Why Internet Television Isn't Quite Ready To Save Us From Cable TV

smaxp writes "It's no surprise that few people love their pay TV providers. In May, Variety reported that the American Consumer Satisfaction Index ranked cable television providers last in all consumer categories. Pent up frustration with cable and satellite TV providers fuels a steady buzz that Amazon, Apple, Google and Netflix will disrupt TV. These new entrants promise to offer variability in pricing and greater choice fueling notions that Americans have officially cut their proverbial cords. But true disruption is wishful thinking. Data from the PricewaterhouseCooper’s (PwC) global entertainment and media outlook for 2013-2017 doesn’t support a disruptive market scenario. Incumbent cable and satellite pay TV providers and over-the-top (OTT) challengers such as Amazon and Netflix are both forecasted to grow. OTT TV has only reinvented a single part of the TV business, streaming archival movie and television content over the internet replacing physical DVDs and time-shifted DVR replay of TV programs. To displace incumbents, OTT TV has to continue to change TV business models in ways that appeal to consumers and attract content owners. "

Comments

no shit

[Xicor]

the problem is that the ppl who make the television all have deals with specific channels, and those channels have deals with the providers. none of the online sites are willing to deal with this kind of structure, and most are smart enough to realize that everyone who watches shit online already has a site where they watch them for free without ads

Re:no shit

[iluvcapra]

none of the online sites are willing to deal with this kind of structure

Erm, Netflix, Youtube and Amazon make deals for content all the time. Kevin Spacey has a deal with Media Rights Capital, that company has a specific (exclusive) distribution deal with Netflix for House of Cards. The web companies are adopting business tactics networks have used for decades, while demanding free access to the cable to your house, while the cable networks have to negotiate with cable providers for access.

Re:no shit

[Charliemopps]

I have an exclusive deal with the Pirate bay that trumps all those deals. Netflix, Youtube and Amazon are NOT the future of video. They are just extensions of the same relics the cable companies are. Internet killed the video star.

Re:no shit

[Bengie]

Because TPB has instant streaming, good recommendations, integrates as an instant streaming source for all of my house-hold devices, and has a lovely children's mode? TPB is only a good deal if you don't value your time or you just can't find something you want somewhere else for a decent price or ease of access.

Re:no shit

[Anonymous Coward]

As fast as show episodes can download, it's close enough to instant to be worthwhile.

Download a 480p episode of whatever and any device in your household can stream it.

Re:no shit

[rolfwind]

I might be wrong since I'm only going by what I'm reading and have yet to use a Roku box myself but I'm continually surprised that you can't stream the channels that you can pick up over the air for free, especially with the HD conversion. It seem counterintuitive that free channels don't go as many avenues as possible. If that were to occur, I would think that + netflix would be enough for a good plurality of people.

Re:no shit

[AK Marc]

The web companies are adopting business tactics networks have used for decades, while demanding free access to the cable to your house,

You lost us with the lie about demanding free access to the cable to my house. They demand equal access to the cable to my house that *I* pay for. When my ISP sends me a check for all the ads I've viewed, then I'll listen to that lie. Until then, I'll consider an ISP blocking access to content to be fraud and a breach of contract, not a fair move to block the greedy content companies. Who, incidentally, pay for their access to the Internet.

Re:no shit

[green1]

The "HOW" part isn't that hard... They could switch to a video on demand model allowing you to choose only the individual shows you want, when you want them and available worldwide at the same time.
The problem isn't "how" to compete, it's the realization that they have to compete... that's the part they haven't got to yet.

Re:no shit

[gweilo8888]

You could accuse Netflix of lots of things, but good recommendations is not one of them. It seems they have done their level best to make it impossible for me to browse their catalog with their ridiculously over-defined category structure and their appalling recommendations. The only thing worse than that is their selection, which is downright awful. It's bad enough that I canceled my subscription a year ago, and I only have Netflix now because a one-year subscription came free with my TV. When the year is up, I'll be canceling again. Which is a shame, because the pricing is reasonable if only the content selection wasn't so bad (and the content deliberately hidden so I can't easily see how poor the selection is.) A hell of a lot more reasonable than my Comcast subscription, given that I watch precisely two channels and about four shows, but I am forced to subscribe to something like 150 channels to get them, PLUS an extra $8-10 a month to get them in HD.

Re:no shit

[jfengel]

I think it works like this: if the broadcast networks were to offer their content for free via streaming, they would be competing with their own clients: the local affiliates. They receive the stuff and broadcast it locally over the airwaves, with local ads (inserted in addition to the national ads that come with the content). They also broadcast it over the local cable providers.

I don't know what, if any, revenue-sharing deals the networks make with the affiliates for competing with them via Hulu.

Re:no shit

[mcrbids]

I use TPB only rarely, I used to use it much more. It's been said before that Hulu/Netflix are highly effective at combating piracy, and for me at least, it's very true!

I'm a cord cutter; haven't had cable service in years, even though a few years ago we had the Dish DVR with all the fixin's for $125/month or so. When we moved, I didn't buy cable right away but I did buy Internet right away, and by the time (a few months later) things were settled enough that we could talk about Cable, we'd already latched onto Hulu/Netflix and we've never looked back.

I have other places I could use $1500/year, such as the $96 I give to Netflix, or the $20/year I give to MagicJack for home phone service.

I'd happily pay $8/month to not have to futz with finding torrent files with decent seeds and weed through all the terrible ads and porn spam. Managing torrents is just a hassle.

With Netflix, I pick the show I want, and watch it RIGHT NOW on whatever device I want. (phone / tablet / computer / tv / xbox / PS3 / whatever) I don't mind $2/week at all.

Re:no shit

[iluvcapra]

Who, incidentally, pay for their access to the Internet.

The Internet isn't a single thing, which you right a check for and have "access." It's a geographically-distributed system owned by a lot of different people. Netflix pays to get its packets onto their ISPs frame relays, what happens after that is up to the people that own stuff up and down the backbone. ISPs negotiate peering agreements to get their traffic passed along, and in the US almost all of this traffic is carried on private, non-"Internet" trunks which ISPs pay top dollar to access, particularly when their traffic is lopsided in one direction.

Just to lay it out, I think Net Neutrality, at least as it pertains to equipment, is a crock, mainly because it destroys the ability for price signalling to build the network efficiently. I'm willing to support the basic idea of neutrality for applications and protocols -- streaming video shouldn't be throttled because it's streaming video -- but it's completely nuts to to demand that your ISP handle and bill Amazon's colo'd CDN traffic on the same fee schedule they charge you to Tx from your apartment in LA to a hundred 3G radios in western Wyoming. It simply doesn't reflect the price of infrastructure and bandwidth, in fact its just a way of clapping our hands really hard and pretending such things don't exist, because Freedom.

When you say you're "paying" for the cable to your house, of course you're not. The costs of the physical link have been amortized over years and multiple subscribers, and your practical network performance is only a tiny sliver of your cable's bandwidth/latency/aggregate throughput up or down. Further, that cable only goes to the ISP, you have not explicitly paid for the cable that goes from your ISP to the tier 2 provider, or the tier 1 provider, the regional exchanges, nor could your flat monthly fee possibly be made to account for the IP transit fees many of those parties have to pay each other. And you certainly didn't negotiate (nor do you even have the right to read) the terms of service or acceptable use policies of these arrangements, which have a direct effect on the ISPs cost independent of your monthly charge.

Re:no shit

[AK Marc]

Just to lay it out, I think Net Neutrality, at least as it pertains to equipment, is a crock, mainly because it destroys the ability for price signalling to build the network efficiently.

Net neutrality isn't about cost-based QoS. It's about deliberately delivering bad service to services you don't like, usually competitors. It harms your customers, and has no useful reason to exist. Paying more for higher grade Internet is perfectly allowable under every version of Net Neutrality ever proposed in Congress.

I'm willing to support the basic idea of neutrality for applications and protocols -- streaming video shouldn't be throttled because it's streaming video -- but it's completely nuts to to demand that your ISP handle and bill Amazon's colo'd CDN traffic on the same fee schedule they charge you to Tx from your apartment in LA to a hundred 3G radios in western Wyoming.

So Comcast should be able to identify and throttle NetFlix, Hulu, ESPN streaming, and the like to drive people to their hosted services? Before 2000, no ISP charged differently for the other end of the tail. You pay to get to the "core" (given your words on this, you know exactly what I mean, but there's nothing I can say that you wouldn't argue with, so I'll call it "core"). Period. So does the other guy. Everyone meets at the core eventually, so why should an edge provider care what the other traffic paid to get to the core? Ooooh, getting all pissy because NetFlix gets cheap core access because they are so big? Then get a new job. It's always been that way, and charging your customers double to get services from companies you don't like is evil.

nor could your flat monthly fee possibly be made to account for the IP transit fees many of those parties have to pay each other

That's exactly what it does. I've worked for a small ISP (a number of them, actually), and I've worked for a very very large ISP, and that's *exactly* how it works. That you claim that it can't work the way it actually does, that just proves you don't know what you are talking about. The ISP "costs" are split amongst all subscribers, and pays for all the exchanges, transit fees, and every other operational expense of the ISP. If it didn't pay for it, the ISP would be out of business. You can't sell at a loss and make it up in volume.

Re:no shit

[nine-times]

Honestly, that's all fine when you're a kid and have nothing better to do with your time. Many of us, however, are looking for a way that we get to watch the content that we want to watch, in a convenient manner, while offering some reasonable monetary support to the creators of that content.

The problem seems to be that you have all these other companies getting in between the content creators and my money. These other companies don't want me to be able to watch the content that I want, and they don't want it to be convenient or at a reasonable price. They want to bundle up a big package deal, where I have to buy a lot of content I don't want to get the content I want. And then they want me to watch it in some time slot they've selected, and then they want to interrupt the experience every 5 minutes with commercials.

If the content creators could manage to get those companies out of the way, then I don't think most adults would bother pirating. We have better things to do with our time.

Re:no shit

[Bengie]

Erm, Netflix, Youtube and Amazon make deals for content all the time.

He said "with this kind of structure". He was not arguing that Netflix et al don't want to make deals of any kind, just those kinds of deals.

Re:no shit

[Bengie]

I guess the recommendations part was a bit subjective, but for me and my wife, it has helped us find lots of movies that we have never heard about, but like a lot.

As for canceling, Netflix is my cheapest source of entertainment based on how much I pay and how much I use it.

Re:no shit

[Jason Levine]

Time Warner Cable recently released a Roku app to let you view live TV using your TW Cable account. It's not OTA TV, but it's a step in the right direction. I await the day when cable companies will release their own Roku apps (as well as apps for other OTT boxes) and will compete with each over for online-based subscriptions.

As far as OTA goes, there seem to be a few OTA TV channel apps on Roku, but they are for small stations in places that I don't live. Maybe that will expand and more people watch their TV online.

Re:no shit

[porges]

See the current Time-Warner Cable vs. CBS dispute to understand why that's not happening.

Re:no shit

[Requiem18th]

Rather, TPB is not a sustainable model. What peopel really want is to be able to buy episodes from websites using micro payments.

Re:no shit

[dj245]

The "HOW" part isn't that hard... They could switch to a video on demand model allowing you to choose only the individual shows you want, when you want them and available worldwide at the same time. The problem isn't "how" to compete, it's the realization that they have to compete... that's the part they haven't got to yet.

AMC is trying their darndest to do this with Breaking Bad. Episodes available on their website the same day of broadcast release, worldwide simultaneous release on broadcast networks, behind-the-scenes videos, full catalog of all seasons available for free watching, etc. They are even pushing same-day episode discussions on their website to try to make watching the episode the same day it is released more desirable (pushback against timeshifting). It is difficult for me to think of anything reasonable they could do to make their product more easily accessible.

What do they get for all this trouble? Breaking Bad is still one of the most pirated TV shows. I can't check ThePirateBay from work, but I think it may even be #1 most pirated.

Re:no shit

[iluvcapra]

It's about deliberately delivering bad service to services you don't like, usually competitors. It harms your customers, and has no useful reason to exist.

It's about charging what the market will bear for a given service.

So Comcast should be able to identify and throttle NetFlix, Hulu, ESPN streaming, and the like to drive people to their hosted services?

If it's more profitable, of course they should! It's their cable!

I'm not saying your monthly bill can't cover the cost of internet service, I'm saying your monthly bill doesn't morally entitle you to any kind of connection. You don't "own" your connection to Hulu, you (at best) "rent" your connection to the nearest concentration point. You give your money to the ISP and they are the ones that pay for the connectivity, not you, and they have a right to spend their money on whatever they please as long as you keep paying, even if it pleases them to block your torrents. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. Wether you can access the "core," and to what extent, is strictly a business decision on the part of the ISP.

If you want neutrality you should fight for more last-mile ISPs, let them compete, and see what eventually subscribers are willing to pay for. Artificially handicapping all packets tilts the playing field heavily in the favor of application providers and pretty much guarantees their future rentier status.

Re:no shit

[Mister_Stoopid]

You can't apply laissez faire, cutthroat free market principles, such as "It's their service, they can do whatever they want" unless you're actually in a free market situation.

For internet access, you can start by eliminating all local monopolies and providing equal right-of-way to anyone who wants to lay new infrastructure, or at least requiring (and rigorously auditing (this part is important)) that infrastructure owners provide equal access and equal customer service to competitors.

It's not a free market situation unless I can choose between Comacast, TWC, AT&T, Verizon, DSL Extreme, and Jimmy-Joe's Old Fashioned Internet Access all at the same address.

Re:no shit

[AK Marc]

It's about charging what the market will bear for a given service.

That's anti-capitalistic. If market pricing works, we don't live in a free-market society.

