Time To Ditch Cable For Internet TV?

itwbennett writes "A flurry of announcements from YouTube, Boxee, Dell and Clicker on Thursday brought good news for anyone considering canceling their cable service in favor of internet TV. First, YouTube announced that within the next few days it will start offering full 1080P HD streams; better than your cable company can offer. Next, Boxee announced a 'Boxee Box' that promises to make it easier to get the content off your computer and onto your TV. Or you could hook up Dell's Inspiron Zino HD instead. 'This is an 8" x 8" PC running Windows 7 (with an option for Ubuntu) that you certainly could use as a desktop machine, but the form factor just screams 'Hook me up to your TV!' via its HDMI port,' says Peter Smith. And, last but not least in this roundup of announcements is the launch of Clicker, a programming guide for internet TV that aims to help you find what you want, when you want it."

Comments

I'm sorry.

[Anonymous Coward]

Next, Boxee announced a 'Boxee Box' that promises to make it easier to get the content off your computer and onto your TV.

Good luck. I'm hiding behind 7 of them right now!

Is it live, or is it Memorex

[Dachannien]

But can I keep what I download?

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[cryfreedomlove]

Why do you want to?

Imagine a world where anything you could possibly want to watch is available from the internet instantly for a flat rate all you can eat cheap price. That's where we are headed. In that world, why bother maintaining enough expensive disk space (with backups) for a video format that will be obsolete 6 months after you download it?

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[Dachannien]

Two reasons:

One, I can transcode it to eliminate the commercials.

Two, I never have to worry about my service provider (at the behest of the Content Cabal) revoking my ability to watch something I've saved.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[GameMaster]

Because this can, very easily, turn into one, giant, bait-and-switch. Once the big content companies companies get the entire market to abandon physical media and adopt online, on-demand, delivery it won't take long for them to end the "all you can eat" pricing system and adopt a "pay per view" system. Once that's done, they'll just keep jacking up the rates arbitrarily. We've already seen this kind of behavior from the broadband ISPs and cell phone companies in the US.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[Seumas]

Last I heard, the average person watches an astonishing eight hours of television per day. Switching to entertainment on the internet to replace cable won't happen until data caps are lifted. Let's say people don't even have to watch HD content. Just regular digital/standard content. And let us say you have a family of four. Or are a few roommates sharing a place. That's an average of 32 hours of streaming video content per day or almost 700 hours of content per month. Not counting all the other bandwidth suckers you have going on like radio, gaming, etc.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[Skreems]

Come on, you really think someone won't find a way around it? If the rates become more than people think is reasonable, they'll pirate it. They already do. And technology in 3 years isn't suddenly going to become impregnable. At the VERY worst, it'll take one guy with a machine fast enough to virtualize Windows, fullscreen a paid Hulu account, and record the screen output to a video file, and you've got an unencumbered video you can share with friends.

No system yet has proven foolproof. If you can watch it, you can record it. And if the default experience becomes irritating enough, someone's going to work their way around it just to spite the media companies if nothing else.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[TBoon]

Three, transcode for portable devices. Watch on while travelling.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember this early on with cable TV, pre-Internet. If you bought cable, you would get some more channels, and all programming you watched would be ad-free. Then ads crept in between programs. Then eventually the shows you watched on had just as many ads as the over the air TV channels.

Another example is tethering. As time goes by, there are more restrictions, fewer phones that offer this service without jailbreaking or reflashing, and more fees attached for this service.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[westlake]

One, I can transcode it to eliminate the commercials.

I watch Netflix downloads almost daily and I haven't been plagued by commercials.

Who has the time to do a clean - professional-looking - edit of every episode of Law & Order?

I never have to worry about my service provider (at the behest of the Content Cabal) revoking my ability to watch something I've saved.

Like revoking the online key that unlocks the encryption? Or embedding a time stamp in the file?

