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Microsoft Invests in Rogers
GRW wrote in
with a link to a story about Microsoft investing in Rogers, Canada's
largest cable company. The $600M (I'm assuming that's CDN) is meant to "change
the way Canadians watch TV". Microsoft says Rogers will use "Microsoft's
television platform". Is that CE, or something more general?
Man it sucks to be a Canadian (I am Canadian)
Good thing I got DSS. Damnit Rogers, sellouts.
Hope they don't make winBLOAT a requirement for cable internet....
*First Post*
wohooo
Nitin Bhatia
(raja_the_tiger)
I'm switching to LOOK!
Wireless TV transmission, PAY BY THE CHANNEL!!! Way cheaper than cable and no Microsoft's forcing me to use their software.
Man, I'd go live in Alberta if that happened =)
Last night at around 10pm in Frederick, Maryland on channel 30 of GSCommunication's lineup there was a MSNT4.0 BSOD. It was still there two hours later. gweeeheeeheeee.
The news is reporting it as:
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
(Bill Gates, Ted Roger.)
I will never let this crap come in my house (im Canadian and BTW a lot of people read /. here!). But it will be fun to hack your neigbourg TV with BO 2000!!!!
Resistance is not futile, be smart, stay away from Microsoft.....
P.S.: Sorry for the syntax and spelling, im francophone, be indulgent....Thanks.
Try Look (www.look.ca). They are much cheaper than cable. They broadcast digitally from land based towers as opposed to satellites. They should have internet access for high speed downloads by now and are planning to implement bi-directional (high speed uploads and downloads as well) internet access too. They should have a tower that is within rang of Guelph. The only downside is that you have to be in line of sight of the tower which means you could be blocked out by buildings or trees. Its worth a try though.
Check this one out... 2600 Mag Winter 98 I don't remember where they said this was, but it's obviously much bigger than 32 inches and in some vacation type area.
Why is it not surprising that Microsoft wants Rogers? Rogers cable service is TERRIBLE as it is. They are autocratic and arrogant to their customers. The @home service (formerly the Wave) is terrible, and (surprise surprise) is totally based on NT (which is why the service is so unavailable most of the time).
Change our ways, eh? More like Microsoft wants to ensure that alternative operating systems can't use the @home service. I do NOT want Microsoft on my television. Of course, our wonderful government HANDED Rogers the cable monopoly...they certainly won't stop Bill Gates from walzing in to make things 1000x worse.
As soon as I get out of apartment-land, I'm going DSS...I'd rather go through Bell's monopoly than Microsoft's.
Ah one Canadian cable monopoly sides with one computer monopoly.
Will become midtower cases with PII-400's to run your cable preview guide software and NT. :-)
They day Rogers tries to put a Microsoft box
into my house is the day I switch to Satelite.
BTW They say that the initial deployment will be
for one million boxes. That is a lot given
Canada's population of less than thirty million.
I really do feel for people now stuck with Rogers for their cable, and especially their Internet access. I can just see it now, some proprietary interface which allows only Windows to connect.
When you think about it, perhaps this is Microsoft's way of an invasion against non-Microsoft users. Imagine that you have to get a special box(running WinCE) just to watch TV, and a Windows equipped machine to surf!
I really feel sorry for all the rogers folk out there. I'm a Canuck myself but in an area covered by Videotron. This thing really scares me, since the cable companies tend to be buddy-buddy with each other, and follow up on each other's initiatives. If Videotron ever went the Microsoft route you can be sure I cut my cable & internet cable access immediately.
Bah, weak swill.
Get yourself some Maudite and Fin du Monde -- and get the quart bottles. You know, they have an actual cork and foil on the top. Those are definitely beers to be proud of. 8 and 9% respectively, yet smoother than fine wine.
If my memory serves me correct, people in Canada(BC specially) sued Rogers Cable for some sort of anticompetitive monopolistic behavior in 1994-1995(forcing people to buy all of their new channels). What a good partnership.
Rogers is part of the @Home network to provide internet access via cable. (@Home is Netscape-based)
Because of this, the Rogers-M$ deal excludes internet access. In order to put IE for Rogers internet access service, they would have to invest in @Home, not Rogers. Not likely.
