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Pirate TV Services Are Taking a Bite Out of Cable Company Revenue (arstechnica.co.uk)
TV piracy services are being used by about 6.5 percent of North American households with broadband access, potentially costing legitimate TV providers billions of dollars a year, a new analysis found. From a report: Pirate services that offer live TV channels are apparently responsible for more downstream traffic each night than torrent downloads. Based on these figures, there may be 7 million US and Canadian subscribers to pirate TV services that generally cost about $10 a month, the report by Sandvine said. That amounts to $840 million of revenue a year. We don't know how many people using pirate services would purchase a traditional cable or satellite TV package if the piracy option didn't exist. But if all of those people instead purchased a legal TV package for $50 per month, that would amount to another $4.2 billion revenue a year for North American pay-TV providers, the report said.
But if all of those people instead purchased a legal TV package for $50 per month
Let me stop you right there...
These devices cost like $50 - I don't think people would suddenly come up with 12x that just because the little device they picked up on the street was not working.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Why, they'd have eleventy kajillion dollars!
TV piracy services are being used by about 6.5 percent of North American households with broadband access, potentially costing legitimate TV providers billions of dollars a year, a new analysis found.
potentially costing legitimate TV providers billions of dollars a year, a new analysis found.
potentially costing legitimate TV providers billions of dollars a year
potentially
No. Just no. Not a potential no, a solid diamond-hard no. Like, seriously Chuck Norris testicles-hard no.
Every study ever on the subject concludes a solid 'no'. Even the frikkin RIAA/MPAA alliance of Evil that has supplanted Satan as the goto source of pure Evil hasn't found a single study to support that losses from poor services translate into increased sales if you muscle the competition out.
No.
Duh. Of course the pirate TV services are preferred, they don't have commercials.
Lets blame pirates.
for not providing reasonably prices a la carte options. Or people *would* give them money.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
So does the pirate TV they are talking about.
Do they think Hulu is a pirate tv channel?
Are they too stupid to realize that the people that pay for pirate TV would use HULU rather than a cable company if they gave up pirate TV?
Do they consider people that use rabbit ears antenne to be using 'pirate tv'?
Article is biased a lot.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
If everyone who doesn't pay for my product gave me money, I'd be rich! Also, if cable companies offered $50 packages that had everything people wanted (or had anything more than the over-the-air channels, which is about all you can get for $50/month or less now), they wouldn't be losing subscribers in the first place. I'm grandfathered into a halfway decent package that costs more than that and doesn't have everything I want, but I would lose most of what I actually watch with the package that costs $5/month less and would have to pay $30/month more to get the few channels I would want, and even then not all of them are available in HD. Is it any wonder people would choose piracy at $10/month over $90-120/month packages just to get a dozen or so channels that they ever watch?
The number of cable and satellite TV subscriptions has been dropping for years due to rising prices and Internet-based alternatives, both legal and otherwise.
My conclusion: Charge fair prices, instead of soaking everyone while you can, and while the market will tolerate it. When the cost and inconvenience of replacing cable with internet alternatives and OTA (Digital antenna) becomes less of a deciding factor, more viewers will do so. Also, the younger generation wants portable media, not one bound to the cable box at home.
V for Vendetta: People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.
But if all of those people instead purchased a legal TV package for $50 per month, that would amount to another $4.2 billion revenue a year for North American pay-TV providers, the report said.
And if we could actually get TV packages for $50, that would be great. When you factor in fees for "equipment rentals", charges for extra TVs, fee/taxes, and all the other BS, and you are at $100 a month for a package that has the channels you actually want to watch (and about 100 more channels you never even touch).
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
If 6.5% of your user base not signing up is costing you over $4,200,000,000 in a single year, the issue is that you are way overcharging for your service. Your Whinging about only making $64.5 billion a year is really pulling at my heartstrings.
