serial_crusher: The bit about changing channels mid-episode seems a bit useless to me though. But I'd definitely like to be able to just put on a random playlist of sitcoms or something when I need background noise.

PseudoTV and it can be configured to run 'adverts' in-between shows/movies as well; which ultimately involves it using the stash of trailers pulled from YouTube. It's an odd plug-in as whilst it's good for making some background noise whilst you do other stuff but beyond that... not so much. I suppose it's a bit more refined than a generic party/shuffle mode.

Football, local news and a couple cop shows OTA, HDMI jacked out of my PC into the TV, up-sampling DVD into other HDMI input for the rest. Fark cable.

ModernPrimitive01: is this where I come to post about how little t.v. I watch to help boost my ego about being on the cutting edge?

/you people still watch t.v., you just end up watching on your tiny a$$ computer monitor

You know little of what you speak young man


Internet+roku+ 50" big screen FTW

What's he biatching about? Cable internet is owned by the same people, they're getting my money either way.

exick: #oldpeopleproblems

I'm 50 years old and have never had cable. I get all my TV online basing my choices on recommendations I read on message boards.

My mum has cable and I have never seen such a collection of crap in my life. Toddlers in Tiaras, American Chopper, LA Ink - the list is long but distinguished.

Pud: Cable companies have had the ability to offer a la carte programming options to their customers for decades with the advancements of digital signalling. They just chose not to in order to make you pay for the 92 channels that you NEVER watch in order to get the 5 that you do.

/I really don't want to pay for 17 Spanish only channels, but there are people that do. Why not offer what your customer actually wants. They'll probably stay with you just out of the convince of it. There are too may options available now, and the cable companies stick with the business model they developed in 1976

This, if I could pay 20 bucks a month and get 15 channels of my choosing, I would have it.

kab: FishyFred: NutWrench: Cable TV companies know that the day they offer a la carte programming is the day that cable tv channels IMPLODE from the hundreds of shiatty channels we now have to a few dozen channels that still offer something worthwhile. And those channels will know they must continue to offer content worth paying for that appeals to the lowest common denominator or DIE. (Either alternative is fine with me).

FTFY.

It will not be the utopian revolution you seem to expect. It will just be a Kardashian sister on every channel.

^^^ x 1000

If you think a la carte programming would be dozens of channels of Deadwood quality shows instead of Honey Boo on DWTS, you're in for a big big surprise.

It will bring us virtual cable packages. Instead of having the option for all or nothing, there will be packages offering all, some, some other set, and a variety of everything in between.

Virtual packagers will strike deals for shows, and others will go the HBO route and finance their own series.

I don't see how there won't be good series produced because right now people aren't signing.up for the fringe subsidized channels, they are signing up for the subsidizing channels.

ModernPrimitive01: is this where I come to post about how little t.v. I watch to help boost my ego about being on the cutting edge?

/you people still watch t.v., you just end up watching on your tiny a$$ computer monitor

What, you've never heard of Windows Media Center? XBMC? MythTV? Roku? Apple TV? Google TV? Smart TV? WDTV? Boxee? XBox 360? PS3? Wii U?

kg2095: My mum has cable and I have never seen such a collection of crap in my life. Toddlers in Tiaras, American Chopper, LA Ink - the list is long but distinguished.

To me, one of the best things about not having cable is being entertained for a few hours by almost any random garbage when I'm trying to kill time in a nowhere motel when traveling for work or bored at my "virtually no internet because we're 15 miles from town" inlaws. If I had cable channels at home, I'd be bored out of my skull in those situations. Since there are hours and hours of Mythbusters or Ice Road Truckers or whatever junkfood I've never seen, I'm usually good. Of course, there are times when there isn't anything on the 30 or so channels the motel gets.

Oh, I'm your problem? Good.

SuperT: Unobtanium: We dumped satellite about 6 years ago. We have terrestrial digital TV, and I need to get a better antenna on it, but we are generally satisfied with it, given how little TV we watch. Netflix fills in the gaps.

The other thing I want to do is go from copper DSL to U-Verse data only, but talking Mrs. Un out of POTS is the sticking point. Earthlink will let us keep our e-mail addresses for a nominal fee, and then port the land-line number to Ooma or a two-step port to Google voice.

