Time To Ditch Cable For Internet TV?

itwbennett writes "A flurry of announcements from YouTube, Boxee, Dell and Clicker on Thursday brought good news for anyone considering canceling their cable service in favor of internet TV. First, YouTube announced that within the next few days it will start offering full 1080P HD streams; better than your cable company can offer. Next, Boxee announced a 'Boxee Box' that promises to make it easier to get the content off your computer and onto your TV. Or you could hook up Dell's Inspiron Zino HD instead. 'This is an 8" x 8" PC running Windows 7 (with an option for Ubuntu) that you certainly could use as a desktop machine, but the form factor just screams 'Hook me up to your TV!' via its HDMI port,' says Peter Smith. And, last but not least in this roundup of announcements is the launch of Clicker, a programming guide for internet TV that aims to help you find what you want, when you want it."

I've canceled mine

[LiQiuD]

I've canceled my cable, and I don't think I'll go back. It's me, my 3 kids, and my wife. They have all adjusted to streaming from Netflix and Hulu. About the only downside is missing out on life sporting events. I'm contemplating just adding a tuner card to my HTPC, and then getting those over the air.

Overall I'm very happy with the new setup though, it is saving me about $100/month (canceled phone as well) and we still watch the same shows. Of course YMMV.

Sports and Crappy Slow Internet

[piltdownman84]

For me I will never give up cable until I can get sports with the ease and quality that I can on my TV. Sports really need to be watched live, and unless streaming makes leaps and bounds the internet is not going to catch up with HD TV anytime soon. I always find that on the internet the term HD is used very loosely. HD movies on Youtube don't compare to cable, neither does a single TV show downloaded with bittorrent that is labelled "HD". I have seen some "HD web streams" and they are ... if your lucky ...the same quality as digital cable.

Don't get me wrong, I hate my cable provider with a passion, but I can't give them up.

Just one problem

[rossdee]

My internet connection is via the cable company...

Telecoms...

[recharged95]

"Time To Ditch Cable For Internet TV?"

Not do-able if you get internet from your cable provider (Fios, or Uverse too).... If they see a shift, guess what: internet bandwidth costs will go up.

Deaf

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi.

That's all fine and dandy, but I'm deaf. I *need* captions and subtitles. Guess what, there's no legal reason for them to be on all these internet services.

Looks like I'll be paying Cable TV Raepage until the end of time.

Won't last forever

[c0d3g33k]

Cancel your cable if you want to save a little money and what you are interested in is available online. Free shows and movies online won't last forever, though. Free everything is just not sustainable, and right now they are just trying to capture eyeballs and prove the concept. At some point, expect paywalls to appear, at least for 'premium content' or selected episodes of a season or whatever. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[Skreems]

Come on, you really think someone won't find a way around it? If the rates become more than people think is reasonable, they'll pirate it. They already do. And technology in 3 years isn't suddenly going to become impregnable. At the VERY worst, it'll take one guy with a machine fast enough to virtualize Windows, fullscreen a paid Hulu account, and record the screen output to a video file, and you've got an unencumbered video you can share with friends.

No system yet has proven foolproof. If you can watch it, you can record it. And if the default experience becomes irritating enough, someone's going to work their way around it just to spite the media companies if nothing else.

Increased competition will drive down the prices

[nanospook]

Unlike cable companies which pretty much hold a monopoly, we may find ourselves with a multitude of internet TV companies. Now we will see true competition keeping the prices down.. PS Got rid of the TV and cable services more than a year ago. Have saved over a grand which went on the credit cards. PSS Unless these internet TV services offer full captioning, I will probably stick to torrents.. hearing loss..

Youtube?

[Hamsterdan]

Seriously...
they (buffering) have trouble (buffering) offering (buffering) (waiting) standard video.

I don't think starting a movie 45 minutes after it starts streaming a good idea :)

Ready for Prime Time?

[physburn]

I don't think this is ready for prime time yet, while digital terestrially TV offers real time high definition TV for your set or wall screen, the computer (if the home has one), still sits in the bedroom and office. Bandwidth is usually low enough that you have to predownload programs before you watch them. When the BBC rolled out they Iplayer a custom player for all BBC programmes, ISP went nuts, complaining about the huge bandwidth increase. In fact the Iplayer repeat programmes while popular weren't so popular as to deluge broadband connections. I doubt Internet TV will be popular for quite a while, maybe creaping up in popularity slowly and being mainstream in the 2020s, but thats just my guess.

---

Interactive Television [feeddistiller.com] @ Feed Distiller [feeddistiller.com]

Re:I still pass

[popo]

Not to mention the fact that TV actors are the most overpaid, undertalented idiots I've ever known. Why is it that starving waitresses suddenly make a couple hundred grand when they get a recurring sitcom role? Is there some shortage of actresses that I'm unaware of?

(And told tell me it's because they're talented)

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[TBoon]

Three, transcode for portable devices. Watch on while travelling.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[Anonymous Coward]

I remember this early on with cable TV, pre-Internet. If you bought cable, you would get some more channels, and all programming you watched would be ad-free. Then ads crept in between programs. Then eventually the shows you watched on had just as many ads as the over the air TV channels.

Another example is tethering. As time goes by, there are more restrictions, fewer phones that offer this service without jailbreaking or reflashing, and more fees attached for this service.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[Darinbob]

Yeah, I don't understand the attitude that things are always a click away. It takes a long time to download, and the internet is not always stable or available. If you're streaming you'll still want to back up or skip forward. If you've paid for something, even a measly $1, you'd like the ability to watch it twice. Backing up to DVD is a good option. Maybe not for Cheers reruns of course, but if you're watching next year's equivalent of Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica, it could be worth keeping. Though I suspect there are a lot of younger generation who can't imagine being interested in anything older than a tweet.

