The Future of SageTV - Which Direction

[nebulink]

To me SageTV's DVR, ripped movie playback along with the HD300 combination is what made this system shine.

IMHO cable tv and satellite tv is going away (not completely) and the new primary method of getting content is via the Internet. Therefore, the new DVR of the future in my mind should have the ability record from various streaming services such as SlingTV, Sony Vue and any other live TV services that comes available through the Internet. SageTV would combine the channel guide of all services into one. The internet takes the place of the Tuners.

Then when you search for content it would combine all recorded content and any other service you subscribe to like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go and so forth.

These are just some thoughts.

[will]

Originally Posted by nebulink

IMHO cable tv and satellite tv is going away (not completely) and the new primary method of getting content is via the Internet.

It seems that way.

Originally Posted by nebulink

Therefore, the new DVR of the future in my mind should have the ability record from various streaming services such as SlingTV, Sony Vue and any other live TV services that comes available through the Internet. SageTV would combine the channel guide of all services into one.

I agree, a favorite for Internet content

Originally Posted by nebulink

hen when you search for content it would combine all recorded content and any other service you subscribe to like Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go and so forth.

Being able to search for things is good but personally I like having a recorded list. So perhaps being able to set shows as favorites and SageTV goes and gets them when resources are available via live streams or Netflix/HBO, etc.


However, I think this is unlikely to happen. First, it would require recording encrypted content; internet streams aren't like a video feed from the output of a cable box. Also how would you "tune" the channel.

PlayOn/PlayLater tries to address this by playing the content in a hidden browser window and then record the playback stream after it has been decrypted but it is buggy, even to this day.

I don't think cable will go away as quickly as you think. Probably cable will be around for at least 15 more years. What will happen, channel packages will be unbundled and you can buy A&E and Discover without ESPN. Think of it this way, digital downloads hurt CDs back in the early 2000s. I can still buy any song on iTunes as a CD as well as a record (a technology from the 1930s/40s). AM radio is still around and going strong. Sometimes it is hard to kill an older technology.

People use streaming services now because they are cheap not because the experience is amazing. I would argue having a good DVR that is filled up with your content is a lot better than using four streaming services to watch your six favorite shows - quality, convenience, and speed wise.

If cable subscriptions start dying off drastically then you will see streaming service prices go up significantly. Making high-quality TV shows is very expensive and if they lose their revenue model from cable/dish then they will need to get it somewhere else. TV isn't like music, with technology today, anyone with raw talent can produce a production quality song for little money but you can't make an episode of Mad Men or Game of Thrones for $200. Technology isn't as much of an equalizer when it comes to video because of the very high skill set AND money needed to create something great.

You mentioned SlingTV, did you know that SlingTV can't have more than 2 million subscribers before it has to stop accepting new customers? The media providers are doing an experiment but they built into their service agreements a hard cap so SlingTV can't eat cable/dish's lunch.

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by nebulink

... Therefore, the new DVR of the future ...

That's the difference between the way we have traditionally thought here at Sage HQ, and the way the future will probably look. There is no more DVR, no reason to record things locally when it's always accessible from a central server.

I like the idea of storing things locally, but I must admit, it is inefficient - until someone flips off the switch on the Internet.

[Slugger]

Inefficient? Yes. Necessary? Yes.

Honestly, I'd do away with a pvr altogether if I weren't at the mercy of the content owners who get to decide if/when I get to watch something. Sure I have access to the networks web sites, but they tend to only keep the last few episodes available then they take them away forever. I have multiple seasons of shows I haven't even started watching yet just because I haven't felt like it yet. As long as I control the content then I'm not worried. Who's Fox to say I have to watch episodes 1-10 (or whatever) of Family Guy by a certain date else I'm not entitled to watch it ever? Screw that. Local storage of recorded content or local replication of stuff from the cloud is the only way to ensure I can truly watch whatever on my own schedule -- the way it should be.

If the content owners make full archives of everything available 24x7 then I'm less likely to need a pvr (though the pvr still provides advantages over streaming from the networks -- comskip being one of the big ones).

[KryptoNyte]

Very true, Slugger. We have passed the age of "don't have the hardware/software capable to do it," into the age of media control.

[blade]

As mentioned above having everything together in one list of recordings instead of having to search for shows is a huge plus for me.