I'm not saying your monthly bill can't cover the cost of internet service, I'm saying your monthly bill doesn't morally entitle you to any kind of connection.

And if the guy who built the driveway for your house were to stand at the end of it and ask where you are going every time you leave, and demand extra payment if you go to Target or K-Mart over Wal-Mart (inspecting your bags and receipts when you return to further enforce it), to force you to go to Wal-Mart more because that's who gives him kick-backs, you find that an acceptable practice? That's the moral equivelent of this. Back room deals forced on users, and hidden with lies. It's not a "market price" when the companies doing it lie about it. The market adjusts to new information, and the information is actively being restricted.

Re:no shit

[Bengie]

Maybe because they only have 5 episodes online? Why would I want to start watching a show 5 seasons in? I need to start at episode 1 and their site does not provide that. TPB does, that is why it is still pirated a lot.

Re:no shit

[mattack2]

That's anti-capitalistic. If market pricing works, we don't live in a free-market society.

Can you explain? How is that not EXACTLY supply and demand? If Netflix wanted to pay more to the ISPs to get their product to you than Hulu, both then charging those extra costs back to the consumer, why isn't that supply & demand for the internet bandwidth available?

And if the guy who built the driveway for your house were to stand at the end of it and ask where you are going every time you leave, and demand extra payment if you go to Target or K-Mart over Wal-Mart (inspecting your bags and receipts when you return to further enforce it), to force you to go to Wal-Mart more because that's who gives him kick-backs, you find that an acceptable practice?

If he *RENTED* you the driveway (like the ISP is doing every month), and you knew the terms when you started renting it, then yes. Well, I wouldn't, but I could see how someone else might agree to it.. Just like others pay to drive in the toll express lanes, congestion pricing in London, etc.

Re:no shit

[AK Marc]

Can you explain? How is that not EXACTLY supply and demand? If Netflix wanted to pay more to the ISPs to get their product to you than Hulu, both then charging those extra costs back to the consumer, why isn't that supply & demand for the internet bandwidth available?

Free-market capitalism doesn't have any "supply and demand" rule. That's anti-free market pricing. Free market pricing is never based on supply and demand (market pricing) but instead on cost-plus pricing. And it isn't even "supply and demand" when you artificially change the supply to change demand and pricing, again, even if you erroneously accept "supply and demand" as free-market, then what the ISPs are doing still breaks it.

If he *RENTED* you the driveway (like the ISP is doing every month), and you knew the terms when you started renting it, then yes.

The ISPs *never* make it clear in the ToS "We will fuck with your connection to punish our competitors." Probably because if they made their illegal actions that clear, they'd be prosecuted for their illegal actions. So "if you knew the T&Cs" is almost always a "no", and given your wording (that you "knew" them, rather than they were included in some 4000 page ToS you ignored), I'd say *never*,

Re:no shit

[hobarrera]

Youtube? Ads? Ever heard of adblock?

Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[mellon]

Admittedly, I have no idea who got voted off the island, but I'm coping pretty well. I can watch all the shows I care about on streaming, when I want, with no ads. Sure, people will continue to pay for cable for years to come, out of habit, but it's a business model that's failing to deliver value to new customers, so the population that consumes it will age out over time even if the streaming services don't change anything.

Meanwhile, big cable is doing everything they legally can to prevent the streaming providers from delivering good service. And yet streaming providers are attracting plenty of customers, and plenty of people are cutting the cable. Why the hurry?

BTW, can we please stop calling it "over the top?" That implies something about the business model that's total nonsense: the idea that IP service is a side business, and cable is the real business. Where did this term come from, anyway?

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[TitusC3v5]

I haven't had cable or satellite TV in over ten years. I watch the occassional movie on Netflix, and I watch a few channels on Youtube on a regular basis (The Young Turks, Angry Video Game Nerd, Black Nerd Comedy, Ray William Johnson, and a smattering of unsigned artists). But by and large my downtime is spent either playing games, mostly online, or reading. Plain old television simply hasn't had a place in my life for over a decade.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[kesuki]

"Meanwhile, big cable is doing everything they legally can to prevent the streaming providers from delivering good service."

i stream video over wifi and so does my phone with no service bloackage even my ps3 doesn't have an issue. now verizon they ARE throttling over cellular towers. i have tried to stream netflix over 4g lte networks and it is trash. google plus app for android also refuses to run over 4g lte even if you disable wifi. normally the android phone does everything over wifi and sends nothing over cell towers, for no good reason. the bad reason is pure greed. 2gb for $20 a month when you're lucky to pull 90 mb per month.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[swalve]

See, I worked my ass off to get to a position where I can spend $100 a month on internet+tv. Maybe I get my money's worth, maybe I don't. I'll save the money some other way. But when I want to watch something, I just want to turn the tv on and watch it. I'm not just paying for content, I'm paying for convenience. The ability to tell WMC "record series" and have it all waiting there for me when I want it can't be underestimated. Or overestimated. I'm tired. I like it a lot, is what I mean.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[roc97007]

I resemble that. We have a roku box in one room and a blu-ray player that includes netflix in the other room, and an ANTENNA (remember those?) on the roof so wife can watch football, and we've been cable-free for almost three years now.

Probably the biggest part of this is no longer caring if we see a show when it first comes out. We've talked about this in other threads, but waiting until a series accumulates a season or so, and then watching it in a few marathons allows one to pick up nuances that would be missed at one episode per week. I'm way WAY ok with not having seen whatever the guy across from me at work saw last night. We can still talk about series, but we talk about them like other people talk about movies. I saw this, it was pretty good, you should try it.

I don't recall the last time I saw a commercial. It might have been the last superbowl. (I don't watch football but I attend the parties because there's beer.) Moreover, the response to "what do you want to see tonight?" is never never NEVER "I dunno, what's on?" Because the networks no longer control what we can watch. (Or choose not to watch.)

> BTW, can we please stop calling it "over the top?" That implies something about the business model that's total nonsense: the idea that IP service is a side business, and cable is the real business. Where did this term come from, anyway?

Completely agree. The term comes from an erroneous assumption.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[Wildclaw]

I save over $80 a month,

You are saving $80 + Not being brainwashed by ads + Time not spent being brainwashed by ads.

Even as a single minimum wage worker, that is probably more than $200 per month in total. (most people heavily underestimate the value of personal time)

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[Darinbob]

I wouldn't mind, but my internet won't handle it steaming very well, and I'd have to do some rewiring around the house if I want to watch on a tv and sofa instead of hunched over my computer (wifi too slow and insecure). The infrastructure just really isn't here to make this take off on a wide scale, so it's going to continue to be seen only in higher income urban areas, so the same areas that won't mind cable costs anyway. Right now you can essentially _only_ get decent speed broadband with cable providers anyway like comcast or at&t and they're all going to have bandwidth limits that will cut down the viewing (ok if you only want to watch a few shows a week, but not enough for the typical couch potato family).

The internet model will have to change, to be something like yet another cable provider. Service provided to the whole town, local caching of popular content, paying to upgrade infrastructure, etc.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[mellon]

It's not about the money for me. It's about the constant consumerist propaganda, which I just don't want to expose my brain to. And then there are the mindless, jingoistic political ads.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[mellon]

That hasn't been my experience on Verizon. But the main thing they are doing is stifling competition, and colluding to avoid raising bandwidth or lowering prices. End result to you: no improvements in network performance, and, as you say, bandwidth caps. I haven't had an issue with this because I don't have much time to watch TV; if you're spending four or five hours a day in front of Netflix, you'll probably run into trouble. Of course it doesn't hurt that things like Dexter and True Blood are only available on DVD, so while I prefer streaming, I don't watch all my TV that way.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[mellon]

Ha! My wife does the same thing. And yes, binge-watching is one of the big pluses of no cable. Waiting all season to find out how it ends? Who wants to do that?

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[mellon]

Huh, I live in a town with a population of 10k, and my internet connection supports streaming just fine. If you don't have even comcast-grade internet where you are, start organizing and complaining. My mom set up a wireless Internet service in her town; with any luck they'll be getting fiber in a year or two, and that's a town even smaller than mine.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[roc97007]

Also, we have a rule. No Cliffhangers! Wow, how is our hero going to get out of that? Well, let's find out.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[Darinbob]

I can get comcast, I just don't want to. VDSL is plenty fast for me.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[drinkypoo]

If you don't have even comcast-grade internet where you are, start organizing and complaining.

If you live in bumfuck you should know that organizing people is about a bitch, especially when you have a lot of extra mileage to cover. Personally, I live in a town which has Mediacom cable within a bowshot, but as others have pointed out, the problem is that distance is reasonably measured by the bowshot in this antiquated podunk. Not enough people live on my street to make it financially viable to install CATV equipment, and I live too far from the box to get DSL. So, I have a connection from a WISP. It's 1.5 Mbps and costs me $50/mo and I am not allowed to use bittorrent even for legitimate purposes because (they claim) their network is based on crap hardware which cannot support many small frames.

I will move or die before high-speed comes to my street.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[drinkypoo]

I strongly object to the idea that you can put a dollar value on personal time, unless you're retaining a painter, plumber, or prostitute. You can't buy more of it. There instead exist multiple economies; an economy of money, an economy of time, an economy of happiness...

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[operagost]

I was going to link to the Onion "Guy always telling everyone he doesn't own a TV" article, but you're like the 10th one.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[operagost]

If you want to stream but can't, it's not fast enough.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[nabsltd]

You are saving $80 + Not being brainwashed by ads + Time not spent being brainwashed by ads.

What's an ad?

With the exception of the Super Bowl (where commercials are sometimes worth watching), I haven't watched a TV commercial in over 20 years. That's a small exaggeration, as until the advent of the DVR, I did see commercials on live sports, but other than that, I've recorded everything I wanted to watch.

In the late 80's, I had 4 VCRs (all with a 30-second-skip feature), and each was programmed for the shows I wanted to watch. When a tape filled, it was ejected and put onto the top of the "to watch" pile. Friends and roommates all seemed to understand the system, and nobody cared about watching shows on the day they aired.

I used to have two dual-tuner TiVos, but now I have a 5-tuner DirecTV DVR. I don't actually watch much TV, but there are times when the shows I like are all on at the same time, so I need the capability of that many tuners. I now watch sports by recording and starting to watch about 1-2 hours after the beginning.

DVRs make my choice of how to watch much easier, but the technology to not watch commercials has been around for nearly 25 years. If you weren't using it, that's your loss.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[nabsltd]

We have a roku box in one room and a blu-ray player that includes netflix in the other room, and an ANTENNA (remember those?) on the roof so wife can watch football, and we've been cable-free for almost three years now.

So, that means you are fans of the local (American) football team. Otherwise, you'd have to have cable or satellite to watch your favorite team (either NFL or college).

I have several TV antennas on my roof, and understand exactly what is really available via OTA, and it's not nearly as much as people think.

Probably the biggest part of this is no longer caring if we see a show when it first comes out.

My wife and I are the same, with our current watch queue including the first series of Hustle as we just discovered it. But, with both of us big sports fans, we need something more than OTA. In addition, Netflix and other services often don't offer the audio and video quality that we have come to expect, while OTA and HD from DirecTV do.

Re:Dunno, I'm pretty happy without cable...

[roc97007]

We have a roku box in one room and a blu-ray player that includes netflix in the other room, and an ANTENNA (remember those?) on the roof so wife can watch football, and we've been cable-free for almost three years now.

So, that means you are fans of the local (American) football team. Otherwise, you'd have to have cable or satellite to watch your favorite team (either NFL or college).

I have several TV antennas on my roof, and understand exactly what is really available via OTA, and it's not nearly as much as people think.

Me, woah, not ME. I detest football (American or otherwise) and very particularly the zombie it makes out of my wife during the season.

Not sure why you would have several antennas, except to point at different stations, perhaps. (That's actually not a bad idea -- it saves having to have a electro-mechanical rotor.) We have one farmhouse-style antenna (I kinda overdid it) pointed at a local mountain range that's covered with broadcasting antennas. We get thirteen free digital channels this way, including local access and shopping channels. I don't watch any of them, at all, ever. But they include the major networks, which contain the great majority of the US football programming, so wife is for the most part satisfied.

Probably the biggest part of this is no longer caring if we see a show when it first comes out.

My wife and I are the same, with our current watch queue including the first series of Hustle as we just discovered it. But, with both of us big sports fans, we need something more than OTA. In addition, Netflix and other services often don't offer the audio and video quality that we have come to expect, while OTA and HD from DirecTV do.

I think it depends in part on whether the content merits stellar HDTV quality. A series we're currently watching from early 2000's is not presented in anything I would call quality, but I'm mostly watching it for the dialog. For effects heavy content, Iron Man 3 for instance, I agree Netflix leaves something to be desired.

I think, though, that the base article is not talking about the way things are now (which is a jumbled up mess, frankly) but the direction things are going. I strongly suspect there will eventually be a solution for sports fans that doesn't require a satellite dish or $100/month cable.

Of course Price Waterhouse...

[pigiron]

doesn't like internet TV. It's customers are the big Network and TV cable companies!

Re:Of course Price Waterhouse...

[pigiron]

Having worked in Fortune 500 companies for 40 years I can assure you that the only thing "premium" about the analyses put forth by the accountancy and consulting firms are the fees that they charge.

Re:Of course Price Waterhouse...

[BonThomme]

The 'analysis' from consulting firms is just regurgitation of what their other clients have told them.

What a wonderful business.

