Online TV shows vs. traditional satellite/cable/antenna

[rakeshagrawal]

More and more popular TV shows are available online. Sure, it's not easy to watch them in high-quality on the big-screen in the living room (at least not yet), but most popular TV shows are out there, web-accessible, just a click away.

On the other hand, you've got traditional methods of delivering television that involve antennas, cable (regular or digital) and satellite. And you have products that let you do cool things with these traditional TV sources like time-shift them (e.g. TIVO, MCE, Beyond TV, etc.) and place-shift them (Slingbox).

What do folks here in the forums think home entertainment will look like when the dust settles? Is one way of getting television just going to kill the other? Or will both methods of delivering television co-exist and just serve different functions? Whaddya think?

[mayhem70]

You know I thought about this as I watched Jackass 2.5 on the Jackass site. They opted to release the content on the web first before DVD. And from what I hear, they are considering releasing 3.0 on the web exclusively. And I've just started trying out Hulu.com as well.
However, I don't see internet or network media players eliminating cable TV. Unless the pricing for either goes up or down significantly, both should exist until the masses realize one offers cheaper/better option.

[rugby]

Take a look at the AppleTV. This is where tv is going. Pay no monthly fee, just buy the shows & movies you want and then watch them. People want simple, they don't want to have to use a mouse to watch tv.

[samundsen]

I killed my satellite subscription years ago. I get my TV fix MOSTLY from OTA broadcasts, recorded with BeyondTV. Before BTV two ReplayTV boxes did the job. The few cable shows that I watch, I get from iTunes or Amazon Unbox, but it has been a challenge to get these two services smoothly integrated into my HTPC setup.

I get The Daily Show from iTunes, and I get Stargate Atlantis and Battlestar Galactica from Amazon Unbox. Of the two, Amazon has understood how to do it, iTunes/Apple has not.

To subscribe to a show through iTunes, every single day you have to select "Check for new purchases" in iTunes. And the shows can only be played back either through iTunes or QuickTime Player, neither of which are very HTPC friendly. I use QuickTime, which does not allow you to jump or skip back and forth using hotkeys/remote control and it does not go to fullscreen automatically (have to use a hotkey). Basically, Apple's software SUCK.

Amazon on the other hand, let you set up a subscription on their web site. The Amazon Unbox software can sit in your system tray, and will automatically download new episodes without ANY interaction. The files are Windows Media files, which can be played back in either Windows Media Player (which kinda sucks, but not nearly as bad as QuickTime), OR Zoom Player Professional WMV, which is the method I use. WMP will go to fullscreen, but does not allow for easy navigation through hotkeys/remote. But Zoom Player will let you do anything you can possibly dream of.

Another difference between iTunes and Amazon is that iTunes charges for a subscription up front, while Amazon charges you only when a new episode is available (you still get a subscription discount).

So, the combination of BTV for OTA HiDef broadcasts, Amazon Unbox and Zoom Player, with MediaPortal as the frontend and using Stephane's LM Remote KeyMap as the glue that ties everything together, I have pretty much the perfect HTPC setup that will play movies, TV shows, DVDs, downloads and everything else you can think of.

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by rakeshagrawal

Sure, it's not easy to watch them in high-quality on the big-screen in the living room (at least not yet)

Hmm, what kind of software could benefit from a "plugin" to watch those online shows/videos (not like it hasn't been suggested before)...

[Harold]

For the mainstream viewer, I'm not sure when the technology convergence will allow simple access to video via internet to a tv monitor.

For those of us with HTPCs, we just need a 10 ft interface software utility to make things like Netflix on demand and TV network supplied streaming programs a better experience than using a browser. Admittedly the resolution isn't fantastic for many of these choices. The BM community has built a rudimentary net video plugin which works, but could use some improvement.

A Netflix viewer and improved net video viewer would seen to be a natural application to incorporate into SS products in the near term.