I used to work for ATT on uverse. ONLY switch if you are going to get fiber to the home. fiber to the node sucks ass. they cut corners and sales often lied to people and would schedule installs on waaaay too long of loops.

I too worked for Uverse about 4 years ago, those sales people were the slimiest farkers on Earth. always sold to customers who were too far away from the dslam

Cable internet + Xbox + Huluplus + Netflix + Renting Movies and buying season passes in the Xbox video marketplace + password to parents HBOGO account (HBO actually has gone on records saying they're ok with that) = what's cable? Also I can watch all of ESPNs content including all the live stuff on the espn xbox 360 app. And if I really feel like watching Jeopardy or another live sporting event I switch over to the antenna. Never gonna buy cable ever again.

Cut the cord a few months ago in anticipation of the NHL lockout, and I doubt I'll go back. Netflix for the kids stuff, and OTA for local news.

Planning on setting up a dedicated VPN for US netflix and Hulu, and the eventual return of the NHL (regional Geo-IP blackouts) with GameCentre.

I was in Orlando for a conference last week, and the Netflix selection is far superior to what is offered here in Canada. And Hulu is really neat too.

/Geographic blocking really sucks.

ModernPrimitive01: is this where I come to post about how little t.v. I watch to help boost my ego about being on the cutting edge?

/you people still watch t.v., you just end up watching on your tiny a$$ computer monitor

You know you can hook computers up to televisions these days, right? I mean I've been doing that for like 10 years now, but whatever bro.

NkThrasher: Oddly they haven't called back since about anything.

I wouldn't expect that to last. You said Comcast, right?

ModernPrimitive01: you just end up watching on your tiny a$$ computer monitor

My monitor has the same size screen my teevee had when I trashed it. It wasn't a small teevee either.

I cut the cord a few years back - I never wanted cable period, but my ex-wife couldn't live without it.

People here in San Antonio look at me like I have the mark of cain across my face when I tell them that I just use rabbit ears. I get the four major networks +CW, Ion, IonLife, and 5 multiplexed PBS stations all free. I use Hulu-Plus as my DVR. I don't really care much about sports, but if I'm going to watch a game, I'll go out to a sports bar with fellow human beings instead of sitting home on the couch eating Doritos.

Sports bars are expensive, you say? I know people that pay $80+/month for cable, but BW3 is a luxury?

As a side note - my living room TV is hooked to a Mac Mini (2011 vintage) with a wireless keyboard. Can anyone recommend a good TV tuner peripheral to use for direct DVRing?

Fark on....

Maybe if they didn't gouge your freakin eyeballs out they would gain customers. $180 a month is BS for tv, internet and phone.
/ wishes he was tech savvy

The My Little Pony Killer: ModernPrimitive01: you just end up watching on your tiny a$$ computer monitor

My monitor has the same size screen my teevee had when I trashed it. It wasn't a small teevee either.

What year Corvette and/or Hummer do you own? ;)

serial_crusher: dletter: Really, the only benefit of TV is the "instant changeability" of the channels that internet streaming still doesn't have.... at least I've never seen an internet app that works as well as... "Switch to CBS".. "Switch to Fox"... "last channel button flips between both within 1 second". You could have two tabs open with both streams, but, now you have to pause one, flip to the other tab, unpause, etc.

A buddy of mine told me about an XBMC app that would do this. Like, it would analyze your video library and make all these virtual channels that would show TV shows and movies at random, sorted by what network they were originally on, what genre, etc. And you could flip between one "channel" and the next, and it would pick up in the middle of the show. I forget the name of it though

At least one of the skins for Media Browser (itself an add-on for Windows Media Center) has a Channels option that randomly flips through a daily schedule of your collection, broke out into channels like Sci-Fi, Drama, etc... but it doesn't start mid-way through the show, whenever you pick a channel it starts at the beginning of the movie or tv show it had listed for your current time slot. If its 11:15pm and you picked Road House showing from 10:30-midnight, it doesnt start 45min in but at the beginning, which seems to negate any point of having the timeslots listed at all. just pick a random show and start it for me. I've bugged it and/or requested the already-playing nature as a feature.

