Limited Selection, Walled Gardens, Unskippable Ads... What's The Benefit Of TV Everywhere Again?
from the train-wreck-in-action dept
While Mark Cuban's insisting that TV Everywhere is brilliant, it's difficult to see what the benefit is for users. We already noted that the whole program seemed to be something of a mess with no one agreeing on standards, meaning that there might be a bunch of different ones. Oh, and then there's the whole plan to include way too many ads and not let users skip any of them. Meanwhile, Broadband Reports notes that the various players appear to be bickering with each other over who pays for what... and who gets compensated for what. The whole thing is a recipe for a disaster. As Broadband Reports summarizes, "bickering between broadcasters and TV operators, limited selection, walled gardens and unskippable ads" are the sort of things that drive people to other options, such as file sharing -- which is what TV Everywhere was supposed to prevent.
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Filed Under: cable, online, tv, tv everywhere, video
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"Its unfortunate that there are some incredibly greedy people who think their entertainment needs should be subsidized."
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/09/15/why-you-want-tv-everywhere-now/
The only greedy (well, they're selfish actually) people are the cable companies that receive a government granted monopoly on the rights of way to use and build cable infrastructure so that they can charge a fortune for television and fill it up with nothing but advertisements.
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Re: FIRST POSTER AKA IGNORANT FUCK
Lets talk about a monopoly...
if you offer a product that only you can offer and other companys are BARRED from coming in and offering the same...
You sir are showing just how ignorant you are...
Are you aware that there are PLENTY of overbuilders out there... oh i'm sorry overbuilder might be too big of a word for you, you should google it and find out what it means...
Well most companies just can't come in and effectively compete because providing cable... imagine this... costs a heck of alot of money. add having to build a network from the ground up... yeah only a few companies have that type of bank roll... ATT U-Verse and Verizon - FIOS are good examples...
Oh and don't forget... Satelite is also and entertainment/tv channel provider... but most people wave them off as not being the same and/or inferior...
It's not the cable companies fault that it's competiors suck and are really not good at providing entertainment.
I have a family of 5... if i was to go out and take them to a movie 1 night a week thats 12$ x 5 just for tickets... (thats 60.00$, math hurts i know)
add soda/popcorn whatever... i'm lucky if i spend 80$ and walk out...
what do you know that is more them i'm spending then on my cable package i got for the entire month... so i can have movie night @ home with my family every night if i wanted to... and be off much cheaper...
but i understand, it's always better to point fingers and complain about others making more money then you...
somehow... by providing what people want, doing it at quite a value.... they are committing a cosmic sin and shall forever burn in hell...
GOOD LUCK BUDDY
you are probably one of those IDEOTS that also want to be able to order channels ala carte because they feel they pay so much because of all the useless channels on the lineup... "Hello Face... meet my friend Palm..."
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Re: Re: FIRST POSTER AKA IGNORANT FUCK
Nice rant
Let me guess, you work in the cable biz.
Sometimes I act like an idiot, but I'm no IDEOT
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Re: Re: FIRST POSTER AKA IGNORANT FUCK
Is there something else that has been bothering you lately? Your response seems way out of proportion.
I mean, I'm familiar with the tendency of the Internet to allow people to vent, but this is off the charts.
Whatever arguments you made, they were diminished by the fact that 80% of my brainpower was thinking about what kind of anger management counseling would benefit you most.
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Re:
The fact that two companies with duplicate plant can't exist in most communities is a financial issue - not a government granted monopoly issue.
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Re: Re:
"[new entrants have] every right to accept the same terms as the local cable company and overbuild..."
So, what happens if those government-written "same terms" create the perfect conditions for a natural monopoly?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
Without those "same terms" there might be some competition, for example an overbuild in the more densely populated aread of a city. But complete coverage requirements (terms)would erase that opportunity - for better or worse.
How is the net effect any different than an government-granted monopoly?
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They can keep their trash
I fail to see how letting me record what I would like to watch is hurting them. So what if I give it to a friend to see too? How is that any different than using a VCR?
Then there is their whole attitude that if I can do things I want to do with their content, they'll go broke. Huh? No, this is all about business models that no longer work and fat paychecks. When you knock down the fence (barriers to participate), gatekeepers (charging a toll on those that want through the fence) lose their monopoly rents. Always have.
Good riddance to them. I haven't watched television since March, and my HiDef TV makes a great monitor.