I'm still wrapping my head around the idea that some people have internet good enough to stream this high definition video in real time, fast enough to treat the whole thing like it was on Tivo. They've probably got cable modems, which they'd have to give up if they got rid of cable...

And no one is going to let you skip commercials forever without having a subscription fee. The whole "everything should be free, and high quality entertainment will spontaneously produce itself" idea seems very suspect. Too much like the whole dot-com bubble where visions of the future didn't synch up with reality.

Re:I still pass

[alvinrod]

If you look at it from the network's perspective those actors are quite talented. Their talent is getting a few million people to park their butts in front of 15 minutes of commercials while entertaining them with 45 minutes of content. The ad revenues are quite good, so why shouldn't the actors get a decent cut? If your TV show draws 15 million viewers each week, I'd be asking for a decent cut as the network wants to keep that show running for as long as it can do so.

To reply to the original poster, why shouldn't they monetize everything? They're in it to make money, not art. If you want creative television, go ahead and make your own. Don't complain when almost no one watches it either as the general public doesn't share your tastes. The criminal part is fear on the part of the cartel, and it's actually quite rational. They probably don't realize it yet, but they're going to be replaced by a new cartel soon. Once YouTube (Google), Apple, Boxee, or any other company trying to change the game actually succeeds, it's more likely that we'll see a sitcoms produced by these companies rather then CBS, NBC, or other current networks. Do you expect the current cartel to willingly give up their position?

They've already played their hand wrong up to this point in time and it seems as though they're grasping at whatever solution they think might save them from extinction. Profits were probably going to go down for them no matter what path they decided to take, but it's probably better than going bankrupt. I give the current media cartels of the world 30 years at most before they're replaced. The death throws will be ugly, but they're going to die.

Unfortunately the new straw boss isn't likely to be much better than the old one. You'll still treated like a criminal, just someone else will be doing it.

Re:Using cable to distribute video

[Darinbob]

And then you yell upstairs "Honey, can you hit rewind on the computer for me?" :-)

It's called BitTorrent...

[Anonymous Coward]

... and it was time to ditch cable a couple years ago.

Re:where da will be available shortly machines?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dell's "Tech Specs" state ubuntu 9.04 available... But no way to order it.

Did an online chat:

Q - "How can I buy this box with ubuntu?"
A - "as if now we don't have option to get with Ubuntu"
A - "will be available shortly"

Q - "so I should check back... Any estimate as to when?"
A - "we don't have exact update"
A - "can I email it you"
.
.
.

Re:Is it live, or is it Memorex

[evilviper]

In that world, why bother maintaining enough expensive disk space (with backups) for a video format that will be obsolete 6 months after you download it?

Disk space is extremely inexpensive now, and will get far more so in the future.

I have cheap, high-speed internet right now... Where I'm planning to move, I'll have no choice but to switch to expensive, low-speed dial-up. It will be an long time before such places are no longer the norm, and an extremely long time before they become legitimately hard to find...

MPEG-2 has been the overwhelmingly dominant format for video and audio since the early 90s. All other formats, up til MPEG-4 are simply poor proprietary re-implementations with next to no improvements to be had, and tremendous drawbacks. Now, MPEG-4/H.264, with it's few small (REAL!) improvements seems to be finally showing people what crap and smoke and mirrors all the proprietary crap is, and wiping them all out. I can't help but wonder how long it will be until everyone forgets the lesson, and starts falling for the same simplistic tricks again.

Re:Telecoms...

[TheRaven64]

The question is simpler: 'Time to separate network and content provision?' If you want a competitive market place, you need to prevent the people who control the pipes bundling the services. Mobile phone companies should offer network connectivity and termination as separate items. Cable companies should offer network connectivity and content as separate items. Then you'll see real competition.

Re:Using cable to distribute video

[7213]

RF IR extenders are a godsend for this sort of thing. I recently purchased a "Next Generation Remote Control Extender" that I HIGHLY recommend. I've got my HTPC in the basement and can use the remote control from my bedroom on the second floor without issue.
http://www.amazon.com/Next-Generation-Remote-Control-Extender/dp/B000C1Z0HA [amazon.com]

Basicly it comes with a very small rechargeable battery that can be put in either an AAA or AA sleeve (The sleeve houses an RF transmitter) . You put this battery & sleeve into the remote control's battery holder and it senses the IR LEDs load on the battery. Turns that data into RF and sends it to a base station placed where your video source is, the base station then sends out the original IR signal. Replaces the 'wife/gf remote' w/a more submissive model ;-) (Un)fortunately it doesn't have all the features of the wife/gf, so you should keep at least one of them around as well if those features are important to you (I often question if the tinkering & effort to keep 'em functioning properly is worth it).

Re:I still pass

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the fact that TV actors are the most overpaid, undertalented idiots I've ever known. Why is it that starving waitresses suddenly make a couple hundred grand when they get a recurring sitcom role? Is there some shortage of actresses that I'm unaware of?

(And told tell me it's because they're talented)

Because the series may only last 3-4 years, after which she may never get another major role ever again (or even a one-episode guest role). So those few hundred grand (and hopefully some residuals from re-runs) may have to last her for several years before she gets another full-time gig. After the Iron Eagle franchise, have you ever seen Louis Gossett, Jr. in a mainstream role? He once won an Oscar and has fairly good acting chops, but even he's in B- and C-list projections now.

The term "starving artist" was invented for a reason.