide multitudes more of hours of shows online each day. The network could finally sell adspace not only show-and-time-based based but independently sell adspace based on a show and/or based on the time of viewing, and even possibly based on the viewers profile. Result: many more viewers leading to more revenue from advertisement.
The fear of the shows being copied and distributed is justified but that problem has always existed. If they provide this service many people, will simply stop viewing the distributed shows for simple reasons:- why go to that effort, if a viewer can simply get the same result (plus some commercials) from the network
- only a minority of people actually view the distributed shows since this always demands a certain level of technical experience. Directing the browser to a network's webpage is much easier and much more accessible to a wider audience.
there are probably more good reasons for the viability (and likely good reasons against it...).______________________________________________
sigamajig...
$120 is about what people that watch anime are paying now for a full season for a series.
Consider the following: a full season of an anime series is about 26 episodes, with about 4/3 episodes (typically they will have an extra episode on the first disk or two and then drop down to 3 per disk) to a DVD. That means about 7 DVDs for a series, and anime DVDs are about $20-$25 dollars a DVD. So that means that on average people that watch anime are paying about $140-$170 to own the series.
Granted it is more expensive to make the series (paying for licensing, dubbing the show, marketing), but the key sticking point seems to be the same it always has been - they change what they know people will buy. If you have a good series people would willing to pay $5 an hour if they can keep a tangible item (a movie file they can burn for example).
Howard Stern and E! have already begun ppv downloads of his e shows uncensored. Who knows how successful they have been though.
In this case, if they produced downloadable episodes with commercials or product placement, it would be dumb of them to place some sort of (albiet get-around-able) DRM on the file, because it would prevent the mass propagation of their commercials to the public (without clutching up their bandwidth to boot!).
The problem is, how do they measure it? They can't sell a commercial spot to some company when all they know is that 100 people downloaded a particular show, even if 1 million people watched it beacuse one of those people put it out on bittorrent.
So that tends to suggest measurable streaming, which increases the cost by a large margin (even if they distrubute it on Akamai or something). While they can measure it, people will be less inclined to watch something that streams (because it's just less convinient, no storing episodes for that long car trip), not to mention, it will cost the network more anyway.
It's coming, be sure of that. Someone just needs to sort out the details first.
The BC are planning to provide this service in the UK with their IMP (internet media player). This is going to be a P2P application where users will be able to download a high (>90%?) ammount of the beebs output. This will be initially in WMV format due to the need to restrict to the UK and DRM it to expire after 8 days due to copyright law in the UK
I had friends on the trial and there is another soon with a hopeful launch in late 2005/early2006 it was fantastic to be able to download stuff and watch it on the train or over breakfast. Like Tivo on the laptop.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/imp/
I've been saying for awhile now (ever since the movie nazi's began throwing lawyers at people), that I would be more than happy to download "official" television shows from the various networks, even if they leave the commercials in. After all, that's always been the arguement that the networks have against p2p sharing of TV shows: They make their money off advertising, and if people are chopping uot commercials before uploading them, then the networks can't effectively determine who's seeing the advertising, nor how they should be charging for ad revenue.
So my theory is that if they leave these commercials in, yet make it so that I can remove them after watching, prior to burning to a storage medium, much like I used to do with VCR tapes, that I would be fine with such a move.
After all, their commercials would be getting viewed, either when I watch the show, or when I'm cutting them out, and they'd know who would be seeing the commercials based on how many downloads they get.
But there is NO WAY that I will pay for this. After all... I never had to pay for the right to record shows on my VCR, so why should I pay for the right to exercise my fair usage rights now that I'm working with digital media, instead of my old VCR?? If the commercials are in the downloads, then I am, in effect, seeing the same thing as the normal TV viewer would, albeit that the display times would be when it's convenient for me, not when the networks decide to show it.
To charge for this right would basically mean that I'm paying for content twice: Once when I pay my cable bill, and again when I downloaded what I want to watch. And, in theory, again when I pay my ISP for my internet connection.
Anything less than free is unaceptable, and anything that prevents me from doing what I want to with the download is equally unnaceptable. Charging money for this will only assure that TV shows continue to be downloaded through un-authorized means.
Dear Hollywood,
I missed the season finale of FavoriteShow this year and no one I know has taped it. Rather than wait until you re-air it in September, I would really like download or stream a copy of the show to my home so I can watch it. Go ahead and downsample it to VCD quality if you want, I just want to watch the show. I'm quite willing to pay, too. I think $1 is a fair price for a 45 minute, low bandwidth copy of a show that has already aired. Please let me know where I can go to pay for and download this material. Seriously. I've got cash.
DD
"Can I finish? Can I finish?
As you point out, "MOST" is pure crap. Having said that, thanks to Tivo, I can pick out the maybe 10 shows that are actually worth watching. So let's se, between 12 and 24 episodes for a given show per year. Let's say $2/episode.
That'd be 18 episode average times $2/episode or $36/year for a given show. Somewhat less than they'd make on a DVD box set, but that's assuming I wouldn't end up buying that anyhow. Furthermore, that $36 has very low distribution costs, especially if the download software incorporates some P2P technology.