(Although, Rogers@Home could be renamed Rogers@MSN. Run away!!!)
According to a front page article in the Toronto Star "Viewers -- or users -- will soon be able to order the clothes their favourite stars are wearing as they watch them." I wonder . . .
My family (yes, not just I) always hated Rogers. :(
It charges outrageous prices for certain channels, has
a monopoly in my area, etc. etc.
Now we will have to use Microsoft software to
watch TV
A telling comment on the value of Windoze...You have to buy somebody to get them to use it.
Well, this comes as no surprise. Rogers is drowning in debt so they'll go to bed with anyone, including Micro$oft. Rogers already provides overpriced and terrible service; now us Canucks will have the opportunity to pay even more money to watch our TVs go "blue screen ".
Aren't you guys coming north to take us over soon anyway?
We already did. We can't help it if you didn't notice.
Last I checked, it was the telco who owned it, Its NorTel's 1meg cards. You can count on BCE being involved as well, since the own lots of this stuff..
Wonderful, just what I always wanted...
So I wonder if my TV will crash as often as my computer does; the one at work anyway ( ie the one that runs windows ). Yesterdays crash was great... it was like a nuclear cascade reaction with so little oddities.... like explorer kept crashing, telling me about it, rebooting itself and then immediately crashing again... it did this about 50 times in a row... I was actually impressed... it then killed taskman, killed my spool32.dll file ( and I wasn't printing ), killed gdi and then killed user.exe and finally kernel32.
It would have been a hard reset but I had just finshed doing something and hand not saved yet...
So I think I'll be real happy when I'm watching the simpsons or something and this kinda of crap occurs.
"Ted, just admit it" were all doomed right!?
More likely "Harrison Burgeron" (sp?). But, instead
of the interrupts to keep smart people from getting
ahead, it will be a BSOD.
Shaw is evil in its own right, but don't assume that every Canadian is stuck with Rogers. :-)
And when you use that "No, I don't want to upgrade" button, the server BSODs, and you get a reply saying "We cannot processor your request..."
Microsoft investments in cable companies scares me given the past policy of this companie in the software market. I hope the will never have a monopoly on this market because this could be bad (first own the pipeline then own the informations).
Shaw and Rogers are the part of the same alliance of media companies! The are the same monopoly!
Sorry about the AC.. but I have my reasons. The truth of this relationship is simple. Roger's is the most mismanaged company ever. They have never had solid years of profitability. Go check out your stock research data.. you will find out.
Ted Rogers is the biggest fool ever. The company is in debt almost 4 billion dollars CDN. How could somebody screw up a monopoly position so bad? Mostly because Ted got into every business he could because he is a meglomaniac. Cable TV, Cellphones, Television Stations, Magazines.. you name it. Like Rupert Murdock except without the business sense.
Basically.. they have been loosing up to 100mill quarter. Recently Rogers has been selling assets just to stay above water. Canadians who are listening closely will see. Notice how AT&T is into Cantel now while before it was all Rogers. Rogers has also recently sold massive portions of their backbone network to Metronet.
The deal with Bill is just a cash infusion for a company that (some anaylsts fear) is loosing at a rate of 75-100mill a quarter.
I hope Bill knows what he is doing.. and I hope for Roger's investors, he got some control over the company (ie: Ted) for his 600mill.
So, Microsoft in set-top boxes, eh? Will the box have a little "blue LED of death" to indicate when I should reboot it? Rebooting via the remote would be a real plus.
If it crashes in the middle of a PPV screening, do I get my money back?
Isn't that Embedded Windows NTV/CE 2000?
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
My bleary mind dropped a "Mr." into that headline.
"Where do you want to go today? It's a beautiful day in the neightborhood!"
What a joke on economic reasoning: Microsoft and Roger's strike agreements on the latter party forcing MS technology down the throats of its clients, and than it is said Microsoft also will make a CDN $600 ... investment in Rogers to further demonstrate Microsoft's commitment to Rogers success in developing and rolling out new digital services. They present this as if the agreements are unrelated to the investment and the investment is primarily symbolic ("demonstrate commmitment").
