I believe this was exactly what Apple was looking for with their television set. If this passes, maybe with some slight modifications like DVR, I see Apple announcing their TV project in the first quarter of 2015. I believe they have everything ready and they are just waiting on this to pass. I wouldn't be surprised if Cook and Co. were the ones to convince the FCC to allow this.
I'm excited for this, but I have the feeling that once a la carte programming is finally rolled out that they'll make the packages so much more attractive price-wise than the individual channels that little will change. Unless there's just a lot more packages, which would be an improvement I suppose.
I believe this was exactly what Apple was looking for with their television set. If this passes, maybe with some slight modifications like DVR, I see Apple announcing their TV project in the first quarter of 2015. I believe they have everything ready and they are just waiting on this to pass. I wouldn't be surprised if Cook and Co. were the ones to convince the FCC to allow this.
DVR? Why not add in a floppy disk and rabbit ears? Other than that I'm onboard.
"... would give Internet-based video services the same access to live content from cable and local stations as traditional television broadcasters."
Always remember the cable companies were the original pirates that intercepted the networks for free, stripped in their own ads and sold it. They deserve no quarter.
I am willing to bet that the cost of each subscription will add up, and we will find ourselves paying the same amount as we do now.
Perhaps, but the end result will be to channel money away from the bad channels and towards the good ones. That could still be good for the consumers because they are no longer subsidizing mediocrity.
Doubtful. The a la carte providers have to offer lower prices or no one will switch. This is a consumer driven change, and consumers don't like to pay more.
Perhaps, but the end result will be to channel money away from the bad channels and towards the good ones. That could still be good for the consumers because they are no longer subsidizing mediocrity.
Doubtful. The a la carte providers have to offer lower prices or no one will switch. This is a consumer driven change, and consumers don't like to pay more.
PBS is the perfect example of your point. People pay (albeit by donations but they pay never-the-less) for the quality of such things as Master Piece Theater, Sherlock Homes and so on. At the other extreme you have The History Chanel, once good channel, descending into mediocrity.
Absolutely. The media companies own a lot of networks so to keep those niche networks operating, they'll charge more for the popular ones.
This will increase the pressure for high quality channels, as medium/low quality channels will go out of business. People may end up paying more, but getting higher quality channels as a result. For some of us, at least, this would be an improvement.
For those who spend a lot of time watching whatever is on TV, they will likely have to choose to have less selection or pay more.
Quality, quantity, low price. You get to pick two.
I am willing to bet you're exactly right. Currently, I pay ~$130 for TV and Internet through the only cable provider in my area. They provide Internet without cable for ~$55. A handful of my favorite channels at $5-10 a pop will get me right back up to $130. If the masses start moving to this model, their revenue stream will decline due to all the people dropping cable and leaving only Internet. This will force them to raise the price of their Internet.
It's bad enough that virtually every one of the hundreds of channels I receive has commercials. This means I'm paying $75 a month just for the conduit to bring those advertisement-infested channels into my home.
i dont remember the last time i saw commercials. i just buy the shows im interested in, and use netflix and prime. works pretty well and i spend less than what i would were i paying for a bunch of ad-invested crap.
I have not had cable TV for about 15 years now. I can't recall a single time that I missed it.
likewise, late '90s. dont miss it. most of cable's content is garbage for other people. these days i selectively purchase the content im interested in. thus no garbage, no ads, and i actually own a copy of the content for later viewing on demand for the rest of my life.
the only time i see cable is if im in a hotel with some time to kill before bed. yawn.
I think media mogul Byron Allen (I know, right?) has the future of media sewn up, as far as the model goes. Instead of producing shows and selling them to media outlets, who in turn sells advertising and hops to make money from the advertisers, he gives the shows to the media outlets and then shares advertising revenue with them. Sadly most of his shows are crap, but he is rolling in dough as a result.
Slap some internet access on that and you share nothing (or very little) with the media outlets.
DVR? Why not add in a floppy disk and rabbit ears? Other than that I'm onboard.
