Posted on 01/21/2014 4:14:42 PM PST by Red in Blue PA
Some tech industry heavyweights took to Twitter on Monday to vent their frustration with the user-unfriendly state of television in the broadband Internet age. The conversation pointed out the conflicts between the freedom to chose that users crave and the content gatekeepers who are reluctant to change from business as usual.
BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield documented the Twitter conversation in a blog post Tuesday.
It started when Jason Hirschhorn, CEO of Redef, complained about the cost of cable and what he received in return.
"It's amazing to me that I pay a cable company $250/month and I can't view all the content anywhere at any time. Are they nuts?" he tweeted.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
What is Cable TV?
What is TV?
I’m a cord cutter. $100 plus a month for service is just dumb these days. Netflix, HuluPlus and Amazon Prime are my current lineup. Really miss Food Network though.
A vast wasteland?
Sports is the thorn, because usually to watch games online, you have to subscribe to a cable provider.
Well cable also provides Internet access.
Where else can you get 100 Mb connections?
I won’t part with mine.
They don't stream? I watch two CBS shows on their website, one TBS show on iTunes, and the rest on Hulu.
That's the thing. I don't think the cable companies care all that much how you watch content or whether or not they provide content. They can make money on giving internet access....if too many people stop buying content than crank up the cost of internet access.
Now even the networks are requiring having a cable provider to view shows on their websites.
The cable companies aren’t going down without a fight.
I believe there is a close connection between many cable companies and liberal politics.
Comcast owns MSNBC for example.
Time Warner owns CNN
etc
Generally when crony capitalism is involved, change won’t happen quickly.
I know some people up in Brooklyn who pay over $80,000 a year for an apartment and $5000 a year for media connections. They make under $200,000 a year combined, and a huge chunk of that goes to taxes. Take away another $10,000 for their annual island vacation, and they live like paupers.
I guess I’m not missing anything then.
They sound like morons.
Do you find that Hulu Plus provides content that you don’t get on Netflix and AP?
I currently have the latter two and there is a lot of overlap. What distinguishes what Hulu Prime offers? I’ve been thinking of adding it but it seems like I wouldn’t get significantly more content than NF+AP.
no children for this couple I take it?
Hulu Plus still has commercials, so I would lean towards Netflix.
Actually, after re-reading your post, I would get Hulu Plus and Netflix, and ditch AP, because you still have to buy movies on Amazon. AP does have a great movie selection though, far superior than Netflix.
ABC in some tiff with Time Warner cut off the video feeds for 1 week after airing. My sister loved watching her soap opera on the Iphone.
Oh well.
The last straw for me was watching "Inglourious Basterds" on AMC, I think it was. It took them four hours to show the movie because they had nearly an hour and a half of commercials in between. To add insult to injury, they even cut out or censored key parts of the movie!
That's one night of my life I'll never get back.
I basically stick to Netflix now. Either through my MacBook Pro (phenomenal picture) or through my Roku when I want it on the TV. Sure, your choices are limited on Netflix with respect to movies but most of the popular TV series are on there and you can watch them at your leisure. So what if they are a season behind. I'm still working my way through "Lost" even though it left the air years ago.
Even if you wait a month to finish an episode of say, "Breaking Bad" - it will be sitting for you right where you left off. And if you want to go back to the beginning to see the episode or entire season once again - go for it!
On demand is the way to go and if cable TV doesn't change their business model, they will eventually go the way of the record industry - which is now owned by Apple, Google and Amazon.
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