[opendtv] Re: Cablevision to offer HBO Now streaming service - MarketWatch

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2015 09:55:00 -0400

> On Mar 30, 2015, at 8:55 PM, Manfredi, Albert E 
> <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> Troubling perhaps, but that's why I think HBO Go and HBO Now are different. 
> HBO Go is TVE, and TVE is still a service that overlays old walled garden 
> limitations onto IP. So as an MVPD, I could argue that I'm not bound by net 
> neutrality for TVE. It's just a different protocol to reach my walled-in 
> content, and that content belongs to my set of bundles and tiers. The 
> middleman has all the control.

Of course they are different - they are premium services that are not part of 
the extended basic bundle, and Time Warner has no reason to pull HBO as there 
are no retrans consent/subscriber fee issues. That is, they negotiate contracts 
with the MVPDs, and now OTT middlemen. I am not aware of HBO content ever being 
pulled because of contract disputes.
> 
> The content owner has a valid point. This problem is mostly manufactured by 
> the hardware makers, Craig. If they don't use existing standards that the 
> content owner already implements, even when they easily could, they are 
> asking for trouble. The device manufacturers are essentially demanding that 
> content owners spend their own money, to make content available in yet 
> another format, to suit the device maker's whims. The device makers should 
> pay, if they take this risky path.

Can you provide any examples? To the best of my knowledge all of these devices 
support the commonly used compression and streaming formats now. The Flash 
issue is now ancient history.
> 
> It's instead more straightforward to see that when a middleman is a natural 
> monopoly, or close to it, and owns a business with a conflicting business 
> model (e.g. MVPD with TVE which conflicts with unwalled IP sources of TV 
> content), that is problems begging to happen.

What has this got to do with content owners blocking specific hardware?

Regards
Craig
 
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:

- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at 
FreeLists.org 

- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word 
unsubscribe in the subject line.

Other related posts:

  1. Home
  2. opendtv
  3. Archive
  4. 03-2015