Sweeet. So long obama-loving Comcast.
I agree, I get more than 100 channels and watch about 10 of them total.
The Paradigm Shift we have been waiting for!
The Paradigm Shift we have been waiting for!
Of possible interest to the “HDTV ping list” members.
This is all I’d ever want for TV. All the science channels, don’t care for movie channels or news networks, and as long as I could watch hockey, I’m good to go.
I hope Intel snatches up a huge swath of the TV market immediately.
One hurdle a cable company could erect could be that if you want broadband from a Comcast, Brighthouse, etc, you’ll have to subscribe to a cable package.
Not so fast.....excerpt from the article:
We’ve been skeptical of Intel’s ability to make a dent in the TV market. If it somehow manages to deliver this unbundled channel option, we’re more optimistic Intel could have success.
Before anyone gets too excited, Janko Roettgers at GigaOm is skeptical it happens. Roettgers knows the TV business very well.
The reason its unlikely to happen is that content companies don’t really want to see cable blown up. It’s been very good to them.
Last summer, Peter Kafka at All Things D poured cold water on the idea of Intel unbundling. Not only is going to be hard to make it happen, it’s unclear if it would even save money for cable subscribers:
Those bundles are core to today’s TV ecosystem. And the TV guys insist that consumers really don’t want “a la carte” programming, because if they do, the channels/shows they like today will end up costing much, much more.
Disney, for instance, charges TV distributors about $5 for every subscriber that gets ESPN. And, by some estimates, only about 25 percent of cable customers actually watch ESPN on a regular basis. So if you unbundled ESPN, the per-subscriber cost might shoot up to $20 or more, to account for the 75 percent drop in its customer base
Legislation to ban a la cart programming and thereby squash Intel’s efforts will be introduced on the Senate floor in 3...2...1...
For the technically ignorant among us, how do you get your T.V.s to get internet connected? We have 4 T.V.s and I would not want to watch the World Series on my 19" monitor.
‘bout damned time somebody did this. We’ve been held captive by the cable gougers for far too long.
(I speak as a member of the general American public. I have no TV and don’t watch it.)
Next up, let’s move towards sanity in the cellular phone industry. If the Europeans can get quality service at 25% of what we pay, so can we.
Remember what all the nay sayer cell phone carriers and computet companies said about Apple when word was out about the 1st iPhone. Let’s see, HP, Verizon, Palm, Dell, Sprint, ..... I like this idea and I hope it breaks the backbone of the cable companies! I currently do not have any cable tv, I have ATT uverse Internet and I stream movies from Netflix and Hulu and I use a HDTV antenna to get free local signals
If there was anything left on TV worth watching, I’d be ecstatic.
Still, if it’s something to move the cable generation toward ad-free streaming, like Netflix or Amazon Instant Video, I’m all for it. I hope at some point they’ll begin to realize the waste of having to sit through truckloads of useless commercials.
Comcast cable will retaliate ans stifle INTEL by limiting how many gigabytes you can download each month.
Shame because Comcast has blazing hot speed where I am— 24mbps. The best you can get with (ATT) DSL here is 6mbps and for my situation I cannot get above 1.2mbps on a their low tier 1.5mbps connection. My house won’t take in their DSL connections that are rated 3 and 6 mbps. I’m pissed because I would love to play them against each other, which I do but not as effectively as I could if I could get DSL coming in at 4 or 6mbps
McCain was going to push for ala carte cable before he ran for president in 2008.
The one useful idea he ever had, and he dropped it.
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Good. This will force the media to tailor their programming more to what the public wants, rather than what they want to promote.
"Last summer, Peter Kafka at All Things D poured cold water on the idea of Intel unbundling. Not only is going to be hard to make it happen, it’s unclear if it would even save money for cable subscribers:Those bundles are core to today’s TV ecosystem. And the TV guys insist that consumers really don’t want “a la carte” programming, because if they do, the channels/shows they like today will end up costing much, much more.
Disney, for instance, charges TV distributors about $5 for every subscriber that gets ESPN. And, by some estimates, only about 25 percent of cable customers actually watch ESPN on a regular basis. So if you unbundled ESPN, the per-subscriber cost might shoot up to $20 or more, to account for the 75 percent drop in its customer base"
So what if it did? But it won't. What will happen is, ESPN/Dizzney will have to scale back what they pay the leagues -- and that will be interesting.
Why? Because the Convergence is here -- internet provider speeds to home like 24 mips, like dennis has, deliver 1040p on demand to enough of an American base now to justify Intel and Apple selling by single-channel (or even single-show) with internet-abled settop boxes.
Game over for dinosaur buy-the-package-or-die cable, and potential big trouble for the dumbnets like Dizzney and Viacom...
Boo yah! This is great, if it happens. We just purchased a Roku player for each set, so I assume with those and then perhaps subscribing to ESPN through this new product, we would be happy with our TV channel choices.
Even if this doesn’t happen, we are telling Cox Cable good-bye. We are tired of paying a lot of money for channels we don’t watch and don’t even want on our list. I hope this means the monopoly on service that cable companies have (courtesy of local politicians) will finally crumble. Good riddance!
This is the future of home entertainment/information...ISP’s will dominate the scene.
They did not mention bandwidth requirements. I wonder how fast of an internet connection is required to watch an uninterrupted stream per channel? I’d be willing to bet that a standard 3 meg DSL connection would be overloaded with three TVs on watching different channels.