I’ve been angling to get rid of my TiVo and cable for some time now and I believe I’ve finally figured out a solution that works best for me. It involves a lots scripting, Sabnzbd, and HandbrakeCLI and I’ll tell you what I ultimately did next week once it’s stable but it seems to be working as well as can be expected for these sorts of hacks.
I posit that the TV industry is about to face the same threat dealt the music and movie industries but they still have a chance to make things better for themselves when the world changes around them. First, let’s rehash the old arguments.
What I’m doing is downloading TV shows and sending them to a media player near my TV. I’m doing this because there exist two separate infrastructures that interface imperceptibly at one key point – the official cable and online distribution networks and the shady underworld of pirate distributors. Right now that interface is a trickle, but it will soon be, pardon the pun, a torrent.
The first infrastructure is the studio system. While I’m talking specifically about TV here, we can also extrapolate to talk about movies and music. This infrastructure is based on the advertising or distribution model in that they make all their money placing advertisements around their content or by placing their content onto physical media. But what is important to note is that the TV industry is in a completely different business from the music and movie industry. They’re not “selling” a product. They’re selling the space around a product. They they commission artists to make that product better in hopes of raising the price of the space around that product. They sell DVDs, sure, but that’s a sideline.
But when I take that content out of its context, like meat out of an oyster shell, I strip out their value and shuck the rest. But technology has outstripped that analogy and television has evolved into a processable set of events – shows – whereas before it was an event, each show linked together into infinity.
TiVo, to continue the analogy, created a way to sell jarred oyster sauce. The device contained the content, sure, but it tried to keep some of the advertising intact. However, what I’m attempting to do buffets into an entirely new infrastructure, one none of us wholly understand.
It consists of two disparate parts. The first is a shady underground that can offer these shows, stripped of commercials, a few minutes after they’ve aired. How they do it is a topic for another story, but needless to say popular shows are available in less than ten minutes after they air on the Eastern Seaboard. It is a testament to the dedication of a few TV lovers that these shows are available, for free, as they happen.
Then we have the web arms of the major TV studios as well as the clips cable stations post on their sites. These are, to a lesser extent, a re-canning of those same oysters in the hopes that the shorter advertisements wrapped around them will maintain the revenue offered by TV broadcasts.
So what’s my point? First, I believe some media will survive the move to the web better than others. Book publishing, for example, may change formats but the inherent problems of pirating a physical book make them weak targets for piracy. I also believe that the medium of television is also not conducive to large scale piracy because there is so much of it. I can shuck all the oysters I want but there will still be 24-hour news channels, old movie networks, and sitcoms that someone out there will watch even if the pirates are uninterested in recording and distributing them.
Now, back to that interface between the two worlds. Because pirates can’t steal everything at once there is no impetus to stop up this hole. The highly regimented and very well organized system of content capture that is going on exists as a labor of love and not as a money making venture. It allows guys like me, guys who no longer want to be beholden to a wonky TiVo, for example, to get HD content quickly and easily. However, there are more guys like me every day. To say that television as we know it won’t exist in a decade is quite far fetched but it is a possibility. How, then, should a TV broadcaster react?
First, I think TV broadcasters need to take a page from the pirates playbook and make their hit shows available online in downloadable form sooner than later – and not on iTunes for $2.99 an episode. The process I went through was relatively painless but decidedly nerdy. The next generation, however, will find new and better ways of doing the same thing, thereby stripping out the content with reckless abandon. TV studios still have some time to save their skins, just like the book industry, but it won’t be long before something comes along and ruins the party. They need to do what the music industry didn’t do – make getting sanction, high quality content convenient. It took me a week to set up my little Rube Goldberg DVR but there’s no telling how long it could take someone with a little more savvy.
Why not, for example, offer TV subscriptions to individual series. The era of channel surfing is almost near its end and discovery of new content through mere chance will soon be gone. This would allow for absoltute control over a series and reward popular series month after month. Sadly, cable companies just won’t do this. As Doug noted in our chat room “Cable companies keep saying a la carte wouldn’t work but in reality they’re saying it wouldn’t work for them because its too much work.”