The best on-demand solutions also include local caching so hopefully Apple can fudge the terminology to provide a useful solution.
Rather than wasting time with per-episode rentals they really should have allowed user-bundled subscriptions & rent-to-buy options. Let's hope they leverage any new legislation more effectively.
Total and utter BS.
Thats the company line the cable company spews out and its totally false.
Its the same thing the music industry said when talking about music singles. They said you need to buy the entire album for $20. If we sold you just 1 song it would cost $5. Total and utter BS.
Just to clarify, music is still almost entirely released in album form with option to buy individual tracks from the album. Cheaper to promote 10 songs at once than 1 song only.
Welcome to the 20th century. You only pay for what you want. What a concept.
And the content providers get to sell you what they want. They would have many different ways to package their channels and content based on the value they put on their content.
They had me up until the point where they said VOD was not included. WTF? I have to have a DVR to watch my internet programing when I want too? Tim, talk some sense to the man.
This is just covering companies rebroadcasting preprogrammed streams for which they'll still need permission from the original content providers. DVR would effectively be repackaging content they don't own and it would be the same with per-show vs per-channel. A pre-programmed stream being rebroadcast means the source provider can ensure content goes out as intended with ads and they can probably determine audience engagement better.
It's really up to the content providers to come up with a new broadcast strategy for the web. I think setups like Netflix will move this along faster. With Yosemite, they will support native streaming without Flash or Silverlight:
Apple implemented encryption for the data streams so that DRM-capable plugins are no longer needed and playback will be smooth and fully hardware-accelerated. Now that this technology is implemented (7 years late), it would be nice to see more effort in bringing a completely new distribution method for TV content.
I quite like the idea of TV streams being like web URLs. So to visit a webpage, you type in http://www.apple.com but to access a stream, you can visit tv://cnn.com (TLD might not even be needed but the protocol can be linked to already owned domains like FTP etc). There can be subdomains for episodes and time in the stream like tv://amctv.com/walkingdead/episode1#27:30 would load that episode stream at 27 min 30s. This way you can link to scenes directly from social media. If they can get embedding working like Vine, even better and you can specify a time range to play.
The way access would work is having some sort of certificate on the browser side to validate the stream access but small scenes linked from social media can be free.
Bringing iOS's app model to the desktop might be another route to go but it ends up being too platform-specific and the shipment volumes don't justify the effort and you lose out on the ability to link from social media.
I'd like to see content providers breaking down international barriers too. Just let anyone in the world subscribe to any stream in the world. With a stream protocol, they can switch any needed advertising to local advertising but ideally just charge reasonable enough rates that advertising won't be needed on top.
In a way, this kind of setup can help get new shows off the ground. New shows would be shoved in some non-primetime time slot and might simply not get the initial traction but online and international, they might hit an unexpected audience. This has happened with apps. A US audience might not like a new US show but it could take off in China.
Comments
DVR? Why not add in a floppy disk and rabbit ears? Other than that I'm onboard.
Always remember the cable companies were the original pirates that intercepted the networks for free, stripped in their own ads and sold it. They deserve no quarter.
Perhaps, but the end result will be to channel money away from the bad channels and towards the good ones. That could still be good for the consumers because they are no longer subsidizing mediocrity.
Doubtful. The a la carte providers have to offer lower prices or no one will switch. This is a consumer driven change, and consumers don't like to pay more.
PBS is the perfect example of your point. People pay (albeit by donations but they pay never-the-less) for the quality of such things as Master Piece Theater, Sherlock Homes and so on. At the other extreme you have The History Chanel, once good channel, descending into mediocrity.
Welcome to the 20th century. You only pay for what you want. What a concept.
It's the 21st century actually.
And I believe the Supreme Court really got it wrong with Aereo. I feel badly for them and me, since I was an Aereo subscriber.
You'll end up paying more.
nope. youll pay based on what you use. i will not pay more than what cable currently costs.
Absolutely. The media companies own a lot of networks so to keep those niche networks operating, they'll charge more for the popular ones.