It's been dead to me for years

[asmkm22]

I haven't paid for TV in years. I just pirate everything that I can't find on Netflix. Not because I don't want to pay for something, or because I'm some kind of cheap ass looking to save a few bucks. I simply don't like paying $100+ a month to watch a few TV shows a week, which of course are laden with commercials. Unfortunately, this will always be an underground "war" until either the knowledge on how to safely pirate shows is commonplace, or there becomes actual competition in cable providers.

I'm content with things the way they are now, however. I watch what I want, when I want, and how I want, for either free or cheap. The ball is in their court now.

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[Xicor]

well, it is currently not against the law to watch streamed copies of movies and tv shows online(at least in the US)...but most average people dont know this.

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[msobkow]

I look on torrents as an online DVR, to be watched when I want and without the annoying commercials stretching a 45 minute show to last an hour.

I haven't paid for TV in ten years -- I can't afford it on disability. I don't even *watch* an hour's worth a week -- I just archive everything in *case* I want to watch it at some point in the future. A bit of a pack rat addiction to downloading. :)

Last time I paid cable, the bill was over $70 a month. I've no doubt it would have increased to $100 a month by now. And that's before HD packaging, a DVR rental, etc. Quite frankly, I'm disgusted that I was ever stupid enough to waste that much money on something that provides me with less than 10 hours of entertainment a month. There is *no* TV show that is worth $10/hour, especially when one considers the force-fed advertising that comes with it.

Were I to be employed again at some point in the future, I'd opt for something like Apple's packaging. $1 an episode is far more palatable than $10 per episode. However, that's rather unlikely as I'm on disability nowadays.

Just to put things in perspective: $100/month would be 25% of my after-rent income, which is supposed to include food, phone, power, heat, clothing, medication, and entertainment. Spending a quarter of my budget on an electronic lobotomy would be foolish. I pay only $85/month for phone and internet, and get the same mind-numbing content at my fingertips if I choose to be numbed.

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[Simulant]

Me too. 10 years now.

The thing is, My ISP and the cable tv company are the same company. I'm still paying them, and only a few dollars less than internet plus basic cable. When enough people dump the cable TV, they'll can just hike the price of internet to make up for it.

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[AK Marc]

Nobody has ever been sued or otherwise prosecuted in the US for "downloading" anything. uploading is the only thing that's been prosecuted, well, and possession (for child porn, but still not for the act of downloading).

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[AK Marc]

I bought Walking Dead. $10 for 16 episodes. Buy yeah, the wife bought TruBlood from iTunes, and it wasn't too much. People want to buy content. It's just too hard. So, of course, I (illegally) downloaded Walking Dead season 3 because there isn't time between the "official" release and season 4 to watch it all and be ready to watch the new content on TV. At least on TV, I can record it and fast forward through the commercials. Most of my TV is time-shifted one day for that reason. Go home, queue up what sounds good, then watch yesterday's while today's records. If it's not free-to-air, I don't see it until I download it, or possibly buy it.

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[fearofcarpet]

I haven't paid for TV in years. I just pirate everything that I can't find on Netflix. Not because I don't want to pay for something, or because I'm some kind of cheap ass looking to save a few bucks. I simply don't like paying $100+ a month to watch a few TV shows a week, which of course are laden with commercials. Unfortunately, this will always be an underground "war" until either the knowledge on how to safely pirate shows is commonplace, or there becomes actual competition in cable providers.

I'm content with things the way they are now, however. I watch what I want, when I want, and how I want, for either free or cheap. The ball is in their court now.

I pay for cable, but just don't watch it--I pirate everything instead and the since the fastest tier comes bundled with phone and TV, I pay for them too.

I just hate commercials so very much. Those jingles and catch phrases, the branding... it pollutes my brain and I resent it. (I will pollute my brain how I want to, thank you very much.) I am bothered by the fact that I remember commercials from my childhood so vividly. I still remember when a Hostess commercial ran twice in a row when I was six... with that dancing humanoid cupcake in the park telling me how delicious it was.

Once I got a VCR, I would record TV shows on VHS and watch them immediately after so that I could fast-forward through the commercials, but someone who likes uploading things to usenet now takes care of that for me.

I'm sure I belong to a tiny fraction of crazy people, but there are plenty of reasons to pirate besides saving money.

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[dk20]

Same position here. I remember when i bought a VCR with "VCR+" to make it easy to program. Seems shows now play more commercials then before and the system is becoming more and more top heavy (actors demanding more and more $$$ and so the commercials have to pay for this by putting more into the show).

I also have Cable TV, but rarely watch it as i just cant take the commercials. I went to a friends place recently and we watched some TV to wind down at the end of the day. Watching shows with commercials after such a long absence was just terrible. This was made worse by them playing a set every 5 minutes or so towards the back half of the show. It seems that as the show ends they want to do 5 minutes of show and 5 minutes of commercials.

I understand the model, commercials play for the program, but perhaps paying a few hundred K per episode to each "lead character" in the show is a bad model? Long ago actors made good money and the show:commercial ratio was reasonable. Now they make an absolute killing and the show:commercial ratio (including product placement) seems to turn blend the line between the shows and the commercials.

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[Xicor]

this is not true. with the recent addition of the six strikes laws, they have been going after several downloaders

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[houghi]

I used to have many different channels form many different countries. Living in Belgium meant I was able to see tv from about 10 countries.

The reason I do not have it anymore is because of two reasons.
1) With 10 countries, you do get 10 times the same shows. So I got a reduced amount of channels that I looked at.
In fact I looked at 3 in the end. BBC1, BBC2 and VT4.
2) They decided to put the BBC on digital and I did not want to pay for a change I did not wanted or requested. Paying all that money for 1 channel with lots of adds was just not worth it.

Basically I had 57 channels and nothing on

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[Ksevio]

But if you're a good torrent user then in the process of downloading you'll also be uploading. If you're a bad torrent user then you suck

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[AK Marc]

And how many prosecutions or suits have come out those?

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[AK Marc]

Yes, attacking the messenger. Prove me wrong. I asserted a negative, without qualification. If I'm so obviously wrong, it should be easy to find one case of someone that did a non-uploading download and was prosecuted for it. Just one. Come on, if I'm so wrong, it should be easy. I can't prove the negative, but you can prove the positive with just a single cite. I am quite certain it was true 5 years ago, the last time I lived in the US. But I got out because of such crap, to a "socialist" country that's much more free than the US. So yes, I haven't been following it as closely as it no longer affects me. But I've still never heard of any legal action taken against a downloader. Just uploaders and people who run companies that allow downloading.

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[Xicor]

a few. though i cant say it is really worth it for them. they went after some guy a little while ago, it cost them a few hundred thousand dollars in court costs, and the guy ended up paying a fine of a few hundred dollars. the mpaa and riaa dont really care about money, they only want to be punitive because they are mad that ppl are finding ways around their ridiculous money schemes

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[AK Marc]

I looked, and all the stories I read, the person was prosecuted for "downloading" but the actual charge was "distributing". I think many listen to the media spin against downloading, when nobody has ever been charged for it. It's a PR campaign to stop downloading through disinformation.

Re:It's been dead to me for years

[Xicor]

even if they dont prosecute ppl for downloading, the internet companies do throttle your internet if you get caught torrenting.

still not as good

[Anonymous Coward]

For me, the only bottleneck is (still) bandwidth. When actual broadband connections get to every household, which means they are cheap enough and all companies invest on HD streaming, there will be no coming back. But the quality of many streaming services nowadays is really unacceptable.

Re:still not as good

[Xicor]

i dunno what bandwidth you get, or where you go for sites... but i get 5mbps(which is total crap) and i can stream 720p without buffering time

Re:still not as good

[swalve]

If you have cable, then the bandwidth is available. Whether the company chooses to deploy it is another story. Fiber+coax networks are very scalable. Especially if they converted everything to IP and used multicast for live things. My rough math says that catv has 150 something channels, each of which are just 38mbps data streams. I mean, "U-Verse" is just IPTV over DSL, and even that can sustain something like 3 or 4 live channels + internet to each house.

Re:still not as good

[Drakonblayde]

It's not just the HFC network that's required to make the bandwidth available. Converting from analog to digital channels does regain an awful lot of spectrum, which can then be repurposed for data channels. With a digital conversion and using multicast to distribute linear video, you can mux a crap load of channels into a single 38 meg stream, especially standard def.

However, keeping the cable plant clean enough to actually support all of that is not a trivial task, especially in a rural environment. Finding people who are qualified to do it is also difficult.

Then there's all of the equipment on the backend. Converting a CMTS infrastructure from DOCSIS 2 to DOCSIS 3 is not a trivial undertaking either. It requires a fairly significant investment in equipment. For metro areas this is a no brainer, the investment easily returns. For rural areas, it's a much much harder sell. Giving a thousand rural customers the same quality of service as 10,000 in a metro area costs very nearly the same amount of capital, but the rural area returns the investment a hell of alot slower.

Antenna + PVR

[Waffle Iron]

OTA digital subchannels are what saved me from cable. Between and DIY and educational shows on 3 PBS channels, and the old reruns on various commercial "retro" subchannels, I'm now getting much better programming than the "reality" crap played 24/7 on the burned out carcasses of what used to be decent cable channels. Best of all, it's free.

Re:Antenna + PVR

[Megane]

My antenna picks up the PBS station from an adjacent market. Create is always the same, but the main channels usually have schedule differences. And they tend to run pledges on different weeks. I had an okay DVR before (Channel Master DTVPAL7000) that crashes a bit, but now I'm getting a MythTV working.

Really, what I "want" to watch other than basic broadcast networks, cable and satellite don't provide: subtitled versions of current anime in Japan. They even have their own torrent infrastructure outside of TPB.

ISP have there own TV systems and they cap

[Joe_Dragon]

Comcast caps it's HSI so people don't cut out the TV side and go on line only also they own parts of some local RSN's and other sports channels.

Re: ISP have there own TV systems and they cap

[malchus842]

I've been on Cmcast for years. Never been hit by a cap (despite going well over the old threshold amount several months in a row). Now I have 100mbps with no cap. And no cable TV. :-)

Re:ISP have there own TV systems and they cap

[sgt scrub]

That is the stone cold truth. Comcast caps and Warner bro's filters. If you don't have a bundle deal that rapes you for the maximum dollar your service starts getting blocked, or dropped, or lagy'er than pr0n server on a 14.4 modem.

Re:ISP have there own TV systems and they cap

[dugancent]

Comcast doesn't have a cap at the moment.

Re:ISP have there own TV systems and they cap

[Drakonblayde]

You are incorrect. I am a network engineer for Comcast, so I have direct knowledge of this.

Comcast previously did have a cap of 250 GB transfer a month. Last year, the caps were suspended and have yet to be reinstated, if they ever will. If you're a customer, your usage per month will still show on your account page when you login, but the references to caps have been removed.

Now, I'm not going to say caps will never come back. That decision is far, far above my pay grade.

Piracy

[Highland Deck Box]

I pirate because the uploaders provide an infinitely better service than the cable companies or even Hulu/Netflix etc. I get DRM/region free ad-free files that work on any device, at great resolutions and quality, barely minutes after the episode has aired. Why the hell would I go back to their terrible services when that option is open to me? Now yes i'm not paying for the content, but often that's not an option anyway, (see The Oatmeal's comic on trying to buy Game of Thrones online). As has been voiced a million times, if these companies fired all their old idiot suits and brought out a 'Steam for movies/tv' that had all the added value that Steam brings it would take off like a rocket.

Re:Piracy

[alen]

time warner has a special $64.99 package of internet, basic broadcast channels and HBO including HBO GO so you can watch GoT when it airs and on demand

Re:Piracy

[Nutria]

Yes, but does it run on Linux?

(When was the last time someone on /. wrote that in a serious manner?)

Re:Piracy

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Old idiot suits is right!

They could be making lots of money just by showing their stations online for a world wide audience and showing advertisements.

But they choose not to do it because they aren't informed enough. HULU makes money, and every broadcasting station should have their own site or use HULU.

Look how bad NBC screwed up with the Olympics. They could have shown every event live, and kept a recorded version for people who don't see it live. They'd have solved the olympic television problem of,"How do we let people watch what event they want, when they want and not cut anything off?". But no, they just treated it like television again. And not only that, they forced people to jump through hoops to verify they owned a cable or sattellite package! Look I have cable, but your verification program was too difficult to navigate through. So instead of me watching Olympics and watching some advertisements which would make NBC money, I just said,"NBC sucks." and went and played computer games.

Don't they know they're shooting themselves in the foot by not letting us watch their advertisements? I mean they could dig through all their archives of old shows, and put everything online with ads, and make a ton of money. They have the technology to region lock you out. So they have the technology to play advertisements that would cater to a world wide audience, or even localized advertisements for those zones if they want to put some effort in to make more money.

Old dumb suits are just shooting themselves in the foot by not letting people give them money. I mean look at TV, they make money on cable, and they make money on advertisements. They make so much money on TV, they could pay you to watch TV and still make money. So if they got creative, they could even run an online network that let you win prizes as you watch television. I'm not saying they should do that because the technology to verify if a person is behind their computer still can be cracked if not implemented intelligently. But what I'm saying is instead of trying hard, they're not even trying a little bit.

I will say one thing, I was able to watch the NBA on what was it TNT? You could watch from multiple camera angles and customize your views. Yet other networks like to black out their sports from online. If they show their sports online, they'd make more advertising revenue. If they black out their sports online, they should really have to answer to their stockholders because they're saying,"We take offense at taking money from people who use the Internet." And in today's day and age of greedy corporations, why would someone say no to easy money? The only thing I can think up is that they really are stupid people in charge of their companies.

Re:Piracy

[CodeBuster]

And in today's day and age of greedy corporations, why would someone say no to easy money? The only thing I can think up is that they really are stupid people in charge of their companies.

