AT&T Won't Give Up On Mobile TV, Now Wants To Sell You $1300 Gear To Watch Cartoons In Your Car
from the that's-a-lot-for-some-cartoons dept
Despite a ton of hype from its backers over the years, there's been very little interest in mobile TV services -- especially with the current subscription-based model. AT&T launched its mobile TV offering using Qualcomm's MediaFLO service last year, and given the lack of news about it, it doesn't seem to have set the world on fire. But AT&T doesn't seem to have learned too much from that experience and adapted its business model to a new satellite-based mobile TV offering that's made for in-car use, preferring instead to trod the same path with a sizable monthly service fee and expensive equipment. For just $1299 for the equipment (not including professional installation) and $28 per month, its CruiseCast service will deliver customers 22 channels of TV and 20 audio channels. Even if these weren't trying economic times, the pricing seems pretty prohibitive, and it's hard to imagine this service will find much more success than other similar efforts. Further, it's really difficult to see a future for any sort of mobile TV service that's built around the subscription model, especially when it tries to force customers back into linear programming schedules, and give up the control that their DVRs and other on-demand technologies offer.
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it's not hard to do, but if you do it the easy way it's most likely illegal. changing from one format to another often involves stripping the original formats protections which is a big no-no according to hollywood.
i think AT&T won't give up because mobile TV is big in europe and asia where lots of people take public transit.
the trouble with mobile anything in the US is that everyone drives and if you so much as think about touching a mobile phone within 100 feet of a moving vehicle then chances are you are breaking some sort of law.
so, mobile TV/movies/whatever is pretty easy to do and comes in super handy in a bunch of situations, as long as you don't mind breaking the law.
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God, who knew that iTunes and Amazon's Unbox are illegal? Why aren't the feds cracking down on these illegal services?!
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and those files will tansfer to and play on your phone as is? perhaps if you have an iphone and only buy from itunes, but for the rest of us, converting a file to avi, wmv, or mpg is likely to be a DMCA violation.
it doesn't stop me from doing it, but it's likely stop your mom and dad (the people who pay for downloads in the first place) from doing so.
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and that is why the anti-circumvention laws in the DMCA are so anti-consumer. you chose to go with amazon, you are now limited to plays-for-sure players.
if you buy an ipod or an iphone, there is no guarantee that your legally downloaded videos will play. also, if microsoft pulls the plug on plays-for-sure, you might be up the creek.
but, MS is a huge company, plays-for-sure will be around for ever, right? i mean MS is bigger than apple, with like a bunch more money, surely they won't trash plays-for-sure, right?
just keep in mind, microsoft's flagship player, the zune, is not plays-for-sure.
sobering thought, isn't it?
so, you can download DRM free content from bit torrent illegally. or you can legally purchase content that may stop working at a later date and strip the defunct DRM off later, which is also illegal.
you are a criminal either way. so why not go with the option that let's you get the content for free at the beginning?
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The AT&T offer isn't actually not all that expensive, relatively speaking. Go to a car dealership and check out the prices on factory installed dvd players. They are often $2000+ options.
Also, why would you assume that DVR's and on-demand services aren't coming? I would assume they are.
-cr
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I have real doubts that today's current wireless technology can supply all three - at least enough to make it appealing to the masses. Video quality via 3G is fine, but nothing compared to an iTunes download. Video quality is better via Media FLO, but that lacks good on demand capability and it's too expensive. Broadcasters will be offering free mobile TV soon (with better quality), but will the old school linear broadcasting model work in the mobile TV environment?
I think all of these companies have grossly overestimated the desire for a mobile TV, and lots of companies like AT&T are going to lose millions because of that pie-in-the-sky thinking.
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Well, I would include satellite broadcasting should be included in any list of current wireless technology. The quality is definitely there as is the quantity. No idea about on-demand capabilities.
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WTG AT&T
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Good Idea, Wrong Approach
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Reference Point
http://www.amazon.com/Audiovox-D1788PK-7-Inch-Portable-Headphones/dp/B0015ZA5WC/ref=sr_1_8? ie=UTF8&s=miscellaneous&qid=1242927936&sr=8-8
If you can get a portable DVD player for less than $80 bucks, how much of the market will pay for the in-car AT&T setup. Some, I'm sure, but not much.
Now consider that there is increasing competition from devices people already have, smartphones, media players, PSPs, etc. That saps the demand for expensive in-car systems, and certainly expensive subscriptions.
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cheap satellite bandwidth?
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The carpocalypse looms
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Re: The carpocalypse looms
I think some laws need to be reviewed and removed since it is not natural to have people that are too stupid to use common sense survive for so long....natural selection seems to be a thing of the past unfortunately since we feel the need to "protect" those that can not think intelligently for themselves.
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Because MobiTV has been around for about 7 years, and their growth stagnated years ago, as they had a limited number of people willing to pay the monthly nut, plus more for premium channels.
Also, as linear TV programming, MobiTV does not offer personalized viewing schedules. Yet as a unicast technology, it consumes as much bandwidth as expected by sending an individual stream to each phone. Worst of both worlds!
OK, so now I've given some attention to the problems of MobiTV, too. Happy?
Services like MobiTV may eventually prosper, however, as 3.5G and 4G technologies might have adequate capacity to make then economically feasible (charge lower prices, grow the market).
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