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[Darinbob]

Yeah, I don't understand the attitude that things are always a click away. It takes a long time to download, and the internet is not always stable or available. If you're streaming you'll still want to back up or skip forward. If you've paid for something, even a measly $1, you'd like the ability to watch it twice. Backing up to DVD is a good option. Maybe not for Cheers reruns of course, but if you're watching next year's equivalent of Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica, it could be worth keeping. Though I suspect there are a lot of younger generation who can't imagine being interested in anything older than a tweet.

I'm still wrapping my head around the idea that some people have internet good enough to stream this high definition video in real time, fast enough to treat the whole thing like it was on Tivo. They've probably got cable modems, which they'd have to give up if they got rid of cable...

And no one is going to let you skip commercials forever without having a subscription fee. The whole "everything should be free, and high quality entertainment will spontaneously produce itself" idea seems very suspect. Too much like the whole dot-com bubble where visions of the future didn't synch up with reality.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[darkpixel2k]

Who has the time to do a clean - professional-looking - edit of every episode of Law & Order?

I have no clue, but whoever he is, he used to upload them to The Pirate Bay weekly...

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[PitaBred]

Honestly? The commercials on Hulu are less of an effort to watch than they are to try to circumvent. They're few, they're far between, and they aren't horribly annoying and at a different volume from the show. I'll take those any day in return for free content.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[zippthorne]

Wait.. eight hours a day? Add in eight hours to sleep and eight hours to work, where are these average people fitting in time to eat and poop (hopefully not combining the two)?

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[evilviper]

In that world, why bother maintaining enough expensive disk space (with backups) for a video format that will be obsolete 6 months after you download it?

Disk space is extremely inexpensive now, and will get far more so in the future.

I have cheap, high-speed internet right now... Where I'm planning to move, I'll have no choice but to switch to expensive, low-speed dial-up. It will be an long time before such places are no longer the norm, and an extremely long time before they become legitimately hard to find...

MPEG-2 has been the overwhelmingly dominant format for video and audio since the early 90s. All other formats, up til MPEG-4 are simply poor proprietary re-implementations with next to no improvements to be had, and tremendous drawbacks. Now, MPEG-4/H.264, with it's few small (REAL!) improvements seems to be finally showing people what crap and smoke and mirrors all the proprietary crap is, and wiping them all out. I can't help but wonder how long it will be until everyone forgets the lesson, and starts falling for the same simplistic tricks again.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[mcrbids]

Yeah, I don't understand the attitude that things are always a click away.

OK. For me, they are.

It takes a long time to download, and the internet is not always stable or available.

It takes me something less than 1 hour to download a 1 hour show. This is called "streaming"....

If you're streaming you'll still want to back up or skip forward.

And I commonly do. It takes about 10 seconds for the stream to resume when I do.

If you've paid for something, even a measly $1, you'd like the ability to watch it twice.

So... I push play again? (I don't pay per show, I pay Netflix a flat price, and Hulu has ads, but they aren't nearly as bad as standard TV)

Backing up to DVD is a good option. Maybe not for Cheers reruns of course, but if you're watching next year's equivalent of Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica, it could be worth keeping.

I could see myself buying season DVDs. I'm more likely to rent then as needed from Netflix, because after 2 viewings, I won't care for at least 5-10 years.

I'm still wrapping my head around the idea that some people have internet good enough to stream this high definition video in real time, fast enough to treat the whole thing like it was on Tivo. They've probably got cable modems, which they'd have to give up if they got rid of cable...

I have a 3 Mbit DSL connection. Most shows are honestly not true "HD" quality, but they do come in much higher resolutions than old school TV. I rarely notice bad image quality ruining the experience. I have a "buffering..." incident perhaps 1x every hour or so, and it usually lasts much less than an average commercial break on old school TV.

And no one is going to let you skip commercials forever without having a subscription fee.

With Hulu/Netflix, I can't skip the ads. Since there aren't 6 of them every 12 1/2 minutes, I don't mind. Netflix has no ads. Hulu has ONE ad where you'd normally see a commercial break. Both are acceptable to me.