Now, Like I said, maybe 10 shows at $36/show. So $360/year. I'm paying roughly $80/month for comshlock cable, so that's $960/year. So I could double the number of shows I watch and still save a huge amount of money. Furthermore, all that money that Comcast would normally get would go right to the production studios who actually make the stuff.
Now, think about it, if everybody was going out and selectively buying TV shows, they'd actually have to be good to compete for money. Why go download that one episode that's nothing but cuts from previous episodes. Give that new reality show a try and if it doesn't pique your interest after a few episodes, just stop downloading it.
Now, broadcasters have to think in terms of, ratings, which means getting either a large audience, or a very well defined niche. One thing that hurts enterprise is that it's a pretty broad audience, but not a big one. If you got all the trekkies to pay $2/episode, that would solve that problem nicely.
The other nice thing is that this opens up the possibility for small independent producers to make small and more creative shows. You have to be able to guarantee delivery of a fairly large audience to cost justify making a television show. That's why reality TV is so popular, it gets good ratings and it's cheap to produce. But if you could make a 12 episode television show for say $120K, or $10K/episode, then if you get 5000 people interested, you at least broke even. Plus, if you aren't sure about the appeal, you can do a pilot, and give it away to see how it goes.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
"Does this mean they really are wondering about using this new media, rather then foaming at the mouth and suing twelve year olds?"
The fact that they aren't bothering with this issue means they don't see it as a problem in terms of drawing viewers away from broadcast tv, nor do they see it as a threat to selling DVDs of tv shows, which is a relatively new phenomenon. People sue over things that are worth something to them. Not suing means these internet downloads are not worth their time and money. The conclusion is they have no plans to market such a scheme if they don't even bother to protect against illegal versions of it. They are much more worried about TiVO than this.
Vote for Pedro
Yea your idea, that they should include adverts in the download, is something I don't mind. Hell if I cared I could probably remove those ads too.
.
But this is too simple for them... they want money, they want to cash in. It's not the ads otherwise they would've done it already.
Those tv execs are greedy money people. They don't even want people to record from digital tv when that roles out. What they want is for you to buy their own tivo and their own stuff so you can pay them more and more.
Cable tv rates aren't enough for them. They want more. Tivo just got neutered so that it doesn't skip ads, I think I read.
Remember the old days with VHS??? If I recorded a program on VHS tape I could then give it to my neighbor if I wanted to so that he or she could watch it too.
Downloading the tv episode with bit torrent now is the same thing... so it's like I can edit the VHS tapes and remove the commercials and still give it to the neighbor.
It's the same thing.
But they want money because they think they can cash in from anything on the internet. They are trying to lock down the internet for themselves, the 'money people'
Downloading tv shows is not illegal. Is there a law? If it's on tv... it's free. How about someone record the local news and post that online... maybe they'll charge for that too. And the weather man too. So stupid.
No one is gonna take away my 1's and 0's from me!! You can't patent 1's and 0's damnit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They're free for all!!
As has been pointed out, the internal rights issues on TV are already enormous - far more so than with Movies or with Music.
The main distinction is geographic. An episode of prime time TV airs at different times in different parts of the world. This is done for numerous reasons, but generally, it results in the US getting the first run, and, say, Australia getting the show a week later - or even a season later.
If all of the sudden you can just download TV, the entire geography centric system dissapears. Local affiliates now have, essentially, no business (a problem they already face in Satellite, as any urban sat subscriber can tell you). Non-US local affiliates, facing the disadvantage of time delay, REALLY have no business now.
So follow it through. Information wants to be free, we all say. So people download Numb3rs anyway, because some guy with a PVR posts it somewhere (generally with the advertising intact). The "if everyone did this" argument essentially bankrupts the system - you may watch the ads, but you can no longer be counted. Advertisers won't pay you. Everyone rebells, overseas rights evaporate, and all of the sudden that show with a 1M per episode budget is simply impossible to fund.
Sure, long term, it's nice to think we could just pay directly for the content, but then we all have to get used to those "DRM" letters we seem to hate so much. Or we could say "but I'll watch the ads" to which the studio will say "yeah right" and force you to use a proprietary play system to ENFORCE you watching the ads.
It's vastly more complicated than music.
My bad
:)
I haven't actually used it.
Tech News, Reviews and Tutorials
The main/only reason a network wants a successful show is so they can sell the limited and fixed ad time at a higher price. And they can sell it over, and over, and over again. Once you have 'bought' last weeks episode of "24" and have it in your l=hot little hands, that's it. The network/local affiliate will never make another dime from your viewership. Subscription-based at its finest. Except we are not the subscribers.
The writers and actors, of course, want higher viewership for its own sake. But the money side of things is not yours to control, but rather the advertisers and networks.
I wouldn't be surprised if Apple was in negotiation with the TV companies right now, trying to work out a way to add an "Episode store" to iTunes (or quicktime or iMovie or something).
As the iPod funds the iTunes Music Store, though, they would need something to fund it (ie a product that buying tv shows through them would encourage you to buy). Could be a iPod video, but I doubt it. More likely a MacMini-type "entertainment box" that hooks up to your TV. Products like this have never taken off before, just like mp3 players never took off until iTunes/iPod; people need a reason to buy a new paradigm of technology.
