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I will be in Seattle in September, and back in Waterloo next January.

Television Reincarnation

October 22nd, 2005

VCR Tombstone TiVo, in a recent publicity stunt, held a mock funeral for the VCR.

But they might as well have burned cable and satellite boxes, too. Because television is broken. Broken compared to the Internet.

The web is vast; far bigger than 83 channels of cable. But it’s a completely different model. It’s 100% on-demand.

Most of what I read online, I skim. I “read” 30+ blogs this way. They don’t simply appear in front my glazed-over eyeballs, I choose to read them. And yet, when I want to pay for something, I do. For the tron09 hallowe’en costume, I needed a high-quality picture of some blood, so I bought one for a dollar. (Sidebar: iStockPhoto never advertised to me— I saw it used and recommended by Ryan Brill)

The On-Demand Future

Apple broke the ice. They’re selling episodes of Lost, for $1.99. You can be completely caught up with the story, 100% legal, and not own a TV.

There’s some problems here, of course, the most obvious of which is that the video in question is of absolutely wretched quality. It’s suitable only for play on the Video iPod, not on the desktop or telelvision.

But they’ve got the start. They’re making it more convenient to be honest than to be a pirate.

“On-Demand” via Piracy

Okay, so I’m a pirate. Let’s just get that right out. I’ve stolen Firefly, Wonderfalls, Battlestar Galactica, some of Stargate: Atlantis, and a bit of Family Guy.

Was it convenient? No. In most cases, the download took in excess of 24 hours, meaning that I had to wait for the content, and the computer had to remain on. Plus, there was the hassle of finding working torrents with enough seeds.

I ultimately bought Firefly, and I may buy Wonderfalls too. But what am I saying? Piracy was inconvenient. I would rather have simply put $2/episode in a slot somewhere and just bought the content directly. (As opposed to, you know, steal now, buy later.)

Numbers Game

When I purchased the Firefly DVD set, it cost US$30. There were 14 episodes; about 12 hours of viewing, plus commentaries. All of it absolutely worthwhile.

So lets do some math here: $30 for 12 hours pegs that entertainment cost at $2.50 per hour. Perhaps more significantly, $30 would mostly cover the cost of cable television for a whole month!

Would I really watch three hours of cable per week? If I were to watch twice that—an hour a night—is there even a remote chance I’d see programming of Firefly quality? Even 50% of the time?

Browsing

Part of the TV appeal, I think, is the lack of effort required. You turn it on, and then change the channel until there’s something that isn’t awful.

The radio is someone else’s playlist, your MP3s are your own. Sometimes you want to hear your own music, sometimes you want to hear that of others.

On the internet, if I’m curious to check out what other people are reading, there’s plenty of places to turn. For the really random, social bookmarking services like Reddit, del.icio.us, and Digg. Plus, checking out the blogrolls of the bloggers I read.

Sometimes I don’t know what I want to watch. Sometimes I’ll want to turn on my video application and simply hit “Stumble“. Perhaps it’ll be smart enough to compare my viewer profile with peers, and make suggestions. Maybe it’ll just be a completely random show. But I’ll be seeing an episode where it makes sense to start. And I’ll not be starting halfway through it.

Television, back to basics

It amuses me to think that the printing press was a revolution in on-demand. Suddenly, provided you could read, there was this vast amount of choice in what to read. Sure, there were still plays and performances to see. But you weren’t bound by them. You could read whatever pamphlets or books you wanted.

Television and radio removed this: A limited number of streams, programmed with commercial interests in mind, and catered to majority tastes.

Yet, here we are, going back to the on-demand model.

I look forward to it.

Mike

← Earlier Later → Posted at 12:10 pm to TV.

Discussion

On demand internet TV is definitely the way to go. With all the latest hardware and software catering to Media Centres, it makes it even more convienient to get things through the internet. I just read CBS is going to offer 60 minutes through iTunes as well. When it’s so convenient to get it from fast download conenctions whenever you want, I agree with you that it will lower piracy (BTW, you aren’t a pirate in Canada, the Supreme Court ruled uploading and downloading material to be legal, remember?). If the material is offered with superior quality, faster delivery, and at a reasonable price, I’m willing to pick it.

In regards to my own habits when it comes to downloading, how it usually plays out is that I may hear a song on the radio (which I usually listen to while driving) or hear about it (or a band) through news, friends, or iTunes (listen to the New Music Tuesday podcast) and decide I want to investigate. I usually then either go out and buy the music, or download it if it’s not a band I’m too familiar with. If I really like it, I then go and buy it. Almost all of my music I have is legally purchased. I prefer to actually own the albums on CDs. While I don’t do the same thing with movies/tv yet, I can see it happening.

What will get me hooked most on something is convenience. iTunes is already making me buy more music. It makes it easy. I think I might give up my CD buying over my most recent purchase, OLP’s Healthy in Paranoid Times. I bought it and there was that damn encryption on in that I couldn’t easily get it onto iTunes to go to my iPod. I, a legal buyer doing legitimate practises can’t even use my newly bought product. Encryption only encourages piracy, because I could have got the music easier from a Torrent for free without having to go to the store. With Torrents making the cost of distribution so low in comparison to classical methods like TV, if the industry keeps making it harder for legitimate consumers to acquire material, they will lose the thing that keeps them in buisness.

Posted at 7:47 pm on October 23rd by Jeffrey Aho.
It’s funny about convenience, because I love to own the Firefly DVDs, but it’s still way more convenient to view the movie files on my computer. I can see any episode without changing discs, and it’s a snap to jump to my favourite scenes within episodes.

But yeah, it is nice to own physical media. Maybe they should just bill $2 an episode to view/download, and then once you’ve grabbed a whole season this way, charge an additional $10 or whatever to ship DVDs.

Posted at 8:12 pm on October 23rd by Mike.
Yea I’m giving more consideration to Swing and Social dance over Ballroom now. Don’t know if I’ll do it next term though. I’m thinking I’ll spend free time swimming, working out, and learning the guitar first and do dance at a later term. Jerry’s also interested.

Posted at 8:56 pm on October 27th by Bily.
To those just stopping by, Bily is responding to a comment I left on his site about extra-curriculars.

I had been hoping to check out swing & social this term, but after talking to an acquaintance who’s in it, I felt a little bit intimidated… he was like, “you might want to come out to one of the special teaching sessions first so you’re a little more up to speed.”

Sounds like the sort of thing where it’s easiest to go from the beginning of the term. And I spent the beginning of the term working on various little projects.

Posted at 3:20 pm on October 28th by Mike Purvis.
You know, I’m not sure whether the fact that you consider that to be a “little” project should scare or impress me. You’re just lucky that you’re the only reason I studied for calculus last term, leans me more towards “impress”.

Posted at 12:48 pm on October 29th by Christine.
Happy Halloween, dude :)

Posted at 12:15 am on November 1st by Alex Spence.
[...] So I did have a whole tirade about downloading TV. But what I didn’t say before was covered better anyways by Thomas Hawk. And the rest ended up as a comment on a piece by Jeff. [...]

Posted at 7:56 am on July 12th by uwMike » Archive » She’s a Marshmellow.

You can use Markdown for style. I love hearing from readers, but please don’t hijack the discussion, use offensive language, or try to sell anything.