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Intel to Offer A La Cart?

29K views 458 replies 51 participants last post by  housemr 
#1 ·
#352 ·
wmb said:
I expect product placement and shows that are essentially extended commercials will become more prevalent.

Also, commercial FF/skipping is a lot of work.
95% of my commercial skipping consists of 6 presses of the 30-sec skip button. That is very little work in pretty much every definition of the term.
 
#353 ·
Hoosier205 said:
...despite the fact that the trend is in their favor year after year?
A year or two ago, Sat Racer said that authentication was a big issue in renegotiations. That is the DirecTV anywhere that is becoming a major part of the product.

DirecTV should be scared of VOD. They do not have a high bandwidth direct delivery mechanism for on demand content. They are at the mercy of cable providers net neutrality and customers desire to subsidize distribution costs by paying for high band width internet.

That said, DirecTV also must know that they have a potential opportunity as a content aggregator. This past year, they offered Sunday Ticket over Play Stations, without any other DirecTV product. Imagine people getting DirecTV content on their own hardware, without DirecTV having to install a dish and receivers.
 
#354 ·
wmb said:
A year or two ago, Sat Racer said that authentication was a big issue in renegotiations. That is the DirecTV anywhere that is becoming a major part of the product.

DirecTV should be scared of VOD. They do not have a high bandwidth direct delivery mechanism for on demand content. They are at the mercy of cable providers net neutrality and customers desire to subsidize distribution costs by paying for high band width internet.

That said, DirecTV also must know that they have a potential opportunity as a content aggregator. This past year, they offered Sunday Ticket over Play Stations, without any other DirecTV product. Imagine people getting DirecTV content on their own hardware, without DirecTV having to install a dish and receivers.
The NFL ST on PS3 is kind of a unique case as it's filling the role that MLB, NHL and NBA online offerings offer. I don't see them forgoing satellite and providing the complete experience over IP.

What I think should happen is what we're already seeing with HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, even ABC has a dedicated app. Networks should provide their own streaming apps (or access to Hulu) as part of your subscription to pay tv. Ideally you get to a point where access to those apps can also be purchased a la carte, but every provider having there own model for tv anywhere/VOD is an inefficient mess. The premium channels are way ahead of the curve on this, HBO Go is a fantastic app experience on iPad, xbox and everything I've tried it on.
 
#355 ·
Another thought to consider...

Delivery services are pushing DVRs because they add revenue through purchase (for some) and services. Revenue that they keep; doesn't pass through to content distributors.

Content distributors see one of the major uses of DVRs is to skip ads. They can't get delivery services to put no-FF flags on everything as that kills their revenue booster. So they jack up the price the delivery service has to pay for their content. Guess who gets burned in this war?

It's a double edge blade. All the delivery services have these DVRs - which they can't control.

So yes, there is a business incentive for the model to change. The content distributors don't give a damn where the money comes from. Preventing FF on their content or charging a no-ad fee is going to look better and better.

Middlemen are getting squeezed everywhere. Our local news today (Minnesota, BestBuy HQ) had a story about how BB was going to have a new price-matching policy to stop "showrooming" (looking at product in BB and then buying online from somebody else). They are obviously desperate. In our area there is a store every 5 miles in every direction. They simply cannot compete on price (without suicide) and they have little else to offer. Does Samsung, Sony, anybody care whether their products are sold retail or online? Nope. Maybe someday there will be a single mega store in the entire Minneapolis metro that sells marketing space to consumer electronics companies for those people that must see something in person or needs help deciding. Retail consumer electronics will essentially be dead. There is a certain justice here - my elderly parents owned a mom-n-pop small town electronics and appliance store and they were driven out of business by BB years ago (fortunately right about retirement age anyway).
 
#356 ·
unixguru said:
I have the opposite reaction - wow, that's a huge penetration in little time.
Really? The DVR is not much more than a more capable VCR. VCR/DVRs have been around for 30 years. Not rapid at all, especially when cable/satellite companies have been giving them away.
 
#357 ·
unixguru said:
http://www.ieee802.org/3/ad_hoc/bwa/public/sep11/cloonan_01a_0911.pdf

See slide 12:
If a 20 Mbps, 3D-HD, H.264 video feed is sent to (on average) 2.3 people per home, then each home should be satiated with an average bandwidth offer
of (20 Mbps)*(2.3)=46 Mbps.... which we predict we will hit by ~2023

You have stated in other posts that the DirecTV bitrate is 6-12 Mbps so the average is less than 10. H.265 will reduce this another 40% to around 6 Mbps average.

That's 1/3 of what that quote references. That pulls in the date from 10 years to what, 5 or less? Do 2.3 people per home watch TV 24 hours a day? We watch about 6 hours so with a DVR that's a quarter of the load per day (spread out over entire day).

