Cable Companies Want Bigger Share of Online TV Market

commodore64_love writes with news that a number of cable companies, such as Time-Warner, Comcast, and Cox, are trying to establish themselves as content providers on the web in addition to television. They are currently negotiating with HBO, TNT, CNN, and a number of other channels to bring their programming online exclusively for cable TV subscribers. They say they're not trying to develop "some enormous new revenue opportunity," but rather trying to compete with sites like Hulu, which provide shows for free. "They pay networks a per-subscriber fee each month for the right to carry channels. But the cable companies have groused that they are paying for content that programmers are giving away for free on the Web. ... People aren't yet cutting the cord en masse - the Leichtman survey found that people who watch recent TV shows online every week are not more likely to give up TV service than other people. But the industry is heading off what could end up as a troubling trend. After all, the availability of free content online has befuddled other media industries, from music to newspapers. ... The cable companies and others involved in the talks for a TV service said their goal isn't to kill the online video goose, but to work out a plan that keeps everyone's business intact."

Comments

Time Warner is horrible....

[VinylRecords]

During LOST on ABC this week my cable cut out five times....in the first fifteen minutes of the show.

I instead just waited for the show to be over, then downloaded the HD scene release from one of those internet sets that let's you do that, instead of watching the choppy version from my digital cable box that I pay a lot for per month.

Time Warner customer service is terrible also. They had no idea what was wrong with my box. Replaced it. And the same thing happened this morning when I watching the news....so I just listened to news radio this morning instead of local TV news.

If Time Warner and these other companies expand into the online realm of audio video media entertainment are they going to carry the baggage and problems that they have on cable already? Are we going to have to pay for 1,000 internet channels when we only watch at most ten of them? Is the digital cable guide never going to be available? When will they start upping the subscription rates and not telling anyone? Will they force the user to purchase a CD from Time Warner with the software installed to watch the online videos so that they can charge an installation fee?

I pay for cable but I almost download everything I watch now besides live sports events, and even then with the reliability of my cable box, I've been turning to radio more often than ever.

Maybe people have other experiences with different cable and satellite TV providers, but Time Warner is tremendously horrible. And why do I keep Time Warner? They are the only cable and internet provider around me, for real. Ugh.

Re:Time Warner is horrible....

[gwait]

An open standard using a torrent like system would allow a hybrid between broadcast and full video on demand.

Right now while my TV is turned off my cable company is broadcasting several digital HD channels at my house, and I don't even have a digital converter box yet. Total waste of bandwidth to broadcast all this data at people who aren't even watching that channel.

How peer to peer could work:

Show creators release this week's episodes as an open standard binary with tags in for downstream commercial addition, (or not for pay per view).

All licensed digital providers (ISP, Cable, Telco) then pick up the torrent seed from the source and fetch it to their local hard drives.

I pay a (REASONABLE) fee for the show, more for commercial free, and my home media adaptor (PS3, XBOX360, Linux box, AppleTV whatever) torrents it from my local provider to my place on to my drive for me to watch.

Yes, you could then implement QOS to allow streaming services like telephones etc to operate while my media box torrents in my selected content.

No I don't want a closed box Motorola PVR, they are crud, too buggy, and I have no control over feature removal at the whim of megacorp incorporated.
This should be open so there is competition, so the quality of the whole thing is reasonable.

Make it easy and cheap enough and you won't have to worry about DRM screwing up the paying customers (and not preventing pirates) See: Nine Inch Nails free music giveaway scheme for evidence.

Miro plus Torrents plus RSS almost offers this now, but is piracy (someone's got to pay the media providers!!) and too technogeeky for Grandma.

No, you giant media conglomerates don't get to push us back on the couch to watch broadcast. You lost. Get out of the way. There's a good reason people spend more time on the web than TV in the western world.

Re:This was my first submission to slashdot

[geekoid]

Don't worry this will fail.
If done right, they'll just abandon this silly notion and nothig will change.
If they really fight this, they will stop in a few year after throwing billion of dollars.
In the mean time just use bitorrent.

I consider it a form of civil disobediance.
P prefer not to, but if they are locking my out of content I want to see, I'll use it.

All I want to do is ahve my machine automatically download the shows I select. I have no problem with them inserting ads, I do understand that's where they get there money.

In fact, they could insert local ads based on your location, which could be based on your billing address.

That is the future of television.