Originally Posted by Slugger

If the content owners make full archives of everything available 24x7 then I'm less likely to need a pvr (though the pvr still provides advantages over streaming from the networks -- comskip being one of the big ones).

I feel the same way. Sometimes it may be 6 months or more before I get around to watching some shows. By then many aren't available online anymore.

[valnar]

I think you guys underestimate what the average person does. Nobody on this forum is average.

CableTV or Dish isn't going anywhere. That's like saying cell phones will go away because Skype exists. People are willing to pay a premium to get their content just the way it is.

Hotels and hospitals will still have Cable. Nobody else out there cares how we've concocted our fancy schmancy PVR setup.

[will]

Originally Posted by Slugger

Inefficient? Yes. Necessary? Yes.
...
If the content owners make full archives of everything available 24x7 then I'm less likely to need a pvr (though the pvr still provides advantages over streaming from the networks -- comskip being one of the big ones).

EXACTLY!

If you give up local storage you give up control - control over fast forwarding through ads and control if you can/can't watch something.

[pjpjpjpj]

Cable companies and media providers are dealing with the change in two simple ways. They are buying up networks and media providers (ex., Comcast buying NBC Universal), and they are becoming the ISPs themselves (many already are, but they will continue to buy up competition).

Whether it's the former, and they charge more to providers for rights to their broadcasts, or it's the latter, and they make back the money they lose (as bundles break up and TV goes a la carte) by bandwidth caps, throttling, tiered data pricing, and just plain old semi-annual price increases... they're gonna get theirs. As I've been saying for years, they've had this decades-old cash cow and they aren't just going to give up and say "we've had a good run".

[valnar]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

they're gonna get theirs. As I've been saying for years, they've had this decades-old cash cow and they aren't just going to give up and say "we've had a good run".

Absolutely correct. Just because we won't be paying high CableTV bills doesn't mean we won't get it in another way. I personally like my TV shows available as they come out and record them (hence Sage), but if CableTV went away, I'd spend more money on Internet, Netflix, HBO-Go, Hulu, etc. They get their money somehow, and I'm not sure the effort to make this multi-year transition was worth it. If enough people do this past a tipping point, those cloud services will get a lot more expensive because the content creators will need to make up the Ad revenue in a different way. The actors need to get paid. The Walking Dead doesn't get produced on sunshine and smiles.

If everybody wants broadcast TV to go away...be careful what you wish for.

[wayner]

Whether streaming will work for you is currently dependent on what you watch. The hardest thing to get currently via streaming rather than cable is sports and I am not so sure that is going to change in the near future. Some leagues allow you to buy season passes to watch all games but that tends to be expensive and can lead to blackouts for games that are on traditional TV channels.

By the way, in some jurisdictions it is now illegal to permanently archive TV shows. In the new Canadian copyright bill that was passed a couple of years ago you are only allowed to keep a recorded TV show for 30 days. But there is no way for this restriction to be enforced.

[wayner]

One thing I forgot to add in my previous post - I would love it if TV/movies adopted the Spotify model of a subscription that allows you to get pretty much everything on whatever device you want. This would include pretty much every TV show and movie produced including sports available for streaming to all devices.

Of course it would cost a lot more than $10/month. I would be willing to pay $150 per month for that as it would replace all of my current media expenditures on stuff like cable, BR/DVD purchases, Netflix sub, Amazon sub, etc. There is a level where this produces more cash for the creators of content than the current model and for consumers it gives you access to far more than what you have today. But what is the clearing price and how many have to subscribe to make this model work.

I recently read a 2009 story about Reed Hastings (CEO of Netflix) where he said that this was his vision for Netflix.

[tvmaster2]

I pulled out some classic, mid-1980's VHS tapes the other day...MuchMusic and MTV clips. Slugger's right...

[KryptoNyte]

My primary concern is that the decision isn't up to us - it's up to the folks providing the media.

[lewispm]

I think there should be one recording directory with all content, online and local, as has been mentioned here.

I think when you set up a "favorite" that is streamed from online, one of the options should be "store locally."

I want some of them to live on my hard drive, and some to just be a link to a stream, and this setup makes the most sense to me.

[LWM4P]

Originally Posted by lewispm

I think there should be one recording directory with all content, online and local, as has been mentioned here.

I think when you set up a "favorite" that is streamed from online, one of the options should be "store locally."
.