Obviously they make more money (for now) by keeping the existing deals going. The side effect is that cable and satellite rates to consumers have now reached insane levels as the content producers demand ever more money from the cable companies for exclusive carriage. However, all hope is not yet lost and the cracks are beginning to show in the old guard system. For example, the spat between CBS and Time Warner Cable was yet another skirmish in the run up to a major war for content between the upstarts, lead by Netflix, Amazon and Hulu and the old guard content delivery players in the cable and satellite businesses. Eventually the price of exclusivity will get too high and consumers will be forced to cancel because they simply cannot afford rates that high and that will mark the beginning of the content war that has been a long time in coming but has not yet arrived in full force. I think that the question will be settled within the next 10 years with most content moving to Internet streaming on demand and cable or satellite relegated to live events and pay per view sports with break even rates on everything else as they compete with Amazon, Netflix and Hulu (assuming that they survive as an independent player). The main casualty will be the current system of bundling cable channels and content and the all or nothing take it or leave it style cable and satellite packages. Those days are numbered now for sure. The cable and satellite companies should be especially concerned with Jeff Bezos and Amazon because Mr. Bezos is no fool and Amazon has given every indication that they intend to become a very serious competitor in this space. They aren't there yet, but the cable and satellite companies ignore Amazon at their peril, especially in the medium to long run.

Re:Piracy

[AmiMoJo]

I'm trying out Netflix right now but my ISP (Virgin Media) is terrible for streaming. Some days it's fine, other days it's unwatchable and buffers constantly. I'm supposed to have over 100Mb download speed, and they used to advertise it was "no buffering" until the ASA slapped them down.

I suppose they are hoping people buy their cable TV service. Fuck you Virgin Media, I'll just torrent what I want to watch thanks.

Re:Piracy

[lexman098]

I just checked this out. It's actually 80 dollars for HBO and 30 Mbps broadband compared to the 40 bucks I'm paying now (albeit for 12 Mbps). I don't really need more than 12 Mbps and $40 for HBO is too much. Thanks for the tip though.

Where do you get your Internet?

[PPH]

Most people get it from a cable company. And those companies will do whatever it takes to throw a wrench into the works of their competition. Apple and Netflix haven't raised the ire of the last mile monopoly yet. However Google has. And I'm starting to see anything 'Google, including some of their analytics mysteriously being throttled by the incumbents. Until the stranglehold on the last mile can be broken and broadband providers are classified as common carriers, nobody does business in the turf they consider to be theirs.

That's a nice little streaming video service ya' got there, buddy. It would be a shame if something happened to it. Ha, ha, ha.

Re:Where do you get your Internet?

[alen]

i have a la carte internet from time warner. no pay TV. netflix is great, almost blu ray quality. MLB TV is also HD quality. i pay $50 for 20/1
of course a lot of content is locally hosted via CDN's so its not like i'm going to the internet to stream netflix. google from what i know lives inside google data centers so you have to use the ISP's limited internet data pipe

i have some streaming issues with some porn and sometimes youtube, but it will only be selected videos

Re:Where do you get your Internet?

[Nutria]

And I'm starting to see anything 'Google, including some of their analytics mysteriously being throttled by the incumbents.

My cable ISP sure isn't throttling youtube-dl.

Re:Where do you get your Internet?

[Bengie]

netflix is great, almost blu ray quality

My wife is not that picky when it comes to quality, but a side-by-side of a regular 720p dvd to Netflix HD puts Netflix to shame, yet alone BluRay's 1080p. I have not have the privilege of Netflix' Super HD.

Re:Where do you get your Internet?

[mmortal03]

Regular NTSC DVDs are 480i/p, meaning something like 720x480 when progressive scan, not 720p. 720p refers to something with 720 vertical pixels, e.g. 1280x720.

The More You Know
==============*

Re:Where do you get your Internet?

[Megane]

...which of course only shows just how bad Netflix's "HD" is, if a 480 resolution DVD looks clearly better.

no sports and a la carte adds up

[alen]

at least the home teams are blacked out on MLB and NBA. and they cost a lot. $150 for baseball, $180 for basketball. no football yet on streaming.
ESPN streams live games but you have to pay for TV

in the end pay TV is not that bad. time warner and comcast have packages that start at $80 for internet and TV
time warner is worse because it is supported by less streaming services like Disney Jr, Bravo and Epix

internet by itself is $50. by the time you pay for netflix, hulu, any a la carte TV shows via itunes, the electric bill to leave your computer on 24x7 to run bit torrent all day it adds up

Re:no sports and a la carte adds up

[kesuki]

you shouldn't be torrenting with a power hungry desktop or laptop when a small linux run downloading box. there are many was to do this from a pi with NAS or other kit computers using slow chips, that sip power and are not huge hacking targets. http://lifehacker.com/274177/build-a-bittorrent-box
they reccomend 'old' box but there has been much progress in low power chips these days, and with bittorent network speed is part of the problem, unless you have fiber to the door then it's number of seeds.

Re:no sports and a la carte adds up

[kesuki]

russian hackers expunged the site. i didn't follow links prior to finding this out. so sorry. i also screwed up my grammar but that doesn't bother me much

Do sport fans age out?

[tepples]

so the population that [subscribes to multichannel pay television] will age out over time even if the streaming services don't change anything.

Will people really "age out" of following the major professional and collegiate sport leagues over time? I was under the impression that sport fandom tended to be something that was passed down from generation to generation.

Re:Do sport fans age out?

[LordZardoz]

Interesting question. I am going to guess no. Sports are surprisingly tied to modern culture.

While it is clearly not 'high culture' in the way that Opera, art galleries, ballet, and such manage to, sports are surprisingly important to modern culture. Humans are competitive with one another. Sports are one of the few acceptable physical outlets for that. Competition in sports allow humans to compete with one another, either individually or in groups, without resorting to violence. Humans are tribal, and sports teams push several psychological buttons for people (belong to a group, and lets kick the ass of those other guys from across the river).

Individual sports may increase or decrease in importance over time, but I expect that some form of sports will continue to be culturally relevant and important as long as humans are both competitive with one another and want to impress women by showing off how dominant they are.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:Do sport fans age out?

[cheekyjohnson]

Will people really "age out" of following the major professional and collegiate sport leagues over time?

I sure hope so.

Re:Do sport fans age out?

[MightyYar]

or going to venues that screen the game.

When I was childless, I watched most games on the over-the-air channels. Sometimes they were on cable, in which case I went to the local bar and watched the game. My bar bill for an entire month probably was very similar to my cable bill, but I was actually getting out of the house. Now that I have kids, I barely have time for sports at all, so I watch what comes on over the air and deal with it :)

Re:Do sport fans age out?

[Grishnakh]

What a load of crap. Sports might be important to many men, but most women don't give a shit about them.

Re:Do sport fans age out?

[roc97007]

so the population that [subscribes to multichannel pay television] will age out over time even if the streaming services don't change anything.

Will people really "age out" of following the major professional and collegiate sport leagues over time? I was under the impression that sport fandom tended to be something that was passed down from generation to generation.

That's a good question, and one my wife is struggling with now. She's a sports fanatic and loss of cable (and before that, satellite) means she struggles to find ways to watch her games. Part of the solution is to go back to the antenna, part is to watch games on her laptop. I understand that the roku has some kind of sports package, but I don't think she's ready to spend money on that yet. I think the answer will eventually be that sports will be streamed from sources specializing in sports. But it's not all in place or completely working yet. (For instance, lots of sources still use flash, which doesn't work on her tablet.)

Re:Do sport fans age out?

[DNS-and-BIND]

You're right, women aren't attracted to dominant men. Women are attracted to sensitive, funny men who share women's concerns about hot-button social issues. Women also greatly value intelligence and thoughtfulness. A man who isn't afraid to be fucked up the ass with a dildo is always a plus. That old stereotype of the muscled man who is in charge of every situation went out with the Reagan administration.

Re:Do sport fans age out?

[mellon]

Wow, from "streaming works really well for me" to "women aren't attracted to dominant men" in four nesting levels. Impressive. FWIW, women are humans, and they are all over the map as far as what they are attracted to. If you think there is one rule that you must follow to attract women, you're doing it wrong.

Also, to pull us gently back in the direction of the topic, sports leagues are selling streaming apps. So on a practical level I don't think that's going to keep cable from dying.

Re:Do sport fans age out?

[snadrus]

It must be a cultural/generational/social thing, because I am a 30-something man and could care less about any sport. As I get older, the idea disgusts me that over-concussion-ed growth-irregular people slamming into each other should get so much of our money and focus while so much many more high-value life (and society) choices go ignored.

Re:Do sport fans age out?

[Sockatume]

People who think sports are irrelevant to human culture have clearly never set foot in a museum. I'm about as involved in sports as I am in jewellery but you'd have to have a pretty substantial set of blinders on not to notice their presence in human affairs.

Re:Do sport fans age out?

[Hatta]

sports are surprisingly important to modern culture

Sports are the circuses in "bread and circuses". Meaningless artificial importance meant to keep us distracted from things that really matter. It's primative tribalistic behavior, we can do better than that.

Re:Do sport fans age out?

[operagost]

I assume you don't watch movies, play video games, play cards, play board games, go to the beach, go fishing, go sightseeing, hang out at the pub, play music, go dancing, or do anything else while "many more high-value life (and society) choices go ignored."

Re:Do sport fans age out?

[PurplePhase]

> without resorting to violence

From paralyzation and death from "accidents" for participants through nigh-typical gameplay, to soccer hooligans and riots when men's college, national, and international teams win (or lose!), to a figure skater having a competitor's leg(s?) broken...

I think you can see the violence inherent in the system.

8-PP

Have full cable with premium channels

[silas_moeckel]

I still use sickbread, I tried cablecard and recording that way far to much was block off unless I went with MS lock in. I still have cable it goes nowhere because the bundle is cheaper that the internet by itself.

Satellite is capped

[tepples]

Some people who live outside cable's service area stick with satellite TV because satellite Internet has a 10 GB/mo cap. Even at 1 Mbps, that's only about 11 hours a month if half the cap is used for streaming.

Netflix is crap, ime.

[mark-t]

My son is staying with us for a few months and has set up Netflix on our main dvd player, so I've recently had a chance to try it out for a while, but almost any time that I think of an old movie I'd really like to see that I don't have the DVD for already, I find it's never actually available on Netflix anyways. If Netflix carried stuff that I actually cared about, I'd probably get it myself when my son moves out, but it doesn't. So.... nope.

Re:Netflix is crap, ime.

[wierd_w]

Previously, Netflix had a much wider streaming selection, but they had a falling out with several content creators. (Who promptly created/bought their own, rival, streaming services.)

This caused netflix to lose their ability to stream that content to customers.

Complaining that "netflix is shit", and then running to the same abusive people who are responsible for cable being over priced to begin with, because they have all the content you want, really doesn't accomplish much.

Rather, you should complain that the content producers refuse to license to netflix, and other streaming services in a nondescriminiatory fashion.

Re:Netflix is crap, ime.

[mark-t]

Who said I'm running to the cable company? All of the TV shows that I watch are available online, streamed from the network's website only one day after airing, and available online for about 2 weeks. I haven't had cable for almost 5 years.

As for how wide Netflix selection used to be, I have no comparison.... since I only just started using it a few weeks ago. I can easily see it as more convenient than going to a video rental store, which is what I see Netflix replacing, but if they don't actually have anything I want to watch, then that convenience can only say that it's not any better than a video rental store at having what movies I want to watch, then that convenience isn't worth a dime to me.

Re:Netflix is crap, ime.

[wierd_w]

that's still supporting the abusive people, through the ad revinue, without supporting any alternative distributors.

I was, however, referring to services like Hulu Plus, Blockbuster streaming service, and pals. EG, the streaming services operated by the content creators, explicitly to kill netflix, and other non-vested and disruptive distributors.

Once all the contenders are gone, the rates will go back up. There is no reason for them not to.

Re:Netflix is crap, ime.

[antdude]

Subscriptions bug me. I like Amazon on Demand since it offers on demand payments. However, it doesn't have everything and all television/TV episodes don't have rentals. I don't want to keep them.

Re:Netflix is crap, ime.

[foniksonik]

Did you search for it or just browse? The browse only shows ~20% of what they have.

Re:Netflix is crap, ime.

[mark-t]

Search. When it's happened to me, they were older movies, and I wouldn't have expected them to be highlighted.

Re:Netflix is crap, ime.

[AmiMoJo]

Perhaps we need mandatory licensing, like we have for audio recordings.

MNF

[tepples]

Anonymous Coward wrote:

if I feel like it I can just buy a season of a show for $14.

Can you buy a season of, say, Monday Night Football or The Rachel Maddow Show for that much?

Re:MNF

[R3d M3rcury]

Well, I can watch Rachel Maddow here. Monday Night Football requires a subscription to ESPN. If you want to watch it live you either (a) need to pay for it or (b) need to go to a bar. I'll go to a bar. It's usually more fun anyway.

If I don't care about watching it live, there's NFL Game Rewind.. $69.99 for all the games from all the teams, including playoffs and Super Bowl. If you have a favorite team, you can watch their games for $29.99, but no playoff or Super Bowl (Yeah, like your favorite team is going to make it to the Super Bowl! HA!)

Re:MNF

[mellon]

Rachel Maddow is great fun, but she's also just another talking head. Do you really need to spend an hour listening to her every night, live? One of the things that I stopped watching when I dropped cable was TV news. I don't even watch the Daily Show anymore. More time for slashdot! :)

Re:MNF

[operagost]

Can I pay someone $14 to make sure I don't accidentally watch Rachael Maddow?