I see it like this. Apple launches iTunes Video Store and the iBox home entertainment center at the same time. At first, the iBox sales are sucky, but people start downloading episodes from iTunes (easier than finding pirated versions). Then people want an easy way to watch these series' on their 90-inch plasmatic television, and iBox sales take off.
And people like me, without a TV, would be happy to pay the occasional few dollars for a TV show to watch...
For the past five years or so, I've had broadband internet access. During each of those years, I also paid for standard cable television service. If I choose to download a season of a show I liked, shouldn't that be my right? I've payed for it. I just didn't have time to watch it. Of course there's the border between people who have basic cable and are downloading everything from satellite to public broadcast. But. *shrugs* It should just be a service, given to subscribers for cable television. Missed a episode? Season? Here's the torrent.
i personally would be all for a service like this. there are several shows on cable that i would like to watch, but i don't because i won't pay $40+ per month for cable just to get 4 channels that i would actually watch. i have said in the past that i would like the ability to choose specific channels that i could pay for- i would pay $5-$10 for 4 channels that i like, but not $30 for 1000 channels when i only like 5. but this would be even better, because even some of those channels that i would be willing to pay for only have 1 or 2 shows that i would want to watch on a regular basis.
heck, it wouldn't even have to be download- just a cable box with no built in channels. they have all of the on-demand stuff available now. let me pay $5 a month for 0 cable channels and let me pick the shows/movies/whatever that i want to watch at ~$0.50 an hour, and i'd sign up in a second.
of course, it's been over a month since i turned on the tv at all, and i don't think i've watched an actual tv show on it since the election debates, so i doubt the cable companies will be swayed much one way or another by my support....
If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
There is no reason subscription based downloading can't happen. Ads can be "inserted" into various cohorts among the subscribers.
.012 cents per Ad shown (per vieweer). If there are 25 ads per 1 hour show, that's 30 CENTS, 50 Ads per show that's 60 Cents.
TV ads cost $5 to $19 per 1000 people (typically). For a $12 CPM (cost per thousand), call that
22 shows per session x 25 to 50 ads per show = a revenue requirement of $6.6 to $13.2 dollars.
They can charge that directly. Say $25 for a package of 3-5 shows. OR then can find the same older advertisers, who would be willing to pay say $25 to $40 CPM to reach a more targetted segment of the audience, they could run (e.g., insert) less ads, charge more and make about the same. Well you get the idea.
http://www.hawknest.com/
I would pay $1 per show, just like iTunes, provided the content was largly commercial-free (I wouldn't mind one or two in the front or back of the show). That model could have great potential for everyone. If the show producers had 10,000,000 people watching the show, bam that's $10,000,000.
Unless it were DRM'ed, which of course the show producers would require. I think this model would work without DRM though. $1 is about what it's worth to someone to buy legitimately without crawling around the net trying to find a copy, wait for it to download from a slow source, etc. And if non-DRM TV shows were offered for $1, not only would people have less incentive to download illegitimate copies, the law of supply/demand would make it less attractive to share copies.
I think anyway. That's quite a risk for TV producers to make. Hopefully they would try this out with a show.
_______
2B1ASK1
The problem with that is:
In reality, it's those 20+ sports channels that are subsidizing channels like Food Network, History Channel, Sci-Fi, A&E, and anything else the typical American common denominator (who loves thing like Ashlee Simpson, NSF, NBA, and Bachlorette/Survivor 9: The Quickening).
If you choose the a-la-carte way, any channel that isn't very popular with the vast majority of the American public (with whom I share little in the way of entertainment taste) will go off the air.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
The problem I see for TV distrib is the AD revenue schemem,
(Pay for download is the only possible replacement)
Think about it,
If "Barf Truck" is available for download - Internationaly - Then Just what ad's do they put in it??? American Ad's?, Italian Ad's, Australian Ad's??????
Another way to think about TV media downloads is this:
The big networks, right now, devote a huge percentage of broadcast time to commercials. In some cases, shows themselves are the commercial with embedded advertisements and product placement.
What if the broadcast medium was the advertising for the shows to be downloaded? I mean, letting people download shows means giving up the right to control the sequence and timing of content (people can skip through commercials without watching them) which means there is no reliable channel for marketing new programming.
Let the broadcast stations stay on the way they are, and bring in the revenue for shows through online subscription services. That way you have a channel for promoting new shows and a revenue stream for something people are going to do for free otherwise.
Can't say whether this is the way the networks are thinking, but it stands to reason this is the way to go. No one can bring their DVR with them (by no one, I mean no average person) and there will be places where broadcast television is the only option.
M
You're the one that needs to go learn English.
50 cents per hour, eh? Interesting. I have started wondering if I shouldn't just start making independedent films. If I could get a few thousand people to pay a dollar for a torrent to an un-DRM'd video file, it would be enough to find microbudget indy work, with college students, and semi-pros. Obviously, it wouldn't be as slick as Star Trek, but with a few grand per episode of budget, you can make do with decent equipment and talented nonames.
The only problem would be that I'd have to pay a lawyer to sue anybody who put the files on Kazaa, or else I'd almost certainly never be able to get people to actually pay for it. I haven't been able to think of a good solution, except for trying to find advertising sponsors, and working them into the productions, so that you can't just skip over the ads. (I.E. The hero would save the day with the sponsor's product, or the bad guy would try to kill people with the competitor's product.)
