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Streaming TV is Beginning To Look a Lot Like Cable (theverge.com)
The advent of streaming TV services and over the top devices that support them has come at a cost. They used to work on a simple, unwritten principle: being different from normal cable services. You didn't have to pay for large, non-configurable bundles of channels that played shows in linear fashion and required you to use a digital video recorder built into the box (often for an extra fee) if you wanted to create your own collection of programming to watch on your own schedule. But that's not the case anymore, argues veteran technology columnist Walt Mossberg. He writes: The general idea is that each of these TV services will appeal to cord-cutters and cord-nevers who merely consider old-style cable and satellite TV too costly. To overcome that, each offers what are called "skinny bundles" of channels, with fewer choices, at various prices. On Sling, for instance, you start at about 30 channels for $20 a month. On DirecTV Now, it's 60 channels for $35 a month. Both offer other, costlier plans, with more channels, or add-on plans for HBO, or for specialized programming such as sports, or kids' shows. Both are working on DVR offerings. In other words, while the bundles may be cheaper and skinnier, they're still bundles, not unlike the tiers of programming offered by traditional cable and satellite services. And you can't assemble your own custom bundle. Also, unlike in the Netflix / Hulu model, the emphasis here is on networks, not shows.
Streaming from the Dark Corners of the Web is also looking a lot like my new TV service.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
I noticed this trend with TV services through the internet. Though I believe they are more optional than their cable TV counterparts, at least it feels that way. Even some TV bundles that come from PS Vue (PlayStation Vue) offer a beautiful clean interface with a package the works a long side the PlayStation itself.
It's cable all over again. So, people who don't want cable won't buy it. End of story.
You still need an ISP to provide the internet connection so you can stream...
Has the author not noticed that Netflix, with its strong move away from third party content and towards its own self-produced stuff, is basically turning itself into another network?
Hulu was created by the old-school networks as well... although, surprisingly, it's probably the least "network like" of all the major services.
Perhaps the author should've said "unlike the Crunchyroll model"?
#DeleteChrome
We don't want "channels" any more. We don't want to watch some program on your schedule. We want to stream specific things when we want to stream them. This is why netflix is cleaning house - it's on demand and doesn't force anyone to conform to their schedule.
Cord cutting is a revolt against three things - unreasonable cost, fixed schedules, and commercials.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
If I can't pick the show I want to watch and watch it when I want, then it's just cable with another name.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
Sure, streaming options provided by cable companies look a lot like cable. News at 11.
However, Netflix, unlike cable providers offers single-fee, on demand, no advertising programming. This is what cord-cutters want.
This article focuses entirely on Sling and Direct TV, neither of which was ever intended to be like Netflix. Those services are both designed to function like a regular cable service, just over the internet instead of a dedicated cable line or satellite dish. Streaming services that aren't trying to be like cable are still nothing like cable.
Clickbait maybe? I don't know. Just a bullshit non-story that shouldn't be on the front page.
With cable TV, the company which owns the pipes (your cable) also provides the service. There is no competition for TV service, so the cable company can charge you whatever they want. This is especially true in the U.S. where most of the cable TV companies have a monopoly granted by the local government.
With streaming TV, the company which owns the pipes (your ISP) does not provide the service. Consequently, there is no service monopoly - any TV streaming service on the Internet could conceivably provide your service. That means they are all competing with each other for best channel selection and lowest price. You'll still get ripped off on Internet service since that's a government-granted monopoly in most of the U.S., but you're not also getting ripped off on TV service on top of it.
Monthly bandwidth limits remain an issue, but my ISP (Cox) is one of the better ones with a 1 TB soft cap for all service tiers. If you go over, they simply reserve the right to kick you off; I haven't heard of anyone actually being booted yet. So it hasn't impacted my TV streaming.
I recently tried Sony Playstaton Vue for a few weeks, and the experience was almost exactly like that being described by Walt....different channel packages at different price levels. I think the base package was $30 a month for about two dozen channels. I even had to sit through commercials, which is one of the primary reasons I ditched cable way back when.
I cancelled it after a few days. If you don't offer me anything at that price that I can't already get with cable, I'm not interested.
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
With more blackouts and not even real OTA feeds. No they have the cut down watch feeds.