[bnflaherty]

Originally Posted by Harold

For the mainstream viewer, I'm not sure when the technology convergence will allow simple access to video via internet to a tv monitor.

sooner than you think:

http://www.betanews.com/article/New_...ote/1199815228

[btvfreak]

Until networks can find a way to successfully change their advertising methods or can find other, just-as-profitable streams, then broadcast TV will not go away. I am a fan of on-demand delivery (cable, Amazon, Apple, VUDU, etc). It just really hasn't taken off due to the ease-of-use (although that is improving), price (needs to be cheaper per TV/movie), quality (real or perceived), and most importantly content selection.

Until the content owners decide to release their content digitally at the same time they release their TV show, DVD, etc, then this is not going to be a good alternative to traditional media. Streaming/compression technology also has to improve to ensure the closest quality to the original, especially in HD. I hate when people say it's not "true HD". True, any compressed file won't be the same, but it can look damn close. Many people won't even be able to tell the difference, and in most cases neither will they. In most cases it's all about perceived quality. If you know it's being streamed, then you automatically don't really want to give it a chance because of your preconceived idea of what the quality will be like vs. what it really is.

I think Apple will be the most successful due to their industry pull. I also have to say that the quality of their downloads is much better than they show in their Apple Stores. On my rear projection HDTV the TV shows and movies look much better.

An example of using alternative means of media consumption was when our power went out for a but this week, which forced BTV to miss the end of my girlfriend's show "Cashmere Mafia". I know I need a UPS, but sue me, I don't have one yet. We then watched the show on ABC.com the next day, using their "HD" player from my HTPC connected to our HDTV. With the browser in fullscreen it looked very good.

[Mistergq]

for me, I want to be able to record tv shows to my computer...and now that my new tv from Circuit City arrived today, this is a much higher priority.

having said that, I think of consumers like my father, mother, and in laws. They will not be into the online tv shows. in fact, they think my homemade dvr is fine for me, but not interested in it for them self.

I have never bought into the ala carte theory of tv viewing. Price of tv service does need to come down, but consumers need more options. hopefully with fios, there can become real competition between cable, telecommunications, and satellite providers.

[hoglander]

Everyone didn't get rid of their ovens when microwave ovens came out. Everyone didn't get rid of their land line phone when cell phones came out. People still go to movies well after VCRs and DVDs arrived. People still use maps even though there are GPS portables with mapping. People still like to shop at stores even though you can shop online.
All most everyone still has horses even though they have a car..... Wait!! Oh wait cars have been around for a lot longer than the rest.

[RiderFan]

Originally Posted by hoglander

All most everyone still has horses even though they have a car.

I keep my horses in the basement. You never know when the old car might break down.

[hoglander]

[MarcP]

I will only watch online TV shows if there's an easy way to bring those onto my widescreen TV using a remote control. I will not watch a show in a small window of my browser. I have to be on my couch with nothing, but my remote control.

AppleTV is on an okay track with the added benefit of movie purchases/rentals, but it's only in the US (I'm in Canada). So far, only Apple has a boxed solution to TV, but they don't have everyone onboard so you'll always be missing out on some networks. Unfortunately, I can't see anyone other than Apple to attempt to bring all shows to a living room environment with most (of not all) players. Anybody else thinking of entering this arena has to be thinking of the living room, not the computer room.

[rakeshagrawal]

Originally Posted by MarcP

I will only watch online TV shows if there's an easy way to bring those onto my widescreen TV using a remote control. I will not watch a show in a small window of my browser. I have to be on my couch with nothing, but my remote control.

My wife says the exact same thing -- she refuses to watch television on a laptop or a desktop PC. For her to watch, it has to be on a television and operable from the couch and a remote control. On the other hand, I'm quite happy watching something on a laptop in bed, on the couch, etc. Personally, I think there will be some shift in viewing behavior so it becomes more mainstream for people to watch popular television shows on their laptops and other mobile screens around the house. But I also think the living room experience isn't ever going to go away. Apart from it being ingrained consumer behavior, people want a passive, couch entertainment experience. This will just be complemented by other newer modes of viewing.