Slide 29:
The Downstream growth rate has been roughly 1.5x per year... Web-Surfing was the driver of growth in 2000... P2P was the driver of growth in 2008... IP Video is the driver of growth today

Intel would not be entering this market, whether it is ultimately successful or not, if there wasn't infrastructure and growth projections to support it.
1) 2023 is a long way off. By then 4K and 8K UHD will be a reality and the data rates will need to that much higher.

2) As was pointed out, averages are not the point. If 10% of the customers of a given ISP are streaming video during primetime, that might be manageable. But when 90% are doing so. that's a whole different story. Now you're going to hit router congestion bottlenecks all the way up the network to the POP on the backbone.

3) Even if there were the capacity at the viewer end, do you have any idea what is involved in delivering 20 million simultaneous HD streams (the number of viewers of NCIS two weeks ago). Even if the stream were compressed down to 5 megabits/second, that's 100 petabits per second. Now think of what it takes to deliver 100 million - the number of viewers of the Super Bowl.

This all points to the inherent problem with replacing linear broadcast TV with an internet based system. The internet is based upon a session oriented protocol. To completely replace cable and satellite services you'll need to create a internet wide broadcast protocol. Broadcast protocols exist, but they don't cross routers today. You'll also need a management entity to arbitrate access to "channels" in this internet broadcast model (likely based upon socket numbers). In other words, you'll need to replace all the cable and satellite systems in the country with one big digital cable system. This is EXACTLY how digital cable works today, whether delivered to your home via coax or fiber-optic cable.

So, in the end, you go around in a circle and end up where you started.
 
#358 ·
unixguru said:
Middlemen are getting squeezed everywhere. Our local news today (Minnesota, BestBuy HQ) had a story about how BB was going to have a new price-matching policy to stop "showrooming" (looking at product in BB and then buying online from somebody else). They are obviously desperate. In our area there is a store every 5 miles in every direction. They simply cannot compete on price (without suicide) and they have little else to offer. Does Samsung, Sony, anybody care whether their products are sold retail or online? Nope. Maybe someday there will be a single mega store in the entire Minneapolis metro that sells marketing space to consumer electronics companies for those people that must see something in person or needs help deciding. Retail consumer electronics will essentially be dead. There is a certain justice here - my elderly parents owned a mom-n-pop small town electronics and appliance store and they were driven out of business by BB years ago (fortunately right about retirement age anyway).
What in God's name does this have to do with a la carte television?
 
#360 ·
Hoosier205 said:
Good question. There have been a series of odd comparisons involving completely different scenarios and/or industries.
There have definitely been some tangents in this thread. I think the main problem is that people think a la carte would be cheaper, so they want it. Traditional providers won't provide it, so the "internet" must be the solution. The problem with that line of thinking is that you need a provider on the internet to share your vision of a la carte. The economics of providing TV service are well defined, so it remains hard to argue for a la carte. Therefore the idea that some mythical company is going to come in and blow everyone out of the water, when they need networks/channels to have a product to provide is a self-defeating prophecy.

It makes no economic sense for the video providers, the content providers or the internet providers to embrace the model that people want, so it's hard to imagine it happening anytime soon.
 
#363 ·
unixguru said:
Another thought to consider...

Delivery services are pushing DVRs because they add revenue through purchase (for some) and services. Revenue that they keep; doesn't pass through to content distributors.

Content distributors see one of the major uses of DVRs is to skip ads. They can't get delivery services to put no-FF flags on everything as that kills their revenue booster. So they jack up the price the delivery service has to pay for their content. Guess who gets burned in this war?

It's a double edge blade. All the delivery services have these DVRs - which they can't control...
I'll just say that the same people that are today saying that al-a-carte pricing models won't save the viewer any money are the same people that 10 years ago were saying that DVRs would ultimately raise the price of TV. No vendor is going just settle for less money for their product. Absent a competitive force or goverment regulation, the content providers will set the price of their content in such a way to insure that they make the same net revenue.

In the final analysis they have the product we want. If you want to watch "Walking Dead" you HAVE to go to AMC Networks to get it. There is no competive outlet for that content, and since there is no government regulation to the contrary, they will continue to sell it the way they please. If the government were to force al a carte, the price for everyone would go up, by whatever degree was required to insure that the content providers earn at least the equivalent net income.

This is where the supermarket model collapses. If one supermarket were to bundle filet mignon with bread, forcing you to but the bundle if you want bread, you can always get just bread down the street. The reality is that, when it comes to entertainment, there is only one place to buy bread - and one place for milk, and one place for eggs, and only one place for filet mignon. All the cable and satellite companies are doing is collecting it all for us and selling us an "all you can eat" smorgasbord for a given price, depending on the ingredients.
 