But, since the distribution would be on the internet, most likely, no local businesses would be interested in advertising. (No guarantee that more than a handful of people in the same state would watch, and all the people in latvia wouldn't care that Bob's has the cheapest stuff in Denver.)
But, being a small independent production, a company that is international, and would be interested in reaching people all over the internet like Coca Cola would probably not be interested in targeting a few thousand geeky downloaders on the internet.
So, anybody have any good ideas for how to do an independent Internet distributed series without DRM?
Score: -1, Incomprehensible
The MPAA is too worried about the broadcast flag and movies. Besides, since (right now) most TV shows are still analog and the PQ sucks, most will turn around and buy the DVDs when they come out. When digital convergence comes around, and you can tell your TV to play a HD-quality MP4 media file off your computer then it will kill sales (well, that and the assumption that hard drives will be cheap and plentiful, perhaps 5 or 10 cents per GB).
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
Two services I'm subscribed to are http://saltwaterchimp.com/ and http://everyshowsucks.com/. These basically have 10 streaming ad free channels each, with only good shows. They are $5 a piece per month, hitting your $10/month limit.
What I'd like to see is a network try releasing an episode of a show on their own Bittorrent tracker. They could put in something that's in danger of cancellation, say an episode of Arrested Development, and leave the commercials intact. (Or, more likely, they'd likely have to renegotiate with advertisers since this would technically be a different release than broadcast) This would actually be cheaper for them, since unlike a broadcast model we, the downloaders, would be footing the distribution bill. If they were to do this, and make it well known that they were doing it ahead of time, and if they did a decent job of the encode, I think you'd see people flocking to the "legit" version of the show. Further, assuming no other versions of the episode are released, they get instant ratings feedback. Goodbye Nielsen families. They could DRM it if they want, but what would be the point with this model? If anything, it would likely be counter-productive, as it would spur some people to "crack" the release and re-release it DRM-free. Think about it. It's essentially broadcast without much of the overhead. They get their advertising revenue, we get our "free" show. Anybody want to launch a letter-writing campaign? All it would take is one network to release one episode of a (decent) show once. - ME -
The TV companies appear to not be so desperate to sue people into bankruptcy for watching an illicit episode of _Friends_ or _The OC_.
I can (unfortunately) tell you from personal experience that this is not the case. I about a year ago I received a cease and desist letter from Paramount after downloading an Enterprise episode via bittorrent. Granted, they didn't sue me. But they did scare me enough that I haven't used bittorrent since.
I always thought that since people can record shows on their VCR and watch them later while fast-forwarding commercials, what's the big deal about downloading them instead?
I always thought of DVD sales as just icing on their cake. It's not like they cost a lot to print, and they already made their money with commercials anyway...
So, if I'm a TV company, why do I care if they download the shows?
Earn a free iRiver
OK. Forget about Suprnova. Its successor is already online, and it's growing everyday. Haven't heard about it? Neither had I, until some guy posted a comment here.
(Hint: search the source code for "</a> [". It's the first match).
IRC leeching? DOH. IRC users could setup their own trackers, i.e. private subnets to distribute torrents. Of course, who knows they're not doing that already...
Sharing a-la Kazaa? Exeem (lite).
Perhaps you were complaining that there aren't any EASY, spoonfed ways to get torrents anymore. Well - in that case, it's the geeks who will master Zen and the art of peer-downlading. As they've always done.
The rest of the world will pay-per-view. As they've always done.
And finally there's the money aspect. A $1 a download for a show that has 26 episodes a year and gets 10,000 downloads is nothing compared to one 30 minute prime time ad slot. I'll bet you that if you had all 26 million viewers of CSI download every episode this season, the amount of money at $1 a download would potentially only be about 10% of the amounts companies pay for ads for the entire season, for just ads run during CSI.
Consider what that ad revenue pays for. I'm sure there is alot more involved in soliciting advertisers to fill a spot then simply saying here is a show for you to download at a $1. If you want to buy it click her.
It would be all electronic your staff would be virtually non existant. No sales guys traveling on the company dime. etc etc etc..
I think the overall revenue would be pretty close and you would have DIRECT feedback from your customer on what shows to renew for another season based on actual sales.
Realistically I don't see this taking off for quite some time due to the enormous amount of change the industry would be required to undergo and the amount of lost jobs.
What I do see is the little guys avoiding the hassle of selling his program to a network and producing it themselves for release exclusively online. Once this gets big (and I have a hunch it will) networks will be forced to compete.
But in Australia free to air TV shows are played months and months after they have aired in the States.
For example CSI:New York just aired last week. And guess what the first espisode was? Think it was espisode 1? Think again.
The network opened with CSI:New York espisode 8! WTF!
http://battlespace.fastmail.fm
Comcast has TV on demand where you can watch popular shows at any time. Quicker than download, I'd much rather have it come up almost instantly than pull it off of BitTorrent and view some ten hours later.
I would imagine this is the model that production companies would embrace, rather than the buy it and download it model.
So you're the person who has never paid for advertising by purchasing anything with a name brand on it!
