Internet Television
Man, how awesome would this be? You fire up the Mac (you do have a Mac, don’t you?) and load up the newest super cool video content aggregation app like Boxee and you just get all this content from everywhere for FREE (as in beer) and now you can just call up the cable company and tell them to shove their $50 a month up their smelly little ass. You can even use your iPhone to control this new miracle app. Bonus!
That would be so awesome. But it’s not going to happen any time soon.
Why, you ask? Boxee is already doing great, on the verge of breaking huge ground, and seems to have Hulu by the balls (resistance is futile, Hulu). Developers everywhere are building tools to extend this functionality. You can even get an eyeTv to suck the content from the wire to your hard drive to your TV. Rad. Over the air HD is just a couple months away. Sweet!
Thing is, content is still really important and the quality of that content (as in quality of video) is more important than ever. Want proof? Stand outside Best Buy for an hour and count how many HDTVs walk out the door. You’re going to need your fingers and your toes for this one.
My house, dare I say, is a fairly average one, other than the fact that we watch a little less TV than most folks and I’ve got a Mac Mini hooked up to the TV (both of which make me more likely to cut the Cable TV cord). I’ve got a nice HDTV and a kid, so a lot of the time it’s tuned to Nickelodean (in HD, for the record). When the girl makes it to bed, if the TV stays on, it gets tuned to the Discovery channel, Travel, Food Network and some nights the major networks for a dose of House, Simpson’s or that craptastic Gray’s Anatomy Steph likes so much. On the weekends I like watching sports and in the Fall I watch a lot of college football.
So, skimming over that list, there’s pretty much nothing that I can get on the internet for free that doesn’t (unfortunately) look like crap on my TV, and as little TV as I watch, I’m not up for crap. In fact, I hardly watch any SD content and get agrivated when I have to. After all, I didn’t buy a fancy-pants TV to watch Spongebob Pixelpants.
Could the networks (at least the ones who do offer up online content) offer it in HD? Sure, theoretically, but that’s a LOT of pipe and if we’re ever going to get to a point where all the majors are feeding HD to all the households we’re going to need more tubes.
At the end of the day though, I find myself saying ‘if only they would give it to me for free then I wouldn’t have to pay for it.’ Therein lies the problem: money. It’s still much, much more profitable for content owners, aka networks, to support and even promote the traditional advertising model of Cable Television, and by the way, the Cable companies are pretty damn invested in this model as well. If you keep reading down in the comments, I predict Jason will tell me I’m wrong and that the online delivery makes them money too, but I am telling you now that he is is wrong (the benefit of writing on one’s own blog) and that the Cable delivery model makes waaaaaaaay more money. Sure they are making concessions (see Hulu) because they know that some people are going to watch online no matter what, and they can still make some money on those folks, but the Cable delivery model is way too profitable and the kicker is the shift would have to come from the content and delivery folks, not the starving hipsters who want free content.
What it comes down to is this: the content owners and delivery networks hold the keys to the kingdom, and it’s a lucrative deal, and no amount of bandwidth or demand or fancy tech is going to cause them to hand either bit over for free.
So keep dreaming, I know I will. And enjoy seeing four beige pixels where John Stewart’s face should be; he’s still funny, right? But if you want to get the content of your choice, at the click of the remote, delivered in the quality you’ve become so accustomed to (and invested in with your fancy gadgets) then don’t let your checkbook stray too far. The cable company isn’t going anywhere for years to come.
Update: Did some fiddling with Boxee and Rowmote on Saturday and my feelings haven’t really changed. The content is thin. The quality is poor. The delivery is hit and miss. And I still believe that’s exactly how the folks in charge want things to stay.
It’s naive to say that internet video is dead. It’s just starting. We are only now seeing true business models come to be. Bandwidth is getting cheaper, along with the hardware to view/store it on.
The key isn’t that it has to be free, but that it should be a fair price. I’m not watching the Bass Fishing channel nor the one that the 700 club comes on. What will come is where you pay for the show itself as a subscription. Say $20 for a season, maybe $30. I don’t know about you, but I don’t watch more than say 4 shows really, and as a result, I would come out with a much better deal. At that price they would be able to pay for their network costs.
Advertising is yet another way. Still, this isn’t FREE. This is paid content to be sure. We’ll see more of this model as well, as it has worked since TV started. It isn’t going anywhere any time soon, as most people are too lazy to hit the fast forward button. Alternately, the Ads on Hulu, I think are the way to go. Targeted ads, where the content provider is able to sell the ad time for a higher price per view, but is able to target their audience MUCH better (and even make it useful to the consumer). Google and others have this base to start with. They know who we are. They know what we like. That is valuable information.
Right now, the content providers are completely in bed with cable companies, but that is mostly because they have the keys to the kingdom. The content providers are KEENLY interested in getting their content into the hands of consumers in other ways. For isntance, just yesterday I found that I can watch many NBC shows on my iPhone. More and more of them have the shows streaming. Sure, you can’t get most of them in 1080p online yet (through legitimate channels), but that will change as the demand grows.
People said that Internet Radio was dead (honestly, I was one of them), but I am now living my dream of having an almost unlimited source of music that I carry around in my pocket (without storing a SINGLE song). These are powerful market forces at work here. Sure, you won’t be one of those that is on the forefront of the move from cable, but I will be once OTADTV becomes a reality. I’m not alone. You lament that Nickelodeon (that is how it is spelled btw.
) isn’t available, but I’m old enough to remember the old “I want my MTV” ads and how well they worked.
Well, I want my DTV. (Money for nothing and chicks for free wouldn’t hurt either.)
BTW, I know that I misspelled instance, but I can’t edit it, so bite me. XD
Well, I didn’t say it was dead, other than in my Tweet, which was an attempt at a meme. What it is however, is a long way away from becoming *the* model. And as nice as it is that you live in a major metro area, I would have to attach something the size of the Hubble telescope to my roof to get networks in HD, then I would be left to pray the Gator game wasn’t on ESPN that week (though I do want Erin Andrews in the worst way).
On the topic of internet radio, it’s not dead but SomaFM and Pandora seem to be constantly on life support, Last.fm is now going to charge people outside the US, UK and Germany, and Sirius/XM is drowning. Why? The people that own the content just want too fucking much money for it and *they* are in control.
It’s coming, for sure, and I can’t wait. But it isn’t going to be free and it’s not going to be nearly as soon as most people think.