how-to block ads
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Comments on news posted 2009-02-20 13:44:02: According to a report in today's Wall Street Journal, both Time Warner Cable and Comcast are working with broadcasters on plans to deliver their customers TV programming via the Internet at no additional charge. ..
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Zzzzzz
@verizon.net | This is boring. Same, same all of the time; sound and fury signifying nothing. You are dust in the wind. | |
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dvd536
as Mr. Pink as they come
Premium
join:2001-04-27
Phoenix, AZ | You can bet. . . there will be DRM, browser requirements, minimum WMP req's.
meh | |
| tmc8080
join:2004-04-24
Floral Park, NY
| Slowing demand for cable-tv There is slowing demand for cable tv, especially in this economic climate.. consumers will be looking for the best deal. If that best deal is to download *FREE* content off the internet, then so be it. The cable companies have done NOTHING to evolve their business models and they had 20 years to first come to the conclusion that they needed to, then enact a plan.. but they stuck their heads in the sand and now they seem to be scratching their heads as to why there is slowing demand for cable-tv?!?
Maybe it's not so much about packages of channels anymore, but access to specific programs in an "on-demand" customer friendly environment (dirt cheap or free). This has always been something the cable companies thought was always supportable by ever increasing subscription prices. The handwriting was on the wall way back when they killed cablemodem service provider @Home. They knew that 10+ megabits broadband was on a collision course with their subscription/advertising/infomercial/ppv revenue model and the industry went through several stages of denial, infrastructure neglect, throttling, application & port filters, booting bandwidth hogs, and now finally data caps.
Finally, the telcos have come to the party.. and they (for the most part) don't give rat's excrement about potential copyright issues. They lost millions in revenues due to phone subscriber loss (POTS). The only weak achilles heel to recover that money is exploiting broadband uptake rates for all they are $$ worth $$. Also, if your hinting that AT&T struck a deal with the entertainment industry to go after their customers with filtering (little sister of sandvine), and cancellations.. Yeah, right.. Let's see how AT&T survives it's incredible investment in U-Verse with such a policy in full effect.
This dilemma has come to a head! The cable companies better tread carefully or risk serious backlash! If I were them, I'd choose the content wisely and offer a **SIMPLE** non intrusive way to stream content with advertising in a way that does not affect quality or usefulness to the subscriber (for this, you'd better get their input, because the cable company's perspective is often misaligened to the subscriber's perspective). The ability to download content will also be important. There should be an incentive for broadband *ONLY* subsribers to choose that model over what's already out there *free* for the taking; not hitting imposed restrictions, cause that only gets them running in droves to the telcos.
IMO, cable-tv will become a broadband value-added proposition ontop of broadband & phone packages. For the most part a one-size-fits-all deal based upon your broadband tier. That means 95-100% of the costs associated with *video* subscriptions will be *ADVERTISER FUNDED* within the time it takes for docsis 3 to be fully implemented without feet dragging--because their time has already run out and every day causes this problem of retention to get worse. | |
| albie
join:2002-03-17
Decatur, IL
| The healthy side of cable The people who post in forums like this are tech savvy and because of that they hate to pay more than they have to have for any technology,and are always looker for something better and something cheaper.
As a babyboomer, I received a first rate public school education, and followed that up with some college degrees.
I believe the people who spend the most on cable are those that would appear to be the ones who could least afford it and who are also the least tech savvy.
Every time I drive by my cable office, it seems I see lots and lots of people paying their bills at the drive up window. Probably paying in cash or money orders as they do not have a bank account.
My guess is that those with the highest cable bills and the highest users of cable add ons such as PPV do not proportionately match those with the highest incomes.
As long as this may be true, it is very premature to predict the death of cable tv. | |
| disc
join:2005-12-31
Raleigh, NC
2 edits | pre-positioning against zilliontv? www.zilliontv.tv smells like it will be a pure over-the-top play with long-play content. In which case, I wonder if the cablecos are trying to pre-position against that with this type of IPTV move.
Edit: »www.vaenco.com/products.htm | |
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