So is HDCP encryption the end of HD recording?

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I'm happy with OTA only, but I miss sports. Especially college sports. I'm good for NFL except Monday night.

The only thing I miss is my local MLB team coverage. I enjoy the radio broadcasts (grew up listening to them, in the days before all games were televised), but I wish MLB.tv would allow you to get in-market games and not just out-of-market, especially since PlayOn carries it - but that would undermine the local cable company who wants you buying cable to see it. There is rarely a college game that I *really* want to see that's not on CBS/ABC, and in the rare case that there is, I plug the laptop into the HDTV via VGA and watch on channelsurfing or justin/tv or whatever. Or if it's a big enough game, I usually end up at a friend's house watching anyway. As for MNF, I only care when our hometown team is playing, and when they do, the local affiliate CBS station picks it up... otherwise, I'm not staying up past midnight EST (on a Monday work night) for two teams I don't care that much about....

Originally Posted by panteragstk

I wish tv providers would just let us choose the channels we want and let us pay for those. I have no need for 80% of what is on most non ota channels.

I read somewhere, several years ago, that the largest lobbyists against a la carte cable are not the cable companies themselves, but the religious channels, because they rely on cable money for their existence and know that not enough people would pay to get them if cable went a la carte. I have no idea if this is true, but it sounds plausible.

Nonetheless, if I could buy a la carte cable, there are two or three channels we'd get in our house... the local Fox Sports affiliate (for the MLB mentioned above), HGTV for my wife, and possibly ESPN (though it's so easy to find their feed online, I don't know if I'd bother... plus I don't know that I want to pay money to hear details on Brett Favre's latest visit to the bathroom, or game predictions from guys who are right about 17% of the time yet still keep their jobs....)

[panteragstk]

Except for college football, it sounds like me and you are in the same boat pj. My college team isn't good enough to ever play on abc except the rivalry games. I used to never miss a game and feel as if I am letting them down. Oh well.

[reggie14]

Originally Posted by jptheripper

i would love a la carte cable. I think i would get about 10 channels. Of course, comcast knows that, which is why there is no a la carte cable.

I really doubt Comcast cares that much. It obviously would disrupt their business plans, but I don't think it would have a big impact on their bottom line. They could pretty easily just have a flat rate to cover their costs/profits, and essentially just charge people the per-subscriber cost that they negotiate from each cable channel.

It's the owners of the cable channels that care. They're the ones that are forcing the deals that bundle channels together. They're the ones negotiating different per-subscriber fees based on what cable package is in.

I'm not really convinced I'd save any money with a la carte pricing. In fact, I think it could get more expensive. I'd only need 10-15 channels too, but I think those channels would get pretty expensive. I'd be awfully tempted to keep ESPN, though their current $4/subscriber fee would probably double when they lose half their subscribers. I'd still want some of the more expensive non-sports channels, like USA and TNT. And, I'd want some of the currently cheap, but niche, channels like the History Channel and SyFy, that would have to dramatically increase their fees to stay in business. A lot of niche channels would probably be driven out of business. While that's not necessarily a bad thing, I'm not a big fan of that when its the niche channels that I like! But I do worry that we'd see more pressure to put out cookie-cutter sitcoms and reality TV shows that appeal to the masses and are relatively cheap to produce.

[tmiranda]

I can see it now. A la carte price list:

• Pick 10 channels for only $10 per channel
• Pick 20 channels for only $5 per channel
• Pick 50 channels for only $2 per channel
• Pick 100 channels for only $1 per channel

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I can see it now. A la carte price list:

• Pick 10 channels for only $10 per channel
• Pick 20 channels for only $5 per channel
• Pick 50 channels for only $2 per channel
• Pick 100 channels for only $1 per channel

...or, for only $100 per month, buy the Mega-Package, and get EVERY channel!
(price is good for one month and will increase to $200 unless subscriber calls, waits on hold for 45 minutes, and then lucks into a customer service rep with enough grip of the English language to understand that you want to change your service)

[Fonceur]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I can see it now. A la carte price list:

Well, in Canada some providers do sell "a la carte" programming for about $1.25 per channels, in packs of 15/20/30... They do require the "basic service" at $25, before the extra "a la carte" package and not every channels is available for that, but...

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

I can see it now. A la carte price list:

• Pick 10 channels for only $10 per channel
• Pick 20 channels for only $5 per channel
• Pick 50 channels for only $2 per channel
• Pick 100 channels for only $1 per channel

That sounds like a great deal...wait a minute...

[jptheripper]

yep i know. No matter what service, what package, what channels, what provider, its still $100 bucks a month.

and its still annoying.

and i still pay it.

[freewheeling]

Originally Posted by reggie14

How is Internet streaming cheaper in terms of distribution costs? It seems like the overall distribution costs ought to be higher when you need to have a separate data stream for each TV that is on.

That being said, start-up costs for a new content provider is probably lower. And more generally the barriers to entry for new content providers is probably much lower. That might help.

Yeah, I'm talking about the distribution costs for content providers. The stage is set for some country like NZ or Canada to start competing with Hollywood, filling a demand that Hollywood no longer knows how to fill. Also, someone like Netflix could start producing their own content instead of relying on their competition to do it for them (at increasing cost). But I don't think people are going to watch this stuff on their computers. They'll go through devices like Roku that essentially make the fact that it's streaming from the internet more or less invisible to the user. They'll just subscribe to an online channel or family of channels.

[panteragstk]

Originally Posted by freewheeling

Also, someone like Netflix could start producing their own content instead of relying on their competition to do it for them (at increasing cost).

Ask and ye shall receive. Netflix to Stream Original Series with House of Cards