Re:MNF

[nabsltd]

There are plenty of sports to watch with an antenna, if that's your thing.

I've responded to quite a few ACs who claim that OTA has a lot of sports, but none have ever given concrete examples to support their claim.

There are some cities in the US where you have a reasonable number of sporting events per week on OTA TV, but those are very few.

Even some relatively major cities (like Washington, DC) have no real OTA sports available. The Washington Redskins are the only sports team in the city where a significant percentage of their games are available OTA, and that's because there is only one game per week and the NFL specifically allows a local station to show a copy of games that are shown on cable stations. If you like hockey, baseball, basketball, soccer, golf, or even tennis, you will get at most two games/matches/rounds per week via OTA. It's even hard to find local college football reliably via OTA.

I on the other hand am very happy with cable

[LordZardoz]

I have no idea who got voted off the island. But I am very satisfied with what I get from having Cable tv.

  - New episodes of good tv shows like Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead, Dexter, and Breaking bad show up on broadcast first. Streaming is absolutely more convenient. But running up against spoilers is too damn easy to do by accident if you use any kind of social media sites.

  - New tv shows like 'The Amerikans' on FX show up on broadcast long before going to streaming sites, unless they are Netflix Originals.
  - Live sports matter. Turns out I like watching people fight in a cage for money. The UFC puts out a surprising amount of events on free TV; 9 events on 'Free TV' (each being 6 hours (prelims and main card) plus an additional 9 events with prelim fights, and another event on Fox Sports 1 tomorrow. Watching these events legally through the official streaming service is much more expensive. Watching illegally is a pain in the ass. On top of that is more content from Bellator on Spike and regional promotions on Fight Network. MMA is not for everyone, but it is for me. And for others, its the NFL, or NBA, or NHL, or MLB.

  - Also, as far as social media + spoilers, as much as it can hurt the experience of seeing a show to know the ending, it fucking kills any kind of sporting event.

  - Not all content that you may wish to watch is going to be streamed easily. My wife is a fan of the Food Network. Not much demand for streams of those shows.

Personally, I love that Netflix and others are doing their own content now, but we are still pretty far off from being able to cherry pick only the shows I want to see and then pay only for that content.

END COMMUNICATION

Re:I on the other hand am very happy with cable

[Darinbob]

Browsing is good too. I find programs that I like because I bumped into them. With streaming there's less of the browse factor, you grab exactly what you want and nothing else. Streaming may be like premium cable too in many ways, all your friends will gush about a great program you must watch but it's not on the channels you get so you skip it.

Sometimes it's just a major hassle. I want to see new Arrested Development, one of my favorite shows. But I don't want to watch it on my computer, I don't want to subscribe to netflix, etc.

Re:I on the other hand am very happy with cable

[mellon]

I hate to break this to you, but many people who want to avoid Dexter spoilers just pirate it. But I haven't really had a problem with that, personally. What, he killed somebody? Shocked! I'm shocked! It helps that none of my friends on social media waste my time talking about TV shows.

Re:I on the other hand am very happy with cable

[AK Marc]

New episodes of good tv shows like Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead, Dexter, and Breaking bad show up on broadcast first.

I prefer to wait 3 seasons. Then you can buy the DVDs (often around $20 or less), and extra seasons are downloaded one at a time about 2 hours after air. And yes, my connection is fast enough that if I set it to download the first parts first, I can start streaming after just a couple minutes and watch every episode the same night as live. I've never run into a spoiler that way. We'll see, as I just finished Walking Dead season 3 and 4 starts in Oct. I've never run across any spoilers before, but we'll see how it goes this time. It's not like the Soprano's ending where I, as a non-watcher, knew the ending within 30 minutes of the airing. Incidentally, because of time shifting, if I was a watcher, I'd have known the ending before it aired. That happened before, where, because Eastern was so far ahead, the rip would be posted before the show was shown in Alaska. I've actually deliberately spoiled things for friends (not bad, just in fun) because the illegal rips were out before the first airing.

Re:I on the other hand am very happy with cable

[Politburo]

Where all is defined as "every game except nationally televised games and those broadcast in your home market", yeah.

Re:I on the other hand am very happy with cable

[stdarg]

Once you start streaming a lot and don't have the option of channel hopping, you DO start browsing for new shows. The major con for me is stream browsing is a lot slower. There's no concept of "channel up" and watching a random new show in 0.3 seconds. It's a lot more like reading the channel guide and occasionally jumping to a particular show.

Granted with channel hopping you are exposed to more actual airtime of new shows. For some genres, you get a better idea of whether you'll like a show by watching 5 seconds of it than by looking at the cover art and reading a summary.

Heh Netflix should put together a channel hopping simulation stream that shows 5 second highlights of hundreds of shows, and if you like the show you press a button to jump to the actual stream of that show.

Sometimes I miss channel hopping, like I miss commercials... when I go to my parents' house and actually use the tv for a while, it's highly entertaining for about 15 minutes. Then I'm done. I realize there's "nothing on" and I'm already seeing repeats of the amusing commercials and I get out my phone for entertainment.

For me personally, though channel hopping is sort of entertaining and stream browsing gives you a lot of exposure to new shows, I've always found most of the tv shows I like through word of mouth.

ESPN is the key

[Martin Blank]

I think the biggest player that keeps people locked into subscription TV is ESPN, and they know it. Everything else can be found via acceptable delays whether it's Netflix/Hulu/whatever, DVD release, or even torrents. But most fans still strongly prefer to watch sports live.

Most people I know who still subscribe would gladly ditch cable/satellite if they could stream ESPN even if it cost $20/month, which is far more than ESPN gets from the cable companies and would allow them to offer features they can't run through non-interactive media. The number of people who have cut the cord (or know how to) hasn't reached critical mass yet, but once it does, ESPN is either going to be able to start dictating higher fees from cable companies or will take a shot at streaming (or both). I expect a strong drop in the cable/satellite subscriber base in the first year after this happens, which will be devastating to their share prices because jacking up rates to make up for lost revenues and profits will just encourage more people to leave.

Re:ESPN is the key

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Yep, as long as you aren't into sports - It's ok to cut the cord.

Over 6 years now - That's $7,000 saved (minus netflix charges).

Never,EVER going back to paying for commercials.

Re:ESPN is the key

[speedlaw]

I don't watch sports. How about I get a refund for all the espn I've been forced to watch...or can I split my cable bill and slingbox espn to someone who cares ? eff the tos.

Re:ESPN is the key

[Drakonblayde]

Disclosure: I work for Comcast

You have no idea how much of your cable bill goes to pay ESPN, if you did, you would be sick. Let's just say that a $20/month streaming bill wouldn't actually be 'far more than what they get from the cable company'.

Sports channels are easily the biggest cost, and the biggest driver of increased costs.

Re:ESPN is the key

[SeaFox]

ESPN is crap i get for FREE in my cable package.. There's no way to not have it and have anything else to watch. (channels i want)

Espn and espn2 are in the garbage tiers like the shopping channels. They cram that stuff onto everyone here.

How are they free if you're paying for a base cable package to get them?

More like "ESPN worked out this sweet deal where the cablecos have to pay them for every subscriber they have regardless of if that subscriber wants ESPN or not, by virture of requiring in their contract the station be on the 'basic' cable package."

That's a lot closer to the truth I bet, and the kind of crap NFL Network I know does. Which is why there are some pay-TV providers that don't carry NFL Network, they wont agree to that type of contract because the demand for the station in their markets is simply not high enough for the cost. ESPN is an easier deal to take because it has a broader appeal than a premium single-sport network and a much longer track record from being an older network.

Re:ESPN is the key

[cornjones]

whoa... does the fire and brimstone smell get you down or are you used to it? B)

Wasn't ESPN just part of the basic cable package? If sports channels are the biggest cost, why aren't there more unbundled packages that don't include them? Or at least get htem out of hte basic cable package. There must be a sizable market that could care less about ESPN et al who would appreciate the lower bill? you don't even ahve to lower it by as much as ESPN is getting.

(I moved out of country several years ago so maybe things have changed)

Re:ESPN is the key

[drinkypoo]

If sports channels are the biggest cost, why aren't there more unbundled packages that don't include them?

ESPN is owned by Disney and Hearst. Guess what happens if you piss off ESPN. Go on, guess.

Re:ESPN is the key

[_anomaly_]

Thanks for confirming what I've long thought. Watching LIVE sports (collegiate and professional) is the only thing that keeps me from dumping DirecTV.

This simply means that ESPN is just making too much money with their current arrangements to ever want to really pursue a subscription-based model for LIVE broadcasts. Yes, I know about the Watch ESPN app/ESPN3/ESPN360. Those are lame attempts at streaming live sports and doesn't include much content at all. The same goes for the NFL Network (which offered live radio streams, but not video, last year).

I guess we, as customers, need to force the hands of the traditional content providers (cable/satellite TV) by jumping ship. Until they start losing enough money, they aren't going to rock the boat.

To that end, I guess I'll just have to live with watching OTA whatever the major networks carry, as far as live sports goes.

Re:ESPN is the key

[operagost]

Or at least I shouldn't have to pay for ESPN 8, "The Ocho".

Re:ESPN is the key

[Martin Blank]

According to Forbes, subscriber fees averaged a little more than $5 per subscriber in 2012. I think the ability to charge four times that would be far more than what they get from the cable company.

Re:ESPN is the key

[Attila Dimedici]

ESPN is crap that every subscriber to basic cable pays for, whether they want to or not. That is part of the reason I no longer pay for cable TV. I wish I could find a high speed ISP that did not make me pay for access to the ESPN360 website. (If an ISP does not pay ESPN a small fee for every subscriber that they have, none of that ISPs subscribers can access the ESPN360 website).

Re:ESPN is the key

[Politburo]

At this point it's beyond ESPN. You also have Fox, NBC, CBS, NFL, NHL, MLB, NBA, and sometimes a local sports channel (e.g. Comcast Sportsnet). Then there's the more fringy sports channels: golf, tennis, Fox soccer, Fox college, Big 10, universal.. surely I've missed some. On top of that you have the "season pass" deals that the major sports offer. These have online components but afaik all of them prohibit watching a game that is on TV in your market.

Re:ESPN is the key

[sqrt(2)]

Or they could give up the moronic habit of watching roided out grown men more athletic than themselves play a children's game. It's always amazing to me that a country so obese can be so obsessed with sports. Televised sports are the most idiotic reason to stick with a company and a business model that is downright abusive to its customers.

Re:ESPN is the key

[Ksevio]

Verizon now has a "No sports" option for their TV service that costs $10/month less so I'd guess it's around that much.

Re:ESPN is the key

[putzin]

Most people I know who still subscribe would gladly ditch cable/satellite if they could stream ESPN even if it cost $20/month

This is the biggest problem, and why Cable/Hollywood/Big Four Sports all need cable to stick around. I'm just two channels shy of ditching cable completely, Fox Sports and NBCSN. I basically only watch live sports on TV, nothing else. My wife watches a bunch of stuff, but it's all on Netflix/Roku/Web so it doesn't hurt her to dump cable. I have MythTV that can record free OTA HD. But until I can watch the Bulls/Cubs (well...)/Blackhawks live, I'm out of luck, and face the issue of paying for cable. I may hate it, but right now, that's the choice. This is why the MLB, NHL, and NBA black out the local teams broadcast on their streaming services. Because Fox/ESPN/NBC/CBS force contracts that say they must (I doubt that clause is ever disputed). This is why people like me will chose to pay for content they don't care about to watch the content they do care about. I'd pay major sports double what they're charging now for online access to get local teams.

And good luck getting al a carte. HA!!! The FCC is simply making noise to at least look like they care about consumers. I'll be walking on Mars before they push that one through.

As a side note, the way channel costs are divided up are somewhat entertaining, as is the now regular fights between content providers and cable/sat companies.I think ESPN pry makes up almost $5 of the total cost of your bill on it's own and a small collection of big channels make up half of the total cost you pay. Whereas HGTV might be less than $.40 cents. It should be capitalism at it's best, but I think since there are like 4 or 5 content providers, it's pry more oligarchical than a good competition. This is here in the states, and based on some tables I saw a few years ago. I don't think it has changed much since then, or would assume not much based on a cable package costing somewhere between $60 and $80. Cable company has to make money too.

Re:ESPN is the key

[cornjones]

The sports networks know that they will get more revenue from being on the basic package and forcing all subscribers to pay for them. They further know that they are popular enough that they can force the cable company's hand.

and they wonder why more and more people are refusing to pay the tax... bundled content makes sense when you have async comms channel and cannot negotiate what you want in real time. With the full two way communication , i am much more interested in setting up a tv bill more like a water bill. while I am using it, I am paying for it and if the tv isn't on, i am not paying. I will accept premium rates for different channels but to pay 100% of the time for something while I am not consuming it doesn't make any sense, let alone paying for 100s of channels I am not consuming..

Idiot Box.

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand the appeal of being able to watch exactly what you want, exactly when you want. I watch 2-3 series a week, and it is nice to have them on-demand. But this type of content-centric viewing is not the norm, for me.

Most of the time when I watch TV, I am doing household chores or working on projects that don't take my full attention. Or I watch during a meal. For this type of peripheral viewing, I want to turn on a TV, flip through the channels and settle for the first thing that doesn't make me want to immediately change the channel again. Generally, I am not going to watch through the end of the hour, and I don't want to invest time in actually specifying a program, even if it is better than whatever is on.

The ultimate a-la-carte-anything-on-demand TV solution would undoubtably deliver better content, but would be pretty much useless for the majority of my TV use.

Re:Idiot Box.