I think I just heard some whining noise coming from the cable..... Pirate companies like Netflex, Amazon Prime, or Hulu no longer require you to have entire packages with the cable company.... Wait, those are actually legal companies people are watching shows on now..... Cable Cutters Untie!!! and Snip!!
From global warming.
The China men want to convince us that we need to reduce global warming. This is a plot they've hatched to freeze North Americans to death. What we need to concentrate on is developing a way to accelerate this warming.
Why should we suffer in the winter when they could be suffering in the summer instead?
Let's research ways to increase the global temperature so that we may see a northern Canada snow free winter in our life time.
I'll be developing a research group and plan to submit several proposals to the Canadian government by spring. I hope everyone here can back us, for our future and the future of our children. Let those others burn.
Where does one find one of these Pirate TV services, asking for a friend? Second of all, why would I pay a Pirate TV service money, doesn't that defeat the purpose of Yar, being a pirate?
Also, please, name a legal cable/satellite company with a package that costs $50. By that I mean a package that consists of more than 10 channels (most of which are FOTA channels), doesn't charge per tv (otherwise we need to factor in the outlet fees), and doesn't require you to sign a contract so they can stick it to you after the first 6 months of a 24 month contract.
I used to pirate Cable channels but I've stopped.
Not because I couldn't do it anymore but for the simple reason that there's nothing that I'm interested in watching anymore.
Netflix, Youtube and Twitch keep my watching needs covered.
Just like I am for Internet connectivity, I am willing to pay about $40 - $50 per month for TV. But it has to be the kind of TV that I want. Not 100 channels that I would not watch in a million years. Not two channels I like with the rest a bunch of infomercials or reality tv. Since my satellite service wanted over $120/month (didn't include any of the 'premium' channels either), I just cut the cable and got Netflix instead. Now they get ZERO from me for TV.
Hey, you know what else is taking a bite out of cable company revenues?
Desktop Linux!
AMIRIGHT?
Piracy levels the forces of regulation in any industry. Anyone that sells products that can be pirated or knocked off, knows this well. Its not a fun market force to play against as a business. The reality is that the market will always win. Netflix and HULU are products of these market forces playing out.
--
"Beam me up Scotty" - Captain Kirk
Stupid fucking anti-piracy math:
So, if all of the people spending $10/month suddenly spent $50/month ... no, no, no. It simply doesn't work that way.
The cable and copyright cartels don't get to multiply things that are actually spent with what the difference would be if they were being paid and come up with some bullshit number on what that hypothetical revenue would be.
If people are spending $10/month, and you wish they were paying you $50/month .. you're overcharging by $40/month more than the market will bear and most people are willing to pay.
They're clearly willing to pay something, but the fact that you've overcharged for it because you feel entitled to it doesn't make that a loss of revenue. It means your overpriced subscription isn't valued by real actual consumers the way you've priced it.
If everyone on the planet paid me $100/year to point out shit like this, I'd be getting paid $700 billion. So come on you fuckers, you're costing me money by not paying me what I think these posts are worth.
This is the most deceptive and bullshit math ever. Cable companies feel they deserve this money, but they haven't earned it, aren't entitled to it, and are too stupid to understand they've priced themselves beyond what most people can/will pay.
Fuck cable companies and their bullshit.
Only $10 a month more with your $150 bundle. Otherwise $75 a la carte.
Not everyone who doesn't pay for your service is a pirate. There are always other options. Rent DVDs from RedBox, borrow DVD's from the library, go to a friend's house to watch Game of Thrones, etc.
A $50.00 cable package includes a ton of additional commercials. At this point it looks pretty close to 50:50 media/interruptions. I suppose all the sponsor breaks might be useful if your in the market for fast-food, trial lawyers and medication (with miles of scary side effects)
Honestly, I would consider buying back into a cable sub if they did away with all of the commercials. As it stands, cable subs are inferior products at half the asking rate on account of the commercials alone. No wonder everybody pirates like crazy.