The whole "everything should be free, and high quality entertainment will spontaneously produce itself" idea seems very suspect. Too much like the whole dot-com bubble where visions of the future didn't synch up with reality.

I agree! I pay Netflix about $15/month. I pay for my DSL service. Sites that I don't pay into have ads. This seems reasonable to me.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[benow]

Who has the time to do a clean - professional-looking - edit of every episode of Law & Order?

comdel video.mpeg; mencoder -edl comdel.edl -o trim.mpeg video.mpeg does.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[fredklein]

But all Hulu has to do is insert a user ID into the stream. Something subtle, and distributed, so it can't be (easily) removed. When a pirated copy is found, they find the ID, and cancel that person's subscription, permanently.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[Golddess]

Perhaps I inferred incorrectly, but I took the method described as basically pointing a video camera at the computer monitor and recording the show like that (taking advantage of the analog hole). Only instead of a physical video camera, you use a WYSIWYG video capture program to record what is displayed on the screen. Since you're recording the resulting image and not the stream used to create the image, there will be no user ID in the resultant file.

Though I guess they could try and watermark the user ID into the image itself by shifting a few pixels a few bits off the original color. That way to the naked eye every stream looks the same, but on a closer inspection pixel 123 is ff0001 on one stream and ff0002 on another. But I suspect that any watermark undetectable to the naked eye would also be tiny enough that when the output from the WYSIWYG program is encoded, any ability to link the file to a single account would be lost.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[fredklein]

I always wondered why they didn't do something like this with screeners. (In case you don't know, 'screener' refers to a copy of a movie that is sent to movie critics and censors before the movie is available to public). Take a minor detail, like the color of the purse a women in the background walks by with, and change it. Then when a screener is uploaded, all they have to do is download it, and look at that scene. By looking at the color purse, they know who's screener was copied.

I've canceled mine

[LiQiuD]

I've canceled my cable, and I don't think I'll go back. It's me, my 3 kids, and my wife. They have all adjusted to streaming from Netflix and Hulu. About the only downside is missing out on life sporting events. I'm contemplating just adding a tuner card to my HTPC, and then getting those over the air.

Overall I'm very happy with the new setup though, it is saving me about $100/month (canceled phone as well) and we still watch the same shows. Of course YMMV.

Re:I've canceled mine

[rotide]

I've done the same. However, I did actually build a HTPC with a dual QAM tuner for Boxee and OTA HD stations. Although, I did keep the $13 a month cable plan just so I don't have to fiddle with antennas. They pipe the OTA/QAM HD stations with this basic basic package.

I've rediscovered the simple pleasures of PBS, etc. I know I've had them all along, but the ability to just put reruns on was so great that I'd never actually watch PBS. Now I enjoy it again!

Why did I switch? Internet TV is so much easier. No, the quality, in general, isn't there yet, but it's so convenient to watch day old shows on Hulu and other sources. Come to find out, I was paying about $75 a month to pretty much watch NBC, CBS, etc. The only channels I miss now are Discovery and Disc Science. Other than that, screw it. Paying $75 a month for a bunch of channels I don't watch, no thanks.

The funniest part, the cableco was charging me $9+ for the DVR/Cable box and an ADDITIONAL $7 for the DVR _function_. $16/mo just for a metal box that sucks up electricity. Now I pay them $13 a month for the convenience of not needing an antenna.

Re:I've canceled mine

[nomadic]

That's the sad part that most people don't realize -- that, EVEN if they were paying monthly(*), getting a Tivo or other DVR(**) likely would SAVE them money in the long run, and be less junky than the cable DVRs.

What a lot of people don't realize is you can stop paying for cable, and not get a Tivo or other DVR, and save even more money. Then you can read, go outside, etc.