Second, television needs to play to its strengths. As Harry McCracken pointed out during the balloon-boy debacle, the first on the scene wasn’t some blogger with a Flip but the television news crews with their trucks, helicopters, and satellite dishes. But even in the vacuum created by the death of local newspapers it seems that local TV stations aren’t able to appreciate their value. For example, I was in Columbus, Ohio a few months ago and I saw the same reporter on two different channels reporting on essentially the same thing. This sort of cost-cutting is detrimental to the brand and is cheapening TV journalism. We all laugh at the 24-hour news channels and their bloviating blowhards, but those are the news networks of choice for millions of people daily. There is value there. TV studios need to give us this content in a way that makes it a win-win for all parties involved. If not, it will be a lose-lose as their content is stripped and stolen and their revenues tank over the next few years.
Sure TV is under threat!!
The effect is already showing in the UK. With internet marketing and social media being prefered by advertisers than the normal ways of advertising via the idiot box.
European TV is a totally different animal.
Good read, I would love to see a follow up on the tech, and also on the TV $$ involved.
I felt suicidal when I was stuck with Czech TV. Luckily I wasn’t there long.
I think that the DIY route is one that the TV people actually don’t have to worry about much. I love my open source, and am writing this on Linux right now, but there’s no reason to believe the open source community can get it together to build a consumer-grade setup for boosting TV. It’s just not good enough at usability.
Still, a lot of the TV people will struggle. Somebody will eventually figure out an alternative for-pay distribution network, no matter how many legislators Comcast and the NAB buy off. Suddenly, the people who are good at selling you and me to advertisers are in a pickle. They may have no real idea how to sell content to us.
Oh so true. With all of the new media outlets coming out the older media will have a tougher time staying up.
One word: sports
Yep, they have it right, a NICHE. I’d subscribe just to sci-fi stuff and maybe another subscription just to horror movies, still lots of space for advertising related products on the website portal I’d go to to get my fix.
They could sell different series to the highest paying webmaster instead – BBC website would probably buy rights to the best stuff in UK and Brits would be scr**ed twice.
EpisodeButler works well also and is what I use.
PS3 with PlayOn Digital Media Server works great for auto transcoding my videos and also streams Hulu and many others also.
I also have a Tivo but opted for the one time subscription fee. I can now record hi def shows to it over the air and they look far better than what I get via cable.
Only reason I still pay for cable tv is because of the bundling, I’d only save $5 a month if I canceled it.
Don’t get rid of the Tivo, just the cable.
I, too, have one-time payout TivoHD and a PS3.
I prefer watching TV off the Tivo rather than the PS3.
Over-the-air HD looks great.
PyTivo is a wonderful transcoder for a Mac/Linux household.
The only thing PlayOn has in its favor is Hulu. (Which the PS3 browser _should_ support fully.)
Actually get rid of TiVo but keep cable.
Why would anyone wants to waste money on TiVo when MythTV is free?
On the other hand, most people need cable for Internet access and TV feeds.
“Why would anyone wants to waste money on TiVo when MythTV is free?” because with tivo hd/series 3, you have cablecard to tune premium channels. One mcard can tune two shows at a time. Using the component connection to one of those hd tuners for a pc with a cablebox costs the same per month or more as the tivo because for a dual feed you’d need two boxes.
Ummm.. The article title may have been relevant about 7 years ago. Many people gave up cable a long time ago. Welcome to the future!
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/9user/im_noticing_a_trend_here_how_many_of_us_have/
hey i saw your comment in that or another reddit thread. that was amusing to read. so basically the content shown on tv is not dead, because people still want to watch things…but i think the medium or the portal is changing. infact everything is changing really. i mean i don’t pay for cable. everything i need i can get off the internet. i saw that a lot of the redditers were like me and mostly just need a couple of shows, or channels, but mostly sports and i agree. that swedish site adsomething.net is pretty decent. i just google everything and somehow i can always find a way to stream something that is happening live. i guess you just have to readjust to the quality or speed but you know what old tv is dead. no one cares anymore. we just want to get what we want on our terms. sucks for the industries that end up being affected.
Also, this is probably going to read as much snottier than I actually mean it, but are we sure those are still news networks?
I don’t have cable anymore, so my sampling of them is limited to hotel TVs, but they seem to be much more a sort of live reality TV these days. They’re great at drama generation and meme amplification, but when measured in terms of how much true, useful information gets into the heads of viewers, they have to be doing worse than ever. And I don’t know that they’re at the bottom yet.
Of course, as the Internet has shown, we have a bottomless appetite for raging drama and shiny new memes. But it’s not like that stuff is expensive to generate, so it’s not clear to me that the cable news networks have much competitive advantage besides habit and their position on the dial. If new, subscription-oriented technologies get rid of the “Channel +” button, that may be enough to doom CNN, et al, to irrelevancy.