You pay retail prices that include money to pay for advertising time. Ask some of those failed dotcoms that advertised heavily during the 2000 Super Bowl if TV is free.
Now accepting PayPal donations!
TV stations already allow downloads in South Korea. The government run station (KBS) has FREE low quality downloads of shows. High quality costs something like 50 cents. YTN (a Korean news station) has free internet broadcast in low quality, and SBS (a private atation) allows sownloads of shows for around 50 cents as well. I'm not sure about quality on those though. Anyway, it surprises me that American companies are so far behind the curve.
The TV companies appear to not be so desperate to sue people into bankruptcy
Not necessarily. My ISP has threatened to disconnect me, as they received a complaint from the studio who puts out Stargate Atlantis. Seems I was watching their show by downloading instead of over the TV. End result is the same (another viewer and fan for them, yay) but they didn't take too kindly to it.
So I download my Atlantis from usenet now instead of bittorrent. (No, I don't give one fat shit about their rules. They put out a show for everyone to watch and I'm watching it. The fact that my feed comes through a phone line instead of a cable is immaterial to me.)
that they do not bother because they realize most people will not pay for something they most likely watched for free to begin with, unless of course it is bundled onto a DVD with lots of extras.
You say you want a revolution....
I was wondering about this earlier today.
What with the new ST:Ent Challenge with the fans essentially paying for the production of a new season. This allows the broadcasters to provide the content without requiring prime-time advertising. Easily allowing the episodes to be made available online.
The only problem I would imagine is the actors royalty payments which DRM (god forbid) or a subscription based system could account for.
I am massively in favour of funding even $50 for the ability to fund a new season and be able to download it when I want to view it.
Hopefully Paramount will look into this option if they go ahead with ST:Ent S5!
If you didn't have access to all of what's on cable, how could you decide which 10 shows are worth wathcing?
Very good point.
Tivo has a "showcases" feature where their "partners" could (pay to) set up their own listings of what they are showing. They also have a "Tivo" showcase which lists things across the board in different categories. When I first got my Tivo some 5+ years ago, I thought these were useless. However soon after I got my Tivo I completely stopped watching live TV and skipped commercials in recordings and so a few years later I realized that I have never heard of many of the shows that started after I got my tivo. If I did not read about it on internet or was told about it by a friend, the show did not exist. And then I re-discovered the Tivo showcase - specifically the section listing new shows. Every once in a while (especially right before season starts) I would go there and look through what is coming up. If something catches my eye, I will record a few episodes, if I like it - then I "season pass" it. Simple and very effective.
Something like this is easy to implement and free to download previews or pilots can make it even easier. And as long as you put the viewer in charge of choosing what and when to see, Adverts for new shows may not be a bad thing.
Then there is always review sites, magazines, etc.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
If I remember correctly, DVD was already an established format when home-made copies of TV shows started to appear on the warez scene in big volumes.
I think they noticed the demand and figure there was a whole new market and extra money from they dust-collecting series and released them on DVD.
Not a bad byproduct from a "bunch of thiefs stealing money from hard working creative minds".
I propose a comission model.
First some background info on TV production in the USA:
Add all that up and you have an industry that is much like cinema - they need that 1 in 10 or 1 in 20 mega-hit just to break even on all the money losing shows. This fact is probably the biggest reason you see networks cancel promising shows after less than one season without giving them a chance to "find their niche."
So, if a production company could be guaranteed a reasonable (say 10-20%) profit immediately upon release of each episode, that would be a huge change in the way hollywood does business. It would allow more niche programming, one might even say more intelligent programming because the need to pander to the lowest common denominator in order to appeal to the largest possible audience would be gone. All you need to do is keep enough of an audience to proftiably fund the next episode.
But, how do you guarantee a profit on each episode? Commission.
Just as the net makes it easy for the pirates to share a show with thousands and even millions of their best friends on the net, so to can the net bring together millions of people to hire the production company to produce each episode.
Let's take Star Trek Enterprise as an example again. Look at the price on DVD for one season of Star Trek Voyager - MSRP is $140 and street is no better than $90. I'm going to guess and say there are 22 episodes per season - that's over $4 per episode. Viewership numbers for first run episodes of Enterprise in the USA are in the 3 million range - that ignores viewers in other countries and during any second showings (if there are any) later in the week.
For the sake of argument, let us say every one of those 3M viewers were to pony up an average of $1.50 per episode. That would produce $4.5M - enough to pay for $4M in production costs with ~13% return on investment in less than a month. In return, the people who paid for the production of the show would now own it - since there are so many owners, it is simpler to just make it public domain and not worry any more about the ownership details - we would all own it.
There are a couple of secondary benefits of releasing it to the public domain -- for both the production company and for society at large:
Just wait a bit: Apple is working on it (http://tinyurl.com/5ehh4). Can you imagine an iTunes-like application where streaming downloads of DVD Movies, and TV shows are available in H.264? DRM similar to iTunes? Apple will take the mess that exists out there now, and integrate it into one simple set-top box with Firewire interface to your Mac mini.