#365 ·
Well, you CAN go out to iTunes and buy a season pass for $42.99 (or other competitors). So it's possible to get current eps of cable series in an "a la carte" format. However, unless you're viewing is very limited, that price model doesn't make sense for very long.
 
#366 ·
Diana C said:
The only comprehensive list is from 2009 (http://allthingsd.com/20100308/hate-paying-for-cable-heres-the-reason-why/)...add 25% for a rough current estimate, or spend a lot of time searching for individual channels.
Thanks. That just steams me even more. Looks like 11 or more of the top 13 are included in the base Entertainment package. At a cost of nearly $15/mo $174/yr + DirecTV markup. The only one we watch (infrequently) is CNN.
 
#367 ·
unixguru said:
Thanks. That just steams me even more. Looks like 11 or more of the top 13 are included in the base Entertainment package. At a cost of nearly $15/mo $174/yr + DirecTV markup. The only one we watch (infrequently) is CNN.
There you go, again, and making this about you and your family. It doesn't matter what you, myself or others here watch. It's about popularity and trends bigger than you or I.

(This isn't meant as a personal attack on you or your family.)
 
#368 ·
Diana C said:
1) 2023 is a long way off. By then 4K and 8K UHD will be a reality and the data rates will need to that much higher.
I gave a few reasons why it wasn't going to be 10 years. You will also be paying $50/mo to DirecTV for UHD.

Diana C said:
3) Even if there were the capacity at the viewer end, do you have any idea what is involved in delivering 20 million simultaneous HD streams (the number of viewers of NCIS two weeks ago). Even if the stream were compressed down to 5 megabits/second, that's 100 petabits per second.
Only if you're hung up on doing it live. We always watch NCIS, several weeks after it airs.

Ever heard of caching? As the model shifts there will be caching servers in every metro area. NCIS will be sent out once to all the caching servers and they will deliver it across town to the consumers DVRs spread out over a very long time.

Heck, the local cable TV company will probably grab it OTA and serve from there.

Do you honestly think that any significant internet service today comes from a single server somewhere?

Diana C said:
Now think of what it takes to deliver 100 million - the number of viewers of the Super Bowl.
If I did watch it every year it would be OTA.

You are all forgetting that it doesn't take a majority of consumers to switch away from the current services to affect a significant change. Nobody can predict the number but do you honestly think things will stay the same if they lose 10% of their customers? 20%? Long before the internet becomes a barrier the current services will have to change drastically.

I'm not against paying a fair price for the content and services I use. When they get back to that then I will avoid the internet.
 
#369 ·
sigma1914 said:
There you go, again, and making this about you and your family. It doesn't matter what you, myself or others here watch. It's about popularity and trends bigger than you or I.

(This a personal attack on you or your family.)
Not taken that way.

I realize that we aren't every family. But you have to realize that there are a lot of families like mine. The underlying trends are similar to many more.

Again, if only 10%, 20%, whatever of the people go over this threshold it's going to get attention and action.
 
#370 ·
bakerfall said:
Well, you CAN go out to iTunes and buy a season pass for $42.99 (or other competitors). So it's possible to get current eps of cable series in an "a la carte" format. However, unless you're viewing is very limited, that price model doesn't make sense for very long.
I recently checked on this for just the series we watch on premiums. Season price on Vudu, 1 or 2 seasons back.

Dexter/SHO $36
Homeland/SHO $32
Borgias/SHO $27
TrueBlood/HBO $48
GameOfThrones/HBO $39
StrikeBack/MAX $29
total $211/season

SHO/HBO/MAX a la carte from DirecTV: $528. Yes, I realize I'm getting a discount via Premier.

$528-$211=$317. Or $6.10/wk. That's 1 PPV per week. I'm fairly certain that we don't watch more than one movie a week on those channels.

I'm ok with DirecTV pricing here for now. I don't have to wait a season or more. I can continue to make a value call on what I use and if I decide it doesn't make it anymore then I can cut.
 
#371 ·
Sure, I understand cacheing (I make my living dealing with data, networks and servers). But now we are getting into a cultural change that I'm in no position to address. How many people will accept a system where they go out and choose to watch NCIS versus how many watch simply because it is on at a particular day and time and they have nothing better to do? I have no idea, really, but I think it is a shift that will take a generation yet to fully develop.

But let's come back to the core issue. Why is al-a-carte pricing models more attractive? Because they cost less? We have seen that in order to cost less, the content providers will have to accept a sharp decrease in revenue. Since that revenue finances the production of new content, that will diminish both the quantity and quality of programming int the future.