This will increase the pressure for high quality channels, as medium/low quality channels will go out of business. People may end up paying more, but getting higher quality channels as a result. For some of us, at least, this would be an improvement.
For those who spend a lot of time watching whatever is on TV, they will likely have to choose to have less selection or pay more.
Quality, quantity, low price. You get to pick two.
I am willing to bet you're exactly right. Currently, I pay ~$130 for TV and Internet through the only cable provider in my area. They provide Internet without cable for ~$55. A handful of my favorite channels at $5-10 a pop will get me right back up to $130. If the masses start moving to this model, their revenue stream will decline due to all the people dropping cable and leaving only Internet. This will force them to raise the price of their Internet.
It's bad enough that virtually every one of the hundreds of channels I receive has commercials. This means I'm paying $75 a month just for the conduit to bring those advertisement-infested channels into my home.
i dont remember the last time i saw commercials. i just buy the shows im interested in, and use netflix and prime. works pretty well and i spend less than what i would were i paying for a bunch of ad-invested crap.
I have not had cable TV for about 15 years now. I can't recall a single time that I missed it.
likewise, late '90s. dont miss it. most of cable's content is garbage for other people. these days i selectively purchase the content im interested in. thus no garbage, no ads, and i actually own a copy of the content for later viewing on demand for the rest of my life.
the only time i see cable is if im in a hotel with some time to kill before bed. yawn.
Slap some internet access on that and you share nothing (or very little) with the media outlets.
Unfortunately, this concept is lost on the Beats Music model.
what? what does a completely different topic have to do w/ this? Beats is a music streaming subscription service.
The best on-demand solutions also include local caching so hopefully Apple can fudge the terminology to provide a useful solution.
Rather than wasting time with per-episode rentals they really should have allowed user-bundled subscriptions & rent-to-buy options. Let's hope they leverage any new legislation more effectively.
Welcome to the 20th century. You only pay for what you want. What a concept.
And the content providers get to sell you what they want. They would have many different ways to package their channels and content based on the value they put on their content.
Because of course you don't know what you're missing
This is just covering companies rebroadcasting preprogrammed streams for which they'll still need permission from the original content providers. DVR would effectively be repackaging content they don't own and it would be the same with per-show vs per-channel. A pre-programmed stream being rebroadcast means the source provider can ensure content goes out as intended with ads and they can probably determine audience engagement better.
It's really up to the content providers to come up with a new broadcast strategy for the web. I think setups like Netflix will move this along faster. With Yosemite, they will support native streaming without Flash or Silverlight:
http://techblog.netflix.com/2014/06/html5-video-in-safari-on-os-x-yosemite.html
Apple implemented encryption for the data streams so that DRM-capable plugins are no longer needed and playback will be smooth and fully hardware-accelerated. Now that this technology is implemented (7 years late), it would be nice to see more effort in bringing a completely new distribution method for TV content.
I quite like the idea of TV streams being like web URLs. So to visit a webpage, you type in http://www.apple.com but to access a stream, you can visit tv://cnn.com (TLD might not even be needed but the protocol can be linked to already owned domains like FTP etc). There can be subdomains for episodes and time in the stream like tv://amctv.com/walkingdead/episode1#27:30 would load that episode stream at 27 min 30s. This way you can link to scenes directly from social media. If they can get embedding working like Vine, even better and you can specify a time range to play.
The way access would work is having some sort of certificate on the browser side to validate the stream access but small scenes linked from social media can be free.
Bringing iOS's app model to the desktop might be another route to go but it ends up being too platform-specific and the shipment volumes don't justify the effort and you lose out on the ability to link from social media.
I'd like to see content providers breaking down international barriers too. Just let anyone in the world subscribe to any stream in the world. With a stream protocol, they can switch any needed advertising to local advertising but ideally just charge reasonable enough rates that advertising won't be needed on top.
In a way, this kind of setup can help get new shows off the ground. New shows would be shoved in some non-primetime time slot and might simply not get the initial traction but online and international, they might hit an unexpected audience. This has happened with apps. A US audience might not like a new US show but it could take off in China.