Slashdot Mirror
Online TV May Be IPTV's First Step
An anonymous reader writes "According to the San Diego Union Tribune Time Warner Cable is letting its customers in San Diego watch live television over their hi-speed internet PCs via 'Online TV'. Time Warner's Broadband TV service (no cost above the min system requirement of cable and hi-speed modem) offers the identical '80 channels that are available with its standard cable TV service.' According to Judy Walsh, Time Warner's San Diego division president, 'It's basically like having another outlet for watching TV. It's TV on your PC. It's that simple.' Is this really the first step towards full-fledged IPTV or is this a service for dad's who can't wrestle the remote control from their kids?"
Maybe I lack imagination, but I'm not sure that I understand the purpose of IPTV. Television can be viewed on a computer using a simple video card, and any time shifting and program recording can easily be handled by the myriad PVRs available.
Can someone enlighten me why IPTV matters? Is it the possibility of creating your own content, and delivering it What's the deal?
concrete5: a cms made for marketing, but strong enough for geeks.
I don't think this can ever really take off unless cable companies change their business model to accomodate a la carte selections. As the article intimates, more refined selections of channels would be easier. I just don't really see that happening here.
My ISP has/had (I don't know, or care, any more) a service like this for a while. Whil not as robust as this, it had ~8 channels. News, Comedy, TechTV/G4, TSN, Much Music and some other stuff. In this situation though, the buffer was always underunning. The picture quality was sub par for even regular streaming video. On top of all this, it was incompatible with anything but Internet Explorer. You could look at he source if you were clever though to get the stream addresses but as a regular consumer service, you shouldn't have to. My experience with Internet TV has been poor so I may be biased, this new service may be great but I'll believe it when I see it.
I've been waiting for something like this to start happening. I don't have a television, don't want a television, don't intend to get one. But I like to watch sports.
This year, my roommates and I have a subscription with mlbtv.com. For around $70 we get all non-local/national broadcast streamed via either real or windows media. Setup two laptops, forward the appropriate ports and traffic types through the router, and !voila! two baseball games.
(for those who care, mlb.com checks your IP address to find out where you are, so using a proxy server gets you access to local games)
If BASEBALL, the most old-fashioned, stodgy sport out there, can stream all games online, there's absolutely no good reason besides stupidity that the NFL, NBA, and other sports don't take advantage of this.
Just like there's no reason *not* to stream television over the internet. Forget being nice to your customers. How about the extra commercial revenue they'll get from having people online and watching tv at the same time.
Cable Companies! Stop being stupid and stream your broadcast signals my way.
Great, so in the future, not watching garbage like this will mean that it gets cancelled, but good shows like this will actually stand a chance of surviving.
A future of Futuramas and Fireflies sounds nice.
Is it safe to assume the commercials will be the same? Strip them out *then!* you have product!
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. - Martin Luther King, Jr.
Good point- Showing me ads for Maxi Pads when they could be showing me ads for beer is a waste of my time and their money.
I believe what we are forgeting for advertising is product placement. Hey look, Hobie on Baywatch just drank a YooYoo chocolaty drink, now I want one! This is common in films, companies pay to put products in movies all the time. I for one, would never have bought a Pontiac Aztek if it hadn't been featured on Survivor. This can be as simple as a billboard in a wide pan shot or seeing the table ads during a basket ball game, to being as complex as having those two big engine things on the back of the Enterprise being coke cans....
The advertising world will have to change.... But they will.
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
"if it goes national- instant, precise ratings."
I'd bet TiVo kills the Nielsens before IPtv has the chance to do so.
And yes, before anyone tries to correct me, I do know that the Nielsens have a pilot program using TiVos currently. But that's just an "embrace and extend" strategy on their part that will ultimately finish them off. Kinda like how Mozilla killed the original Netscape Navigator, although many would argue it was self inflicted, or a mercy killing.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*