It honestly seems to me that most people, when they talk about al-a-carte, really mean "don't include sports in my bill." Understandable, since ESPN, the various other channels, and regional sports networks make up about 50% of the basic programming costs in our bills.

Sports is also a content type that does not work well with on-demand viewing. Most people that watch sports want to watch it live. As a result, it won't be moving to internet delivery anytime soon.

Perhaps that is where we are headed - where sports is nearly the ONLY content on traditional linear broadcasts and everything else is available using some form of on-demand delivery (whether by internet or prestaging on servers or DVRs).

But keep in mind that the traditional OTA broadcast networks are still both the source of the majority of all non-sports content, and still command the majority of the primetime viewing audience. They are the originators of the linear delivery model and have an enormous investment in it. I honestly don't see them or the cable networks going away anytime soon. What we will more likely see if more diffusuon of the market. What started as under 10 channels, even in the largest markets, is now 200 channels. The internet will turn that into 1000 "channels" or more. How the vendors respond is hard to say...but it will offer opportunities and challenges. I think, in the long run, it will make the whole discussion of al-a-carte versus tiers a moot point. If you don't like the tier approach, there will be options.

Forcing al-a-carte onto the existing industry will require government intervention - something I personally would not like to see. I doubt they will do it correctly, and I think it has real constitutional issues.

One thing for sure...this has conversation has been stimulating. :)
 
#372 ·
unixguru said:
Not taken that way.

I realize that we aren't every family. But you have to realize that there are a lot of families like mine. The underlying trends are similar to many more.

Again, if only 10%, 20%, whatever of the people go over this threshold it's going to get attention and action.
So now the story is the Internet will survive long enough for a major dent in the industry ripples back to the content providers?

What would happen is ESPN will still get its money. Dish, DIRECTV, comcast, etc. won't. They will feel the squeeze first. Then Intel will as it grows to a size that ESPN will start charging them more. (If they haven't all along.)

The other post/posit is that enough people are like you, watching things weeks after the fact. Currently that is running about 30%, from what I've seen.

In other words, still 70% watching live.

Caching only works if one pre-produce and then feed the caches (in a multicast form), then individuals would overload the local networks. Cuz remember, there will be bottlenecks at EVERY level of the Internet.

Also recall that most people watch TV at the same times of the day: after work. It doesn't matter if the stuff has been cached, compressed, folded, or spindled. Content will have to move the last 10 miles of Internet one stream at a time. At a rate of 2.3 streams per household (or whatever it is) during a very intense primetime period. That last mile or ten miles of internet will still be overwhelmed. And likely long before 20% of the market hits. And that will slow adoption as performance suffers.

Peace,
Tom
 
#374 ·
Diana C said:
But let's come back to the core issue. Why is al-a-carte pricing models more attractive? Because they cost less? We have seen that in order to cost less, the content providers will have to accept a sharp decrease in revenue. Since that revenue finances the production of new content, that will diminish both the quantity and quality of programming int the future.

It honestly seems to me that most people, when they talk about al-a-carte, really mean "don't include sports in my bill." Understandable, since ESPN, the various other channels, and regional sports networks make up about 50% of the basic programming costs in our bills.

Sports is also a content type that does not work well with on-demand viewing. Most people that watch sports want to watch it live. As a result, it won't be moving to internet delivery anytime soon.

Perhaps that is where we are headed - where sports is nearly the ONLY content on traditional linear broadcasts and everything else is available using some form of on-demand delivery (whether by internet or prestaging on servers or DVRs).
On that we can agree. The root of this is that the cost of service is rising too fast and much of the reason seems to originate in sports. People that aren't heavily into sports will not continue to subsidize it at this rate. As it continues to take up a bigger and bigger portion of the air in the room something has to give - breaking sports out into a few bundles would silence my complaints.

Diana C said:
But keep in mind that the traditional OTA broadcast networks are still both the source of the majority of all non-sports content, and still command the majority of the primetime viewing audience. They are the originators of the linear delivery model and have an enormous investment in it. I honestly don't see them or the cable networks going away anytime soon.
The bulk of the population has access to OTA. My amplified OTA antenna is smaller and cleaner looking than my dish. It can remain linear forever.

Diana C said:
Forcing al-a-carte onto the existing industry will require government intervention - something I personally would not like to see. I doubt they will do it correctly, and I think it has real constitutional issues.

One thing for sure...this has conversation has been stimulating. :)
I don't like government intervention either. But what other way is there to even accomplish what you suggested - breaking out sports? We saw on Wall Street what happens when there aren't reasonable controls.

Stimulating is a word for it :D I do understand where people are coming from and it goes to show how entrenched the current model is. There is a huge inertia and in general people don't like change.
 
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