Slashdot Mirror
Voom No More
RokaMoka writes "Today the world got a little fuzzier. Voom has announced thay they are shutting down. As a subscriber I can tell you they will be sorely missed, as they far better than the competition.
For those of you who are not familiar with voom, they had 3 times as many HiDef channels as the next competitor and a really nice remote control. It sure was pretty while it lasted." I think they died because they don't have a PVR. Hi-Def folks are early adopters and they want the technology. Of course, with all the mess swirling around DirecTV's move to Mpeg4 and the obsolesence of the HD-Tivo, it will be interesting to see what happens next.
No, today America got fuzzier. Yes, there is a difference.
So, the world doesn't include any of America? (Which America, btw...North, South, or did you mean a specific nation?)
Nit pick and be prepaired to be nit picked back.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
b/c they believe they can purchase the "birds" at lower costs from creditors looking to get some of their money back.
-b
So wait, are you saying he's wrong? The USA got fuzzier and the world did not? What country got sharper to balance it out, or was the difference spread out among the other countries, making them all slightly sharper?
Only an terminally stupid troll like you would use their abject ignorance to get in a jab at Republicans.
Lack of PVR was definitely part of the problem. I'm an early HD adopter and didn't consider VOOM because of it. Not enough subscribers = paltry revenue.
This is really hurting HD in general, and I'm sure Voom suffered from it too.
Over half of HD content is "cheap content". That is, it is made up of either pointing a camera of things that don't have to sign a release (animals) or converting old cheap film content to HD.
Every company wants to start their own channel. Look at Universal HD. They have very little content, why don't they sell it to someone else? Why don't they air it on UPN HD? Well, no one wants to buy their content (see cheap content above) and no one wants to sell it. They'd rather squat on a channel with absolutely lousy content and hope their channel (real estate) becomes valueable later. So they don't air it on a network, they air it on their own channel.
There are two ESPNs HDs now, even though neither shows HD much of the time. Discovery has their own channel and carries 4 shows of note in HD. "Trading Spaces", "American Chopper", "Monster Garage" and I forget the other. They don't even have "Mythbusters". One channel, 4 shows total? You could air those in an evening!
The problem with companies squatting on these channels is that DTV only had bandwidth to carry maybe 25 HD channels. Eight are HD "locals" that many people can't get. 3 are decent movie channels that carry movies in HD 50% of the time or more. And the other ones carry something worthwhile about 10% of the time. So it's like having 7 HD channels. That's a pretty tough sell.
More HD content is being made every day (mostly for the networks). These channels want to carry it, but they don't want to pay for it.
What will make HD go is content.
Anyway, back to Voom. As the poster said, they had a lot of homemade channels. These channels just carried cheap content. I just can't watch that much footage of fish and prarie dogs.
I think they died because they don't have a PVR. Hi-Def folks are early adopters and they want the technology. Of course, with all the mess swirling around DirecTV's move to Mpeg4 and the obsolesence of the HD-Tivo, it will be interesting to see what happens next.
Voom died because they didn't know how to compete. They were the 3rd player in a 2 player race. If you want to break into an established market, you go back to the basics and compete on price. First and foremost, people are going to ask, "What does it cost?" You do what it takes to bring in the subscribers. Voom didn't do that. Sure, they had a big lineup of channels, but half of those channels, no one had ever seen. There's not enough marketshare to survive on HD alone. What incentive did Voom offer to switch? You couldn't walk into Sears, Best Buy, or anywhere and look at their lineup. Why? I've had an HDTV from the moment the 2nd gen Mitsubishis were introduced. I picked up a DirecTV HD receiver as soon as they offered service. I have no interest in the HD TIVO box because you have to reboot the thing EVERY DAY. What a piece of junk! It's more aggravation that it's worth. There aren't enough HD owners out there yet for a satellite company to survive. And HD owners that want TIVO? There's no way I'd gamble on such a specific audience. Your speculation doesn't wash.
The truth is, PVR, MPEG4 and the impending doom of the current HD-TIVO box have nothing to do with the decline of Voom. Voom never acquired enough subscribers to pay for their programming. And their programming stunk. They had a hodge-podge of everything, which meant they were excellent at nothing. If you want subscribers, you've got to go after the sports market first.
Their sports lineup stunk. Instead, Voom chose to compete with custom programming. Switching to Voom was a risk, and in the beginning, no one was willing to risk it because Voom wasn't willing to offer any fantastic deals. I would have done the opposite. I would have worked hard to get the sports market, and ALSO undercut everyone's prices... a lot more than what they were willing to do. Subsidize the hardware... from the beginning. And then word of mouth might have gotten them more subs. I don't have a single friend that asked me about Voom. Not one. And I'm the early adopter. No one was interested in trying Voom. I mentioned it. But no one cared.
-- No sig for you!