+1
Together with the push for mobile TV… meaning more ways to mistreat the masses’ brains.
Turn the suckers [whichever] off and grab a good book. Take control of your own thinking… and push the beginning of Alzheimer’s far into the future!
I suspect that what you may be doing violates the EULA of the cable service contract – just because you are using the ‘internet’ connection to your router (vs the one connected to your cable box connected to your TV or TiVo) does not magically make the data streamed (video or otherwise) to you “to do what you will” with it.
I am not here to defend that or argue in favor of that, just suggesting you take a good luck at what agreement you have signed with your current service provider – this all may change pretty quickly, but better to be safe than sorry.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Study-Cabletelco-competition-brings-North-America-slowest-costliest-broadband/1255734941
Too funny. Are you serious?
some people only do things that are legal
some people believe ‘change’ worth believing in comes from inside the system… funny people
“I posit that the TV industry is about to face the same threat dealt the music and movie industries”
Perhaps, but that’s a long way off as the majority of people aren’t going to hack their way to downloading pirated versions of TV series episodes.
John;
Your posting nicely sums up what most of us in technology seem to understand implicitly: That content and distribution, while having been inextricably linked in days of yore due to cost and lack of infrastructure, will no longer be so linked as “point to point” distribution over what is currently known as “the Internet” continues to grow.
It is puzzling to me why television “networks” haven’t realized they are actually two business enmeshed together: content creation and content delivery. And if they HAVE realized (Hulu), why they haven’t acted more aggressively to move to alternate distribution and simply change the pricing model around the viewing space they sell: sell interstitial ad space on a “per view” basis for those who want “free” content, and remove interstitial ads for those willing to pay a subscription.
To be honest, I would much rather go to “reputable” content vendors, and pay a reasonable fee (ie. itunes) than take my chances with what could be coming from “pirate” sites. After all, if such sites have no qualms about blatantly stealing and redistributing content, its only a small step to getting involved with more nefarious activities like spyware/botnet code distribution ala limewire, etc.
I too relish the day when I can watch as much or as little content as I want, when I want, where I want, without having someone make that decision for me…
“It is puzzling to me why television “networks” haven’t realized they are actually two business enmeshed together…and why they haven’t acted more aggressively to move to alternate distribution and simply change the pricing model around the viewing space they sell”
Really? Since when are corporate structures with embedded business practices innovative? These are employee run hierarchies. Since when is change their forte?
All change happens when the stability of a W2’s paychecks are jeopardized, and even then there is no guarantee they will not just go running to the Supreme Court for assistance (RIAA vs Napster).
Breaking things, creating chaos, creating choice for the under-informed is the work of independent change agents. The internet gives them force to collectivize their objectives across time and place.
There’s no reason to have TV networks when someone with a few dollars/pounds/euro can put together a bit of talented media, stick it on YouTube for free and get more viewers than a primetime network show. Then someone with a bit more dosh phones up these YouTube posters and contracts for a regular stream of content and a web site to distribute the content in popular formats. Put ads on the site, put ads at the bottom of the video, when you get enough viewers, product placements in the media itself and voila! It’s not TV because the TV is unnecessary. It’s also not Trent Reznor or Radiohead putting something up and not caring how much they make. This is cold hard business built around identifying talent. Yes there is a tiny fraction of people posting to YouTube that can produce regular content of any worth, but that small fraction still ends up being a massive number given the volume of posts on YouTube. Also, the new production companies don’t need to fixate on their ability to spot talent or do market research to know what the audience will like. The viewers of YouTube will point it out to them with view counts. This already happens, but the noise of dying media streams drown it out of the conversation.
Last step is for someone to pull these “produced” content streams together like a newsreader and plop them in front of you in some glassy pretty interface so you feel like you’re a normal person and not a nerd when you’re watching it. They add some ads to their software and bob’s your uncle. Ads make the world go round.
P.S.: Downloading everything via the Torrent/Usenet model is a waste of time in this new media system. Energy prices are going up and people have less and less time, so leaving your computer running 24/7 to get you that rare episode of your favourite show will be more and more unfeasible. Also worth noting that hard drives won’t be able to keep up with 10-20 one hour HD programmes every week.
