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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!
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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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.