Using cable to distribute video

[inKubus]

I don't have cable and I use a DSL modem. I have a cheap $30 gforce with an svideo out and what I did was get a RF Modulator at Home Depot and I feed the svideo (well, composite, after a quick convert) and audio into it. Then I connected it to my house cable (it was wired for cable already). Outside I disabled the feed from the cable company. Anyway, I connected my TV to my home cable and I just set it to channel 4 to view any content I want.

Netflix includes Instant Play which has a TON of movies, all included with your $8.95/month membership. Lots of TV show DVDs, especially. It's a great deal.

Re:Using cable to distribute video

[inKubus]

For HD you'd need an ATSC modulator. They are available but like $500+, not $22 ;)

Some other details, I set resolution to 800x600. NTSC has 525 scan lines, around 500 of which are visible. But it really looks good, full screen fills the screen perfectly centered. The gforce handles the downconvert to TV pretty perfectly (and I'm going svideo to composite also). TV's are pretty blurry anyway so it's not noticable. The splitters in the system in this case act as a multiplexer in reverse. I was lucky that they all went into a hub type splitter.

My next purchase will be an RF remote and maybe an RF wireless keyboard. It's not sharp enough for serious text but movies look great and netflix uses gigantic thumbnails so you can browse movies pretty well on the TV.

Netflix instant play is a hit, I'm also doing youtube playlists, Hulu is ok (I hate ads), music with visualizations might be fun at a party. I'd like to have a entertainment center PC but for under $100 I couldn't be happier. Anything to get me out of this chair and onto the couch ;)

Re:Using cable to distribute video

[Darinbob]

And then you yell upstairs "Honey, can you hit rewind on the computer for me?" :-)

Re:Using cable to distribute video

[WidgetGuy]

It's an even better deal if you get the $99 Roku box. Plug it in and it jumps right on your WiFi network. Also hooks up to your router or modem with an RJ45 cable. Connects directly to your TV via composite or HDMI. I've had mine with my $15/mo Netflix subscription for over a year now. Roku also carries MLB (Major League Baseball) and Amazon's Video on Demand (rip off prices, but they do carry more recent DVDs and TV programs than does Netflix's Watch Instantly offering).

The stuff from Netflix is free (no extra charge) with your standard, snail-mail subscription (as low as $9/mo). NO COMMERCIALS. You can even watch current-season TV programs (they are automatically added to your Netflix instant queue every week on the day after they air via cable TV). I watched CSI, Numb3rs and Dexter like that last year. And, what you put in your queue (by selecting them on-line at the Netflix site) STAYS in your queue until YOU delete it. Even the TV episodes. You select the Amazon and MLB stuff directly via the Roku box (you rent the Amazon stuff for a limited time, another reason to avoid them -- don't know about MLB since I've never used it). You can watch the Netflix content over and over again. Did I mention NO COMMERCIALS.

The Roku box is rock solid and its software is maintained and upgraded automatically over the 'net. Excellent customer service (although you probably won't ever need to use it 'cause the unit is so reliable and easy to set up). Simple remote control and a coverflow-like queue viewer (with descriptions of each DVD or TV episode). Top notch engineering and UI design all the way around. You will completely forget you are watching streaming video. It's really that good.

I changed my $100/mo cable TV/Internet subscription to just Internet over two years ago (RoadRunner was the only ISP offering 15Mbps down around here). I'm Pandora (also no commercials) and Netflix/Roku equipped now. Life is good.

Re:Using cable to distribute video

[7213]

RF IR extenders are a godsend for this sort of thing. I recently purchased a "Next Generation Remote Control Extender" that I HIGHLY recommend. I've got my HTPC in the basement and can use the remote control from my bedroom on the second floor without issue.
http://www.amazon.com/Next-Generation-Remote-Control-Extender/dp/B000C1Z0HA

Basicly it comes with a very small rechargeable battery that can be put in either an AAA or AA sleeve (The sleeve houses an RF transmitter) . You put this battery & sleeve into the remote control's battery holder and it senses the IR LEDs load on the battery. Turns that data into RF and sends it to a base station placed where your video source is, the base station then sends out the original IR signal. Replaces the 'wife/gf remote' w/a more submissive model ;-) (Un)fortunately it doesn't have all the features of the wife/gf, so you should keep at least one of them around as well if those features are important to you (I often question if the tinkering & effort to keep 'em functioning properly is worth it).