27 million businesses and 30,000 advertising firms in the United States trying to attract new customers & improve sales are quickly realizing a 19th century invention and its failings are being exposed by 21st century technolgy. The concept of advertising needs to evolve and if it does, the Internet can $ should remain free. Getting pennied (WS term) will ruin the internets potential. There’s a better way and it’s coming, keep your eyes open for Adovation!
i just want to point out its not just TV that needs to watch out but radio as well
like when 3G/4G and wiMax roll outs hit peak with wider and broader availability + cheap more competitive pricing and faster speeds ppl will start to use stuff like pandora and other applications rather then FM/HD/XM radio
however with regards to TV i dont think live TV will ever go away – sports events are still huge/phenomenal and believe or not ppl actually still watch the news shocking i know but its the truth like mentioned in the article theres still value in infotainment
but for the TV shows its anyones guess on who will make the first move….
will it be the producers/studios? that cave in first and unlock their content from airtime and go with a more modern distribution method on their own terms?
or will it be the broadcasters that get a clue and make steps to broaden their horizons and offer new distribution models for the content producers at very generous offers with most of the risk being taken on by the broadcasters?
right now as far as TV show content you have the following options:
-live TV ugly UI no platform to offer innovative applications, no personalization or role specific GUI for instance a kid friendly TV suite or like what is mentioned in the article
-DVR – still could really use some serious innovation mainly being able to stream this content to and from other TVs or devices connected on the network as well as scrub commercials
-streaming services like youtube/hulu/netflix/amazon/ect you can get those on the TV with a little help from $$$$$$ or resourcefulness and some determination
-downloads – itunes ect and mostly piracy
-oh and dont forget the consoles are starting to slowly morph into a hybrid media centers with their own content markets such as zune video market place on the XBOX and PSN for the PS3 and most of them offer streaming content from PCs and some limited access to services like netflix
like i use netflix and tversity to stream pirated content to my Xbox360 i seldom if ever buy any video content from itunes i still buy some music mainly because im too lazy sometimes to pirate label and get album artwork
for tv i live in a rural area in a somewhat mountainous region with no clean line of sight to a satellite for both dish and whatever the other company is with no broadband penetration so my isp uses iptv and compresses the hell out of it to push it to my house via fairly new dsl lines so obviously the quality is horrible in fact streaming content from hulu has better quality then the TV i get and hulu is free and im paying standard price for the TV too :(
I agree that pirating of TV is accelerating, but I’m a little unclear on how this is going to upset the network TV business model.
Music & movie piracy completely bypasses the business model. TV, on the other hand, is pirated after the initial broadcast, so that advertising revenue is safe (outside of the general issue of TV losing audience to the Net).
That leaves syndication, which I’m not sure how that is trending, given the explosion of original cable programming, and DVD sales, which is probably impacted most by piracy.
Interestingly, I think the success of DVD sales and its impact on consumer behavior (watching whole seasons in a short time), is likely fueling consumer desire for control over media as much as DVRs and internet on-demand (pirated, Hulu, et al.).
So while they’re architecting their own demise, I wonder if it might take longer to fatally cripple their business model, given that their network ad money is somewhat safe for now.
This is probably good news for internet TV startups, however, as it gives them that much more time to build a better product that the lame excuse for “digital tv” the cableco’s have cobbled together.
Hey John,
Great article.
I am about 98% done on finalizing a new format that delivers the future your talking about.
On-Demand is the future I agree. There has been always a gap of technology to deliver it.
We see it as the need for an electronic format with the authoring and distribution power of optical disc. Something that can float through the internet whether it be WiFi, HTTP or Bittorrent delivery. This has been created and will deploy fully in November 2009 :)
I’d love to hear more about your project if you’re interested. Write me at olzj@msn.com
Would also love to hear more about your project
your weblink appears to be dead
email me pls trixjo – at – gmail
ty
Sorry about the link error due to an appendage of the intended link to the buffered link.
Here is the link: http://www.str3em.com/About:_Contents
I will also forward direct mails as per your requests.
Thanks
-Will
There is a white paper I am currently authoring in support for our technology titled: “Turning Pirates Into Partners”.
The basics is this:
If you look at the number of seeders of the most popular BT trackers, you will find a maximum of 50K users on the highest distributed TV shows.
What if content owners befriended a medium of 50K users, gave them a membership KodeKey account for free in exchange for holding up a positive quota of double (2:1) upload ratio on the content owner’s own tracker network.