"Working with"?! They have been buying cable share like mad. I wonder what their ownership percentage of all cable companies globally is by now.
Rogers Communications and Microsoft to Bring Advanced Television Services to Canada
http://www.microsof t.com/presspass/features/1999/07-12tvpak.htm
-cjr
Microsoft and the executives within have been buying or buying stake in cable companies left and right. ASDL hasn't taken off nearly fast enough so it looks like cable modems are winning the consumer bandwidth war, at least in the short term. I'm out in a small community in Wisconsin and I've got a cable modem, if I held my breath waiting for the phone companies to do ASDL here I'd be dessicating before it happened.
As a result of this cable companies will be even bigger money than they are now. This is the next frontier Microsoft wants to assimilate.
Actually thats incorrect. Presently we watch TV drinking either Molson's or Labatt's beer while eating slabs of back bacon and wearing toques. After the investment we'll all be issued Microsoft logoed beer hats. Personally I feel that as long as the flow rate of the beer through the apparatus is fast enough I don't mind at all.
Yes, that's pocket change for Microsoft. I feel sorry for those living North of our border. The company that milked us good now invades our Northern neighbor and gives them a proprietary standard they can't refuse. All your news, information, and the world around you will sure to be innovative by today's standards. Everyone will soon have the One True Service from One Microsoft Way.
But ignoring the emotionally-loaded phrases like "Microsoft technology" and "investment", what cool things could you do with a TV that has a 4 Mbps internet connection? It's a pretty awesome setup, surely some good could come of it? Here is some stuff off the top of my head; use your to add more:
We would want MPEG or something open, MS will use some proprietary crap like RA or their own
[okay, okay, RA is adopting some open stuff, but you get the idea]
we would want this [really] as long as it's securely anonymous, MS will want to know who everyone is and how much money they make, plus their postal address so they can send targeted marketing junk mail based on viewing habits
it better have *at least* this, or it's all a complete waste of time
able to pause live TV for up to 2 Gigs of disk space..
I want to watch episode 32 of Babylon 5.. NOW.
Well, I can dream, can't I? Is it so far-fetched? Really?
[ReidNews]
...or it'll be like in "Fahrenheit 451". Your TV will have a camera on it, and one of the big things to do will be to get to "be in the play".
What do you think, Julia?
Right!
Next subject...
... buy them.
support gun control: take guns from cops
Microsoft is always afraid. Read any book about the MS business philosophy, and you'll see that it's embedded deep in their collective psyche.
This is why they respond as they do to competition - not out of strength, but out of fear.
D
----
Do what I do. Don't watch T.V. Really, it's boring. True crap. I can't stand most of it nowadays. The only channels I can dare watch are the Nature channel and sometimes The Movie Network.
:)
:)
As for Internet, yup you're kind of in a bind there. Lesson learned: Resnet cannot be beat
On a tangent, did anyone watch "The 700 Club" as a kid while you were searching for cartoons? I did, and for the longest time I found it the most boring show. I couldn't understand what it was supposed to be. I saw it again today (they were vilifying Internet p0rn too), and realized what it is. *SIGH* That could explain a lot...
Anyways, back to slav^H^H^H^Hwork!
That's fantastic, I always wondered what a 32 inch blue screen of death would look like!!
Thank god for dss and direct tv!!
Those of you who were around here for that will deeply remember that (and the ensuing outcry). Those of you who don't, the gist of it was that Rogers had come out with some new cable TV channels and that you would be automatically subscribed if you did not explicitly say you didn't want them. (And, yes, they did add to your cable bill.)
So, I can see it now... Windows 2000 upgrades up the wazoo, and the "No, I do not want to upgrade" checkbox is hidden deep within www.microsoft.rogers.com. Another reason I'm glad I'm stuck in the flat bits with Shaw. (and my 60kb/sec upstream)
Speaking of which, digital cable is available here, but I don't have it (I don't have cable TV, period... just cable Internet). One of my friends does, though, and I have to go over and check it out sometime...
