[opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld
- From: Craig Birkmaier <brewmastercraig@xxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2016 10:18:05 -0500
On Jan 28, 2016, at 8:30 PM, Manfredi, Albert E <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
Are you so nostalgic that you can't conceive of TV that only delivers
anything "live" when it's necessary to do so? Do you really think that
anything would "collapse" if distribution infrastructures quit wasting the
vast majority of their capacity on signals practically no one is watching?
Nostalgia has nothing to do with my position. My position is that live linear
will continue to attract a viable audience for the content owners and
advertisers.
The broadcast networks are still relevant - despite a huge decline in audience
they still create the largest pool of what you consider to be high quality
content.
And you keep beating the drum about channels that practically no one is
watching. I agree.
The 500 channel universe was a transitional solution based on the limitations
of legacy technology. There will be a dramatic reduction in these "rerun"
channels. But that does not mean that every live linear network will disappear.
Is that a good thing for consumers, Craig?
Obviously monopolies and oligopolies are not good for consumers Bert.
But we all live with the reality that they exist, not to mention the higher
prices that we pay for "competitive industries" that gain advantage from crony
capitalism.
Unless you buy an all electric, diesel, or propane powered vehicle you are
forced to buy ethanol to operate a car or truck.
We tolerate it, just as we tolerate the content and distribution oligopolies.
And if not, why would consumers promote this model with their wallets, given
that alternatives exist, and who is paying you to insist this must go on?
We are paying them, Bert.
You can take the high ground on this issue, as you refuse to pay, and tolerate
the limitations that you accept with respect to program access, broadband
speed, and video quality.
How would the "sky fall" if this practice stops? International travel is
thriving Craig, no thanks to ocean liners. TV content distribution thrives
too, without becoming nostalgic about the old way.
The TV industry is thriving BECAUSE they operate a defensible monopoly. This is
not going to change because of the Internet.
Depends what you mean by "walled in."
Earth to Bert: any content you must pay for is walled in.
In the new paradigm, IP-based MVPDs (OTT sites) *would* be idiots, if they
constrained themselves to operating only over a specific infrastructure, the
old way. And why should they? To play nice with the competition? Come now.
Walled up mean this to me. Walled up does not mean that some content would
only be available for pay. The Internet has supported pay sites for decades.
Exactly. And a growing amount of popular content is only available for pay.
How paid bits are delivered is just a question of infrastructure and business
models. The underlying technology keeps evolving. At best, we are moving to a
new business model where we have fewer channels and perhaps a bit of choice of
what is in a bundle.
Ocean liners are VERY POPULAR these days
Predictable response. Yes, steaming around in circles, in the Caribbean and
the Aegean. These are different ships, different business models, having
nothing to do with the legacy ocean liner role.
There is still a thriving transatlantic cruise business Bert. I encouraged you
to search for this yesterday. Legacies evolve, as will the legacy bundles.
The longer term view is certainly to use satellite for something it's
uniquely good at. Like I said, rural broadband seems one natural role.
Satellites are uniquely good at delivering live linear content to areas where
the economic incentive to build a hybrid fiber/coax or FIOS infrastructure does
not justify the investment. Satellite bandwidth is far too limited to compete
in the broadband business - it is at best a niche solution for a limited number
of users. Constellations of low earth orbit satellites or even balloons can do
a better job of enabling rural broadband that geostationary satellites.
Which does not mean that the industry had to follow this path. The telephone
companies seem to have survived more than a century, selling only connection
service and neutral pipes.
Survived my ass. THEY THRIVED ON A GOVERNMENT MANDATED MONOPOLY. This monopoly
was replaced by an oligopoly, that is now reliant on continued government
support to repurpose spectrum for a wireless oligopoly.
At least this time they are selling the recovered spectrum; unfortunately WE
are paying for it; it's just indirect taxation
So why, if you really believe what you wrote above, are millions
of people NOT signing up for Sling TV?
First, you have no idea how well they're doing. Second, momentum and basic
laziness. Millions are bailing out of the old school model you so cherish,
Craig, and guess what, they're going SOMEWHERE. You need to get used to it.
Not to Sling TV. And the decline in MVPD subscriptions has largely stabilized.
Let me know when it declines 10% a year, like the market for PCs.
Are you joking? Email, for one, Archie, Gopher, any number of documents and
software from FTP sites, and by 1993-1994, the WWW!
I already noted e-mail and documents. And sorry, but the WWW was just a
science project in 93-94.
Craig was seriously snoozing. In those days, I deliberately stayed away from
schemes like AOL. Why spoil a good thing? And the only reason I could was
because competition existed for ISP service.
I too avoided AOL, despite the fact that I had great respect for Steve Case,
and the opportunity to discuss the future with him. I was privileged to have
been given an Apple Mail account in 1992 to support my work on the DTV
standard. I moved to EarthLink later. I also saw the early version of Mosaic in
1993 at NIST.
Technically, with Mosaic, the web did start in 1993, but it took a number of
years to evolve from science project to a consumer phenomenon. And as soon as
broadband came to Gainesville I was at the front of the line.
You can thank Tim Berners-Lee, Marc Andreessen, and Vincent Cerf,
No, Craig. You simply don't get it. The Internet was not invented "to be
neutral." In fact, its protocols were supporting, and continue to serve,
non-neutral networks. The Internet was originally used to tie together
research sites, military sites, and the like. Not available to the public at
all. The NIPRNET and the SIPRNET are hardly "neutral." When commerce was
allowed to use the Internet, enterprise networks sprang up, also hardly
neutral. The public cannot gain access to these non-neutral networks, and
many times, users of the non-neutral IP networks cannot gain access to public
Internet sites!
Give it up. The Internet is a network of networks, some public, some private.
The thing that makes this work is that they are all using the same base layer
protocols and they are all interconnected. And most private networks are behind
firewalls that connect to the public Internet.
But you are wrong about the development of Internet culture, and the role that
key individuals played in keeping it neutral.
Regards
Craig
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- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Craig Birkmaier
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Manfredi, Albert E
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Craig Birkmaier
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Manfredi, Albert E
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Craig Birkmaier
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Manfredi, Albert E
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Craig Birkmaier
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Manfredi, Albert E
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld - Craig Birkmaier
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Manfredi, Albert E
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Craig Birkmaier
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Manfredi, Albert E
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Craig Birkmaier
- » [opendtv] Re: Congress to cable customers: Stop your whining | InfoWorld- Manfredi, Albert E