With a solid core of 50K servers to deliver content, owners can sell subscription access to TV shows available through this network the same moment it is aired, or even in batch per week of broadcast.
As John explains, this is the current practice anyways, shows are available within 10 minutes of an east coast broadcast. Why not capitalize on this trend and monetize it?
The technology exists to deliver this model as explained earlier.
I forgot to mention that with the above model, bandwidth costs are 0%.
Pure profit.
The cable companies are very well aware of the risk of inaction to the threat highlighted in this post. There defense is called TV Everywhere. It is very ambitious considering the MSO’s and TV Networks and web publishers all need to work together! But if successful, it will be a win-win-win. See http://TVNewsStream.com for lots more info on this.
TV everywhere is not about providing value to consumers but about perpetuating the current business of high-priced bundled content. if they cared/listened to consumers, they’d have unbundled content long ago – but they haven’t and won’t.
not all of us steal for a living.
Call me ‘traditional’.
Steal for a living?
Stealing is criminal and this would be a civil case. You seem to be missing that simple fact despite making a comment (a tacit claim to authority) that shows your ignorance.
I missed the line where it was indicated income was being generated on the part of the author. Please cite that line.
no one is stealing when they break copyright.
nothing is stolen.
This is ultimately all about value as perceived by the consumer.
The vast majority of people are pretty fair and don’t mind paying a fair price for a product/service that delivers a decent level of value for money.
Although I don’t condone “piracy”, I can understand why people try to circumvent paying stupid prices for lossy MP3 downloads. Or seek out ripped versions of over-bloated $350 ‘office suites’.
Similarly, I can completely understand why the user community will go to great lengths to find commercial-free television programming. It’s ridiculous that some “one hour” program episodes can have as little as 23-minutes of actual program content. Where’s the fun in viewing that?
Get the price-point right, or get the advertising/program content balance right, and fewer people will try to circumvent the “system”. But the broadcasters, record companies and software industry doesn’t get that.
Well, some do.
The article was about “on-demand” media and I, for one, love Netflix. I can start streaming films via my Bluray player immediately any time I want. The picture quality is “good” enough that I don’t notice anything “bad” enough to distract my viewing pleasure (if that makes sense). The price point is right too considering that streaming is included in my monthly “hard” rental subscription.
Some of the Internet radio stations are getting it right too. Before the demise of the “original” station, Radio Colorado had very high audio quality. The Radio Paradise 128k Orban AAC stream also sounds very good. The ’subscription’ donations I’ve paid for these two stations is well worth the money.
So, it can be done. Good, or even excellent quality programming at a sensible price point. The broadcasting and music giants just have to wake up and get it right.
I think it is only a matter of time when someone will have an idea on how to stream pirated stuff to the tv like napster first did with music..
I’m sure it will be harder to adopt, but with the amount of ps3’s and nintendo wii’s out there, I would think there would be a hack to make these devices do it for your somehow.
Just my thoughts.
During my old Quake death match days, there was talk floating around about how to make a “camo” texture for your in-game avatar, to make you invisible (most likely as a “cheat”). One of the server owners made a comment along the lines of “Oh great. I can just see everyone running around the server complaining to me that they can’t find anyone to play with”.
I spoke with another tech writer the other day who remarked that everyone just rehashes other people’s content and they seemed OK with that. My first thought was, if everyone does that, who will write the original content that they rehash? Without original content that whole system breaks down the same way our economy broke down when too much of it was based on remixing money instead of creating products.
I can just see people a decade from now complaining about the lack of truly great artistic content except for a handful of rich artists who can afford to do it just for fun. The artists will still be there, they’ll just be too busy working at your local restaurant or post office to pay the bills since they can’t make money of their music anymore. For all the people with jobs that are about to rattle off the standard arguments (we all know what they are) about why it’s OK to take away an artist’s right to charge for their content by duplicating bits, let me know how you feel when your boss says he isn’t paying you because you’ve already done the work and heck it’s not really stealing, it was just your time.
The only solution will be to move to a subscription model that and then have some kind percentage that is paid to the artist based on their popularity amongst subscribers. But anyone who thinks placing that kind of power in the hands of the cable and telecom companies is a good idea is in for a big surprise. Just imagine the Apple App Store problems times a million.
The subscription-based model can go wrong too (despite what I said in my earlier post about paying for Internet radio).
