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The Economist On Television Over Broadband
zxjio recommends a pair of articles in The Economist discussing television over broadband, and the effects of DVR use. "Cable-television companies make money by selling packages of channels. The average American household pays $700 a year for over 100 channels of cable television but watches no more than 15. Most would welcome the chance to buy only those channels they want to watch, rather than pay for expensive packages of programming they are largely not interested in. They would prefer greater variety, too — something the internet offers in abundance. A surprising amount of video is available free from websites like Hulu and YouTube, or for a modest fee from iTunes, Netflix Watch Instantly and Amazon Video on Demand. ... Consumers' new-found freedom to choose has struck fear into the hearts of the cable companies. They have been trying to slow internet televisions steady march into the living room by rolling out DOCSIS 3 at a snails pace and then stinging customers for its services. Another favorite trick has been to cap the amount of data that can be downloaded, or to charge extortionately by the megabyte. Yet the measures to suffocate internet television being taken by the cable companies may already be too late. A torrent of innovative start-ups, not seen since the dot-com mania of a decade ago, is flooding the market with technology for supplying internet television to the living room." And from the second article on DVR usage patterns: "Families with DVRs seem to spend 15-20% of their viewing time watching pre-recorded shows, and skip only about half of all advertisements. This means only about 5% of television is time-shifted and less than 3% of all advertisements are skipped. Mitigating that loss, people with DVRs watch more television. ... Early adopters of DVRs used them a lot — not surprisingly, since they paid so much for them. Later adopters use them much less (about two-thirds less, according to a recent study)."
You really can find just about everything you want or need online.
I had a spare computer that I loaded Ubuntu on, made sure it had the latest flash and java. I also installed Boxee, although, since the Hulu problem, haven't used it.
Most of the entertainment type shows I get via Hulu. Their interface could be a bit friendlier (too much scrolling, really), but overall it's not bad. For news, CNN offers live streaming, which is really quite good quality at full screen. MSNBC offers all their shows for streaming - well at least the ones I care about - Countdown and Rachel Maddow. And I get local weather from WGN - also streamed full screen.There are a few European stations I like watching, and I use Livestation for that. The quality through that isn't the best, but I will say the streaming is steady.
The one beef I have with it all is the disparate pages I have to go to/navigate to get to the content. This is where I was really hoping Boxee would do some good. Not yet. They have a section in their UI to add apps, but it looks like it's Boxee specific, so I can't just add any program (such as Livestation. As it stands, I've created a bunch of Prism desktop shortcuts to take me directly to the content I want.
A torrent of innovative start-ups, not seen since the dot-com mania of a decade ago, is flooding the market with technology for supplying internet television to the living room."
Torrent was EXACTLY the word I was looking for. Thank you, The Economist!
No, socialism is bad, it's what got us here in the first place. Gave the telcos $200B for a 46mbps pipe to the home by 2008 (? might have been 2006, I don't recall). As is typical with government, there was no oversight, or checks to make sure what needed to be done was being done...the money disappeared.
This and this. We've been using Tivo since 2001 and I'd say our viewing is the exact opposite of what the Economist says.
I think the only reason we see ads anymore is when my daughter is watching a pre-recorded show from Disney Channel or Cartoon Network - she can't work the fast-forward yet.
It's just so great not to have to be tied to the network's idea of when I should be watching TV. Have a meeting on Monday nights? No problem, Heroes, 24, and House will be there waiting for me in full HD glory.
In due time, we are going to have to pay ourselves up-front for the big budget entertainment, rather than indirectly as a cost built into the products we buy, because they got advertised as a subsidy on our media.
Nah, the ads will just move into the movies in a bigger way. Along with NOS, Autometer, Nissan, Ford and Subaru... I wonder how much Castrol paid to get in to Fast & Furious this time? Even my non-car-geek friend picked up on that advertising. Or the ads become feature length movies... either way really.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
Mythbuntu allowed me dodge the expensive DVR and accorded me the freedom to skip commercials from recorded programs. My Mythbuntu, connected to a wireless router, quietly runs in the basement and through a netbook connected to an LCD TV, I watch these shows. Sweet.
I just hope that folks at Mythbuntu can integrate the script that removes commercials. Right now, you must be a semi geek to set this up. The other problem too is the trouble with remote controls. It appears that there is no way of getting a remote control configured without editing some text file. This can be scary with the enormous number of options. Even with this, you will be lucky to have it working.
My experience has been rewarding. To save on power bills, I would like to use a notebook based TV card if I can find one.
For those who might be wondering whether Mythbuntu 9.04 has solved anything, I can say not much over here though boot time is faster with 9.04 as compared to 8.10.