I'd rather read a book.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
At least the cable company is still making money from these peoples Internet subscription. It will really get bad when Elon musk gets his Internet satellite up and people can bypass cable companies all together. Note I donâ(TM)t support piracy even if you think they are unfair in their pricing. TV today is generally pretty worthless, and youâ(TM)re better off not watching it at all.
I went cable free years ago and used SlingTV, Netflix, Hulu. Since my local Cox cable in the Phoenix Metro area was successfully in suing Google and keeping them from installing fiber they rewarded the valley by putting a 1 TB data cap on the line and I was using 1.5TB a month. So my already expensive $80/mo 50 meg service would have jumped to $130 a month with their new "unlimited data" plan. I happened to buy a house and move a couple months ago so that made me a new customer to Cox again. $120 a month for 200 channels and 100 meg service. So I cancelled Hulu and Netflix and got cable again to save money. I watch a lot of shows now via Kodi plugins since they come up before they are on cable in my timezone and have no commercials.
The reality is that the market will always win
water is wet, how about that!
maybe next you can regale us with your radical discovery that 1+1=2
What is "...how many people using pirate services would purchase a traditional cable or satellite TV package if the piracy option didn't exist", Alex.
Pirate TV Services Are Taking a Bite Out of Cable Company Revenue ... TV piracy services are being used by about 6.5 percent of North American households with broadband access, potentially costing legitimate TV providers billions of dollars a year, ...
Less than one in 15 North American households with broadband access subscribe to a TV piracy service.
FTFY
Of course that means there's a vast, untapped, market for TV piracy services. If everybody with cable or satellite TV service switched to a piracy service (and dropped their high-priced "legal TV package") that WOULD cost them billions.
"Quick: We've got to block the rollout of cheap broadband Internet! (Oh, wait. We already did that.)"
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Comcast used a pop-up ad during the World Series game last night to advertise and upgrade to X1 or what ever it's called. That was in addition to the split screen battery ads they ran. If it wasn't for their competition being ever worse I would change providers again.
Heard that MOBDRO's the bomb, but I don't really want to go the cast route to play such content on my Roku. Oh well. :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBH4g_ua5es
>We don't know how many people using pirate services would purchase a traditional cable or satellite TV package if the piracy option didn't exist.
>But if all of those people instead purchased a legal TV package
So, they admit they have no idea how many of those would convert if they had to, then they go on to assume 'all of them'. Which is a number that NO research on the subject has EVER supported. In fact, most research suggests 'very few of them' as the right number.
How can I get paid to write analysis with obviously wrong assumptions?
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Those assholes at ARS need to stop publishing this shit. The more news there is about it, the more antsy big cable will get. Damnit!
Last I checked Netflix wasn't a pirate service.
If someone is not purchasing our product because he thinks ours is deficient or substandard or superfluous, then he is a pirate and therefore should be reckoned a debtor, even if he does not actually consume an alternative or equivalent product.
Extreme view #1: If all of those people instead purchased a legal TV package for $50 per month, that would amount to another $4.2 billion revenue a year for North American pay-TV providers.
Extreme view #2: If all of those people inspired just one of their friends to purchased a legal TV package for $50 per month, that would account for $4.2 billion of revenue a year for North American pay-TV providers.
I know EV2 sounds crazy, but no more so than the established dogma of EV1. If we stop taking these statements as gospel and start considering their extreme nature, we might catch a glimpse of reality.
For decades the music and video industry has claimed that copyright violations are costing them untold millions in sales. This has never been proven. There's no proof that a person copying a song or a video would have purchased anything.
A recent report that the industries hid said that copyright violation had no impact on the industries in question.
Please stop repeating what the industry is parroting.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
This is the crap we had to put up with when you are the only game in town: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBsJ9VSQvbE.
Once there are actual competitions, you have the audacity to whine and complain about losing money? No, just no. You have provided crappy services at gouging prices. Of course people will run away when there is a better service elsewhere. Get your shit together, or you will continue to lose your subscribers.