Re:YouTube

[Shikaku]

http://www.southparkstudios.com/

http://www.thedailyshow.com/

http://www.hulu.com/

http://www.youtube.com/movies

http://www.getmiro.com/

I haven't paid for TV for over a year now. Neither did I torrent.

Was the internet meant for this?

[Provocateur]

Has the tech caught up to provide us with shows When we want them, Where we want them? Or will (example only) iphone users or wireless users start feeling the crunch as the bandwidth is being hogged by ex-TV viewers? Will it be less information interchange and more of movie watching?

I don't want the creators of the internet to be rolling in their graves. Oh, wait...

I still pass

[buss_error]

I'm not feeding the copyright cartel until they quit treating me like a criminal and going to insane lengths to monetize every last drop of creative talent. (And that's giving them credit and assuming that they have any.)

Re:I still pass

[popo]

Not to mention the fact that TV actors are the most overpaid, undertalented idiots I've ever known. Why is it that starving waitresses suddenly make a couple hundred grand when they get a recurring sitcom role? Is there some shortage of actresses that I'm unaware of?

(And told tell me it's because they're talented)

Re:I still pass

[alvinrod]

If you look at it from the network's perspective those actors are quite talented. Their talent is getting a few million people to park their butts in front of 15 minutes of commercials while entertaining them with 45 minutes of content. The ad revenues are quite good, so why shouldn't the actors get a decent cut? If your TV show draws 15 million viewers each week, I'd be asking for a decent cut as the network wants to keep that show running for as long as it can do so.

To reply to the original poster, why shouldn't they monetize everything? They're in it to make money, not art. If you want creative television, go ahead and make your own. Don't complain when almost no one watches it either as the general public doesn't share your tastes. The criminal part is fear on the part of the cartel, and it's actually quite rational. They probably don't realize it yet, but they're going to be replaced by a new cartel soon. Once YouTube (Google), Apple, Boxee, or any other company trying to change the game actually succeeds, it's more likely that we'll see a sitcoms produced by these companies rather then CBS, NBC, or other current networks. Do you expect the current cartel to willingly give up their position?

They've already played their hand wrong up to this point in time and it seems as though they're grasping at whatever solution they think might save them from extinction. Profits were probably going to go down for them no matter what path they decided to take, but it's probably better than going bankrupt. I give the current media cartels of the world 30 years at most before they're replaced. The death throws will be ugly, but they're going to die.

Unfortunately the new straw boss isn't likely to be much better than the old one. You'll still treated like a criminal, just someone else will be doing it.

Re:I still pass

[sowth]

It is because of the actor's union (Screen Actors Guild - sag.org). The big music companies hire untalented musicians for cheap because they have no union.

To sum it up for the entertainment industry:

• Union: untalented employees get paid absurd amounts of money.
• No union: employees get paid almost nothing. Anyone with a brain would not bother, so they get untalented employees.
• In both cases, the people buying products produced by these systems get screwed.

Sports and Crappy Slow Internet

[piltdownman84]

For me I will never give up cable until I can get sports with the ease and quality that I can on my TV. Sports really need to be watched live, and unless streaming makes leaps and bounds the internet is not going to catch up with HD TV anytime soon. I always find that on the internet the term HD is used very loosely. HD movies on Youtube don't compare to cable, neither does a single TV show downloaded with bittorrent that is labelled "HD". I have seen some "HD web streams" and they are ... if your lucky ...the same quality as digital cable.

Don't get me wrong, I hate my cable provider with a passion, but I can't give them up.

Just one problem

[rossdee]

My internet connection is via the cable company...

Telecoms...