What Microsoft fails to understand is that Canada will tax them to death, and that will be the end of them. Go Canada!
The new Sleeman's steam is really good. Try it.
And the robot says: "In the begining was man. Man created all things. Man, with his infinite skill, created machines
I have a deep technological respect for the Microsoft Television Platform. Why, if it weren't for all those old windows cd's holding up my television set, the darn thing would wobble all the time.
anyone else read the back issues of that "after y2k" comic posted yesterday?
/. pretty closely
"i should have bought canada when i had the chance"..
i guess Bill Gates must read
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Looks like they see the writing on the wall...
Chris
Chris
So Buddha walks into a pizza parlor and says: "Hey, make me one with everything."
Gosh, I suppose that this means that Microsoft are going to try and get involved in some sort of web-based television. It's a great idea; can't possibly fail.
I can't wait to see the Microsoft propganda to start flooding our already crappy cable services. I wonder how this will effect my @Home service?
I wonder.. I wonder how much a DSS is worth now...
[ssa]
It's just Crap.
Now you Yankee /.ers will be at war with us for sure! :-(
And I thought the Rogers Cable monopoly was evil before....
Currently we have Rogers@Home and of course their cable tv service. There are no immediate plans for ADSL service in my area (Guelph), and a DSS is beyond the price range of a household of poor students
"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it."
> Most WebTV's use a telco (phone line) return...
They'll probably make use of the @home infrastructure that's now available to most Rogers customers (well, except the folks in remote communities... Billy will need a "Death Star" of some sort to make that work.)
"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it."
Am I the only one here who feels that Canada is becoming the Oceania of 1984? We have a monopoly for cable TV and broadband internet access (which you cannot get without having cable TV) joining forces with Microsoft's monopoly. Soon we shall have those little set top boxes provided from microsoft recording everything that we watch and do, remember Gates and Co. plan to have these replace the PC. Soon we shall have the M$ thoughtpolice breaking into our homes in the middle of the night and re-educating us on the glorys of microsoft.
"Thoughtcrime does not entail death, thoughtcrime is death."
Don't forget Keith's - now THAT is a beer ;)
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
"By using Microsoft's television platform, Rogers will be able to deliver new services that fully utilize the broadband infrastructure, thereby enabling a great information, entertainment and communications experience for their customers."
So, Microsoft is once again leading a paradigm shift in technology? *lol* Funny the article hardly says anything about what will actually change, except for Microsofts yearly income.
"Oppression and harassment is a small price to pay to live in the land of the free." -- Montgomery Burns.
I really hate buzz-phrases like this. I got this mental image of a bunch of Canadians hanging upside down bat-style from their lampshades so they could watch TV differently.
we're your northern *neighbour*
[We don't come from a planet. We come from a grid sector.]
I'm out in a small community in Wisconsin and I've got a cable modem, if I held my breath waiting for the phone companies to do ASDL here I'd be dessicating before it happened.
Out in BFE, that's pretty much what it's like, I gather. But everywhere else, the situation is reversed. Most major cities don't have cable modems in any useful form, but DSL is all over the place.
I'd have loved to get cable if it were available, but since the projected availability date is still three to six years off, DSL is the right-here-right-now immediate solution.
The general trend I'm seeing is that in the burbs and in no-mans-land, cable has the better availability, and everywhere else DSL seems to be taking over. But then again, I live in California, so maybe I have it all backwards...
I'm now very glad that my parents got a mini dish. My Canada does not include MSRogers.
-- themenace
They have already bought huge plots of land in Vancouver, and I think Canada will welcome their half trillion USD company without any silly old restrictions on business practices.
No more choosing between Rogers or Microsoft as to the most hated corporation in Canada!
Those of you not living up in the Great White North here, Rogers is infamous for poor customer service, misleading ads and questionable business practices. I think our good ol' attorney general or CRTC are looking into them yet again... heh!
Sound like some other company you know?
I'd rather not start getting junk mail that matches what I was watching three weeks beforehand.
..."
"Dear os and so,
We noticed that you have an interest in watching sport fishing. Our company sells a complete line of free-range worms
I can see a lot of viewer information being sold if it's possible.