My next task will be to grab free "Free To Air" signals in my area. I understand there are many channels around. This means folks, that I am not very happy with my cable TV company.
Yep. I remember that provision. And apparently so does Robert X. Cringely. I remember thinking back then that by now we'd have 45 mbps, which was practically unheard of back then. Most of the country was on dialup, and there were a few folks on cablemodems.
So where did the $200 billion go? Read Cringely.
My blog
You already have socialism: it is government that grants these companies their exclusive monopolies. Why do you think that a bigger, more intrusive monopoly will lead to improvement? Take the monopoly away, don't strengthen it.
That's not socialism, though.
The important difference between a publicly-run network and a privately-run network is that the public network is not run with the intention of generating maximum profits for the shareholders, but rather for the public good. Financially speaking, it's fine if it breaks even. Fast fibre connections into every home would also have many secondary economic benefits to the community that are harder to quantify than a company's balance sheet. Yes it's technically a monopoly, but many of the reasons for a monopoly being a bad thing no longer exist. There would also be nothing to stop telcos from building their own private networks alongside the public one. Given the choice between a public monopoly and a private one, I'd rather have the public one every time.
I would possibly like to see such a public network run as a wholesale service whereby the service providers buy capacity and resell it with their own packages. This would completely level out the playing field and make true market competition possible. This is evident in the way that the incumbent telcos are trying to get bills passed to prevent this from happening; they are scared shitless by the possibility that the power they have to completely rape their customers for as much money as possible for as shoddy service as they can get away with, would be neutralised.
I haven't had cable television in 7 years. I don't miss it. For the money I save, I
* Netflix
* Go to the movies
* Pay for the newspaper
* Pay the late fees on my library books
* Pay admission to museums
At the end of the day, cable isn't offering us anything we can't see already on Netflix or on youtube or hulu et al. So really -- why pay $700/yr or whatever when we can watch all the programming that we really like by pulling it instead of waiting for it to be pushed?
P.S. Take a Kill-A-Watt and check out how much electricity your cable box + DVR + ??? are using on standby and calculate the additional burden on your electric bill. I'd bet it's a combined 40W or so, good for another $50+ a year.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Most would welcome the chance to buy only those channels they want to watch, rather than pay for expensive packages of programming they are largely not interested in.
I'm sure they would, but the economics of television channels doesn't work like that.
Let's suppose person A is willing to pay $5 a month for the sport channel and $10 per month on the news channel. Person B is willing to spend $10 a month on the sport channel and $5 a month on the news channel. If the package of 2 channels costs $15 they'll both be willing to pay for the channels. If the cable provider charges $7.50 for each, then each subscriber only pay for one channel since the other one is not worth the amount they're charging to that customer. So, the cable provider has lost out on $15, and each subscriber has lost out on a channel that they're reasonably interested in.
It's not like other purchases. The cable provider doesn't have to buy a selection of channels and resell them. They pay a fixed fee to the station, based on the expected number of subscribers, and price their offering so as to maximise their profits.
Internet based TV services aren't going to change this offering. They'll still offer a selection of "channels". You'll still end up with a package of programmes, most of which you don't want to watch.
in my house its usually on cartoon network or the news and its just been sitting there playing while we are online, gaming, or doing things around the house. we watch important shows on hulu if we care about it, or we look through ovguide.com, so we can start and stop and go back to previous episodes. we have a tivo someone gave us but never saw justification for the subscription fees.
shows that we really care about and want to keep come in from netflix and copied to external hard drive.
we search for the ultimate device to make use of this collection. that device would read through all the episodes of each show we have and play them back like itunes on random and broadcast those to all the tvs in the house on our own custom tv channel. we dont want to have to pick a show to watch, we just want them all playing on their own and we can either sit down and watch if were interested at that moment or not.
my younger sister lives in an apartment but is rarely ever there because of work or social activities. she just has her laptop with her always and a sprint card. this is how she watches her tv shows and gets her news. if that device gives her whatever she needs, why pay the extra money for something that only works when she is in one particular spot?
the people i know that care about the tivo are older, they are settled into houses, have a big entertainment center hooked up, and do not spend alot of time buzzing about. like my dad, he loves tivo. the difference i think is he specifically spends an hour or more sitting in front of the tv and thats all he does, his purpose is actually to just sit there and watch... just sitting and watching tv would drive me nuts.
I lost a lucrative job in late 2001. The first thing I cut off was the satellite tv. I learned to test DTV until the p-4 switch and have since relied on OTA and various forms of TV over DSL, especially justin.tv. My kid doesn't care or doesn't realize that we only have 2 channels on our tv.