Yep there are some people out there enforcing tv piracy, I posted an episode of the Simpsons I captured with my tv card to a newsgroup a few years ago and my ISP disconnected me. Of course this was an older episode so it may have infringed on their potential DVD sales even though that episode wasn't released on DVD yet.
Believe it or not Howard Stern actually sells 'uncensored' downloads of his "E" network show.
t es/howardstern/Splash.jhtml so DRM and all that good stuff apply.
They're sold through movielink, http://howardstern.movielink.com/commerce/affilia
Channels of VoD content? How is it VoD if it's channels?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Why can't the networks seed a bittorent for each episode (after it's aired on TV) with commericals in it? Sure people will skip some of the commericals, but you can do that with a DVR too.
I would certainly pay to watch shows pay-per-view. I don't want to pay for (or have the distraction of) cable TV in my house, but I don't want to miss South Park or The Daily Show. However, I don't think that Comedy Central would want to allow me to miss out on the possibility of sitting down to watch another one of their programs as well. With the advent of TiVo, DVD's, and other on-demand content, consumers have become more discerning. But at the same time, programming providers have found ways to make their content more addictive: more and shorter commercial breaks, preview of what happens after the commercial, programs are easy to get into because there is no plot but you can't tear yourself away because you know something is coming up that you just have to see.
If this became a reality, especially if it was an all-you-can-eat monthly fee.... well... i've heard of marriages and careers being destroyed by MMUDs, but this might even keep people out of casino's to stay at home and feed a serious addiction.
I'm really all for this in the sense that it will breed competition between the various programs, and kill the 'ooooh, there's nothing on right now' syndrome.
It'll also give the ratings process some 'better data'... We kicked this one around at work a little bit and decided that if it was a per/episode situation, that many shows would die nearly instantly. (who would actually pay to see 'Survivor' or 'Trading Spaces'?)
Certainly an interesting question, and has the potential of pulling the rug out from underneath everything.
I see a similar cherry bomb has its fuse lit in the VoIP/POTS department. Hey everyone, here comes our chance to stick it to the MAN!
Gotta make up for the lost syndication money. Why watch the reruns on some other channel when you can PPV. That bumps the PPV price up, be cause they aren't willingly gonna give away that syndication revenue stream. I doubt DVD sales is making that much of a dent.
Dump the IRS - http://www.fairtax.org
Corporations do not care about a "fair" price or a price where the maximum number of people can see something where they still make a profit. They manage for the maximum profits, period. This means they will raise prices until their profits drop and then back off back to the point of maximum profits.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Well, if they're not going to sue, they should be doing something to prevent them! People are losing brain cells as we speak.
They are watching the other industries duke it out with their customers.. waiting to see how it comes out..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Since HBO already has its regular series eps on Video on Demand on cable all across the USA, and the cable industry and networks are working on seeing a major expansion over the years, it ain't too far away. Sooner or later Survivor, Jerry Springer, and so on, will be on VoD.
Meanwhile on my computer, where I've got ten dozen network analysis windows open and a couple browsers, where would I put a window to show tv shows and movies? I burn DVDs and VCDs of what I bother downloading and watch them on the DVD player on the TV.
Maybe when the average PC comes with a quad head 16XAGP card and 17" LCDs are under $100 a piece and come bundled with it, I'll care more. Until then, I will probably stick with cable video.
Besides, how are all the low-bandwidth users going to get their fix reliably?
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
From what I can see, advertising revenues pale in comparison to the potential profits of a well run and efficient digital distribution system.
By charging very small prices, i.e.. ISP billed micro-credits, they, the content distributors, could enjoy the same advantage as manufacturing currently does. That is to say, the economics of scale.
If prices were very low, i.e.. actual physical cost of a digital file from a P2P type file system, the number of potential customers would then be in the billions, instead off merely some few million.
That's right, sell books, movies, music and television for less than pennies per view. The potential revenue stream dwarfs anything a few advertisers could provide. However, advertising, of course, is still an value added option if done discreetly.
Now, I'm a nobody, and I can see this. Why do we pay these suits so much again?
Words to men, as air to birds.
Lets say you spend 50$ per month on boxed sets. Eventually you accumulate enough programming to have your own personal TV channel.
All the conglomerates need to do is realize that there is 600$ per year on the table they could have if they would just let me watch what I want, when I want.
If they can't be satisfied with 600$ per year, then they will not get the money, and I'll write a python script to put what I want to watch in rotation on my TV. Sure, I have to own a storage array or a DVD jukebox to hold the content, but its easier than wrestling with the bastards.
Same thing with music. If I buy one 15$ CD per month, then there is 180$ on the table per year. If they can offer me listen-to-what-I-want-when-I-want for 180$ per year, then we can talk. Otherwise it goes onto the array, or into the jukebox.
If 780$ per year isn't enough to keep the industry's interest then fuck them. I can always spend the money on a dual core AMD64 and a motherboard, and keep watching the boxed sets I already own.
And if you think these numbers don't make sense, look at what the average household cable and broadband bills look like.
Programmed (by the networks) TV may become the next radio, as radio became the next newspaper. If geeks can pay to get their favorite shows produced and on DVD, then who needs the middleman? And if it never plays in a public venue, who needs the film board?
If everyone on slashdot put even 500$ per year on the table for consumer directed video/music would it be enough to cause ripples in the pool? Who knows?