Weird desire? Yeah, but how many times have you sat down and watched a movie on tv that you just ignored while looking through your DVD collection? The wife specifically asked for this when I sat up the media center in the first place and I've yet to be able to find a WMC-based solution. That XBMC offers is it something I'll need investigate.

jayhawk88: For no other reason, apparently, than the game was on ESPN proper, and ESPN can't figure out how to stream the same number of commercials online that the broadcast over the air has.

Oh, they can. They call that "WatchESPN", but only Comcast, TWC, Verizon FIOS, and one or two other providers get you access to that, and only if you are paying for "TV" anyway. But, they can and are streaming it.

The bait-n-switch is that last year you could watch a lot of ESPN/ESPN2/ESPNU stuff on ESPN3 if you were an internet subscriber on an ESPN3-paying ISP (most of them, it's only a buck or so a month per customer). This was to try to get a portion of us cord-cutters readdicted to ESPN content. And I did enjoy watching a lot of KU b-ball last year. I won't watch nearly as much this year. Meh. ESPN3 now has reverted to its original role of showing cricket tournaments and MAC football. Meh.

Sounds like Time Warner is demanding every American has to buy some sort of national cable insurance.

Izunbacol: As a side note - my living room TV is hooked to a Mac Mini (2011 vintage) with a wireless keyboard. Can anyone recommend a good TV tuner peripheral to use for direct DVRing?

The best one on the market is the SiliconDust HDHomeRun. They're networked, so you can just hook them up to your video source and your router and access them from any supported device on the network. If you're just using OTA or ClearQAM channels, you can use the standard HDHomeRun. They do have a CableCARD-compatible model, the HDHomeRun Prime, but it sounds like you won't really need it. I'm not a Mac user, but from a bit of googling, it looks like there's a DVR app called EyeTV that is compatible with the HDHomeRun.

Finally, there is the question of advertising. According to Bewkes, advertising-only models are not viable for most types of content, pointing to the era of the big three networks as a "wasteland" for TV. He called on companies to make more ads that people want to watch, citing a James Bond trailer or ads in GQ magazine as examples.


Is there such a thing as Ads people want to watch? Ads are the main reason I don't watch more TV in the first place.

NickelP: I am pretty sure espn3 and watchespn are the same thing now. I am watching a big on espn3 right now and it has a big WatchESPN logo on it. Usually all the games are on it that espn has access too, they just black the shiat out anywhere that you could actually watch it on espn.

ESPN3 is the branding for obscure things that aren't being carried on ESPN1/2/3/U or are on before 5PM local (i.e., trying to push midday sports to people at work). But, yeah, it's the same delivery platform, and they're using it to push the broader WatchESPN (only for TV subscribers, and even then costing your cable company even more).

Count_0: Finally, there is the question of advertising. According to Bewkes, advertising-only models are not viable for most types of content, pointing to the era of the big three networks as a "wasteland" for TV. He called on companies to make more ads that people want to watch, citing a James Bond trailer or ads in GQ magazine as examples.


Is there such a thing as Ads people want to watch? Ads are the main reason I don't watch more TV in the first place.

I use to go to the international Adfest showings, there be gems within the rough. But yah, 99.9999% of them are just a nuisance.

You people realize that if you go strictly a la carte, there's no farking way this show ever gets off the ground, right?

Nexzus: I was in Orlando for a conference last week, and the Netflix selection is far superior to what is offered here in Canada. And Hulu is really neat too.

/Geographic blocking really sucks.

Yep, I keep hearing about NetFlix so I tried it out, my god the selection is crappy. OFC this is NetFlix UK... not the US version. I'm seriously considering trying to set up a VPN that only relays calls to NetFlix and Hulu down its pipe.

Laughably the same Geo-IP system they use to lock us out would just as easily feed us region specific adverts... which I'd begrudgingly watch.

Trocadero: [images.tvrage.com image 600x600]
You people realize that if you go strictly a la carte, there's no farking way this show ever gets off the ground, right?

Why? People said the same thing about programming in general only a few years ago, they said you'd never get a decent Scifi show without this way of doing things. Then stuff like Pioneer One appeared and was totally crowd funded.