On a side note, I watched my first iTunes movie rental last night (on a laptop) and I was impressed with the picture quality -- it was one of their SD selections (I watched it on a laptop in bed) and in spite of that it looked really nice, I thought. The movie selection wasn't great, though it sounds like they'll be picking up lots of titles between now and the end of February (I think they announced they'd have 1,000 titles by end of Feb -- right now I think they have 200-300 movies in total, and only some of them are for rental). Finally, I thought the usability was disappointing. iTunes has always done strange things with video, IMO, and watching a movie was no different. The rental part was easy. But once I went to play the movie, it first showed up in a tiny window in the lower left corner of iTunes (where they normally display the album art for a piece of music) and once I got it into a separate window, it seemed to randomly pause every so often. The latter must have happened 10-15 times over the course of my movie -- very annoying. I think one of the big things we'll see in the next version of iTunes is a proper user interface for videos. Right now it feels like they shoe-horned video into a program that was designed for music.

Anyways, on the subject of Apple TV, I think what they announced this past week -- Apple TV as a movie rental box that doesn't require a PC and delivers up to HD quality movies -- is really interesting. I'm married, have a daughter that's three and a half. A couple of times a year, family comes into town and there are always inevitably a couple of evenings where the adults want to do something together after the children have gone down to bed and we often turn to Comcast's video on demand "channel". I've always been disappointed with Comcast's selection of movies and it almost goes without saying that the interface they provide to find and rent movie sucks (navigation is slow, movie covers are pixel-y, menus are fugly). So the new Apple TV thing kills the cable company's VOD and, possibly, provides Apple a beachhead in the living room. I'm convinced that's what they are searching for and if they don't get it in Apple TV 2.0, they'll take another shot with Apple TV 3.0. In my the-family's-in-town-and-the-kids-are-FINALLY-sleeping scenario, the prospect of staying in and watching a movie on the home television is much more appealing with Apple TV 2 (or at least what they've described of it -- I haven't actually used it yet).

Finally, I found this quote from Steve Jobs, from an interview after his keynote at Macworld this past week, pretty darn interesting:

The model will not extend to cable television, he insisted. “We’re not going to go there with the cable cards,” he said, referring to the relatively open cable industry connectors that are gradually allowing companies like TiVo to replace the standard set-top box. “That whole industry, their go-to-market strategy is pretty loopy, and it’s fractured,” he said. “Our model is like DVD.”

So Apple's strategy for media delivery sure sounds like it's all about the Internet. Robert Cringley thinks that the Macbook Air's lack of an optical drive points at Apple being all about Internet-delivered content. From his most recent column:

What about the Air's lack of an optical drive? It's hard to find a place for an optical drive in such a thin computer, but isn't Steve Jobs the guy who when he returned to Apple railed against notebooks without removable media, like the PowerBook 100 and 2400 and the various PowerBook Duos? Why did Steve change his mind now? Because Steve wants to replace optical drives of any sort with bits provided over the network, preferably from iTunes. That's also why we didn't see an Apple Blu-ray announcement this week and -- if Jobs has his way -- we'll never see one.

Even though Robert Cringely is famous for being a conspiracy theorist and there are plenty of other good reasons for Apple to leave an optical drive off of their new *ahem* ultrathin laptop, his suggestion that Apple might eventually kill the optical drive sounds pretty reasonable to me.

There's so much new stuff happening here, it's hard to escape the feeling that a major disruption (to TV and movies) is coming very soon.

[MarcP]

Originally Posted by rakeshagrawal

But I also think the living room experience isn't ever going to go away. Apart from it being ingrained consumer behavior, people want a passive, couch entertainment experience.

1080p and 5.1 sound can only be truly enjoyed in a living room environment using a large screen. Don't consider these as merely ingrained behaviors. The living room has the environment to provide the experience, not a 15" LCD screen with earbuds. And don't think that TV content is an exclusive source of entertainment. I don't want a passive couch experience, I want the big sound/big screen experience and whoever can pull this off will win my money.