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AT&T To Offer TV Over Phone Lines
ppadala writes "AT&T is upgrading their phone lines to offer video programmes over phone line. The service, called U-verse TV will be available in parts of Southern California communities initially. Channel lineups will be similar to traditional cable and dish offerings. AT&T is insisting that, 'This offering is on par with those of its cable rivals. But AT&T claims that it offers customers more for their money, including fast channel changing, video-on-demand, three set-top boxes, a digital video recorder, a picture-in-picture feature that allows viewers to surf channels without switching channels and an interactive program guide.'"
At least not in Hong Kong, where the local phone company has been offering this service for years:
http://www.nowbroadbandtv.com/eng/
Helloooooo America! Welcome to 2004.
fast channel changing - What's slow about pushing the button and the next channel is there? I can't even blink that fast.
video-on-demand - Cable's got it and charges out the ass. Unless it's free and actually has content (the free stuff on cable is crap), no thanks.
three set-top boxes - Right, cuz 1 just wasn't enough.
a digital video recorder - Is that ANOTHER box? Anyhow, cable without DVR isn't worth it.
a picture-in-picture feature that allows viewers to surf channels without switching channels - TV, cable, satellite have all have this for years,
an interactive program guide - Again, they've all had it for years.
If they aren't going to offer anything special, and they aren't going to have significantly lower prices, they can go ahead and call this a failure.
The only thing I see that's even halfway special is that the entire thing is going to be 'on-demand'. That's why the need to state fast channel switching, etc. They aren't going to play all channels all the time... They are only going to play the 2 channels (pic in pic) that you are currently watching, streamed from their CO. (Central Office, the local telephone switch in each city.) If they also made it so that the 'DVR' wasn't at my house, but was instead stored at the CO (it's not really a DVR, just a way to play back whenever I want) then I could see an advantage.
DVR Advantage: I missed Survivor this week because A) I forgot or B) The president had a fit and decided to tell the world, making every show in existance run later than normal. With CO-based DVR, I could just say 'I want to watch ep 785 of Survivor' and it plays it. No worries about storage space or recording mishaps. I'd even pay -extra- for this service. Take it a step further and let me watch Thursday's shows -any time- on Thursday, even before they 'air', and I'd be even happier.
But no, they'll totally miss the coolest aspects of this and instead try to merely match what everyone else already has.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Way to go AT&T! I love when telecoms are looking out for the consumer's best interest.
Indeed, it is a common misconception that companies want or care if you have something: e.g. Wal Mart "wants" to give you low prices or AT & T "wants" you to have high speed internet.
Of course, the thing -- and the only thing -- that these companies want is to make money.
America, Fuck Yeah!
Coming again, to save the mother fucking day yeah,
America, Fuck Yeah!
you might not, depends on how much content you want your myth tv setup to record
ADSL modem + private network + set-top box. Must have taken them months to independantly discover this combination.
And coming soon to a patent office near you.
I dunno, I'd keep my somewhat slower service to avoid a max transfer limit.
I've upped my standards, so up yours.
A good friend of mine has Tivo and the shitty proprietary cable signal he got combined with a proprietary Tivo compression looked horrible. I hated watching saved shows and would very much prefer to watch shows live because they only had half the amount of artifacts. You're acting like we asked for the streaming compression they put on the signal. In fact, I have heard many complaints (to which I agree) that the amount of compression they put on cable lines are unacceptable. It's just sad when over the air signal is crisper than the one provided by a dedicated cable for the same TV stations!
You are also talking about are two completely different problems. I'm okay with AAC because it was
I also don't see how using a Myth-tv box is an OSS-only mindset. Sounds like we want the choice of OSS or something proprietary (like Tivo)--we just want the interfacing to be open enough that we have a choice.
Not only that the combination is probably already patented somewhere and litigation will ensue.
Remember those AT&T commercials back in the nineties, where people would be talking to each other on handheld videophones and using all kinds of other nifty gadgets, and the commercial would tell us that AT&T was bringing these great things to us? Well, I still don't have my handheld videophone, AT&T...
ZuluPad, the wiki notepad on crack
we're in a wired world now.
Can't we skip the middlemen, and let pilots and such pitch themselves directly to the audience?
If you're interested in a new season of firefly, well hey... pony up.
they wouldn't even necessarily need to finance the whole thing. Rather than the media moguls guessing at what is a "sure thing" and what isn't, they can see what kind of funding response potential shows get. Cross X threshold, and you're worth Y risk.
Just a thought.. but sooner or later, getting the audience directly involved has to be inevitable. The barrier to their participation at that stage is shrinking every day...