[foniksonik]

We do that with Netflix too. Browse to documentaries and hit the first thing that looks okay. Know what's great? It's a documentary. Probably educational. No commercials. If it gets interesting you can pause it or watch it again later without having to have set it up to record in advance. Want to finish watching it outside? Grab your tablet - picks up where you left off.

Subscription to a catalog of content is just the way to go for this stuff. IMHO 90% of the media content ever made should be available and we should only pay for the hard costs of making it available. Books, music, video, audio recordings, photography, art. All of it. It's what the library system should provide, not a private company and IP rights holders.

Re:No Shit Sherlock

[sjwt]

Other way around in some places..

https://www.foxtel.com.au/shop/packages-and-deals/?execution=e1s1
$47 a month for the basic 37 chans.. $109 for 86 channels. (+$10p/m for HD)

The Piracy battle has been lost here in Australia.

Blackjack and hookers

[tepples]

Rather, you should complain that the content producers refuse to license to netflix

But that'd still be complaining. Rather, you can consider making your own content, with blackjack and hookers.

Re:Blackjack and hookers

[wierd_w]

That's what YouTube is for. :)

Re:Blackjack and hookers

[drinkypoo]

Presumably, if you're good at blackjack, you can afford the hookers' time. But you might want to consider strippers for your content, instead. IME they are more likely to be photogenic, albeit not that likely

Imminent relocation of dairy products

[tepples]

Why on earth would they say anything that would rock the boat?

When the cheese moves, PwC's clients need to know when, where, and how to move with it. Businesses that do not move with the cheese don't stay in business very long.

When even the finals are on cable

[tepples]

The Rachel Maddow Show can be streamed from nbcnews.com.

Live, or delayed a day and requiring user interaction after each clip?

There are plenty of sports to watch with an antenna, if that's your thing.

In 2012 and 2013, some games in the NHL Stanley Cup series were shown on Versus (now NBCSN). That's the finals of professional ice hockey, as if the second half of the Super Bowl were on ESPN. The head of one of the households in my extended family is a fan of NFL, NHL, and UFC, and he told me that should money become tight, he'd rather take himself and others in his household back to dial-up than cut off his sports telecasts.

Season tickets or Buffalo Wild Wings

[tepples]

Anonymous Coward suggested three workarounds for cable-exclusive sports telecasts. They may work for some people but not for others, and here's why:

actually going to the game

Cable is far cheaper per year than season tickets for you and junior to two sports. Attending games in person is also impractical for people who follow an out-of-market team, such as fans who moved away from their favorite team, fans of the team associated with the university that a family member attends, and fans whose favorite player got traded to another team.

or streaming it where available

It probably isn't available. If it's shown OTA or on a national or regional sports network in your area, it's blacked out online.

or going to venues that screen the game.

That depends on how many other people at Buffalo Wild Wings want to watch the same game that you and junior want to watch, and restaurant food is still more expensive than home-cooked food. Or if by "venues" you mean a neighbor's house, that eventually gets ruled out as well.

Go away, you're not 21

[tepples]

If you want to watch it live you either (a) need to pay for it or (b) need to go to a bar. I'll go to a bar. It's usually more fun anyway.

Option (b) won't work for parents or college underclassmen in a 21-to-enter state, unless by "bar" you mean something like Buffalo Wild Wings.

Re:Go away, you're not 21

[mellon]

Right, but their parents are the ones who are going to age out, so this isn't really a problem, since they live at home, or else at a frat house, which probably has one cable hookup for the whole house.

OTA FTW

[triffid_98]

Cable what? OTA + Netflix gives me pretty much everything I want.

Too bad the cable company is my only halfway decent choice for an ISP.

importance

[roc97007]

Looking over the wide range of responses, one thing stands out -- one's opinion on whether "cable is dead" has a lot to do with how much importance one puts on TV in general. If you have a need to make sure you don't miss anything, you still need cable and you tend to believe it'll be there for the foreseeable future.. If you only watch TV occasionally, and your head won't explode if a certain series doesn't happen to be on Netflix right now, (because other series worth watching still are) then you tend towards cable's days being numbered.

What's the actual truth? I dunno. I tend towards cable being a dying technology. But I'm definitely in the second camp -- I don't care about whatever is on TV this week. I'm still working through season two of Veronica Mars.

Re:importance

[drinkypoo]

I know a bunch of people with kids and they tell me their kids don't really give a shit about sitting in front of a TV any more, unless perhaps it has a game console attached. Once they're old enough to have a significant social life and a portable gadget, they're glued to their cellphone or tablet. Television as we know it is, finally, going away. Unfortunately, it will still take a couple of generations.

Re:importance

[Jason Levine]

I think cable is dying, but has a lot of momentum behind it. This means it will take quite awhile to die. Add in that many cable TV providers control people's Internet service as well and "Internet TV" might hit some hurdles from cable ISPs trying to protect their businesses. (See Time Warner Cable's idea awhile back to cut everyone down to 5GB per month... a plan which was met with much anger and which they were forced to backpedal on.)

Re:importance

[Jason Levine]

My kids get very frustrated on the rare occasions that we watch a cable TV show that isn't DVRed.

"Dad, fast forward through the commercials."
"I can't. It's live."
"Just hit the fast forward button!"
"It's live TV."
"But if you hit the fast forward button you'll go by the commercials."

Re:The only thing

[swalve]

And when you look at the subscriber fees the content providers charge, plus the retransmission fees the OTA networks charge, the actual cost of delivering the service to the house isn't all that bad. The real problem is on the content side.

Not so much

[rsilvergun]

if you've got kids, particularly girls, you're stuck. They all want to watch the same shows and the same night. I'm too broke for cable right now (When it hit $170/mo for Internet+tv I had to bail) and it drives my kid nuts. Sure, the shows might show up on Netflix, but it takes months. I can get them on iTunes, but it's so expensive I might as well buy cable (and I'm sure that's by design).

I know a lot of people will rant about Television being brain rot and all that, but for most normal people (hint: Not the /. crowd) TV is a social thing. It genuinely puts my kid at a social disadvantage that she doesn't have it.

Re:Not so much

[spire3661]

I really wanted to mod you down for using 'social disadvantage' in regards to CABLE TV.

Re:Not so much

[Anonymous Coward]

The replies about not catering to your children's every whim or whatever are clearly not from parents... no one with a modicum of compassion enjoys watching their kid get ostracized for not being up-to-date on the latest shitty TV show or not having the latest shoes or whatever stupid thing the older children are judging them for.

Re:Not so much

[drinkypoo]

if you've got kids, particularly girls, you're stuck. They all want to watch the same shows and the same night.

It's too bad that you're teaching your kids both that they can demand any shit that they want and get it if they cry enough, and also that television is syrup and not the shit that it is.

I know a lot of people will rant about Television being brain rot and all that, but for most normal people (hint: Not the /. crowd) TV is a social thing. It genuinely puts my kid at a social disadvantage that she doesn't have it.

It genuinely puts your kid at a disadvantage that you have placed them into a situation where they are at a social disadvantage if they don't suck the glass teat. It doesn't differentiate you from most parents, but most parents are shitty parents. How can I prove that? Just look at what is going on in America today. We have permitted our nation to come to this pass, it didn't just happen. Parents are responsible for their children's development; if the best you can do is make more apathetic idiots, then you should not be making more humans. Why would you want to make more normal people? Can't you see that is leading to the destruction of our species?

Re:Not so much

[Anonymous Coward]

It's sad, but true..

All the kids on the playground saw the new whatever last night, and the kid without cable did not see it..... That makes that kid uncool and it ostracized from the group

Of course I just used the work ostracized, so I'm already ostracized from that group...

Re:Not so much

[Agent0013]

I enjoy watching my kid be non-brain rotted due to the force fed commercials they stare blankly into. After using a MythTV box for a few years I got so sick of commercials that we cut the cord after the box died and I took too long to rebuild it. We could no stand watching "live" tv so we just watched what was available on Netflix. If there is something that we are desperate to see on the day it comes out I will go to TVtorrents and get it, otherwise I am fine watching what is there on Netflix or playing some computer games.

Re:Not so much

[Areyoukiddingme]

did you suffer because your parents didn't buy you designer jeans in high school?

Yes.

Next question?

Re:Not so much

[Areyoukiddingme]

It's too bad that you're teaching your kids both that they can demand any shit that they want and get it if they cry enough, and also that television is syrup and not the shit that it is.

Reading comprehension fail.

I'm too broke for cable right now (When it hit $170/mo for Internet+tv I had to bail) and it drives my kid nuts.

His kid doesn't have access to cable TV, however much she has cried for it. He can't afford the subscription fee.

Settle down, Beavis.

Re:Not so much

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Google 'sickbeard', make sure to grab the tpb edition.

Silly TV people

[Ol Olsoc]

They are looking at it completely bass ackwards.They are assuming that we are all just waiting to watch Here comes Honey Booboo, and Duck Dynasty and American loggers on the internet. Ain't necessarily so. People like myself aren't interested in that swill, and I'm just as happy to watch things I click on on Youtube here on the internet

Cable TV is starting to have very little of interest. Network television is the pits of hell. The very limited time I spend watching cable Television is when my SO is watching something. It really isn't difficult to replace the almost 50 percent commercial rate, where now we don't know if the programming is those idiots that need a bath talking about each other, or the main point is how such and such medicine is going to make you kill yourself, but ask your doctor if it is right for you, how to get Social security disability, or the fine range of products thst will allow you to urinate without using a toilet - just pee in your adult diaper, and life will be good. And nothing makes you feel as good as watching a catheter advertisement. Now that's entertainment!

My son has never used Cable Television since being on his own for several years now, a trait shared by many young people. And I am going to be dropping it as soon as the wife gets tired of watching infomercials and the other crap that they foist on us.

Re:Silly TV people

[Seumas]

I never had or watched cable until I was about 20 or 21 in the late 90s. I haven't watched cable (or over the air) since I was about 26, in 2003. I find the stuff people are watching when I go over to their house to be really depressing and, frankly, I don't want internet entertainment to simply offer what television/cable offers. If that's all we can accomplish, then we might as well all mass-suicide, right now.

However, even today the average American watches about 5 hours of television per day. Fucking five hours! That presumably doesn't count time they spend online, playing videogames, reading books, working, or anything else. That is about a third of all waking time... spent watching fucking What To Wear and Kitchen Nightmares and Oprah. What the actual fuck, people?! Figure you're lucky enough to spend only an hour total commute each day. So that's about 10 hours working or getting to/from work. And 100% of all the time you're not working or driving to work is . . . watching television?!?!?!?!

Frankly, these guys should be thinking less about how we can move all the television content to internet distribution and thinking more about simply moving people off of "television" as a concept -- rather than where it is consumed. And don't get me wrong -- there are a few good things on television during any given time of the year -- but not 35 hours per week worth . . . that number indicates that people are literally just rotting in front of their sets because they can't think of anything else to do with their lives.

Re:Silly TV people

[Megane]

I've watched cable from the early '80s until 2000. I remember when MTV actually played music, and it was glorious. I spent a lot of time watching "superstations", WGN, WTCG/WTBS, and even WOR when they did it for a while, which were local independents in big markets showing the kind of things you got on the fifth station in a market before Fox, like movies and sitcom reruns. And I also remember what a pain in the ass it was to get good reception from an antenna. That's how cable got big in the first place. (Once the digital switchover started to happen, I was all over that shit and its clear picture.)

Then the cable-only channels started happening in the '90s. It was okay at first, but eventually it got to the point where most of them jumped the shark and went "off topic" just like MTV did. Just look at what the "History" Channel shows for an example. Even the "movie" channels (HBO/Showtime) started making their own shows. (With the crap that Hollywood churns out these days, I can't blame them.) About the only thing cable-only that I really appreciate (when I get to where I can sit and watch cable for a day) is Mike Rowe's Dirty Jobs, because he is just that awesome.

And hey, don't dis the Kitchen Nightmares... Gordon Ramsay is just that awesome too, even if he does put the "F" in food. If one or two other people running fucked up restaurants "see the light" after watching an episode of KN, then he's done good work. Deep down at the basic level, his shows are about professionalism (even under stress), paying fucking attention to what you're doing, and abandoning childish ego. Though I do admit to not caring as much about Hell's Kitchen lately since it's had such total and complete fuck-ups on the teams. (But I still think it's funny how it's always the same three things that make everyone fall apart: Beef Wellington, Scallops, and Risotto.)

Blah blah

[redog]

Blah yea right, I don't need 99% of the fucking crap on cable assholes

A La Carte Cable and Consumer Choice

[ScottCooperDotNet]

The largest reason I don't have cable TV, except for the cost, is that I cannot choose what channels I pay for. By only having tiered packages available, I cannot avoid having my money going to things I don't watch or find repugnant. I simply don't want my money going to Fox News, MSNBC, MTV, or the flavors of ESPN.

The major content creators (Viacom, Disney, Fox, etc) force cable companies to bundle their offerings, so if you want something popular (say, Nickelodeon) you also end up with the second rate crap or worse (Nick at Nite, CMT, etc). It's very anti-consumer, but no politician wants to get on the bad side of media.

One even more morally disgusting thing is that the NFL can blackout games in taxpayer-funded stadiums. I'm curious if this happens in other countries with football/soccer or other sports?

Blackouts

[tepples]

Also, to pull us gently back in the direction of the topic, sports leagues are selling streaming apps.

And then proceed to make exclusive contracts with cable networks that result in games being blacked out on the streaming apps.

Re:Blackouts

[mellon]

Yeah, give that time. As soon as it starts to look like it's costing them more money than it's getting them, or as soon as ESPN can't afford to pay what they want anymore, they'll change their tune.