Also some like Layer3 TV force you rent there hardware ($10 an outlet) and it counts ageist your download cap as well.
It's the content providers, not the content deliverers, that push the fat bundles. Try licensing ABC broadcast network without also licensing the expensive ESPN. So long as the content providers are able to hold the content deliverers hostage via forced bundling, the fat bundles situation won't change
the emphasis here is on networks, not shows.
The emphasis isn't really on networks with Sling, it is on cheating the customer. If you look at the $20 "orange" offering from Sling you might not find anything that you want to watch at all (that was the case for me). The $25 "blue" package is a little better, it claims to offer more channels including FXX and National Geographic Wild. But these two channels (and perhaps others) are not really there, they only offer you a handful of archived show episodes to stream on demand, not the regular channel lineup for these networks. And if you have any hope of signing up for Sling and then logging in to a network's web page using Sling as your provider, forget it. Sling isn't accepted as a provider on any of the sites that I wanted to use even though you are supposedly paying for the content. And Sling offers very little streaming content through the Sling apps. By the way, the service is awful too, and I frequently could watch half a show, only to start getting errors blaming my Internet connection and couldn't finish watching the show. Tests of my connection and it speed indicated that the problem was with Sling, not my Internet provider. And don't even get me started on the awful quality of the support staff.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
This is why netflix is cleaning house - it's on demand and doesn't force anyone to conform to their schedule.
Except that they don't offer much than I'm interested in watching. I've been a subscriber twice and dropped the service twice. I very much like what they offer in principle - ala carte all you can eat programming on my schedule. That's great. But the problem is that they don't have much that I actually want to watch. Their movie catalog was mostly old or B movies that I wasn't interested in. Few recent releases or stuff that I hadn't already seen. I don't care at all about their original programming though that's not a commentary on its quality - just doesn't suit my tastes. And navigating Netflix to find anything worth watching was a painful experience. I'd spend upwards of an hour looking through a crappy interface and end up finding nothing I wanted to watch.
I'm not interested in Sling because they don't offer DVR features worthy of bothering and it's not truly ala carte with the channel selection. I'm not going to waste my time sitting through a bunch of commercials so if I cannot skip them or fast forward through them I'm just not going to watch.
Youtube has come closest with the commercials in a manner that is almost acceptable. I might sit through a 5 second commercial but nothing longer and only one. Honestly if you cannot tell me about your product in 5 seconds you need to work on your pitch. I'm not going to sit through anything longer. It's just not worth it.
I have little interest in subscribing to a bunch of different streaming services. First one to get it right gets my money.
However, Netflix, unlike cable providers offers single-fee, on demand, no advertising programming. This is what cord-cutters want.
It's close. But Netflix doesn't have a lot of what I want to watch and finding stuff to watch on Netflix in my experience has been a painful process. I don't really care about their original programming and their catalogs of other programming is less than amazing, especially for recent releases.
I assume you clipped out all the unskippable anti piracy warnings and preroll ads for other movies by the same studio?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
In my little world, "cord cutting" isn't about finding a different delivery method, it is about not watching.
After working full time, my free time is rare and precious, with an overwhelming set of options competing for that time. Watching TV is seriously scraping the bottom of the barrel. A way of sleeping while still awake.
None of my friends are fans of TV either. And, though it is a completely unfair generalization based on a heavily biased and microscopic sample size, the people I do know who watch TV are all a bit shallow.
Sorry for being an elitist prick, but, I have exercises to do, knowledge to gain, skills to master, challenges to overcome, people to interact with....you know...stuff...
I can't believe you're wasting time on Slashdot instead of climbing Mount Everest, or solving world hunger. People I know that post online instead of creating Michelin Star restaurants that use only ingredients found in other people's dumpsters, are all a bit shallow. Perhaps you should spend less time online, and try setting some goal, maybe swim the atlantic, or dive into an active volcano. Doesn't your lawn need cutting? With Scissors to make it perfect instead of cheating with a lawn mower?
I think there is room for both "packages" and ala carte shows.
Most people still grew up with a TV that had a big round dial, or at least a remote with a "channel" keypad, and a group of shows associated with that "channel".