If your show is any damn good it'll make money. If it's crap that uses every cliché in the book to be 'dark and gritty' whilst following a boring and long established formula... it dies.

So... which is your show? Good and thus make money regardless or formulaic crap?

He argues that "cord cutting" is overstated and that the phenomenon is limited to a small segment of low income Americans.

You sure about that. I am not.

Bewkes pointed out that the "cord nevers" are not receiving the best content (it will be interesting to see if this argument one day sways them into signing up)

The problem is cable isn't the best content anymore. Maybe if you like sports or reality shows. If not the rock stars I see in forums, Breaking Bad, Walking Dead, ect are few and far between. Reality shows done for cheap are displacing other shows.

Finally, there is the question of advertising.

Why should I pay cable to watch commercials that usually take up 18 minutes per an hour.

I get Unlimted LTE.

I have an OTA antenna that lets me watch live football.

Netflix/Hulu gets me anything I'd want to watch.

Why in the hell would I get cable internet or TV?

How about it costs too much and then has ads too

I cut the cord earlier this year. I'm by no means low-income but I decided that the $92/month that I was handing over for cable+DVR could be put to better use. For me, the eureka moment was when I realized that I hadn't turned-on my DVR in almost two weeks. Honestly, I don't miss cable. XBMC has plugins that scour the various network websites and index the content that they make available so I still have access to the most recent episodes of shows like Big Bang Theory almost as if I'd DVR'd them.

Vaneshi: Trocadero: [images.tvrage.com image 600x600]
You people realize that if you go strictly a la carte, there's no farking way this show ever gets off the ground, right?

Why? People said the same thing about programming in general only a few years ago, they said you'd never get a decent Scifi show without this way of doing things. Then stuff like Pioneer One appeared and was totally crowd funded.

If your show is any damn good it'll make money. If it's crap that uses every cliché in the book to be 'dark and gritty' whilst following a boring and long established formula... it dies.

So... which is your show? Good and thus make money regardless or formulaic crap?

I haven't seen Pioneer One, but just reading about it briefly it looks more like a passion project that hasn't really made that much money (if any) and has released six episodes in 18 months despite having production costs of less than $10,000 per episode. If "the future of television" is releasing episodes every three months, then I think most people will pass.

The reason Breaking Bad and other shows wouldn't get made is because the current television model does three things incredibly well that an a la carte model can't:

1) It spreads risk between all the parties involved (creators, production companies, networks, cable companies, advertisers) so that, if a show bombs, no party takes the whole fall. Television is an incredibly risky business. More than half of shows don't see a second season. You need to spread that risk so that people don't lose their shirts and when a critically well-received show bombs out (Lone Star).

2) The barrier for entry for creating new shows is relatively low. This is an especially great thing since, as I mentioned above, the failure rate for new shows is so high. A creator invests nothing in his show except for the original idea. A production company pays him for a script and the network pays for one episode. About $2-3 million gets invested to see if an idea is worth exploring and, usually, it's pay-as-you-go for the first few months a show is on the air. Without that piecemeal approach, shows will have to be produced in larger batches (7-13 episodes before air) because people won't want to spend money on a show they don't know will plan out.

3) The barrier for entry for watching a new show is, in most cases, zero. I can watch any new show on broadcast television or cable for free. How could it possibly be easier to try something new? Under an a la carte model, I have to pay for a show before can I ever even see it. Mad Men is, by all accounts, one of, if not the, best show on television. And yet fewer than a million people watched it during the first season when they didn't even have to pay for it. How many people do you think would have watched it if they had to pay for each episode or each season individually? Probably not enough to keep it on the air.

Until a la carte can figure out those problems, the current model is better for most people.

Cutting cable was the best thing I ever did.. Save a shiat ton of money..

Netflix + Seedbox + Private Trackers = I spent less to fund it and see the exact shows I want, when I want. Also, I get to see shows I never got to see before because I refused to sign up for anything but super basic cable. I refused to be raped by the "packages".. Pay extra so I can get TruTV at a premium? No thanks..

Comcast also unofficially officially raised their blast cap to 500GB.. If you check your status page where the meter is.. You'll notice the quota has doubled even though it says the 250GB cap is suspended. I'm at 250GB right now but the meter is only 50% filled.