Being able to store anything locally means that I can grab, at will, any show I want and put it on an SD card to watch on the plane or on a road trip. I like things online, but if you travel much, wifi is just not reliable.

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by lewispm

I think when you set up a "favorite" that is streamed from online, one of the options should be "store locally."

Except that probably violates copyright laws - or at least user rules of the particular online source (i.e., netflix or hulu). You might be able to pull this off legally if you were doing it through a third-party contract (like PlayOn) which allows downloading via their PlayLater function.

Of course, I've seen reviews of PlayLater which wonder aloud how they were able to get companies to agree to this... I suspect it's because everything you download from them gets the "info screen" (with user name, IP address, etc.) tacked on the front and back of the video file.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by pjpjpjpj

Except that probably violates copyright laws - or at least user rules of the particular online source (i.e., netflix or hulu). You might be able to pull this off legally if you were doing it through a third-party contract (like PlayOn) which allows downloading via their PlayLater function.

Of course, I've seen reviews of PlayLater which wonder aloud how they were able to get companies to agree to this... I suspect it's because everything you download from them gets the "info screen" (with user name, IP address, etc.) tacked on the front and back of the video file.

They get away with it because of the way they are 'recording' it instead of saving the original stream. Not any more infringing than using an HD-PVR on your cable boxes component outputs.

[Monedeath]

Originally Posted by will

If cable subscriptions start dying off drastically then you will see streaming service prices go up significantly. Making high-quality TV shows is very expensive and if they lose their revenue model from cable/dish then they will need to get it somewhere else. TV isn't like music, with technology today, anyone with raw talent can produce a production quality song for little money but you can't make an episode of Mad Men or Game of Thrones for $200. Technology isn't as much of an equalizer when it comes to video because of the very high skill set AND money needed to create something great.

I'm going to dither a little bit on this. The Video Game industry is perhaps on the bleeding edge of this in many respects. Some of the AAA titles being produced these days have $100Million+ production budgets, putting them on par with, or even far in excess of, their AAA title counterparts in the movie industry, where $100mil for a production is still not that common.

But then you have things like the Indy(Independent) Game scene going on, which seems to have found a way to better tap its market than other such industries, including the Indy Film Industry(although the problem there is they tend to go for "high art" which tends to lack mass appeal, while there are some other (initially) Indy titles out there which abandoned such pretense and turned into significant blockbusters over the past 20 years). Where there are titles that are tending to break out with increasing regularity.

Perhaps you've heard of a game called Minecraft? Started out as a solo programming project, I believe the core development team made it up to about 12 people before they sold the franchise to Microsoft for a reported $4 Billion. Prison Architect, Space Engineers come to mind, although they aren't major titles by any stretch of the imagination. More recently Cities: Skylines (a 10 person dev team doing their take on a successor to SimCity/Simcity2k/3K/4, grabbing a million purchases in the first month, albeit that dev studio has been working up to that for some time)

Polish is important, it helps a lot, but there are other considerations that can and do come into play. Small groups of focused and talented people, when tapped into the right things, and given enough resources so that they don't starve to death in the interim, are still able to accomplish very amazing things, even including finding their way into the realm that only the AAA-tier titles are "supposed" to play in. The production values(and associated polish) may not be as good, but for what you're getting, you'll probably be willing to accept the trade.

[Monedeath]

...and speaking of Minecraft that brings to mind something else as SageTV prepares to go open source. I hope people either are doing, or have already done their homework on Open Source Licensing options. I'd hate to see SageTV get slapped down with a situation like the Minecraft Modding community had happen to it with regards to CraftBukkit, which was nominally "owned" by Mojang(the company that owned Minecraft), but not managed by it. Once one of the major contributors to that project discovered Mojang's ownership of the project(when the CraftBukkit team decided to shut down their operation), he slapped the GPL sourced project with a DMCA takedown on the basis that it was using non-opensourced code from Mojang(that they had reverse-engineered/decompiled on their own in order to add their own API hooks into the Game's server-client--and incidentally part of why Mojang was considered the "owner" so they'd fall into a legal grey area and make it so Mojang wouldn't need to sue the CraftBukkit team to protect their(Mojang's) own IP rights).

But yeah, the CraftBukkit people chose the wrong code licensing scheme from the onset(prior to Mojang's involvement), so it was a time-bomb waiting to go off, which it eventually did, several years later. Let us try not to do something like that here?