Letters to the Editor
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Re: @jmenon -- Yes, I got hammered.
I got monthly and yearly confused. I'm an idiot. That's what you get for reacting, and for not being good at math.
But still, that means that you get no news, no sports, etc. If your watching habits crave news and sports then it wouldn't work for you. TV serials are weekly--actually, bi-monthly if you consider the number of episodes each year--but baseball, basketball and hockey are on every day. And news is on many times a day.
I think you would be cutting back your watching options severely, unless you were a very particular kind of watcher.
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Download Viewing options
I certainly would never view a downloaded TV show (BitTorrent or whatever) on a computer screen - the experience would be horrible. I have a bigscreen TV, surround sound and comfy chairs in the living room for a reason.
That's why I used to burn the video files to DVD and then watch them on the big TV - quality was excellent, not as good as HD but much better than PAL/NTSC.
Used too - now I have a Au$70 DVD player that can play DivX files directly off a USB thumb drive, so the process is even easier - DL via bittorrent over night, copy to thumb drive and play. If I wanted to make it even easier I would get a wireless streaming media player such as the Mvix
This sort of thing is actually having a positive effect on Broadcast TV in Australia - it used to be (and still largely is) that popular TV shows would take literally years to arrive here, it got extremely frustrating trying to avoid the Doctor Who/BSG/Heroes etc spoilers. Turns out that people like me were increasingly downloading TV episodes as they screened overseas.
So the networks actually made a intelligent decision for once - they've started screening popular shows (Californication, Heroes when it restarts) shortly after they play overseas. Great - I'm happy to watch shows within a reasonable timeframe rather than go through the hassle of DL/ing them.
Radical concept I know - networks responding to consumer needs rather than trying to clamp down.
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What it would take for me to live without cable
I have two posts on my blog abotu this very subject. I spent some time, calculated out my cable bills and figured out what scenario would have to exist for me to go without cable or with limited cable.
I also try to do some back of the envelope math on whether tv industry could survive on 100% itunes like subscriptions rather than advertising (again, as a hypothetical, not necessarily as a prediction). Both links are below.
http://www.fatmixx.com/2007/05/10/living-without-cable-in-an-internet-world/
and the post about ad revenue vs. itunes rev
http://www.fatmixx.com/2007/09/02/how-much-advertising-money-does-one-tv-episode-bring-in/
Hope folks find that interesting. appreciate any feedback on my math.
Sujal
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don't read this if you are a cop
Just for anyone who is interested you can get those favorite tv shows on dvd for 4 bucks. All it takes is a dvd burner, a free copy of DVD Decrypter and a Blockbuster card. I'll let you figure out the rest.
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Question for Farhad and the other tech savants here.
I could follow what you all were writing with regard to downloading TV shows and playing them over your TV, but it's obvious that I am a tech idiot compared to you all.
Can any of you recommend a website, or even a book (gasp!), that explains in simple terms what the heck you all are talking about? Something akin to an idiot's guide to using the internet to get TV shows and movies?
Thanks.
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agreed, lower the price
Currently a satellite or cable subscription only makes sense due to the plethora of available channels and content 99.44% of which are full of shit and advertising. cut the price of downloads and i'll happily redirect my monthly subscription money to downloading what i want to watch.
I won't pay $2/show when that costs way more than the dvds and results in a digitally restricted low quality version. Lower the price and a roughly standard definition download starts to look appealing.
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Access charges
Another poster mentioned access charges. This has been tried. Back in the day, when GTE sold their telecom division to United Telephone (now known as Sprint), they practically begged them to take a third of the internet backbone off their hands - at no charge. UTS complied. 3 years later GTE realized the enormity of their error, paid a lot of money to buy UUNet (billions?) and then set out to recoup their investment by announcing they were going to charge for every packet that crossed their portion of the backbone. ISP's routed around them just to show that they could and that was the end of that.
It would take a concerted effort by a lot of telecoms to implement any kind of internet usage charge. Ubiquitous wireless in the home makes it easy for anyone with the will and the resources to provide access free of charge. Google would probably squash any effort by Comcast to charge anything other than a flat fee.
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Why Are You Watching?
Those crummy television shows are *that* important to you? You just *have* to see all these sitcoms, detective shows, and fake reality shows, etc.? You'll even pay money to see that stuff? And watch it on a miniature screen, no less? Why???
I've often wondered who actually watches that stuff...now I know.
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The True Revolution
The True Revolution will come when we as the consumer are able to support the shows we enjoy with our dollars directly.
When I think of my favorite shows over the past several years, the viewership has always been smaller than the viewership of "America's Next Top Smarmy Reality Show." I ask, who will pay premium prices for that stuff and have no answer. But who will pay premium prices for:
- Angel
- Battlestar Galactica
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer
- Everwood
- Firefly
- Gillmore Girls (with Amy SP writing)
- Heroes
- Jericho
- Lost
- Scrubs
- Veronica Mars
and not only will I have to jostle for the position of first in line, I think 5 million (about half of what I think some of those series sometimes are gettng in viewership) people might be the answer. All are shows that recevived great critcal acclaim but (with the excpetions of Lost and Heroes) failed to become major hits. But the fanbase loves them, and - especially if we could dump the commercials and even more the network exec interference - I think would happily pay directly to the artists invovled to continue experincing this artistisc medium.
The digital delivery is in place. The technology (albeit with a manual sometimes requried) is ready. All that it takes is the first Joss Whedon, or Rob Thomas to be onboard as someone figures out how we can get the first few episodes shown to enough people to bring about this change. I don't think it will happen this decade, but I am certain - CERTAIN - it will happen in the next. And if I knew that answer to the magic "how can we start it" question . . . I think I'd be able to retire pretty quick too!
AlterEthan