Surprised "social tv" hasn't taken off more, though I guess people commenting using twitter during broadcasts kind of killed that idea I liked the pirated streams that had open chatrooms with just enough moderation to kill spam and wild political ranting where you could joke about what you're watching, kind of how taima.tv and JustinTV used to operate.
Netflix and the Future of Television
21–30 of 58 posts
Re: Netflix and the Future of Television
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
Likely due to the fact that as of yet, no one has found a particularly good way of monetizing torrents without alienating downloaders. Monetization is a necessity for industry adoption, so it's hard to tie the future of television to something like torrenting, unless there's a way for content creators & licensors to get paid.
Broadcast television has been given away for free since it's inception, and monetized with advertisements. I don't see why officially-sanctioned torrents couldn't do the same. Make them high quality, and backed by fast seedboxes, and you'll outcompete the crappy scene releases that trickle down to public trackers.
People would just release versions with the adverts cut. What do you think goes on with HDTV releases at the moment?
Re: Netflix and the Future of Television
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
We're already seeing the beginnings of one possible solution to the "sports on TV" problem: e-sports and video game streaming. Right now there are several hundred thousand viewers on Twitch.tv, unless their viewer numbers are extremely inflated. Video game streams overwhelmingly tend to be free (with subscriptions to remove ads, unlock the highest video quality, or access previous video on demand). Many tournaments h…
No technical reason, but it'd probably be a pretty big drop in revenue.
Why? How much revenue do the teams and leagues get from TV per-viewer now? Why couldn't they get more by cutting out the middlemen (cable companies and TV networks) and just get subscription fees directly from viewers, and ad revenue directly from advertisers?
Re: Netflix and the Future of Television
#24I miss Aereo and the ability to watch live local broadcast channels on my Mac Mini.
Copyright recently has killed a few venues online where I was paying to watch their content. I'd still pay them directly for an Aereo service if they provided it. I will never pay for Cable TV again .. bloated, over priced junk in which you have to deal with horrible customer service! No thanks!
I do see Dish is coming out with an over the top cable like service. It's sure to hobbled at first, but maybe in the long term it will provide a solid experience.
Re: Netflix and the Future of Television
#25I wonder how long physical media and things like redbox will live on for.. it seems tempting to say it will die out soon, but at least in the US, we do not have ubiquitous high-quality bandwidth.
Re: Netflix and the Future of Television
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
No technical reason, but it'd probably be a pretty big drop in revenue.
Why? How much revenue do the teams and leagues get from TV per-viewer now? Why couldn't they get more by cutting out the middlemen (cable companies and TV networks) and just get subscription fees directly from viewers, and ad revenue directly from advertisers?
> Why? How much revenue do the teams and leagues get from TV per-viewer now?
An ungodly amount. TV deals are everything to (at least American) pro sports. Smart athletes structure their deals to end the same time as the TV deals knowing that it will increase their potential salaries when the new deals are signed.
> and just get subscription fees directly from viewers and ad revenue directly from advertisers?
Because running a TV (or non-TV) network that has the reach and success of the big 4 networks is very fucking hard. You don't cut out the middle-man until you can replace what they give you.
Re: Netflix and the Future of Television
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
What incentive does a cable provider have to progress and become a dumb pipe? The only value Comcast brings is owning the license to rent a wire that brings Internet signals to your house. After that, the content creators/curators can take care of the rest. Of course, being a dump pipe means less profitability, but it should have already been treated like a utility in the first place, like in Chattanooga, Tennessee.…
"Of course, being a dumb pipe means less profitability" If you have a strong, legally enforced monopoly, I'm not seeing this. Is walmart really less profitable than mom -n- pop main street? If they aren't, why did mom -n- pop main street all go out of business when walmart moved in? The future seems to be big dumb profitable pipes and much less profitable content sources.
Walmart isn't a dumb-pipe, for one. A dumb pipe would be electric and water companies, are those as profitable as cable companies?
Re: Netflix and the Future of Television
#28I work for one of the big cable companies, and the internal culture seems to be "innovate, but slowly and carefully". Everybody is fully aware of the threat Netflix et al pose to the incumbents, but progress is slow. So many of our resources are spent just trying to minimise costs and maximise revenues, without really changing the game. Comcast, for all their flaws, do seem to really care about innovation. I watched…
What incentive does a cable provider have to progress and become a dumb pipe? The only value Comcast brings is owning the license to rent a wire that brings Internet signals to your house. After that, the content creators/curators can take care of the rest. Of course, being a dump pipe means less profitability, but it should have already been treated like a utility in the first place, like in Chattanooga, Tennessee.…
> It's a huge, profitable, conflict of interest to have your content provider also be the internet signal provider to your home
So why isn't it prohibited on the antitrust grounds? Or they can't be sustainable as separate companies?
Re: Netflix and the Future of Television
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Broadcast television has been given away for free since it's inception, and monetized with advertisements. I don't see why officially-sanctioned torrents couldn't do the same. Make them high quality, and backed by fast seedboxes, and you'll outcompete the crappy scene releases that trickle down to public trackers.
"Make them high quality, and backed by fast seedboxes," Another option: directors cut type content. So you get 2 minutes extra content of dubious quality, but there's a 10 second diet coke ad at the start. Well, you could try to find a torrent of the extra content without the ad, but its got slower seeds, so you're better off with the diet coke ad...
> but its got slower seeds
I'm not sure this would be true.
This may work for rarer content, but certainly wouldn't work for hot torrents. A fast webseeds CDN or whole datacenter of seedboxes is still on par with a large community-only swarm - that is, except for minor issues (possibly slower start) they both can well saturate one's downstream channel.
That is, unless one wants the download to start at full-speed right at the release second and not an hour or two later when swarm gets enough seeds. But I'm not sure most users care whenever their favorite series get an update at, say, 18:00 or 20:00.
Re: Netflix and the Future of Television
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
No technical reason, but it'd probably be a pretty big drop in revenue.
Why? How much revenue do the teams and leagues get from TV per-viewer now? Why couldn't they get more by cutting out the middlemen (cable companies and TV networks) and just get subscription fees directly from viewers, and ad revenue directly from advertisers?
In aggregate, billions. It would be impossible to calculate per-viewer. [0] The thing is, at present they are paid by every cable subscriber, not just the ones who actually watch the channel. So by switching to the model you suggest, there are two options, charge the user directly what they were currently charging the cable company and lose hundreds of millions in revenue because only a portion of your current viewers will pay you or more likely they will raise the price significantly.
The other thing is it would mean they would have to build a billing and customer service infrastructure. At present they only really have a handful of customers [1] - the cable companies - so it's really easy for them to deal with that side of things. When you have 300 million subscribers, one of the biggest problems will be billing and customer service, so prices would further increase because of that.
I would love to see sport leagues do this. But things need to change somewhat before there will be any major incentive for it to happen.
[0]: Every league, team, sport is different, probably with different contracts with every cable company. The average wouldn't be useful at all because you would have more extreme data points than you would average data points.
[1]: Sure, some networks have online streaming options, but the kind of customer who has no problem paying the extra few hundred dollars a year for access are not the ones that will require the major customer support.