Those people seem somewhat alienated and lost having to search for programs by name, and the cutesy "wall of VCR boxes" - type results interface is a VERY inefficient way to present a simple results list. Think of how hideous and utterly useless Google would be if it showed the Home Page of each of the websites returned in a Query?
And if you live in a home with a person utterly incapable of typing, like I do, having to search by typing is RIGHT-out. And even with something like AppleTV, which has the Siri Remote, there doesn't seem to be enough crossover content between cable TV content and NetFlix/Hulu content to really be a viable replacement for cable, but it is slowly getting better.
And, although we all hate commercials, one of the GOOD things about cable (and OTA TV) "channels" is that there are "promos" for upcoming shows. And quite frankly, that is one of the major ways most people learn about content that might be interesting. The "wall of VCR boxes" approach is simply abysmal for that, too. The streaming aggregators haven't figured that one out, and a "teasers channel" doesn't work either; because who wants to sit an watch trailer after trailer, promo after promo?
But, the person who figures out how to make streaming services "feel" MORE like TV channels has a fortune with their name on it, just waiting for them!
First of all, the price of Internet (at least at my home) vs Internet + TV is purposely priced by comcast and others so that you really don't save THAT much money. Secondly, what about data caps? Are you really going to police your 2 teenagers and your significant other to watch their data usage?
I haven't logged in or posted a comment in years... What Mossberg and the vast majority of people bitching about cable tv don't understand is the content providers (the channels) are the ones that require bundling and the "linear style" video services. The Viacom and Disney owned channels are perfect examples. For those of you that don't have kids - why are you required to have Nickelodeon and Disney? Do you really thing the cable provider cares what channels subscribed to? For a long time competition was driven by the number of channels that were available to watch. Now, as those channels continue to charge the cable companies more and more every damn year, the market is pushing back a cost of service is more important. But large conglomerates (including Comcast and Time Warner / AT&T / DirecTV) hold the keys to access to a huge portion of the content that people want to watch. It will still be a long time before those entities change, if at all.
"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have to ram it down their throats." --Howard Aike
I'll never, ever pay to watch commercials.
If you must have commercials in your content, make it free to stream.
If you must ask me to pay for your content, don't put commercials in it.
This is non-negotiable. I will do without rather than pay for commercials.
I'll speak for them. Yes, it's very easy to do.
all of it. cable, satellite, streaming. It's all a scam intended to numb your brain, confuse, control and separate you from the only little bit of power you have...your money.
Are you a Millennial? From what I read, Millennials do not watch TV. They may have an Internet subscription that includes a tiny TV package because that's cheaper than just Internet, but they may not even rent the cable box to decode the content.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
This is the same exact reason I cancelled my Sling subscription earlier this week.
Not gonna pay $20 for the only one channel we're watching from time to time. And no, sorry, your free roku offer is not winning me back.
The can keep trying different ways to fleece us, but any cable or cable-like companies that still stubbornly refuse to get a clue that the internet has already blown their entire monopoly-based business model away will simply have to accept going bankrupt.
Don't forget. Bullets go both ways.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
The only value sling has is for ESPN1/2/3 if you want live sports that are exclusive to that network. Its month-to-month and you can subscribe during the sport seasons you are interested in. I don't know why anyone would have SLING for any other reason.
Even if these packages are bundled like cable, and have the same dvr/commercial/linear programming schedule setup, they are still a major upgrade over cable.
The reason: BYOD
Vue/Sling/DirecTVNOW all functionally enable a customer to bring their own hardware. with 3 TV's in my house, almost half of my cable/internet bill is spent getting the FiOS media server with the extra streaming boxes to allow cable TV to all 3 sets. With Vue, I can use my own Playstation/Roku/Fire TV to control it, and dont have to keep paying 50+ a month in equipment rental fees. If PS Vue gets Viacom channels back, I'm in all likelyhood dropping FiOS cable and switching.
So... only people of other races are poor.
That's an interesting claim there "warrior".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Keeping yourself "informed" on Slashdot? Really?
You have no reason to be smug about anything.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Cool
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Even better are private sFTP servers shared among groups of friends and family.
Set one up and you will find that very soon 90% of your (non-porn) piratebay searches are already on the server. Helps to have one person in the circle on Gigabit fiber...I've got two.
