http://money.cnn.com/2005/11/08/news/fortune500/nbc_cbs.reut/?cnn=yes
CSI, Lost, desperate housewives, commercial free when YOU want to watch them…
The future of television…
Starting at a buck a pop.
Worth it to me to download - say - mythbusters - commercial free, and then backed up on DVD.
Same as or cheaper than buying the DVD series set - Lost can be gotten for 40 bucks at Best Buy, at a buck an episode that would be 32.00
So yeah, bring it on - I’m looking forward to the downloads, and eventual subscription base for on demand television.
Isn’t this essentially what HBO is becoming? with their series, as well as movies commercial free and via TIVO on demand?
kinda - but TIVO is going lockstep with DRM - so if they don’t want you to copy the show, or let you keep the show on TIVO for over a week - they can already smack you down.
The MPAA and Hollywood are pretty terrified of television on demand like this - It’s going to absolutely destroy syndication.
yeah it probably would, but people as a group (lemmings…) tend to stick with what they are used to.
There are other versions of like-TIVO that are more like what you want, if their user interfaces were a little better, I think. I saw a review in the Wash’ Post a few weeks ago about TIVO-clones that use a computer to store the stuff. With these big hard-drives today, it is pretty practical, don’t you think? If it were easy, I mean?
MythTV.org is the better well known one. - and yes, it’s a great alternative for cable/broadcast -
satellite tv - not so much since directtv and dish don’t release an interface to change the channel to record for open souce -they keep it proprietary so they can collect their money from you.
hmm…I have a really old DirecTV receiver, and it has a serial connection that at the time we bought it they said was for “future uses”. I wonder if there is any signal there?
Probably not -
You’d have to get a new card for it, and DirectTV is still pissed about the people that had card readers cracking their stuff. They really have locked it down to the point where even if you got something off the serial connection, you’d need the codec to decrypt it.
sadly, I am still using it. I don’t think they like it much, but unless they give me another one, I’m keeping the old one. You’re right though, they go through a lot of work to keep people from hacking those cards. Personally, I love Directv. They have a reasonable setup, their prices are cheaper than the comcasts, they never seem to go out on me, and their payment system is easy to use and can be automatic so I don’t pay late. I just wish my receiver would keep the local channels information in memory when I go to the other channels. I know that is an issue with my old receiver, though.
I ditched direct tv when they changed their packages and charged me more for the same.
I had the discovery package that included the military channel - which they ssplit out and put into a higher tier, then charged me more to get it.
Called em and they were like “It’s only five bucks” and I said “Screw you” and they said - “We’ll give you five bucks a month off for three months” I said “Screw you and the horse you rode in on”.
then they had the audacity to say “We’ll let you keep the equiptment until you come back” and I said - “Your equiptment? I paid 100 bucks for MY equiptment, and you wouldn’t get crap back until you paid me back my money.”
We went back and forth on that for a bit, and then it was over.
I hope you don’t mind me butting in, but I really like this idea of on demand tv. I don’t have tivo (sadly) and being able to download what I want to watch, when I want to watch with no commericials is a great idea.
Don’t mind anyone butting in - Apple is offering on-demand at 1.99 a pop right now - the industry will shift and you’ll see more of it soon.
The article read said NBC was offering one program vis DirectTV and it would be commercial-free.
CBS, via Comcast is offering more shows, but according to the article, “Comcast’s service will be available starting in January to customers in markets with a CBS owned-and-operated television station, which includes the nation’s seven largest media markets. The episodes will be available as early as midnight following a broadcast and will include commercials.”
there’s been a few articles on it - Direct tv and comcast are attempting to lock in the drm’d shows - Apple is posting them with their own DRM - but shortly we’ll see this explode ala netflix.
It’s kind of hard to retain a lock on content when you can get a full season from netflix for literally less than 5 bucks.
This will really fly when networks can maintain production and distribution costs from direct downloads instead of relying on advertising dollars. Maybe.
I think that the networks won’t be around much longer in their present form.
The internet is going to crush them. Releasing seasons of popular shows on DVD’s was great for a cash boost - but deadly for syndication.
I see more people do like I do - Wait to get the season box set - commercial free - delivered to my house on MY demand.
Like netflix - I’m in the middle of watching season one of Hogan’s heroes. I get to watch them in order, commercial free at my pace - Why should I tune in at 11 at night to catch an edited version with 6 minutes of the show missing for commercials?
It’s a small step from DVD series to Download series - and it’s coming - and as I mentioned earlier, this is terrifying the whole industry because like CD’s and RIAA - the hand writing is on the wall,people are already using torrent to get their tv shows rather than tune in.
Big big changes headed their way.
If that becomes the case, the networks will likely have to operate more like movie studios - producing their programming for general release/download, then packaging for the collector market . . .