[opendtv] Re: Analysis: Should Apple Buy Hollywood?

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:16:54 -0500

At 4:46 PM -0600 2/20/12, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
You claimed that the congloms are preventing search engines from finding any content except for their own. And I showed you that this is false.
NO. I made a simple statement about the way the congloms restrict access to and ignore the world outside of their walled gardens. I was talking about legacy TV, delivered via OTA broadcast and MVPDs including cable and DBS. Hardly anyone uses the digital broadcast program guides because they are so limited; and the cable/DBS guides ONLY list content available through their walled garden.
THIS is exactly what you seem so upset about with Apple, Google, et al. To be specific, the notion that they ONLY promote what is in THEIR walled gardens, or in the case of Google, that they might disavantage some search results versus paid search results.
Last I checked, the congloms can only control searches inside their web portals - Hulu, the broadcast web portals, Netflix etc. Nobody is preventing ANYBODY from searching the Internet for content that I am aware of.
Now you change your story. Now you're limiting your assertion to a walled garden's EPG? Any logical person would blame the walled garden model, not the congloms.
Sorry Bert, but it is the congloms that are blocking certain devices from accessing their content, not the devices or the search engine in them.
I just don't understand why you give the congloms a pass for running walled gardens, but constantly trash Apple for giving consumers limited access to content they license from the congloms. Walmart and Target operate exactly the same kind of walled garden - its called a store.
And even then, you'd still be wrong. If you use the MVPD for broadband Internet access, that MVPD is not preventing your search engine from working. 

Never said it did.
If ISPs, including MVPD broadband, tried to play games like that, there would be a huge backlash. You can EASILY find TV content online, using any search engine you care to use, even if you get to the Internet via the MVPD.
Exactly. But you trash Google TV because they support the few services that they are allowed to access like Hulu Plus and Netflix; yet you have no problem with the congloms blocking access to Google TV... 

as long as they don't block access to your PCTV.
Google TV uses the Chrome search engine and it searches the Internet in exactly the same way as your PCTV.
It's all up to you. If you put yourself at the mercy of MVPDs, you pay the price.
The issue is choice and monopoly behavior Bert. If I want many popular TV shows, the ONLY way I can get them is to subscribe to an MVPD. Yes I can see some of these programs - eventually - via packaged media, the iTunes and Amazon stores, and subscription Internet streaming services like Hulu Plus and Netflix. If I want it free (i.e. advertiser supported) I may eventually get to see it via one of the conglom portals.
The stuff you keep talking about from outside the US is another story entirely. These portals - many of which offer content broadcast in other countries - are the only way for many of these companies to access the U.S. market. Before Internet streaming, you almost never had access to this content. 

Regards
Craig


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