[recharged95]

"Time To Ditch Cable For Internet TV?"

Not do-able if you get internet from your cable provider (Fios, or Uverse too).... If they see a shift, guess what: internet bandwidth costs will go up.

Re:Telecoms...

[TheRaven64]

The question is simpler: 'Time to separate network and content provision?' If you want a competitive market place, you need to prevent the people who control the pipes bundling the services. Mobile phone companies should offer network connectivity and termination as separate items. Cable companies should offer network connectivity and content as separate items. Then you'll see real competition.

Already canceled mine...

[krovisser]

I cancelled mine not too long ago. We just weren't using it all that much (me and the gf). We have a home server with Mediatomb, and she's got abc.com, and our homemade antenna.

I spent just over 30 minutes "cancelling" the cable service. I was on hold for about 28 of those minutes. Don't tell me they don't do that on purpose... grrrr

Won't last forever

[c0d3g33k]

Cancel your cable if you want to save a little money and what you are interested in is available online. Free shows and movies online won't last forever, though. Free everything is just not sustainable, and right now they are just trying to capture eyeballs and prove the concept. At some point, expect paywalls to appear, at least for 'premium content' or selected episodes of a season or whatever. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Re:Deaf

[headhot]

Almost all of the dvd and blueray rips enclude subtitles now. VLC usually has it on by default.

Increased competition will drive down the prices

[nanospook]

Unlike cable companies which pretty much hold a monopoly, we may find ourselves with a multitude of internet TV companies. Now we will see true competition keeping the prices down.. PS Got rid of the TV and cable services more than a year ago. Have saved over a grand which went on the credit cards. PSS Unless these internet TV services offer full captioning, I will probably stick to torrents.. hearing loss..

Youtube?

[Hamsterdan]

Seriously...
they (buffering) have trouble (buffering) offering (buffering) (waiting) standard video.

I don't think starting a movie 45 minutes after it starts streaming a good idea :)

Ready for Prime Time?

[physburn]

I don't think this is ready for prime time yet, while digital terestrially TV offers real time high definition TV for your set or wall screen, the computer (if the home has one), still sits in the bedroom and office. Bandwidth is usually low enough that you have to predownload programs before you watch them. When the BBC rolled out they Iplayer a custom player for all BBC programmes, ISP went nuts, complaining about the huge bandwidth increase. In fact the Iplayer repeat programmes while popular weren't so popular as to deluge broadband connections. I doubt Internet TV will be popular for quite a while, maybe creaping up in popularity slowly and being mainstream in the 2020s, but thats just my guess.

---

Interactive Television @ Feed Distiller

Re:where da will be available shortly machines?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell's "Tech Specs" state ubuntu 9.04 available... But no way to order it.

Did an online chat:

Q - "How can I buy this box with ubuntu?"
A - "as if now we don't have option to get with Ubuntu"
A - "will be available shortly"

Q - "so I should check back... Any estimate as to when?"
A - "we don't have exact update"
A - "can I email it you"
.
.
.

Re:Playstation 3

[kramerd]

The sad thing is, linux is good because it handles most codecs and you can ignore drm with it (big win), but it always seems like getting 1080p and 7.1 surround out, and blue ray playing is iffy.

You were close./sarcasm

Windows is good because it handles most codecs and you can ignore drm with it (disturbingly easily, I might add), but it always seems like getting 1080p and 7.1 surround sound out and blu-ray playing are independent of an OS. These are hardware issues.

Re:YouTube

[melikamp]

30 seconds breaks were perfectly tolerable and kind of funny to read. But after a while they started actively fighting AdBlock, and there is no cure for that.

https://adblockplus.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2456&start=45

AdBlock is a great technology, and it won't be long before we have trainable (Bayesian?) filters, I think. But Hulu has an upper hand in this fight: they can always default to gluing ads into the video stream, which would put us back to square one. But hey, whatever. I can write a script that detects new torrents and downloads them automagically. Eat that, Hulu.