Noone is going to pay for TV downloads when they can get them for free, and it's now too late to stop them from being available for free. Even if they could, you can still get them for free using an old TV and an antenna - so why pay for them?
What they (the TV networks) need to do is offer *free* downloads or streaming playback of shows that they make money off of in the same way as on broadcast: advertisements. Why can't they let companies buy ad space in streaming TV shows and then let viewers watch for free, just like with TV?
Arguing about vi versus Emacs is like arguing whether it's better to make fire by rubbing sticks or banging rocks.
Will TV show production companies be the first to show some sense and offer their own downloads on a pay per view basis?"
No, they won't. Ever.
The TV companies appear to not be so desperate to sue people into bankruptcy for watching an illicit episode of _Friends_ or _The OC_.
I know a friend of mine that received a "cease and desist" type e-mail for bittorrenting, of all things, Malcom in the Middle. If you're wondering, it was the MPAA who was named as the requestor.
I kid you not.
The space unintentionally left unblank.
First of all, I suspect that most shows would offer you a taste of a show for free to hook you. So you could readily go around and try different shows.
:)
Another possibility would be to do trailers like they do at the movies. I mean throw two minutes worth of ads for other shows before my program starts. Honestly the only ads I don't skip now are ads for other programming.
They can advertise on the Internet. They can release their shows to critics, and we can use them to measure whether they are good.
Honestly, I don't find good TV by skimming what's out there. I see ads for them when watching shows I already watch. I hear about them from friends or on the net. I'm fairly certain I found out about Battlestar Galactica on Slashdot and that's one of my favorite shows now.
Another possibility I could see would be an HBO like model. You could pay a monthly fee to get all of SciFi's shows for example. You could download however much you wanted whenever you wanted. Essentially allow me to do my television a la carte rather than getting a bunch of channels I'd never watch (FoxNews, for example
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
On the off-chance you check for replies...
You should check out RedVsBlue
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
Everyone is overlooking a huge point...Who besides all of us really wants to watch TV on their computers? People want to watch TV on their TVs. For the non tech saavy (95% general population), this business model doesn't work at all. Demographics people...demographics.
pay per view Top Gear. Top Gear is an incredibly awesome car show on the BBC that you can't get here in the states. Its things like this that I think people would buy.
Kiteboarding Gear Mention slashdot and get 10% off!
I moved from web based downloads into hubs years ago ... The only way [Direct Connect] can be stopped is if my ISP starts monitoring traffic and punishing me there.
Or if the price per GB of hard drives stops decreasing. Most of the hubs with the good stuff already have share minimums larger than my main PC's whole hard drive. And even given hard drive space, how would somebody get the 40 GB of quality material to begin with?
I've got broadband with no caps
In some geographic areas, the pricing structure of broadband is that anything higher than a 1 GB/mo cap is priced at "if you have to ask, you can't afford it".
TV Anytime is a standardisation proposal to achieve downloading and recording of events (TV shows) from multiple sources (internet, satellite stream etc) and at any time.
It will allow, for example, to cue a recording for a TV show that hasn't been scheduled yet but that will be broadcast "around Christmas" or to queue a recording for a TV show that was shown two years ago.
A system implementing TV anytime will clearly be able to offer pay-per-download too.
The point is, yes the manufacturers and broadcasters do want to do this.
The difference between a show and a song is that a (good) song you will listen to 1000 times (Think: Roxanne You don't have to put on that red light. Walk the streets for money. You don't care if it's wrong or if it is right ...) but a show? I can't imagine that I would look at a show more than 10 times. So pricing is different.
If they do it right, they will follow Apple's lead and price it at $.99 per show. Since I don't watch that much TV, I would be willing to spend a buck an episode to be able to watch a show commercial free at a time that is convenient for me.
The scenario I envision is one where I would sign up for the shows I want to see. When they become available, they would auto-download to some local box. When the download is successful I would be billed. The show would then appear in a list of shows I can watch.
From previous post:
That dollar has to cover:
Production Contract
Distribution Contract
Actor residuals
Writer/Producer residuals
Legal costs
Pipeline/Delivery costs
And music rights
Actor, writer, and producer residuals - Those people get a percentage of the profit, not a flat rate per airing. Since it is based on a percentage the owner of the show could decide to give it away free and those people would get nothing.
As for all those other things the dollar must cover, aren't they the exact same things included in the cost of DVDs? The average price for a season of a TV show on DVD is about $50 and since the average number of episodes in a season is 22-24 the cost per episode on DVD is $2.27 to $2.08. (Forget about Star Trek DVDs costing $100 per season; that cost is a function of greed plus insane rabid fans)
I think it would have to be cheaper to distribute a show over the Internet than to pay for the material and shipping costs of producing disks. With electronic sales you also don't have the problem of unsold merchandise to deal with.
So to say TV shows would cost 5$ per episode to download is totally absurd. As shown, an episode would cost at most about 2$. In the future that price could increase if people start making "direct-to-download" TV shows (meaning it is never broadcast so there is never any advertising revenue).