For people for whom this is a deal-breaker, they simply won't be the first ones to abandon cable. Life goes on.

Re:No Shit Sherlock

[cheater512]

You call that worthwhile?

Lets say I want Fox8 and Discovery Channel. $35/month with 12 useless channels? Yeah right.
And the shows are still delayed from the US, and there are still some you miss out on.

If each provider wants to package its own channels

[tepples]

The major content creators (Viacom, Disney, Fox, etc) force cable companies to bundle their offerings, so if you want something popular (say, Nickelodeon) you also end up with the second rate crap or worse (Nick at Nite, CMT, etc). It's very anti-consumer, but no politician wants to get on the bad side of media.

If each provider wants to package its own channels, then why can't people subscribe to, say, just the Turner package (TBS, TNT, TCM, CNN, HLN, Cartoon Network) or just the Disney package (ABC Family, Disney, Disney Junior, ESPN, ESPN2)?

Wrong spreadsheet

[EmperorOfCanada]

If you have 11 guys bidding on your 10 camels then you will get a great price. If 2 of the guys buy cars so you now have 9 guys bidding for your 10 camels then you are going to get hosed. This is the same situation combined with the fact that people are angry at being abused for a long time. Being forced to pay outrageous prices for crappy programming. Then spreading out the desired channels in to 4 different packages so that we have to buy all 4 to get the 5 channels that we only wanted. Plus commercials that drive us up the wall. Moving programs around based on this weeks insider political clout of the producer. Then cancelling shows when the political clout of the producer dropped below some imaginary threshold.

Then you get the ultimate competitor, piracy. Piracy set the bar as to what the consumer can have. Basically commercial free, on demand, and with no bizarre strings such as time-limits, device limits, or weirdo delays for countries that aren't the US. All this plus it was almost free. The two gate charges were that you had to mess with torrents, and you once in a while get a dud. But Netflix showed that there is a business model that can compete with piracy. Month after month they get money from people who are now getting nearly all the benefits of piracy with none of the downsides.

Is Netflix the be all and end all? Probably not. One great quote I heard went like this, "Will Netflix become more like HBO faster than HBO will become like Netflix."

There are exceptions. Nightly news. Live sports. And highly topical TV such as Big Brother. Those don't quite fit the download netflix model.

Now where this whole thing breaks down is that I suspect that the big producers are all going to think, "Hey we can build out our own netflix with our giant library." They are wrong. If you open up your overpriced hotdog stand next to McDonald's that just went all-you-can-eat you will do 1/1000th of the business. These other companies have little hope of becoming even Pepsi to Netflix's Coke. People aren't going to drop cable to discover the wonders of Netflix at under $10 month only to start tagging on Disney, Warner, Sony, etc bringing them back up to their old obscene cable TV bill. Maybe people will subscribe to 2 services but with their all-you-can-eat libraries growing and getting better why would you need 3+ services?

The one I can't figure out is iTunes. Why would anyone buy anything that you can get on Netflix for the price of many months of Netflix? The prices on iTunes are bonkers.

Re:Wrong spreadsheet

[thoth]

The one I can't figure out is iTunes. Why would anyone buy anything that you can get on Netflix for the price of many months of Netflix? The prices on iTunes are bonkers.

I buy a handful of shows on iTunes and think it's great. For about $40 a show (rough price for a season pass), I get the episodes a day after they air, in HD. I'd get more shows if they were available in this fashion (e.g. the ones I mention below)

Blaming iTunes for prices is like blaming Amazon for ebook prices - the reality is they have a floor somebody else sets.

Netflix is great but they are tied to an external release schedule as well - Homeland, Game of Thrones, Dexter, etc end up on Netflix on the studio release schedule, which for those shows is a year after the season ends.

So basically for me, there are 4-5 shows I'm willing to pay to watch NOW rather than wait a year. And no, I'm unwilling to download them. Of those, 2-3 are available on iTunes and I get them. Since I'm a cable cutter this works out cheaper and I am supporting this new business model I hope becomes more and more viable (or cable changes their ways but that will be tough as too many folks are slicing the pie - too many lose even if some are better off with change).

My old cable bill (TV portion) was about $80 a month. That's two shows a month off iTunes to break even. There aren't 24 shows a year I'm interested in buying, so iTunes for those that I am and Netflix for the rest works for me.

Hence the leverage cable has

[Camael]

And this is precisely what cable companies are banking on to hold their customers hostage. It all boils down to personal choice. Money vs. Addiction.

Using your example :-

Must you watch only the Rachel Maddow Show, or are you willing to accept a substitute, perhaps with a similar format ?

Must you watch it live, or are you willing to put up with the inconvenience of delayed telecasts and/or clicking?

Must you watch those specific ice hockey games?

The cable companies have ensured (through exclusivity agreements etc) that if you answer yes to any of the above, you will have to pay a premium to them to scratch your itch. That is their business model. And if you choose to pay them, that is fine. What I am pointing out is that consumers do have choices. Given the way the fees/premium have been rising over the years, it appears that more and more people are answering "no".

Netflix saved me...

[Andy Prough]

...years ago. I tossed cable when Netflix was still sending DVDs in the mail (they probably still offer that - I'm not sure). There's no way in hell I'm paying a dime for the crap that's on the cable lineup.

"I've got 1,300 channels of shit on the TV to choose from..." (Pink Floyd, Nobody Home, from The Wall, 1979 -- revised to add double 00's)

Re:Netflix saved me...

[BonThomme]

They still send them. We still get them. There's no way in hell I'm paying a dime for their lousy streaming selection.

Completely off base

[Anonymous Coward]

WAY off base and wrong. It just takes the will to want to do it right. The Blaze started up from zero, and within 1 year has more prime-time viewers on their Internet video channel than MSNBC and CNN.

Quality content for the right targeted audience is all it take to put the old media out of business.

Three words...

[emaname]

Over The Air

Cut the cable 20+ years ago and never looked back. Saved a lot of cash so far.

However, I'm located between two large markets with several stations. If someone is located out in a remote area, this probably isn't viable since antenna ranges top out around 70 mi, I think (can't remember). And terrain is an issue (locations with mountains and locations in mountain valleys are a problem.

Conservative estimate is we receive 60 stations. And we receive HD.

We got tired of paying more and more for cable AND having commercials. Remember when cable started and they promised no commercials since their revenue would come from the subscriptions? We do.

We're also watching more DVDs (collections of programs, etc) and I'm making more use of the internet.

Also I really enjoy watching certain sports, but there is NO way I'm paying ESPN some freakin' premium price just because they're popular. I understand supply and demand, but there also is such a thing as gouging. I sincerely hope they price themselves out of the market.

Re:Three words...

[dk20]

Remember when the people acting on the shows use to make a "reasonable" amount of money? Now they are in the multiple-hundreds of thousands per episode. Someone has to pay for this so they just introduce more and more commercials. It's rare i watch tv with commercials anymore and when i do its incredibly annoying. As the show gets closer to the end the commercials just pile on knowing you want to see how it ends.

Re:Three words...

[cluedweasel]

I live in a town of 80,000, out in the middle of nowhere. The only reliable Internet is from the cable company. There is DSL, but it's slow, only available in a pretty restricted area and goes down for days at a time. Being a town of mainly minimum wage service workers, OTA is very popular. There are antennas everywhere. This didn't escape the notice of the cable company. What they've started to do is to buy the local network affiliates and then turn down the transmitter power as much as they can. Their first acquisition was the CBS affiliate. They turned the power down to 250W. At my house, 4.5 miles away from the transmitter, the signal was barely at 30%. Their other tactic is the 150Gb monthly data cap with a $1.50 per Gb overage charge. All aimed squarely at preventing people from streaming. All for $51 per month for 12Mbps down / 1.5mbps up. Don't even get me started on how it hinders start ups and damages the local economy.

Flamebait article

[Camael]

If you read TFA, you will find his claims are contradictory.

First it states the premise:-

To displace incumbents, OTT TV has to continue to change TV business models in ways that appeal to consumers and attract content owners.

So far so good. Then it states the facts relied on to suggest OTT TV doesnt appeal enough to customers :-

In its June 2013 Cross Platform Report, Nielsen reported that the average consumer watched over 157 hours of traditional television per month. Nielsen also reported that the average consumer watched only 3.8 minutes per day of OTT TV or about 2 hours per month. If all 11 original TV series from Amazon and Netflix appealed to the average consumer and he or she watched one hour from each series per week, original OTT television content would amount to 44 hours in an average month. The consumer would be left with 111 hours per month of unsatisfied television viewing appetite without cable or satellite pay TV. OTT TV challengers don’t have the economic scale to create or acquire enough content to replace incumbent pay television providers.

Note the assumptions- It assumes that "average consumers" must watch 157 hours of traditional television every month to be satisfied. The article very carefully never explains why it thinks this is a valid assumption. Do we even have any numbers to show that those who watch 157 hours of traditional television every month are happier with their service than those who watch less?

The irony is that right at the beginning of the article, it admits that

"In May, Variety reported that the American Consumer Satisfaction Index ranked cable television providers last in all consumer categories."

So we do know that customers of cable companies are very unhappy with their cable service. This directly contradicts his assumption that"average consumers" must watch 157 hours of traditional television every month to be satisfied, since on average they are obviously unhappy even after watching that much.

This is a badly written article trolling for hits.

Re:Flamebait article

[sanosuke001]

So someone can't be satisfied with how much TV they watch while at the same time be dissatisfied with their content provider, the costs incurred, and requiring commercials? I don't think satisfaction between the two are 1:1.

Re:Flamebait article

[Jason Levine]

It assumes that "average consumers" must watch 157 hours of traditional television every month to be satisfied. The article very carefully never explains why it thinks this is a valid assumption.

Exactly. My kids began watching normal cable TV (though less than 157 hours a month). After we got a Roku box and Netflix, they began watching that AND cable. Slowly, they migrated until they now watch very little cable TV* at all. Even more recently, they've taken to getting their entertainment from tablet computer games and the TV will often remain off entirely. Even if we accept that customers "need" X hours of entertainment every month, that entertainment can come from a variety of sources. TV is just one of those sources, not the only source.

* We're considering cancelling cable. The only reason it has remained is that Time Warner Cable gave us a great deal this year to keep us as customers. We watch some shows (e.g. Mythbusters) that don't show new episodes via OTA, on a station website, or on Netflix. Once you factor in paying for those shows, our savings shrink to the point that cancellation doesn't save us much. However, cable TV is constantly on the edge of cancellation with us and it's only a matter of time before it goes.

Re:Flamebait article

[pr0fessor]

I have kids that leave TVs on all the time even when they are not home. I'm constantly turning TVs off in my house that no one is watching, and complaining the they need to be turning things off when they are done. If cable companies charged by usage I would be screwed. They leave on all kinds of electronics my power bills are outrageous.

Re:Flamebait article

[wiit_rabit]

Maybe we watch so much TV because we start to watch before our interested show is on, and then absentmindedly continue to watch after its over. Or how about channels that alternate reruns between two different shows during the late afternoon. To watch two reruns of a show you want to watch you sit through one episode of a show you don't really want to watch. Or how about that of the 157 hours of TV watching about 1/5-1/3 of that was sitting through / ignoring commercials.

I watch Netflix / Hulu / Amazon, etc... because of a few things. The ability to watch the shows I want, when I want. The ability to catch up on shows by watching a whole season, if necessary. The ability to watch old shows on my terms. And also less commercials. I'm not opposed to commercials, but they all seem to be either cars, car insurance, or feminine hygiene products.

I think Hulu only shows two 30 second commercials before or after a TV episode. Compare this to interrupting the show every 10 minutes for 2 minutes or so of commercials on cable / broadcast TV. And this is with me paying $60-$100 every month for the 'privilege' of cable TV.

I don't remember any commercials on Amazon Prime, but I may be wrong.

Re:Flamebait article

[pugugly]

Who . . . the hell . . . watches ~40 hours a week of TV?

Well - checking the 2011 BLS American Time Use Survey that's wrong; Actually, his number almost exactly match my math for "Leisure and Sports" Daily *30, but the numbers for "watching Television" (a subcategory) come to 2.75 hours/day, or ~82 hours per month on average; even among people that watch some *every* day that only goes up to 105 hours a month on average. Then there's the assumption that that is all 'original programming', as opposed to movies, reruns,catching up on series you missed the first time around.

So the premise is based on flawed data from the getgo, exacerbated by bad logic.
(Chart won't go through here "Filter error: Please use less whitespace", but search for "Watching television" in the report; )

Pug

What's wierd is I know so many people without cabl

[Maxo-Texas]

Some only have the basic cable that comes free with internet.
Lots don't even have that.
As basic speeds are getting so fast, I'm wondering if I really need 900K/second.
I think I could downgrade a couple notches are even go with the local club internet which is $45 a month.

Better headline:

[johnny cashed]

Why cable TV isn't ready for the internet.

Bullshit.

[Seumas]

Most television is absolute shit. Go watch Hulu for a week if you don't believe me. There isn't even $8 worth of non-shitty brain-drivel content on the whole thing per month.

I haven't bothered with Cable television (or even over the air) in more than a decade. Between Netflix, Amazon Prime, podcasts, and other stuff online I have *more* content than I can even possibly keep up with.

Yeah, sure, it's hard to replace actual television if you're the type of person that spends all day and night sitting on the couch watching shitty talk shows hosted by the mom of the daughter-famous-for-getting-fucked-on-a-home-video whose dad was an accomplished lawyer and reality television and mind-numbingly stupid sit-coms . . . but for people who aren't rotting away in a recliner, there is a fuck-ton of endless video content outside of paying $100-$200/mo for cable or even having an antennae for over the air.