It'll be expensive, intrusive, and unstable. But maybe I'm just off my coffee.
Esteem isn't a zero sum game
$600M CDN is ~ $50.00 US. Microsoft was probably just paying their cable bill. Nothing to worry about everyone, move along...
Can we now expect all Canadians to be the victims of subliminal messages causing the entire nation to become a bunch of M$ droids buying all the products they sell?
-- close but no sig
Microsoft and Rogers Cable in bed together now? It doesn't surprise me in the least.
They both make a fortune by overcharging their customers for their mediocre products and services. Rogers doesn't hesitate to charge me $40 a month for my cable service which only includes a few special channels - cartoon channels for the kids, History channel, Much Music etc. Many of these channels were offered free of charge for several months with the understanding that you would have to pay for them after a certain period. When January 1st of that year came Rogers slyly added the extra charge for the channel on everyones bill. It was a huge fiasco for Rogers - they apologized -I think - and automatically removed the channels unless they were ordered like they should have in the first place.
And if I want a cable modem they want me to pay them another $40. Almost $100 a month out of my pocket an into their bank account? They can kiss my ass. Rogers has swallowed up most of the competition. If there was an alternative in my area I would us it.
Recently, Rogers also came into my apartment building and installed new cable wiring. Now instead of our cable coming from the walls it no runs in from the hallway which itself branches from a central cable that runs up the garbage chute rooms. Don't know if this is significant but the timing is interesting. They spent months installing the cable and there was a lot of nonsense about all the great new services we would eventually enjoy to make up for of all the inconvenience they caused us.
#include "mysig.h"
Seeing as the CRTC just decided NOT to regulate the Internet (or "New Media", if you prefer), I wouldn't take too much comfort in that. You might not get MSTV, but you'll sure as hell get MSWebTV, MSHotmail, MSN, MSPayPerView, MSVideoPhone and MSAnyBroadbadAppYouCanThinkOf.
:(
I can't believe the CRTC allowed this to happen.
Just a couple more months and you'll be able to say fuc^h^h^hgoodbye to TedTV. On the bright(?) side, this means that we're gonna get MSNBC on the lineup...
- - -
Rogers doesn't (afaik) create any content, they're just a carrier. I doubt the CRTC will relax it's Canadian Content legislation, even for Billy; so does this mean a big shiny new "Microsoft TV Productions" office tower for Toronto?
"I use the words you taught me. If they don't mean anything any more, teach me others. Or let me be silent"
I don't think it got as far as a law suit. What happened is Rogers added a bunch of channels, jacked the price and didn't give existing customers much of a say in the matter. The result was getting a lot of the subscribers mad, people dropping subscriptions, and the threat of government involvement.
Rogers back peddled quickly and everyone was more or less happy in the end. A little while later the BC government (and maybe the Federal government as well) brought in a law preventing them from attempting it a second time.
This is how I currently recover after a power outage: turn on my TV, and ask it to auto-program the channels. I can't imagine what would happen to an M$ box after a power outage...
(Shaw's gota "digital cable", I wonder how that works...)
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
To be accompanied by Microsoft News (during which all other shows are tuned out), the Microsoft "Freedom to Inundate" Hour, and, as a special bonus, Microsoft Test Pattern(TM) late at night.
Don't forget Alexander Keiths.
:)
But hey, there is always Labatt Max Ice for those "I think I want to drink 'till I puke" times
I saw something about this on CBC last night. Apparently this deal is to create an interactive environment. They're renting a 'Set-top box' (see The Road Ahead - Gates) to enable interactive gameshows etc etc. If this actually works, I'll be REAL happy to not have to wait for the ultraslow Prevue channel. The box is supposed to rent for $10 a month, and comes with a remote instead of a keyboard/mouse.
I can see it now.
You flip to a channel, it isn't there and the cable box crashes. No more of that static, we have the BSOD.
Some other company that MS is pissed at trys to advertise and Dr. Watson for TV pops up and says this commercial has caused an error and is shutting down, ok cancel help. (of course they will forget to place a keyboard and mouse on the TV which leads to my next one).
