[opendtv] Re: The Boldest Dumb Idea I've Ever Seen
- From: John Willkie <johnwillkie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 29 Jun 2006 07:31:36 +0000 (GMT+00:00)
What is that analgous to?
If I remember correctly, in 1956, a portable radio (with battery) was the size
of a small picnic basket. The sound was considered tinny.
When I got my first portble radio in 1964 (Radio Shack, shopper's world, Natick
MA), the 9 volt battery lasted about six hours and the radio was very
tinny-sounding. But, it worked in bed, where I wasn't supposed to be listening
to the radio when I should have been sleeping. I used it for about five years,
until the tape fixes fell off about 1969. However, I used it never inside,
after I got my Hallicrafters S-120 (which is still stored up in the rafters 30
some years later.)
Portable radios didn't become useful until the late 1970's, with the advent of
the Sony Walkman and other fm/am/tape/cd playback devices that came along
later. No crappy speakers: headphones. I once sat down and figured that I've
spent more than $2000 for such devices. As an ardent bicyclist, I've always
been interested in handheld media so that I could listen to NPR, news and music
on the radio while riding.
I've also owned three portable hand-held TVs. But, they didn't make me pay by
the minute to watch tv, and they let me watch all available forms of wireless
TV. I found that they were useful only for spot checks of the signal my LPTV
station, and only for a few seconds.
To think that people will for any length of time spend $$ per minute to watch
walled-in content that is not unique, that is only a subset of the content
available by satellite (when will we have hand-held DirecTV receivers), on a
small screen that won't work well as a feeder device to larger displays, and at
A TIME and PLACE(s) that one should not be watching TV, and indeed, probably
left home TO GET AWAY FROM a TV set, is to be smoking the good stuff.
The real purpose here is to try to reverse the decline in ARPU (average revenue
per user) of cellular companies. I believe it won't even help that, and it
will lead to greater churn of customers as they realize the stupidity of their
purchase of the new phone.
The first adopter of MediaFLO is Verizon. Have you seen the new flight of
national spots for Verizon? They are pimping a new -- from them -- service that
gives you turn-by-turn directions on your cell phone. Just a few years back,
Verizon was telling the FCC that it would never be economical to offer GPS in
cell phones. So, they have either bitten the bullet and adopted the Nextel
model of GPS-enabled cell phones, or they are promoting a technology that
highlights the fact that they can (and do) track the minute by minute position
of their customers, down to which side of the street they're walking upon.
The spot even features a guy who is so dumb that he asks a clerk in a hardware
store for such a phone, and she ridicules him. It's been a long time since I
saw a spot that was so contempuous of it's customers and prospects, but the
Sprint spot with the guy who gets into a pretzel to watch TV on his cell phone
gets an honorable mention.
Just this week, I talked to a fellow at a venture-backed wireless startup (I
sure hope he doesn't read this list). He thought that it was a good thing that
content producers, through content aggregators, were willing to license
short-form small screen repackaged versions of big-screen content. Actually,
they'll license used content to just about any fool that distributes it
securely and can't rebroadcast it.
He even told me that their technology was complementary to and not competitive
with MediaFLO, then explained that their technology helps the signal work even
when a car goes behind a mountain, and the content is optimized for small
screen. These are things that MediaFLO appears to do quite well, thank you,
with the base and enhanced layers. I suspect that Qualcomm will eventually be
suing this firm for patent infringement on several grounds.
I was once enamored of the EVR concept, until my late father explained how
stupid it was to pay $1500 for the hardware and $75 per hour to record TV shows
on film, regardless of the fantastic technology. Less than a decade later, all
on my own, when I first saw the concept, I figured out that Polaroid's Instant
Movies (let's see, take the movie at Disneyland, and then whip out the screen
and projector to watch the results inside the park) was a fundamentally stupid
idea, despite the technology. Now, I'm saying that the mobile phone
technology's emperor is wearing no clothes in it's walled TV venture. With
those three exceptions, I've been in favor of virtually all new forms of
entertainment and communications in my lifetime.
In 1952, most people could foresee that they would never pay $0.10 per minute
or $5.00 per month to watch on a small color screen, with tinny sound, three
minute versions of soap operas, national newscasts and sports highlights.
"What's the killer app?"
John Willkie
________
Cliff Benham wrote:
Richard Hollandsworth wrote:
>I would never watch a video on a tinny/tiny screen,
>
and in 1952, I bet no one thought anybody would listen to a tinny sounding
portable radio the size of a pack ofcigarettes.
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