There are some things a business like this would have to do in my opinion; most of these rules apply to both PPV and buying from a website:
1. No freakin' commercials (unless it is an optional version that costs much less)
2. Good shows (remember when MP3 sites only sold crap that nobody ever heard of?)
3. Purchased episodes must be downloadable and recordable
4. Offer different video quality options (I like 350MB Divx for 42min. shows but some might want better quality or faster downloads)
5. Episodes must be available for download at the same time as, or even before, they are aired normally. I believe the delay between the airing date and the DVD release is a prime reason for people "pirating" TV shows.
6. For website - No freakin' streaming video
7. For cable/satellite PPV - Must be truly "on demand" viewing, not the "on demand if you happen to demand it at the time we tell you to" model we have now.
8. Must offer samples of the shows like MP3 stores do. Perhaps offer the pilot episode free.
9. Reasonable pricing. None of the "let's charge as much as we possibly can without starting a riot" that they do now. If you charge less, people will buy more (except for 'status' items) is a basic principle of economics that these people vigorously ignore.
As far as I'm concerned those are all requirements. If even one of those isn't supported then I'm not interested. Yeah, I'm a picky bitch but I'm also the customer and they are supposed to give the customer what he wants as long as it is reasonable and I think what I want is reasonable.
USE BITTORRENT... Offer a secure server that you have to log into in order to get access to the tracker. This would offload all the burden from the tv studios and make the costs of serving said tv shows that much cheaper! I'd be willing to pay $2 a show for sure.
But what about this... offer the show WITH COMMERCIALS, just as it was aired, and offer it for free. How? Because they'd know DIRECTLY how many people would be at least downloading the show, and thus watching it. Say goodbye to the "Nielsen family" which is so rediculous and gets good shows canceled just because people tape instead of watch live! The AD revenue would be insane since they'd see how many ACTUAL watchers/downloaders there were.
Either way, money could be saved since bad TV would go away quickly since no one would want it.
The quality of downloads is usually not close to that of the DVD you buy, that will never change.
....if there was no DRM and it was in a format that I would like, ie DIVX/SVCD.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I don't know about you, but watching advertisements isn't one of my favourite pastimes, and I'd much rather pay reasonable amount - say, bit under $CHEAP_DVD_BOX / $NUMBER_OF_EPISODES, which boils down to maybe $1 - than be forced to watch ads.
Well.. sorry to break some illusions, but this is far from Science Fiction.
It is already happening in Norway at several channels, is marketed as Web-TV +, and works very unremarkably without further incident. (tv2.no lets you open account, see some shows for free, and will ask you to sign up if you want content labeled as PLUS content) For a simpe fee of NOK60 (~$9.50) subscribers can view any already aired episode of Lost, Norwegian Idol as much as they would ever want. The service has special deals with major internet providers wich enables customers of these companies to view content in higher streaming qualities. Smart move, probably some smart dealing there that saves the TV station some major bandwidth cost, and gives the broadband companies some serious sales pitch for the wider internet connections. The solution is web-based and runs WMV format only (surprise, surprise), and are probably developed involving some serious co-operation with the Norwegian branch of Microsoft. Something that makes this work, is the fact that people over here already pay an annual fee to the Norwegian State Broadcasting, who was first out testing out web-tv projects. The price is pretty cheap considering the ability to view any show any time, and is possible for most ADSL (+++) customers. (We got only half-decent broadband penetration here owing our insistence to spread out very thin in the rural areas). All this would be great if TV weren't so damn EVIL. Unless the offer comes with extra free hours at the end of the week, this will have to have detrimental effects on the nation as a whole.. I mean. IT HAS ALREADY COST ME SEX MORE THAN ONCE! (She in bed with laptop running wireless broadband and web-tv running: "Yeah, but wait, I just HAVE to see the Idol show I missed earlier today") See?
Bullshit. Sports are a special case because the sports franchises demand so much money to air games. They continually push their partners to up the fees.
The production costs for the Food Channel, on the other hand, are very, very low.
So, indeed, the Food Channel fan is subsidizing local sports broadcasts.
(However, cable would not be as widespread as it is without the sports fans gleefully shelling out big bucks for sports coverage. So perhaps they aren't directly subsidizing those other cable channels but they are aiding in that economy of scale...)
Unless I'm missing something, isn't the formula for the cost to watch an episode once really easy? Take the total ad revenue per episode and divide it by the number of viewers, and you have the value of a viewer. For example, let's say that Battlestar Galactica draws 2 million viewers per episode, and sells ad time for $100,000 per minute, with 14 minutes of ad time per hour episode. The cost of watching an episode (ad-free, and neglecting bandwidth costs) on the web should be about $1,400,000/2,000,000 viewers, or 70 cents per viewing. So including bandwidth costs, $1 per episode sounds about right. Is there a flaw in my reasoning that I'm not seeing, or is it really this simple?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4332337.stm The BBC recognises that TV over broadband is a reality and aims to innovate with it, said Rahul Chakkara, controller of BBCi's 24/7 interactive TV services. The iMP is based on peer-to-peer technology, and lets people download programmes the BBC owns the rights to for up to seven days after broadcast. "IPTV enables us to take back that programme to our audience at different times," said Mr Chakkara. 'Any time' "So we can tell our audience that that programme they paid for [via the licence fee], they can access it any time they want."