The Torrent side is getting better all the time.

[snadrus]

QBittorrent:
- Watch torrents within minutes of finding what you want with in-order downloading.
- Searches span tens of sites & return only results & seed/peer numbers, but no ads. The description page (if you want it) is still only a click away.
- After 3x seed, torrents auto-pause. (no management necessary)

The final video file is mine to watch wherever I want. Unlike Netflix, this includes:
- With the kids during Car trips.
- On the cheap non-Google Android tablets that are affordable enough to entrust to young kids
- On the Cyanogenmod- ed phone because the stock ROM was awful & insecure.

Well...

[Svartalf]

...it doesn't help that you can't really lay your hands on an IPTV (Direct or Multicast) vendor unless you're talking someone like AT&T (U-Verse), CenturyLink (Prism), or Verizon (FiOS). I've tried, to no avail, to get access to decent service that way. No. Go.

Re:What's wierd is I know so many people without c

[Maxo-Texas]

Uh... Texas.

Comcast charges $98 a month for XFinity internet service after all taxes and fees are applied.

With that, I get free basic cable (for a while it was $70 without cable and $60 with cable).

I'll give them a call tomorrow and see if I can get anything like your quote in my area.

In the Netherlands, they are already streamed

[dutchwhizzman]

In the Netherlands, the main sports people watch on television is soccer. Nothing more. The national soccer bond has their own live streaming of the 2 leagues and all the international games service which you can subscribe on. National television usually broadcasts the national team if they play a match and there is public television that is streamed by the station itself for "other sports". We have a crowd of people watching Formula 1 on any of two or three channels that usually provide the feed on television, but it's the only sport that can be found "free" on cable that isn't streamed "free" on the internet that has a significant of people watch.

It's being done, it's proven commercially viable because we have enough density of high speed internet to satisfy "the fans". The reason it won't work in the USA yet, is because there aren't enough people able to watch these streams. Once broadband gets enough penetration, Cable and satellite TV will be dead as disco, unless they will start providing a-la-carte channels instead of bundles.

Don't forget that Netflix has their own exclusive series now. You can't get those on cable or satellite and this means that people will eventually be going to want both services. Given the netflix pricing schedule, it will be relatively cheap for people to have both and only pay for the netflix stuff they can't get on cable, or not when they want it. Paying cable for expensive upgrades like a DVR feature will happen less and less because of this.

Advertising income from channels will be lower because fewer people will be watching, even if the potential viewer number doesn't change. That means that the channels offering the content and the producers of the content will look for different ways of making money. They could charge the cable companies more, making cable more unattractive for more and more people, or they could go on the internet. They could do both. Regardless which they choose, the cable companies will have to choose to either get more expensive, or cut costs somewhere internally in their organization. The end result will be that they will have to spend more money on marketing to compensate for the lower quality and/or the higher price, again resulting in a less satisfied customer.

It doesn't take much more than what is already happening to trip the balance for the cable and satellite companies. It's already happening and it will be a matter of time until they will start to change their pricing model and offer you to pay per channel. It may take some bankruptcies for this to happen, but it will happen soon enough. That won't be the end, but they'll be around as long as enough people can't get high speed internet in their homes. Cable TV will probably die sooner than Satellite, but in the end, we'll all be watching IP-based streams, or whatever the prevailing technology is by then.

Re:In the Netherlands, they are already streamed

[Lennie]

But the cable providers will still remain:

Ziggo in the Netherlands just like in the US the cable provider (Comcast) is the or one of the biggest Internet providers and most of the Netherlands and US watches digital TV which is also IP-based streaming.

Their network is completely fiber except for the 'last mile' and DOCSIS 3 provided up to over 300 Mbit/s downstream and 120 Mbit/s upstream.

Re:In the Netherlands, they are already streamed

[Lennie]

It's just a matter of time.

They are taking advantage of the situation for as long as possible.

Kickstart for TV

[crossmr]

Why not a model like this:
Organization wants to create a TV show,
they create a budget
they crowd-fund it using a kick starter style method
All the people who support it get first access on air date. It's released to the general public 1 week/1 month later/3 days earlier on the pirate bay
Each season they fund again.

TV becomes democratic. TV shows which flounder are unlikely to get funded for another season, we find out what people really want to watch.

Question for Slashdotters

[Mike Frett]

I'm new to this IPTV thing and after reading quite a bit, I still can't make heads or tails out of it. I currently have DirecTV and enjoy how I can, with one click, browse through the channel listing guide and mark a series to record or a movie etcetera. I'm basically a hermit and have my TV beside my Computer and very much enjoy that I can simply browse the guide and watch one of the movie channels (HBO, Stars etc) with shows back to back without having to be interrupted to click anything. In fact, I don't think I watch anything except the movie channels and the local and live news. Before you ask about an Antenna, I tried that already and we can't get a signal in our area, it's too far away from any big city or tv stations.

My question is as follows to IPTV users here: Does IPTV work the same way, or is it something I will need to be constantly interrupted to click things and wait for buffering and stuff?. That would be too cumbersome to me. If it makes any difference, this household uses Linux on all the computers and it would be appreciated not to recommend any Microsoft product, but don't hold that against me. So what say you?.

Re:No Shit Sherlock

[erroneus]

Some honest cable internet installers weened me from TV long ago. In the past, I used to bribe the cable internet installers to leave the TV signal unblocked. But the last two time they refused. I ended up with no TV. I've been without TV for about four years now. I download and watch things occasionally, but that's it. I'm simply weened.

Sports

[ThatsNotPudding]

Sports (both professional and collegiate) fuel the spiral of cable TV cost increases. Whether you watch them or opt out of the sports tier, you are still paying for sports. Loss of sports coverage is also a real reason why a good chunk of people will never 'cut the cord'.

A moral battle

[Sockatume]

It's a moral battle, not a pragmatic one. P2P would already be dead if they simply treated it as a competitor. They've got huge war chests, loads of deals with device manufacturers, all of the content, and the ability to make more. They could beat it on convenience and narrow the price disadvantage until they mopped the floor with it. Unfortunately they see the moral issue that people shouldn't be pirating content and mistakenly assume that reversing that is the solution.

Re:A moral battle

[Jason Levine]

And, unfortunately, when someone does compete with P2P as a competitor and beats it, they treat that company as an enemy. Example, Netflix. It's an easy to use service and is on virtually all devices. You can buy an inexpensive Roku box for $50 and then get thousands of shows for $10 a month. How have the content providers treated Netflix? Many are trying to keep their content off of it as if having their content stream via Netflix (and getting paid for that) is a horrible thing. Imagine how much better Netflix's service would be if the content providers opened their vaults and let Netflix have access to everything? Even if Netflix doubled their price, it would be a wonderful service that millions more would sign up for. However, it would also seriously disrupt the business model that content providers know and love and so they try their best to withhold content from Netflix. Ironically, this just helps piracy, not the content providers.

Re:A moral battle

[Xiaran]

To be fair netflix are a new competitor for them. I think the head of netflix said something along the lines of : netflix needs to figure out how to be HBO before HBO figures out how to be netflix.

Re:A moral battle

[mattack2]

But Hulu Plus, started by several of the networks, does/did have the "content providers open their vaults". I'd be fine with something like Hulu Plus charging *MUCH* more than even your twice-Netflix rate, IF THERE WERE A COMMERCIAL FREE OPTION. As much of a Tivo fan as I am, I'd much rather not have to deal with recording my own shows (though I still want the option, for e.g. OTA shows that I can record for keeps).

As for green1's message up the chain, there already IS "a video on demand model allowing you to choose only the individual shows you want". iTunes, Amazon Instant, etc. Pay per episode. Too expensive, IMHO, but it does give you the newest episodes, and there were stats recently showing way more downloads from them daily than I would have expected. (Yes I'm being vague since I don't have the link, but I think it was in the 5-6 figures, daily.)

Re:A moral battle

[pugugly]

In my experience Hulu Plus is the same price as Netflix with the additional 'features' of . . .
A worse interface (As of the latest iteration, there's a 'view timeline' at the bottom of the interface that doesn't actually show you where you are in the episode, and if you click *anywhere* on it to, say, watch Kevin Spacey steal Colberts Emmy again, you go back to the beginning of the program again. Seriously.)
Less Content (and some of the actual *good* content is just web series you can view for free - I'm looking at you Kevin Pollack - {G}),
Shows expiring at random times,
Arbitrary licensing on how you can stream (I'm *paying* for the Simpsons, but can't actually watch it over Roku? You have my money, why do you even *care*?)
Commercials,
a tendency to crash/hang more often than Netflix on any given platform.

Netflix is far from perfect, but frankly if Netflix doubled their price, I'd pay it and drop Hulu - 90% of what I watch on Hulu is The Daily Show/Colbert Report anyway - heck if Netflix picked those two shows up I'd drop Hulu.
Heck, if Comedy Centrals internet streaming was half decent, I'd drop Hulu.
And they were asking for *how* much to sell Hulu last month? Gee, I can't imagine why no one jumped on that.

Hulu - there to make you really appreciate Netflix!
Pug

Re:A moral battle

[Jason Levine]

Hulu is what happens when the cable companies try to get into the Internet streaming business but don't want the Internet streaming business to get so popular that their cable TV revenues are impacted.

As for Comedy Central, if they had a Roku app, I'd love it. I'll often miss The Daily Show and Colbert Report and would enjoy just streaming the past week's worth of shows one after another to catch up. That being said, my temporary solution would involve a tablet/phone and the PlayTo app. It streams videos from your tablet/phone to a PlayTo app on your Roku box. Very useful for those shows that are available online, but that won't otherwise play on your TV.

Re:lmao

[BonThomme]

Except they have the wire into your house. In the end, cable TV (and wireline phone) will be free. Your internet will cost you $180/month, though.

you can't win against the house

[louden obscure]

AT&T knew this would happen, my monthly DSL bandwidth has a soft cap of 150 GB with extra data charged @ $10/per additional 50 GB. AT&T thinks 5 gigs a day should be enough for anyone, my grand kids would beg to differ; they are very network intensive with Ipods and tablets and a roku box and video messaging and netflix and youtube and "grampa could you get us " which means a torrent download with appropriate uploading and more bandwidth...

The reason?

[houbou]

Revenue Streams. TV shows advertising models are the networks revenue streams and they clash with our it works online. Who wants to spend 18 minutes in 1 hr watching advertising? I would pay a little more each month is my TV channels provider would deliver advertisement free TV shows.

Traditional television overrated and overpriced

[intermodal]

People like to throw around their pet business models when arguing this issue, but when it comes down to it, I don't care about anything that cable/satellite offers me over what I already get from Netflix. A lot of people seem really sold on television as a lifestyle, though, and for me, that isn't enough to convince me that I need to pay for something beyond the $8 a month I already pay. If they want to stop making new shows as a result, I don't really care.

Finding people who are qualified to do it is also

[Joe_Dragon]

well stop asking for degrees and get rid of that personality test

what a load of BS

[hesaigo999ca]

Are you seriously wanting us to think that the internet TV is not ready.
1) Get netflix ready component ps3, xbox, wdtvlive, wii
2) Get netflix account for 8$ a month (replacing costly pvrs and decoders from ur fav. consumer company)
3) Watch the limitless tv shows WITHOUT THE ADS OR COMMERCIALS.

How is this "not ready yet"?

Whoever this smaxpis, please ....do us a favor and hang up your journalistic pen.

Nightly News

[Phoenix666]

Sports is certainly the last hold-out for live pay TV, but nightly news isn't. I can already watch Tagesschau on my Roku with a mere several hours' delay, if I don't happen to catch it live. Anything more actual than that people will go to Twitter or Facebook or YouTube to see the real-time reports and videos that people upload from their phones. "Real" news is mostly spin and BS anyhow--it has lost all value.

Sports shouldn't get too comfortable, though, because in the era of Google Glass and drones the chance for real-time broadcasts sourced from those who haven't paid the NFL millions for air rights is quickly coming about.

The upshot of all of this is none of us has the luxury of resting on our laurels anymore. We all have to use our brains constantly to make a living.

Re:Nightly News

[EmperorOfCanada]

"Real" news is mostly spin and BS anyhow

I fully agree; and this makes me sad.

TV going downhill

[k6mfw]

this also reminds me of "Why Doesn't MTV Play Music Videos Anymore?" as described in this satire (turn volume down, language NSFW), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ysyZF-DZFY

Overall, I see "watching TV" as phasing out. Ugh, visiting friends that have network TV playing and it's all super bad. There are a few (very few) cable channels somewhat worthwhile but even TCM is repeating movies and having more self-gratifying "advertisement." Internet TV seems pretty good but requires highspeed internet which may or may not be readily available. But then I'm an old guy from the 20th century who used to remember when late night TV played movies, and variety was pretty good. OK there was some ads have to watch (Cal Worthington and his dog Spot, or Ga3ry from MMM Carpets) but not atrocious as current ads.

Re:Salvation

[k6mfw]

most highly thoughtful statement for this thread.

Re:The Torrent side is getting better all the time

[mcrbids]

My $8/month comes with complete and total peace of mind. I can keep my chin up knowing that I'm legal and don't have to worry about it.

I buy at least 1 drive-thru coffee a week for $4, which should put this into perspective.

Re:The Torrent side is getting better all the time

[snadrus]

I do that too, but consider
- the latest shows that won't make Netflix this decade,
- the benefits of fully-patched Android devices over unpatched stock roms. I have more piece of mind from that than anything,
- the civil disobedience against ever-more-invasive corporate blockades with laws attached. Are you sure you have nothing to worry about in the grander sense?
- other providers: I've watched UK shows which will never be available to the USA.