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Ah, the Boolean Mentality strikes again. The question is only "possible or impossible," there are no intermediate degrees.
The reason you don't know the very obvious answer to this question is because the answer is all about degrees. That it is possible to tape something, edit out the commercials, and give it to a friend is only a small part of the question. The real question is, how easy and attractive is it to do this?
Taping stuff on a VCR is a pain in the ass. You have to get a tape. You have to set it at the right point so you don't record over something else on the tape. Constant fast-forwarding and rewinding fucks up cheap-ass VCRs pretty fast. You have to remember to set the speed right. You have to make sure you have enough tape left. If you don't want the commercials, you have to fast-forward through them which is a minor pain, or edit them out, which is very difficult on a regular VCR. Making copies requires at least two VCRs, and each subsequent copy degrades the picture. Even with two VCRs, you can only make one copy at a time, and it takes as long to make a copy as it does to watch the show in the first place. So, with two VCRs, making five copies of a movie for five friends takes 10 hours.
I think the about 90% of my taping anything on a VCR occurred in the early 1980s on one of the very early VCRs, until it quickly became clear that it was just more trouble than it was worth. Seriously, do a large portion of VCR owners actually use the record function often? Did they ever? How many DVD recorders that hooked up to TVs (not computers) were really sold? Was there any outcry that DVD players had no recording functionality?
This, of course, explains the hullabaloo behind Betamax in the early 1980s and why it eventually became a nonissue: everyone thought that taping and copying stuff would catch on, but it turned out that (with this specific technology) the VCR became, for all practical purposes, a VCP - player only. DVDs - even with recorders that hook up to the TV - were also playback devices. DVRs strike a slightly different compromise: they make recording easy, but make transferring that recording to others, or editing it, difficult. I'm sure you remember the ruffling of feathers about the 30-second-skip button, though.
But take away every single one of those disadvantages, and people who make money distributing content are finally in for the nightmare that they thought might happen in the Betamax days. Recording is one-touch. Editing, if necessary, can be done by a 14-year-old on a laptop. Copies do not degrade in quality. Copies of two-hour movies can be made in seconds locally, and minutes if you distribute them over the Internet (with BitTorrent, the more copies you make, the faster it goes).
Then there is their whole attitude that if I can do things I want to do with their content, they'll go broke. Huh? No, this is all about business models that no longer work and fat paychecks.
Why is this confusing for you, when you already understand all the elements of the situation? You act as if the fact that you can do what you want, the fact that they're going broke, and the fact that the business models no longer work are somehow dissociated. That you can do what you want with their content IS WHY their business models no longer work. All those business models were about their ability to do something you fundamentally couldn't: they could make cheaper, higher-quality copies, distribute a greater variety of content to you, make an attractive browsing experience in retail stores, etc.
But now you've taken away all these "inefficiencies," which is why people paid them in the first place. That their business models no longer work IS WHY they are going broke.
Good riddance to them. I haven't watched television since March, and my HiDef TV makes a great monitor.
Good for you. Just don't be a hypocrite and watch their content on that Hi-Def monitor.
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Re:
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I remember
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A streaming online collection of every episode of every season of a television series without advertising breaks every few minutes; with the freedom to watch the episodes in any order, to fastforward to the scenes you want to view.. to pause play and rewind.
The genie is out of the bottle, the technology is out there and the general public will choose the format that best suits them - not the format that suits the corporations.
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Lets Just Shove A Roll Of Quarters In
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Re: Lets Just Shove A Roll Of Quarters In
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Re: Lets Just Shove A Roll Of Quarters In
In fact, I remember some Jukeboxes where that was possible. Scattered though the records were ones with 3(?) minutes of silence (or it might have been "White Noise"). You selected them like any other record and when they arrived in rotation, there would be your requested silence before the music resumed (a longer period if there were no requests for any of the records between two Silence Record Requests).
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Unskipable ads ?
Will this TV Everywhere disable the remote mute, volume and change channel buttons during the ads?
There are many ways to skip the ads, is it considered stealing the content?
Soon they will want to charge a fee for each person sitting in front of the content monetization device or CMD.
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Re: Unskipable ads ?
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no care for customers
Whatever happened to the days when businesses actually CARED about what customers want?
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Re: Moronic Rant
Brian: Do you listen to yourself when you talk?
Peter: I fade in and out...
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