Media 2010
I think TV as we know it is dead. The internet is at a breaking point to be THE media delivery mechanism of the future.
This has already begun both legally and illegally, and I much prefer this method of getting TV. (of course the downside is that I am watching more TV. BUT, no commercials and at whatever time I want.) iTunes inked a deal with ABC that put episodes up for download to the iPod for $1.99. I call that a good start, and the 20 Million downloads in the first 2 weeks that there is HUGE potential. The problem with that is I can get the same show for free and in HDTV using a bit-torrent client. Here are the things that need to happen to make it work.
1. Embrace bittorrent. This fixed the only bottleneck for releasing all this content to everyone. Currently the main expense is the bandwidth. Every bit you download from a server has to be paid for, and this expense can get huge. When you start talking about 300 - 700 MB files and millions of downloads that cost can become prohibitive. Bittorrent is a Peer to Peer sharing protocol that works very well and efficiently. Using this technology, the cost of bandwidth would be exponentially reduced due to all of the users sharing the cost.
2. Make it easy access. Right now it is only fairly savvy geeks are truly capable of taking full advantage of the internet. Yahoo and Tivo have made a deal recently that can fix all that. Tivo, a box that is already installed in millions of homes and is already connected to your television, and Yahoo one of the largest providers of internet content out there. If they put their shared recourses together and build a bittorrent client into the box and offer $1-2 downloads of a show, I think that will be the end of cable companies as we know it. Either that or they will become who we all pay for our internet connections. (which allot of us already do.)
If that all happened I would be the first to sign up.. Think about it, Cable already cost $50-80 a month, so I say ditch that, pay $45 for a high speed connection and say $1 for each show you want to watch. OK, here is an example for me, there are maybe 5 TV shows that I want to watch, and most of them come out once a week. That’s $5 a week, $20 a month, that brings the total to $65 a month. I am totally willing to pay that and I would not feel it is wasted because I am paying for what I want and only what I want. The Networks should not feel bad because if you have 60-70 Million watchers a week, they all pay their dollar, suddenly that’s $60-70 Million an episode. That has to be a healthy chunk of profit.
Now I know that there are probably a million things that I ignored to make this work but this is the way I think things should be, and if all goes well it will.
I’m going to keep watching what Yahoo an Tivo do, and the moment I hear something like this down the pipeline and am buying all sorts of Tivo stock... (well that and their stock is super cheap right now.)
UPDATE 12-5-05: I told you... times are changin, now you can get a live stream of the news... CNN: Pipeline
UPDATE 12-6-05: iTunes just added a bunch more shows to their store. all they need is better resolution and Im sold..
9 Comments:
suddenly i feel less geeky... tv thru the internet? interesting. i may have to scope this out. i am on the comcast 6 months at $30 a month for now, but am NOT looking forward to the $80 a month for cable and $45 for cable internet.
Only flaw I can see is the inability to make new shows hit big. How would you get people to spend $ on a show they've never watched before? Htye'd ahve to be willing to part with their cash just to see if they liek the show. Also, how would people know when new shows were coming out if there were no promo commercials? Aside from that, I can see the idea working well. maybe for a bit less than $2 each though. You figure a whole season on DVD costs $50 so there's gotta be an incentive to not just wait. Either that or the show's gotta really be good.
Thats a good point Stan. Heres what I see. The promotion problem is not that big a deal I think.. There is all sorts of advertisment and promotion that can be done other than the in the show. I would not be opposed to 30 seconds at the beginning or end of a show to promote the other shows from the network.
On the big hit thing.. thats where free comes in.. THey will have to understand that as soon as this content is available on the internet someone will make it available for free. If the companies fully understand this and use it as a tool like drug dealers "Your first hit is free" more people will know about the show and offer premium content (i dont quite know what, maybe behind the scened clips and or other little clips for paying subscribers.) so far every true IPTV show has a free version and a Donation ability. Revison3 as an example always releases thier content for free, but if you pay for it you get the show a few days earlier. Of cours I can still get it for free but I chose to pay becaue it is a fair price and I want to support the shows.
When this starts up, the internet will be a very small portion. So if even 10% of the 50000 downloads pay for it that is still $5K free and clear for the show, that will at least pay for the badwidth used (if they use bittorrent.)
30 sec clips, got it
first hit free, check
bonus material, might work
10% thing, not following you. I thought you were talking about the internet/download stuff replacing cable and TV rather than just suplementing it.
Yea I definitely think it will be replaced. But that is a long and slow process. It will be awile before cable will be replaced. I think as it starts it will just be something on the side, just another way to deliver content.. (intill people realize that the internet is the ONLY way to go when it comes to content delivery.)
I feel so informed when I read things like this. I think the whole TV through Internet thing will take off...I know a lot of people that already do the Ipod tv stuff. someday I'll catch up with the rest of the world and watch tv on my computer too.
Gotcha. Next thing we need is bigger monitors or a way to port my PC over to my big screen. Do that and it'll take off a bit faster.
the HDTV connection to TV already exists.. you just need the hardware.. also with the Tivo Deal that will not need to happen.. I predict Media PC's to be a big seller soon.
Next thing we need is bigger monitors or a way to port my PC over to my big screen.
We've been watching stuff from the computer on our tv for years. You have to get a tv-out cable, and you need a decent video card if you still want to do other things on the computer at the same time.
And you probably have to do one or two other things that I'm forgetting.
Oh, it's also great for showing photos to lots of people.
I hope that made sense--Edo is definitely the hardware expert, not me.
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