191–200 of 264 posts
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Their advertising is less broken. I'd still rather pay for GMail instead of seeing ads.
I'd still rather pay for GMail instead of seeing ads. You can; it costs $50/year, though: http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/features.html
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Eh, do you have a citation for it being $100B or more a year? I can only find figures for about $60B: http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-07/tech/30048336... (The UK's is about $2.5B, despite it having around 20% of the US's population. Quite a stark difference.)
Another question is what percentage of that $60B actually funds TV content and how much is spent on producing ads and other advertising-specific overhead that would presumably vanish if we payed for completely ad-free TV.
http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/can-google-c...
Here we see a 750MM subscriber base in the US:
http://www.bgr.com/2011/05/19/internet-and-telco-tv-eat-away...
So, that's what, ~$100 per subscriber...PER YEAR, to compensate for zero commercials? I hope my math is wrong!
Some people have mentioned the cable boxes are the issues but no one has mentioned Scientific Atlanta by name. If I'm not mistaken they have been producing horrible boxes for multiple carriers for years! As a Cablevision/Optonline subscriber, I find that using their iOS app is way ahead of using the actual cable box interface. Is it IR that just makes the interface slow or is there some other hardware constraint that…
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Here's a question for my fellow amateur economists: What happens to the quality of broadcast television when you increase the supply of broadcast channel-hours by a factor of 50 and you don't increase the supply of viewers at all? I used to watch TV, like most people. Then, in the 1990's, the number of channels started increasing. More options, great. Twice as many channels did allow for more specialization, so maybe…
According to most people who follow TV closely, it's lead to a TV renaissance. Most people agree that, post-Sopranos, we've been living in a golden age of television with shows like The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Arrested Development, Community & Louie all being an order of magnitude better than what's gone before it. We're currently suffering from a glut of amazing television and if you haven't been paying attenti…
This is akin to saying that the internet is broken because some videos are prefaced by a commercial. Or HN is broken because some of the front-page are hiring ads for YC companies. I use a PVR for all of my "TV" needs (I have two large wall-mounted screens. They are great entertainment devices. I only mention that for consistency with those proudly informing that they only old some small CRT in the corner somewhere).…
> This is akin to saying that the internet is broken because some videos are prefaced by a commercial. Youtube showing mandatory, non-skippable video commercials before the video you want to watch is the single most annoying thing that happened on the Internet in the last few years. I still haven't figured out how to get rid of them, but if I ever find out, I won't hesitate to do so.
There are many other things that are broken too. My fancy expensive name-brand digital TV takes a full minute to boot up from a cold start, longer than it took my tube based TV from the 1950s to warm up. Once on, it takes almost a full second to change channels while it rebuffers the stream of the channel being changed to. This prevents quickly flipping through channels to see what is on. As a result I just don't bot…
Here's a question for my fellow amateur economists: What happens to the quality of broadcast television when you increase the supply of broadcast channel-hours by a factor of 50 and you don't increase the supply of viewers at all? I used to watch TV, like most people. Then, in the 1990's, the number of channels started increasing. More options, great. Twice as many channels did allow for more specialization, so maybe…
I dislike the fact that they make such a big deal about the number of channels available. DirectTV, for example, offers between 140 and 285 channels! Who would want to flip through that many channels?!
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> It's advertising. Agreed. It's simply a bad business model; you're the product, not the customer, etc. It also has a hugely distorted effect on content production, incentivizing shows to shoot for safe returns and broad appeal instead of monetizing hardcore fans of innovative niche programming. Put simply, I want businesses to care whether they have my money, not my eyeballs. I cut most forms of advertising out of…
I feel like using AdBlock is unethical. You are using a sites resource, while depriving them of the revenue they need to provide you that resource. I vote with my feet so to speak, and stick mostly to sites with subdued advertising.
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Another question is what percentage of that $60B actually funds TV content and how much is spent on producing ads and other advertising-specific overhead that would presumably vanish if we payed for completely ad-free TV.
Here's an article that describes a $77.5B TV advertising market in 2008: http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/can-google-c... Here we see a 750MM subscriber base in the US: http://www.bgr.com/2011/05/19/internet-and-telco-tv-eat-away... So, that's what, ~$100 per subscriber...PER YEAR, to compensate for zero commercials? I hope my math is wrong!
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IMO there is a strong correlation between the mobile phone landscape circa 2007 iPhone release and the television landscape today. Pretty much the same players, mostly vying for market share based on kitsch features... No true innovation. Without having read the article I'm guessing Apple will introduce something along the lines of 'Siri TV' dispensing with the remote control as they did with the stylus but instead o…
> Siri TV First off, iTV or whatever it's going to be called, doesn't need Siri yet - see this: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2671593... Siri is a game changer, but Apple's current implementation on the 4S isn't adequate. Whether it's bandwidth problems (due to bad coverage) or misunderstood commands due to noise, my experience with Siri has been mixed - it's a tough problem, but the results ar…
The thing that advertisers don't seem to understand is that we consumers are actually interested in the right ad's. I would choose to watch the new trailer for Game of Thrones - Season Two for example. Or an add for the new Honda Element, if I were shopping or just curious what the new model looked like.
All the sponsored by ads could be google-style customized to the viewer, and the view-rate would likely be higher than it is now where I DVR skip pretty much all ad's since there is no easy way for me to know what is being shown.
On top of all that, advertisers would be able to know exactly how many people were actually watching their ads. They could even add in interactive 'like/dislike' voting to further determine the effectiveness of the ad.
I thought of all this 5-6 years ago when DVR's really got popular. It seemed to me an obvious way to 'evolve' TV, and I'm pretty surprised something like this hasn't already happend. I guess it's expecting too much from an industry that is used to just shoveling ads at us from all angles, the idea of 'choice' is probably pretty scary/imposible for them.
Maybe this is the way Apple intends to crack TV?