I've got 101 mod points and you can't have them!
That was not socialism. If it had been socialism the government would have put some oversight in place to make sure that the telecommunications companies actually rolled the fat pipes that they promised to. There would have been regulation and some control over the companies that received this money to make sure that the money did not just vanish into shareholders' pockets. What happened in telecommunications in the US in the 1990s and 2000s was a classic example of what happens if you just let private companies do whatever they want with public money.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
That is not socialism, it's incompetence. Making sure that work paid for (in this case rolling out telecoms infrastructure) is done properly is basic management and should be part of every system of government.
"Welcome to our world. We are the wasted youth. And we are the future too." Yes, I know these are stupid lyrics.
Whenever you list online media sources like Hulu, you should remember they are available in the USA only due to restrictive regional licensing agreements by the major media cartels. The rest of the world can only download the same content illegally.
The BBC is a perfect example of what you are saying. Despite being funded by the taxpayer they are run along commercial lines with orders to maximise profits...
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
The Economist article on Internet TV says all the right things. But never underestimate the ability of the incumbent broadband ISPs in North America to leverage their near-monopoly control of last-mile facilities. In Canada, as well as the US, the incumbent telcos and cablecos have both the opportunity and motivation to use traffic-shaping, bandwidth caps and exhorbitant fees to discourage the use of the local loop for any service that threatens an established service of their own - especially video. Ever since the collapse of the content/carriage distinction, they've all been in a conflict of interest, fully sanctioned by the FCC and CRTC. You get to own the pipes plus you get to offer whatever content you like. So don't be holding your breath about the ability of that "torrent" of startups to dislodge the likes of Comcast and Rogers. True, Time Warner Cable just lost a high-profile battle on bandwidth caps. And they retaliated by taking their DOCSIS 3.0 marbles and going home to sulk. Up here, Bell Canada has filed a tariff that would allow it to extend 60-gig caps beyond its own subs, to be applied to every DSL reseller it supplies in Ontario and Quebec. And this tariff is actually being given serious consideration, even though it's egregiously anti-competitive. Proving once again that non-facilities-based competition just doesn't work. Did I mention Bell owns Canada's leading satellite-TV provider, ExpressVu? Sure, we're getting TV over the Web. And Canadians lead the world in consumption of online video. But fiber is the only viable way we'll ever get real hi-def TV running over the Web in North America, looking like it oughta. And the incumbents - with exceptions like FiOS - don't want to go near FTTH, because that would spell the end of the artificial bandwidth scarcity that keeps them in charge.
I usually think that when the government starts merging with industry, it's called Fascism, which is more an attribute of the right than left, but both parties are moving that direction. Usually the government nationalizes corporations, but if the government is run by the corporations, it will end up being the same thing... the single party bit is true in all but name now -- neither party resists the corporatism.
Currently hooked on AMP
public network run as a wholesale service whereby the service providers buy capacity and resell it
That's more than the government needs to be involved in to fix things. All they need to do is provide *fiber* for service providers to resell. Keep it to the absolute minimum that has a natural monopoly, and let the market take care of everything where competition can be provided.
I've said more about this before.
True, the combination of Netflix, Netflix, and online news can replace films, scripted TV series, and news on cable TV. But what replaces live sports on cable TV?
It's not the cable companies that are selling packages of channels, it's the content producers - cable companies don't much care beyond the technical details of access control and so forth.
Everyone thinks they want a la carte programming, but the reality is that if it ever came to pass, most folks would pay pretty much what they pay now, except they'd get fewer channels in exchange, particularly for those who are interested in niche or specialty channels. Without the producers being able to subsidize niche channels through fees for their popular, flagship channels - which is, of course, exactly why they sell channels in packages like they do now - the price of those niche channels will go up dramatically for those who choose to subscribe to them. Not a problem if you're only interested in ESPN 1 and MTV 1, but if your tastes are even slightly outside the mainstream, you won't wind up saving much money at all.
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
We need to avoid both at all costs.
We do not need government owned or operated businesses. This never ends well. We do not need a government that has its strings pulled by big business. This never ends well either.
What we need is government protecting an environment that fosters competition, and businesses competing. It IS the hard way... requiring the most work and diligence.
Discovery has 100 networks that earns them 3 billion from 1.5 billion viewers. Whats to stop them from starting their own over-the-internet subscription service? If their viewers bought only one channel a-la-cart, they could pay 17 cents a month and Discovery would still net 3 billion in a year. With their viewers buying even more channels, or packages, the price per channel could drop even lower, or they could simply pocket more of the revenue.
