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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?"
if it goes national- instant, precise ratings.
always mosh clockwise
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.
What is the point or purpose of IPTV?
A practical purpose of IPTV is to allow content from anywhere and anyone - not just Big Business. Now, Time Warner is doing this only to prevent such a thing from happening.
Take, Strong Bad, for example. I would easily pay like $5/year to watch this creativity a couple times per month. What happens if 30 million others feel the same way? Instant negation of Big Business, that is what.
Time Warner, Comcast, NBC, CBS, Fox and all those others need to be first here or they will be gone in short time.
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IPTV forever frees the broadcasters from the shackles of fair use: with Microsoft's help, they can dictate whatever terms they like for viewing.
IPTV also frees the system manfacturers from the shackles of competing with an installed base: at any time, they can declare your particular display, computer, hard drive, etc. to be noncompliant and the system will stop working until you upgrade.
Between these two, it's a Brave New World for two business sectors which were facing market saturation and declining revenues.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The same is true of books and everything else. Television is subject to Sturgeon's Law no more and no less than everything else. The "smash your television!" mentality is dangerous close to the book-burner's mentality.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Take, Strong Bad, for example. I would easily pay like $5/year to watch this creativity a couple times per month. What happens if 30 million others feel the same way? Instant negation of Big Business, that is what.
Millions of people can make their own CDs, but we haven't seen the major record labels "negated" yet. With TV, the major studios are the ones who can supply the cash and resources for sets, special effects, big name actors, etc etc. Although I can imagine there will be a lot more cult followings of low-budget TV shows and the big TV networks will have less control, they'll not have to worry about instant negation. Strong Bad will be bought and whored out like nobody's business long before any one goes out of business.