The Full-On Assault On Cable Is Underway
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
And the people will scream bloody murder... in the computer infrastructure industry, you raise your prices by not lowering them quite as quickly as you could. raising prices? your customers will mutiny. I know I would.
This expectation that computers, bandwidth, etc... will get cheaper and cheaper over time is strongly ingrained into the minds of consumers. push them back, and they will scream but loud.
Isn't this the root of this whole net-neutrality thing? we are afraid that telcos will raise prices (by raise prices, I mean either raise prices, or provide degraded service at current prices) so we want the government to come in and regulate that sort of thing? I mean, regardless of what you think of net neutrality laws, you have to agree that it's a sign that consumers get /very angry/ if you even suggest that bandwidth prices might go up.
Google TV looks amazing - http://newteevee.com/2010/08/20/an-in-depth-look-at-the-goog...
I think this will be a great leap forward for crowdsourced news, home-brewed entertainment and video blogging.
Eventually, I started to get pissed off at the mere thought of fast forwarding through commercials on the DVR. I just cancelled my cable last week because I hadn't actually turned in on in over a month.
I hope one day we can kill cable so that each show will be forced to compete on its own merit, without ads, and not just be at the mercy of some agency that misunderstand the value of its viewers (Star Trek TOS) or executives at fox that don't understand their own audience (see Firefly and another ton of scify show that have all been canceled in their first season).
Heres is to the death of cable middle men.
First of all... the "siege" has already started, but it has not been very successful so far. You need content first (which many cable providers have special access to given their parent company often owns a lot of it). But also a good interface. And most of all it has to be TOTALLY bug free. A crash or a "format unknown" error may have been accepted on a computer, but people won't accept it on their TV. When you watch TV you want it to be problem free: it's your time to relax!
Second, cable companies are also ISP. Hence companies such as Google or Netflix will still need to be nice to them or risk getting bad service. And if they make some kind of agreement then for the cable is not different than it is today: the cable is the medium to send the data, you are just adding an additional layer.
Third: what would stop a cable company from "cutting the middle man" and simply producing the same service on their own? You know, like they did with TiVo. That's especially true given that their parent company are also the content provider: instead of Google buying content from Disney and then selling it to ABC, ABC may just get it from its own parent company (Disney) directly!
Forth: Google, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix and Amazon have NOT teamed up. They are all win that war, but they are far from allies. Which means the cable companies can play divide and conquer.
Fifth: the cable companies are not exactly small. Those 5 may be tech giants, but these are media giants. If it comes down to a fight for the cheapest service, I am sure cable companies can spare a few pennies and lower their fat profits.
And that's without even mentioning the poor framing, using war metaphors and the D-day. Oh, and "it will be many years before everyone’s addiction to cable gives way to something else. But it will." is not a prediction! We can all play that game:
- "it will be many years before everyone's addiction to oil gives way to something else. But it will."
- "it will be many years before we can live in another planet. But we will."
- "it will be many years before tech pundits will gain quality, but they will".
No, wait... maybe I went too far there. ;)
There is definitely a new AD model at work - there will probably be location based ADs for all we know. I mean, you still watch TV in your living room only?