Channels that are unpopular should die, not be subsidized by other consumers. We already have public television to fill that gap.
One arm of the BBC makes profits, and all of them are reinvested in the BBC.
No one owns shares in the BBC. When the BBC makes a profit, the people who gain are the British public, through reduced license fees and an improved service. I think the world gains as well - how many BBC shows are rightly regarded as classics?
The BBC is not funded through taxation, but through a license fee. If you don't want to pay it, you do have to divest yourself of all equipment capable of recording their broadcasts.
On the other hand, for less than £12 a month you get a lot of value, not least of which is the knock-on effect of improving the general standard of broadcasting in the UK. We have a mandated maximum average of 12 minutes of commercials an hour here - it's more like 18 elsewhere.
Complaining about the license fee is like complaining that for a measly 1/4 of what the USA spends per head, we get universal health care with no co-pay and fixed prescription costs.
I'd like to point out something I've observed over the years I've used my DVR: I watch the commercials.
I'll be watching my show, and I'll be using the 30-second skip feature to skip commercials during the show... but in the act of flipping through the commercials, If I see something that looks interesting to me, I'll actually go back and see what the commercial is about.
Reasons I skip commercials include: The commercial is annoying, I've seen it several times, or I am defiantly not the target audience.
I've also experienced where I am watching with somebody else, I skip a commercial, and the other party asks to go back to see it because they were interested in it.
I'm sure I'm not alone in this observation. So, I think all commercials get a fair showing in most cases with DVR.
Blanket labels like that are rather shortsighted. There are many socialized services that do very well and are required for quality of life in the US. Medicaid, medicare, social security, police, fire, public schooling, etc. You post smacks of partisan politics without any real thought behind it. If you are so against social services, would you take your mother off of medicare? Would you pay for all of his or her expenses out of your own pocket since they could no longer pay for themselves without social security? Could you even afford to do so and care for your own family? Would you put out your own house fire and arrest your local neighborhood criminals yourself?
It could also be argued that the handouts that these telco's took also ushered in broadband for millions of Americans, but only where it was profitable to do so. Oversight is never as good as hindsight. It does not mean they cannot do better or be required to do better by congress. The first bank bailouts had zero controls. They now come with a substantial number of them to the point where banks are hesitant to take them or eager to pay them off early. Granted more thought could have gone into them but they are at least trying to learn from past mistakes.
It sounds like congress let out too much leash and is hopefully ready to reel them back in (hopefully a lot). I see cable companies in the same boat as the failing brick and mortar RIAA model. They will either need to adapt (and compete), or they will simply be replaced by those that can.
I for one would have been MUCH happier had the government done the work that they expected of the telcos. It would have at least been done, been more accountable than the telcos, and given some return investment to the tax payer rather than filling the telco's purses, and I'm betting I would currently be using 50MB service at home for far less than I'm paying my local cable provider.
Why do you think that the Democratic Party is fascist
Because everyone points their fingers at everyone else when it comes to fascism. It'd be the most overused hyperbolic epithet of the current decade if only it weren't so often true.
The "right" insists that they're not fascist, only the left can be fascist because the left wants to control what you think and do on a daily basis. By forcing conformity and compelling everyone to march in lockstep... this is indeed a part of fascism.
The "left" insists that they're not fascist, only the right can be fascist because the right wants to give corporations unlimited powers and money. Government and corporation marching in lockstep... this is indeed a part of fascism.
The fact that the right also wants to control what you think and do or that the left also wants powerful corporations... these facts are lost on the supporters of both sides of the argument.
So what will happen? I think content providers will partner with cable cos to provide their content online.
That might bite the cable companies in the ass. Certain content providers are waiting eagerly for them to open the doors on such negotiations. That'll make cable dumber than a dumb pipe.
Second, they are waiting for the end of analog signals so they can reclaim some bandwidth.
Huh? Cable bandwidth is unrelated to the OTA switch to digital signals. Some cable companies will continue their analog basic cable services long past the switchover date. Others have already abandoned analog, requiring their customers to use a digital set top box, with whatever DOCSIS version or other protocol they deem appropriate (FiOS for example).
Have gnu, will travel.
> The reality is that most of the content that offered on cable today
> won't make its way to the web for free under the current revenue
> models of content providers (not cable cos). Currently half of the
> revenue that channels like TLC get is from cable subscriptions. The
> other half is from advertising. These channels aren't interested in
> cutting their revenues in half on the hopes that on-line advertising
> somehow doubles in profitability. This is especially the case when
> it's currently only about 10% of what the same ads get you on TV.