The problem of advertising still remains. I have a Sprint “everything” account on my ‘phone — live TV, radio, Internet, etc. It was fine until about 6 months after I signed up. Then Sprint started splattering banner adverts everywhere. Not just on in the content, but actually on my menu bars and navigation buttons!
I hate it and can’t turn it off. Sprint has ignored my protests, so I shall respond in kind and ignore them at contract renewal time.
Looking at your list of shows, the overwhelmng majority are broadcast programs, not cable. If you want to watch those shows without a cable subscription, I’ll save you some time messing with this cumbersome solution.
If you’re going to that much trouble to watch shows “immediately after they air” rather than “as they air,” it’s called an antenna. You might look into it.
http://www.amazon.com/Antennas-Direct-DB4-Directional-Antenna/dp/B000EHYG9K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1255820599&sr=8-1
This is all predicated on an economic model for broadcasting funding which imposes on every viewer an environment of annoying drivel that is only ever of any use when I need the product.
Imagine if there was somehow a country where this model was been replaced by one where the economic cost was paid equally by all consumers, without the added costs of producing commercials, and all funds raised went to making programs.
Jeez it would be the end of the world as we know it – it would never work – it would be socialism and death and the holocaust – it’d be the end of freedom – it’d be like the …
BBC
(Yes there really are no commercials in our broadcast television)
Great read John,
The str3em solution looks intriguing as well.
Ultimately we think that no matter what the tech behind distribution, if the economics are not shared with the consumer, piracy will continue to be an issue- and next generation solutions will continue to outpace incumbents legacy models.
We have developed a new business model for local broadcast television (and newsprint,) to move into the era of always available, from any screen, distribution…while being agnostic to the tech running it….be it boxtop or other.
It does not reward these players as before, but it allows them a seat at the new table.
Without Users/Viewers/Customers, sitting at an equal place setting, the content distribution marketplace, will not evolve to a place of equilibrium, needing subsidies and advertising to survive.
It’s simple. Change is inevitable.
Most content exsists on a server somewhere.
I shouldn’t have to wait for that content to stream over cable or just so I can record it onto my TiVo.
It’s inevitable that all video content will be available to stream to most any Internet-enabled device, be it a computer, tv, or iPhone and I will be able to view that content either with ads for free or without ads for a fee.
That’s what people want. And the best way to make money is to give them what they want.
Love this discussion…lets conduct some thought experiments though….
1. Suppose you, your wife and your kids sit down to a nice quiet evening of pirated icarly or whatever the popular family show is nowadays. Two minutes in…what you see on the screen is not icarly but porn, or a profanity laden voice-over, or a worse yet, a snuff film. Mon dieu, what a predicament
2. After you’ve downloaded a pirated version of game 7 of the world series, or superbowl, or nba championships, or world cup final, or whatever, have a party and see how many of your invited guests show up
I think there are two conclusions you can take-away from these thought experiments. The first is, there is more to content distribution than just the distribution. One must also consider quality and standards. The second is, not all the stuff you get online is stuff that drives the most audiences. Most of the stuff online is syndicated, previously seen inventory that is less valuable. Not exactly the stuff people are willing to pay for anyway.
i believe you’re missing the point… most folks, even the ones here don’t appear to mind paying for content. what they hate being forced to (a) watch content when broadcasters want to air it and (b) don’t want to pay “bundled” fees for content they’re not interested in… how much advertising they’re willing to stomach is another conversation all together.
Hard Times for old-fashioned tv, everybody wants to watch on-demand, no-one wants to watch ads.
I saw an article yesterday about Fox moving Fringe to an already crowded Thursday line-up. I laughed at it. Im so far removed from having to chose between what shows to watch. I too have Sabnzbd set up to get me all the shows I want to watch – regardless of air date and time. I spend money on storage for this content, and for newsgroups to deliver the content. I spend probably as much or more a year than I would on cable, but Im paying for the experience and convenience. A better option is available, and painless if you know how to do it. It just happens to be illegal.
Since iTunes and the Amazon music store, I buy > 90% of my music. That’s mostly because EVERYTHING I want to download exists in these two places. There is no equivalent for video content. When there is, I will gladly be a paying customer. I refuse to watch the same stupid ad 30 times on hulu and I refuse to pay 100 channels I dont want. Im a sentient consumer, and I hope at some point content creators will recognize my needs and provide a solution at reasonable cost and convenience to me.
Completely agree. I suspect broadband will increase costs as a result.