Keyboard and pointer device not found, please insert MS TV cdrom into cable box and click ok.
You video card has not be found, defaulting to VGA 16 colors.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
Im an engineer for a cable co. and I have been playing with CE and Sun java digital set top boxs for a few years now. If M$ owns your cable co and they start handing out new boxs -good luck. The M$ logo will be in your face all day, stats are collected of what you are watching(depends on cable plant) and basically they have control of anything the box does. But the new Scientific Atlanta 3000HCT is leet0 ;)
If there's @home service (cable modem) that can be used internally in the box to "fetch" more web info, something that MS will need for the return path...
The Microsoft deal is probably to put the WebTV interface into the set-tops. Microsoft has recently started porting the WebTV software to other boxes (Gen Inst, Sci Atl, etc..) so it looks like this will be some kind of "proof of concept". I noticed that they didn't mention whether it was digital set-tops or analog...the difference being that the digitals are much better with the interactive content than the analogs. I'm just wondering how they're going to do the return-path (that's when you buy something on your TV, how does the box "talk" to the rest of the world). Most WebTV's use a telco (phone line) return... Anyone know what kind of box is in place there? Some interesting links to check out.. http://www.microsoft.com/dtv/ Microsoft's official interactive TV stuff http://www.atvef.com/ The specs for sending web pages over TV The e-mail is drawcab!
It may be my faulty memory betraying me, but isn't "roger" commonwealth (or at least U.K.) slang for, um, sexual intercourse? If so, can't think of a more fitting name--"Microsoft Rogers" as a verb phrase.
This seems to be a much wider plan to totally shut java out of the set-top OS market, Microsoft have already this year I think bought large stakes in three of the largest UK cable providers. Sun better start buying Cable stock soon or it may find Microsoft has a stake in every cable provider.
I've had the Shaw service for 18 months and so far it has been mostly excellent. There was a couple of weeks of DNS irregularity and two or three days of network downtime altogether.
I *frequently* see 600KB/s (bytes!) when downloading from big sites such as Intel or ESPN or AltaVista.
The Shaw network uses the Terayon technology which is based on spread spectrum concepts. This means that all the available upstream channels broadcast simultaneously on the same frequencies and the head node sorts it all out.
The algorithm for allocating the available spread spectrum downstream channels can be a bit of problem when playing Quake in the evening. There are something like 128 64K-bit channels each of which can be assigned to a different user on 10mS slices (I forget the exact numbers and I haven't even checked the arithmetic). But it works out to a situation where a very large number of low-bandwidth streams become a bit choppy (you don't get slices quite as often as you might like).
I've also heard a rumour that you hack the box somewhat with SNMP protocol but I don't know the details of how this is done.
I'm not sure that Shaw is any better than Rogers and I was ready to find lots of faults with this offering and there simply haven't been any worth mentioning for as long as I've subscribed.
Futhermore, the representatives have insisted that they are not in the process of implementing upstream bandwidth caps. It might that the Terayon technology is less sensitive to the abuses which I know are going on (e.g. sharing copies of the Phantom Menace).
We are fortunate to also have ADSL here but the economics are such that only businesses make much use of it.
We really have nothing much to complain about--yet.
I can just see it now...
* A BSOD every other day, requiring me to reboot
my TV
* Having to add 256 MB ram and a 6G HD to my TV
in order to watch CBC Newsworld.If it had been
MSNBC (not available in Canada), it would only
have been 128 Mb ram and 4G hd.
* My cable bill now expressed in USD
(GST included, Washington State tax included)
* Being forced to take @Home internet service,
just to download Microsoft fixpacks for my
cable TV service
But, I can look on the bright side...
* Now, my TV will be able to call the Home
Shopping network automatically (through the
Gates PC phone), and order all that MS software
that I don't want or need.
* I'll be greeted by BillG at every commercial
break
* When not in use, the TV screensaver will remind
me to register *all* my Microsoft products
(and take a quick survey of the rest of my
household for future upgrades and marketting
opportunities).
I think not.
If it comes down to Microsoft on my Cable, I'll
switch to sattelite.
"values of beta will give rise to dom!"