Cutting the Cord on Cable

We're witnessing non-death throes of a more-intelligent animal.

When the music industry was disrupted completely, their Plan B was a white-knuckle-grip onto Plan A (their traditional business model). The cablecos were foresightful enough to turn their TV monopolies into broadband value-adds. They've done a drn good job at it, despite the bellyaching we can do. While providing "the best available internet access," they're no dummies, and entrenched cableco interests will ensure cord-cutting's not easy.

HBO is balancing the beam effectively (for their business, if less so for their "audience"). They have zero plans to make their "HBO-Anywhere" service available except to cable subs.

http://paidcontent.org/article/419-hbo-to-cord-cutters-youll...

Competition is still Good. Cableco monopolists were in no hurry to improve things until DSL and fiber-to-the-premises services became available and attractive. But they've responded.

Re TV programming itself, cutting the cord is more difficult when kids are involved. Even with timeshifting as second (or first) nature, you need the source to switch from.* As for torrenting, etc., "it's only 'free' if your time has no value" comes to play.

Per the cited article, and per comments in this thread, TV is a lean-back, consumption-oriented time sink. I like to have that even knowing it's a less-than-optimal use of time.

But yeah, HBO will earn more money when they get off cable-only.

Whenever I hear someone disregard torrents offhand, I get the distinct impression that they've either never actually tried it or that they're simply being dishonest, because piracy has never been easier.

Have you actually tried torrenting TV shows or movies (or any other type of digital content, for that matter)? Contrary to the FUD that seems to be popular opinion on HN, it's a cake walk. Most importantly, learning how to use torrents is a (rather small) one-time time investment, whereas watching TV means that you perenially waste 1/4th of your viewing time watching ads. And don't forget that you have to keep track of when shows are airing and either watch them then or remember to record them for later viewing.

So if saving time is one of your primary concerns, the numbers simply don't add up in favor of broadcast TV, no matter how you look at them.

In fact, piracy is so easy that I won't even bother with free solutions like Hulu - why should I waste my time traversing 10 different sites looking for a particular episode of a particular show I want to see when I can go to the same torrent site every time and have a virtual guarantee that the content I want will be instantly available, and in HD, at that?

If you have moral qualms with respect to piracy, I can agree to disagree, despite my personal lack of objections to the practice. But claiming that piracy is somehow time inefficient is nothing more or less than pure prevarication.