Look, HDTV works perfectly fine. Just get an HDTV antenna on Amazon for less than $50 and you can pick up 100 HD 1080p, HD 720p, and SD signals.
The reason they're going broke is they keep paying for the NFL that we don't want.
Perfectly happy using the HD Telmundo and Univision broadcasts and turning on SAP to listen to the English version, thanks. It's built into your set.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Cable bundles are made in a way to force people to get 2-3 packages to watch their shows. Even if some Cable providers offer a-la-carte packages, they are way too pricy. In Canada the TV providers have to provide a 25$/month package. But you still have to rent a box for each TV, not all channels can be added, so it still comes out to 50$/month.
Years ago I setup an external antenna, put a ATSC tuner in my BeyondTV machine, and hooked up all my HDTVs to the antenna. Don't have to rent anything, digital decoder for the old TV cost me 20$ on eBay, antenna was given to me. All I had to buy was a mast and the hardware to install it. Total cost was under 100$. total cost is 0$/month and I don't have to mess with unstable cable boxes.
They shot themselves in the foot, and are now aiming for the other one.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
Yeah.. it's piracy that's the problem.
I used to use one. But there are only so many sea shanties that I can tolerate.
Have gnu, will travel.
> We don't know how many people using pirate services would purchase a traditional cable or satellite TV package if the piracy option didn't exist.
This right there tells you the entire thing is bullshit. People are dropping cable because of cost and packaging and that you can find content online.
It's not that its illegal. We've seen this bullshit before in the past. I'm not paying them to see something I can download on iTunes or see on Netflix.
And I certainly don't give a shit about the propaganda laced garbage they've been spewing out for the last couple years.
Packages here are $150+, don't know where this guy lives.
1. Back to the Future. Do you live near a transmitter, and can you put up an antenna (tvfool.com) 2 If yes, then you need a DVR. Tivo is the easy way for a price. ChannelMaster is almost as good but cheaper-some tech involved. 3. Streaming beyond that is Youtube, a borrowed username and password or a legit username and password. Some channels are locked unless you pay a CableCo for a land subscriotion-bastards !!! Let's just say one could find TopGear, and Grand Tour and Discovery without even really knowing anything.... I get to see cable occasionally when in a hotel. You can't watch without a DVR and half of it is now adverts..for crap
Pirate companies like Netflex, Amazon Prime, or Hulu no longer require you to have entire packages with the cable company
You're right. It's the cable company that requires purchase of an entire TV package before it's willing to sell you a home Internet subscription with a large enough monthly Internet data transfer volume allowance to make Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu worthwhile.
....10$ is what these folks consider the service to be worth, but not 50$. Besides that, would be nice to only have to pay 50$ for basic cable. Let's start with that.
Sure - just guarantee me that there will be no advertisements in this package, and that I have full access to any of the programs on any of the channels at any time after they've aired, with the ability to watch them as many times as I'd like. That's how you get people to buy a service. We're sick of buying advertisement packages with TV shows sprinkled in that we can only watch when the company wants us to watch.
There's no such thing as "intellectual property."
I imagine the IP lawyers earning large amounts of money would disagree.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
So, what's a good kodi type system to check out? Asking for a friend ...
you need to sell internet as a commodity and be satisfied with that or get another job dumb asses. we don't want your stupid tv service or cloud services or any other half ass attempt at enslaving us further.
Who started this pirate meme? I kind of see companies portray people stealing their services as vicious criminals but labeling them as pirates doesn't quite work. Most people's education comes from pirates as portrayed in the movies, this Halloween had several Capt Jack Sparrow costumes. Though in real life pirates were the kind you would never want to encounter even back in the days.
So when media companies complain about "pirates" stealing all their stuff, it seems the opposite happens and many people want to become a pirate (character created by same media) with the eye patch, parrot, flintlock, and ship and go steal stuff from the media. Yes, a goofy comment.
mfwright@batnet.com