[opendtv] Re: Here’s Comcast’s Version of Apple TV
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 10:57:51 -0400
On Jun 15, 2013, at 7:22 PM, Albert Manfredi <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> Craig Birkmaier wrote:
>
>> So who should be in control Bert?
>
> Anyone who doesn't have a vested interest in walling up the Internet, with a
> conflict of interest that would lead them to create site-specific hardware or
> hardware that deliberately filters out the very vast majority of the Internet.
So anyone OTHER than the oligopolies that are walling up the Internet.
So once again I'll ask: Who is going to bust this anti-competitive trust?
> These OTT sites would make up the new content aggregators, making that role
> much less monopolistic that it has been until now. That's how you bring
> sanity back.
I'm not sure how they can make a difference if they cannot offer a price
advantage.
The one area where things could change dramatically is making everything that
is now delivered in "programmed time slots" available on demand. This works for
the vast majority of programming on TV today, EXCEPT for the live programming
that is keeping the bundles alive.
> Remember back in the 1990s, when people were asking why should broadcasters
> want HDTV? As if they had a choice? It's a bit like asking why horse stable
> keepers should want the automobile. The answer is always the same. Either you
> reinvent your business to continue to be relevant, or you go out of business.
> The MVPDs have to sink or swim. It's not like the cablecos have no role to
> play in the future. Especially when Verizon has thrown in the towel,
> essentially, saying that they have no plans to install FiOS in more than 20
> percent of locations? Something like that.
Truth is that HDTV has not contributed a dime to the bottom lines of
broadcasters; nor has it helped bring back the audience they continue to lose.
The dynamics of the business are unchanged with respect to the DTV transition -
too bad because broadcasters COULD have used their spectrum to compete with the
MVPDs. But that was not the plan; the plan was to milk the MVPDs and the
bundling model to create a second revenue stream that flows to the bottom line.
As for throwing in the towel, clearly the real opportunity for the telcos is
broadband. The real question is whether they light up all the dark fiber they
already own, or move to wireless broadband instead.
> Here's the irony. Back when digital TV was embryonic, pundits were making the
> most absurd and inane comments about "what DTV is." Either out of an urge to
> generate hype, or just plain ignorance, they confused the "digital" of
> one-way broadcast DTV with the "digital" of the then new(ish) Internet of the
> day.
When DTV was embryonic nobody knew about the Internet. AOL was just beginning
to tell people "you have mail."
Some people were doing e-mail; the browser had not been invented - I saw the
first prototypes in 1995 about the time the DTV standard was finalized. And the
TV industry pundits thought that the sheer size of HDTV data, and the
associated processing requirements would protect them for at least a decade or
two.
They had no clue that the Internet as we now know it was even possible.
> Now that TV is becoming/has become available on the actual Internet, suddenly
> these same pundits and trade scribes can't connect the real dots anymore.
> They much preferred waxing eloquent about their imaginary fabrications, back
> then, than they do making sense of the reality around them today.
The reality around them today is that the conglomerates have kept the Internet
at bay, and nobody has a clue how to change this.
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:
