Do We Need Video On Demand?
from the just-tivo-it dept
Wired has an article about HBO's latest experiment with video on demand. Apparently, it's going pretty well. However, it's costly for the company, and really, it just sounds like a specialized Tivo that only works for HBO. It seems to me that Tivo (or a Tivo-like device) is really the future of video on demand - rather than the broadcasters themselves. Why would anyone sign up for HBO-on-demand when they could just buy a Tivo and have the same functionality for every channel?
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re: model
Example: I have "breaking away" on my TiVo wishlist. I'd pay $0.99 to see it (commercial free -- interesting little twist there, huh). Say TiVo aggregates that information and determines that 1000 people would pay $3.99, 1400 would pay $2.99, 3000 would pay $1.99 and 5000 would pay $0.99. They could offer it starting at 3.99, then 2.99, then 1.99, etc. I might not get it -- given my low price -- for quite some time if at all. But the distributor gets to reap all the demand (assuming price is negligible -- which may not be a fair assumption). Perfect price discrimination?
I think TiVo starts to blur the line between always-streaming content and batched content. Now that my TiVo has both tuners active on DirecTV, it has the ability to record a minimum of twice as much TV as I am able to watch.
What I would pay to watch -- and when -- is another story. That market is only starting to get interesting thanks to technology like TiVo.
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