For live TV I find that OTA TV is 'good enough', especially with an antenna tower so you can just reach out past the blackout areas for sports.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
So very true. So very true,
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Would I be welling to pay to crowdfund the sorts of shows I would actually like to watch?
There have been dozens of groups who did essentially that, the most notable for me being 'Dead Gentleman Productions/Zombie Orpheus Entertainment' with 'The Gamers' and 'JourneyQuest', as well as a number of one off projects that never managed their funding for further episodes or another season.
There is no reason in this day and age we still have media companies foisting on us what THEY think we want to see. We have a world of stories and passionate amateurs and semi-professionals who only need to find the right niche demographic willing to financially support their visions, in exchange for viewership or other benefits of the same. With a bit of work this could lead to for instance a CC-BY-SA ecosystem of props, storyworlds, etc that could provide future generations the sort of world changing opportunities people have always pretended they had with Star Wars and Star Trek and all the other Sci Fi or Fantasy Worlds that we often feel were ruined or betrayed by the wrong visions of what what the world meant. Or like in the case of Star Wars, where 20 years of expanded universe fiction gets thrown out, first by Lucas and then even more brutally and blatantly by Disney, who has now ruined an entire generation's literary followings of the lives of Luke, Leia, Han, and Chewie and their offspring up until the past few years. Thanks to corporate ownership, the direction of that world cannot be changed, for it lies on the whims of its 'owners', but thanks to crowdfunding we could have a dozen Trek or Wars or other universes, all essentially community owned. Sure some people might take it in directions you dislike, but at the same time you would have dozens or hundreds of nerds poring over everything that happened, and demanding/ensuring canonical works. As history is written the past, present, and future will be told, slowly meshing into the sort of world I once envisioned through the star wars novels, WEG RPG and companion fiction works (the adventure journals for instance had dozens of stories, many tying in with authors other novel works and secondary RPG characters, adding a whole layer of depth and interactivity beyond the 'normal' literary and gaming (video and paper) universe.
I have brought this up in the past, but nobody seems interested in making this a reality. Perhaps people need those 'not so benevolent' dictators dictating what their fictional universe should be like until the end of time...
Like nearly any movement. When it start out with simple goals it grows and becomes popular. However to sustain the growth the complexity in solving the details comes into play, which often turn you into the entity you were fighting.
Ok you won, now to create your Utopia. Now your followers have these minor needs, that force you to compromise on your grand schemes, A little by litter until you are back to where you started.
So you made a station that allows you to cut the cord. Then you have some people who wants to watch sports, So you add a live sports feed. News junkies want to see the news streaming, when a new show appears you want to show it the same time as your competitors. All this is taking up bandwidth and resources so you can put less effort into storing those streaming shows. Until you end up with something exactly the same as before.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Okay, I'm being very flippant about it, but I stopped using cable TV about 10 years ago, started using an antenna for broadcast stations, and never looked back once. My DVR always has more sitting on it than I have time to watch. Some shows pile up, and I'll watch those during the 'dry spell' times of the year when things are in reruns anyway. I know my situation isn't available to everyone (I can have an antenna, and I can get every major network plus a range of 2nd-tier ones), but I still say if you can use an antenna effectively to get shows for free, then by all means do it.
This. I can easily afford $35 a month, but for $8–12 a month, Netflix provides me with enough content to fill the available TV viewing time in my busy life. What could some other streaming service possibly offer that would be worth spending 3–4x as much per hour of viewing?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Maybe your idea would gain more traction if you posted with a logon and people had a way of contacting you. I definitely am in favor of it, it sounds like a great proposal kernel. Email me instead of the AC if you want to support the idea. AC contact me if you want further involvement as well. We could start with setting up a website and probably some regional groups: Los Angeles, Bay Area, NYC, MidWest: Oklahoma, Texas.
Lets do this thing!
Only I can judge you.
Let's grant that Sling looks a lot like a mini-cable service. The difference is, Sling doesn't own the wire coming into your house. You can use Sling, or Hulu, or Netflix, or Amazon, or Roku channels, or all of the above, or switch when you want. You're not a slave to whatever your cable provider chooses to bring into your house. That is what will keep the "new" streaming services honest, the friction is so low that you can switch any time, and people will do so.
* no commerials for paid content
* no subscribtion fee, I want to pay only for things I have watched, like one or two movies per month