Any channel that needs to squeeze money out of cable providers
as well as spam us with advertising is already living on borrowed
time. These are the sorts of channels that need to be put out of
their misery by the march of technological progress. If you are
extracting subscription fees out of me or out of me indirectly
through my cable carrier then your content better be commercial
free or else you are trying to steal my time.
Hulu or something similar is probably the wave of the future. Any
"channel" that can't deal with this sort of model probably should
"start getting their affairs in order" right now.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
public network run as a wholesale service whereby the service providers buy capacity and resell it
That's more than the government needs to be involved in to fix things. All they need to do is provide *fiber* for service providers to resell. Keep it to the absolute minimum that has a natural monopoly, and let the market take care of everything where competition can be provided.
How many fibers will government provide to profit making businesses? Why should my tax money be given to businesses so they can make more money? ComCast's 4Q gross profit was more than $5 Billion and Time Warner Cable's was almost $2.5 Billion. Government or a separate entity building and owning the fiber which then has open access would be better. Best may be to have a coop own it.
Reading your previous post it looks like you're suggesting this. But in this post I'm not sure what you mean. GP says the public owns the infrastructure then wholesales it but you say "That's more than the government needs to be involved in to fix things".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Ironically, the Economist misses an important piece of the puzzle. It writes:
The 1999 CES awarded the "Best of Show" video category to ReplayTV, with Tivo as the runner up.
ReplayTV was the DVR to own during the analog era. It offered built-in autoconfiguring ethernet, automatic user-oblivious commercial skip (using detection heuristics similar to those now employed by MythTV) and the ability to exchange show recordings over the internet. The last two features were potentially massively disruptive to the TV/movie industry and landed the ReplayTV people in court. The protracted legal battles drained the company's finances and attention, and in the end they consented to remove the coolest features from their newer units. By then Tivo, which always played well the media conglomerates, had taken most of the market by offering units with significantly less disruptive potential.
Da Blog
As for Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security I think it would be better if they were privatized or opened to a free market.
When the Bush administration started just over 8 years ago, one of its major goals was to privatize social security... everyone would get their own account... in the stock market.
Now consider what has happened in the stock market since then. What happens to all the people who depend on that "fixed income" from social security when it would now be easily cut in half?
This analysis doesn't require any sympathy or consideration of the plights of individuals (some would argue that they should have provided for themselves). But what happens to the economy as a whole? A bunch of people lose their houses because they can no longer pay their mortgages and taxes. We already have a glut of houses on the market, adding more houses only makes the problem worse.
Then consider the hoards of homeless old people. Now, again, we don't need any compassion for this analysis... we don't have to care about the individuals and their suffering. But do need assess the impact of their homelessness on society as a whole. Some will turn to crime and some of those will be caught and we'll need to more spend money on trials and prisons.
This exercise in identifying systemic costs due to a lack of a functioning social security system can go on for a quite a while. But what you end up with (again, without taking into consideration compassion or emotional arguments) that no matter what choice you make as a society, there will be a cost to the decision. You can have the direct costs of a social security system or the many indirect costs of having hoards of criminal or sick grannies wreaking havoc on society.
Once you realize that every choice for a system has its own costs, then it's a matter of maximizing or minimizing the the things that are most important. THAT is a judgment based on the values and priorities of a society.
It's easy to say that everyone should provide for their own retirement, and it's a great "value system" and sentiment. But the fact is, not everyone can or will (there are plenty of ways even the most perfectly planned "life" can be derailed by life events). The hard reality that has to be faced then is "what do do about them". The world isn't so "neat" that they simply go away. Our society, as a system, will incur the costs of their lack of a retirement plan in one way or another.
Because of a disability and being turned down for health insurance I collect SSI and have Medicare and I don't believe hard working taxpayers should be paying my for disability or health care.
You're welcome. I work hard and pay taxes and I'm glad we have a safety net in place for people who need it. I do realize there are some people who abuse that safety net, but even then, I feel we are better off as a society with it, abuses and all, than without it.
You don't have to look very hard to find societies that are failing because they have no safety nets and people are driven into poverty and crime. Somalia with its pirates and Mexico dominated by drug cartels are easy examples. In fact, look at most places that are laissez-faire, low regulation, have minimal societal safety nets, and they're generally unpleasant places for a majority of the population to live in. The rich will be comfortable wherever they are, but since most of us won't be rich, I opt to live in a society that has some safety nets and regulation.
Republican Party != "US right"; well at least not currently.
The 2008 election would not have changed the direction this country is going to ... merely the speed of change. Both major candidates had a platform which required significantly larger federal government.