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AppleTV may not be able to offer ala carte channel choices—PING!

AppleTV Ping!

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As part of our going Galt two years ago, my wife and I terminated all cable/satellite service and now get all our TV over the air. We buy or rent the movies we want to see, and get everything else off the Internet (DSL). We're saving a ton of dough and only miss seeing a cable program every once an a long while.

Well worth the trade.

The only way I'll ever come back to any kind of subscription TV service is on an ala carte basis, but we're in no hurry.

A la carte content will be the death of some cable channels. I can’t wait. If MSNBC weren’t a part of a “package” it wouldn’t be on my TV, ever. Same with CNN, Headline News, Bravo and TLC. Oh, and MTV and BET (I must be racist). Bundled programming is like the Eurozone, where some companies work hard and make money to support other companies who do little or nothing for the actual bottom line.

Really, a lot of cable programming is crap. The best channels are rerun channels. Hallmark has Little House on the Prairie and the Waltons, and is mosly wholesome, family-oriented and not outwardly anti-Christian. Comedy Central has a bunch of idiots who make a living by making fun of Republicans, Conservatives, TEA Party followers and people from the South. Cartoon Network has original cartoons, but they are all horribly drawn and show nothing of the quality that Warner Brothers and Hanna Barbera cartoons had. We are cheating our children with the cartoon crap of today.

The Sci-Fi channel is half commercials. And they changed the name to SyFy. I have always been a fan of the science fiction genre, abbreviated to sci-fi. I must be a fuddy-duddy because I don’t think that the new name is all that creatve. It reads like see fee to me. If they have any good programs, I will wait until the next year and get them on Netflix.

In fact, most cable channels are nearly half commercials. They take a one-and-a-half-hour theater movie and pad it with enough commercials to fill a three-hour time slot. I watched Jurassic Park on the DVR and I was frikkin po’d at how many commercials I had to skip past to see the movie. In one part, 11 thirty-second spots.

I got suckered into signing a year contract with my cable company for the new channel lineup of HD channels and a free DVR, but I tell you what, when that contract ends, I am canceling cable and giving my money to Hulu and Netflix.

APPLE TV has never made any sense to me.. I’m honestly suprised the product hasn’t been killed yet.

Ala Cart purchasing would have given it a reason to exist, but honestly I just don’t get it.

I can BUY/RENT a movie from Apple Itunes, at far higher prices than Netflix or even my local cable provider... What’s the point?

Funny thing about keeping those bundles because you won’t make as much money via a la carte...when the dish/cable gets cut they get $0. I just ditched the dish because I was sick of paying for 98% of the channels that I didn’t want, or have time to watch. Got new TV specifically so I could get an Apple TV for the HD Netflix, iTunes, Hulu and anything else that comes down the pipe. Don’t miss it at all.

The media giants and distribution companies say it’s not just in their best interest — it’s also in customers best interest — to maintain bundles.

Funny thing is, they have consistently failed, for 50 years that I know of, to ask their customers for their opinion!

I for one, however, view Apple's entry into the industry as an unmitigated disaster. The hallmark of Apple has always been to gouge the user. Without exception. Up til now, the public has always had at least one alternative choice.
Their entry into competing with the cable company cartel, from the customers' viewpoint is the choice of being eaten by a regular very large hungry shark, or a Great White.

Oh joy!

The largest media company and the largest distribution company Comcast struck a ten year distribution deal earlier this year.

This seems like a rare education moment. What is the difference and the interaction between "media company" and "distribution company?"
Congress has made periodic feeble (over the last 40 years) attempts to break the monopolies which create the cable/media mafia; RICO material.

But magically, every time it goes nowhere.
I am just amazed that no one has managed to unravel the money paths to the payoff of the politicians. Pulitzer Prize material.

The largest media company and the largest distribution company Comcast struck a ten year distribution deal earlier this year.

But magically, every time it goes nowhere.
I am just amazed that no one has managed to unravel the money paths to the payoff of the politicians. Pulitzer Prize material.

The media giants and distribution companies say it’s not just in their best interest — it’s also in customers best interest — to maintain bundles. By paying for channels they don’t watch customers are subsidizing the smaller channels that not everyone would select. Disney CEO Bob Iger has explained to me, if everyone only paid for the 10 channels they thought they wanted, smaller channels wouldn’t have the financial support survive, and no one would get all the channels they wanted. Both Iger and Time Warner [TWX 42.60 -0.09 (-0.21%) ] CEO Jeff Bewkes have stressed to me that customers really want the choice of dozens or hundreds of channels and don’t realize just how narrow choices would become without bundles supporting the system.

I call B.S. on this one. If a cable channel cannot pay for itself, let it die or move to YouTube.

I'm sick and dadgummed tired of the cable TV companies trying to claim that it's in our best interest to give them money for things we don't want.

Really disappointed in Apple, was hoping they'd finally force the companies to offer actual choice and not some crappy tiered system that wants to bump up our monthly bill by %20 or more just for a few channels we want and a bunch of channels we don't want.

We have found in many cases, that it is cheaper for us to ignore some of those bundles and just wait for the DVDs to show up on Netflix or Amazon, or even on the instant streaming.

We were spending over $1000 a year on TV channels/bundles. That $1,000 will easily cover Netflix, Hulu+, Amazon's Prime, a boatload of DVDs and even Blu-Rays and still leave us a few hundred bucks left over. And we get to skip the commercials to boot.