HDTV Almanac - Railroads versus Highways

[alfredpoor]

I’m not an expert on transportation history, but I think I have enough of the facts straight to make this analogy work. So please bear with me if I stretch the facts in order to make them fit my purpose.
In the early days of this country, transportation was more or less based on the individual; [...]

[url=http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/columns/2011/05/hdtv-almanac-railroads-versus-highways.php]Read Column[/url]

[jbowen01]

Using your railroad theme....too much power of content and delivery is stagnating and open to abuse by the liberal media (which feeds the cable companies).

I have always kept my internet, phone and media separate....I was a Directv subscriber from week one. I use Sirius radio and would NEVER bundle all my services under AT&T (my internet provider).

Competition is good....choice is dependent on separation of content and provider.

[BobDiaz]

I see a day where the current model of cable TV will go the way of gas lamps. Until something better comes along, IPTV seems to be the next logical step.

Picture a high speed connection to your service provider, who has banks and banks of computers. IF I want to see a movie or show, a server will feed this show direct to my home. Depending on the resolution and quality that would take around 1 Mbps --> 12 Mbps of a constant data feed to make it happen. That's possible with today's technology.

At that point, the only limit to the number of "channels" or view options is the limit of the servers from my ISP.



Bob Diaz

[stevekaden]

Oh here we go again. The Liberal Media - abuse??? How about truth.

I guess it was okay by you that Fox is the ONLY network in HISTORY to go to court for the Right to Lie. Yes absolute truth not liberal abuse. Then there is Beck, getting pushed off the air for being a complete jackass. (Sorry only subjective.)

We will both be told to leave the politics elsewhere, so let's leave this here. But as this forum desires, please don't spit this crap in our faces.

[alfredpoor]

I see a day where the current model of cable TV will go the way of gas lamps. Until something better comes along, IPTV seems to be the next logical step.

Picture a high speed connection to your service provider, who has banks and banks of computers. IF I want to see a movie or show, a server will feed this show direct to my home. Depending on the resolution and quality that would take around 1 Mbps --> 12 Mbps of a constant data feed to make it happen. That's possible with today's technology.

At that point, the only limit to the number of "channels" or view options is the limit of the servers from my ISP.



Bob Diaz

Not only does cable already have adequate bandwidth to support streaming video feeds, consider how much more they would have in their infrastructure if they gave up on the "broadcast" linear model of making hundreds of channels available to every subscriber all the time, and simply delivered the packets that they want. I think that they can't see a way to survive financially if they do that, but if they simply offer a metered service -- so many dollars for so many gigabytes (terrabytes?) of data per month -- I expect that they would do just fine and the consumer would get the "a la carte" system that seems to be in such demand. Many content producers would fail because they would not have the automatic baseline subscribers that they get through the current cable/satellite system, but I see that as a good thing. The flip side of those failures is that it opens the doors to "micro producers" of content that can find a small but loyal niche market of viewers.

Alfred
HDTV Almanac

[ccclvib]

Many content producers would fail because they would not have the automatic baseline subscribers that they get through the current cable/satellite system

The bad news there is who gets to determine what that baseline is. We're back to the same old thing: lowest common denominator. If how much the pipeline makes off the content is the only determining factor, lots of programming with real worth will be left behind - like most of the programming on PBS. Is this what we have to look forward to? If so, my Kindle will get a lot more use because most of the programming I watch won't be there anymore. The Republicans (yeah, I know, no political content) are already trying to kill off PBS and NPR because they don't like what people hear from probably the only real independent news services.

[Roger Halstead]

I sorta agree with you, but with some major differences. First, The move from railroads to highways did not result in greater efficiency, it resulted in greater flexibility but with far less efficiency. It is far more economical to transfer a ton of cabbage from coast to coast via railroad than it is by highway. On a smaller scale, it takes far fewer resources for an individual to travel coast to coast via railroad than via car. I didn't say cheaper, but in the end the overall cost is less via the railroad, or even via airline coach class (with planning) than by car if you figure how long the average car is kept. I'm not counting those of us who drive them till the wheels fall off. Typically when all costs are accounted for traveling long distances by car is one of the most expensive on average. Mass transit when fully utilized is the most economical and environmentally friendly.

As for selecting content providers. For the cable companies, it depends on their business model. Properly organized, a cable company *should* be able to be both a content provider and an ISP. Whether the movie is via their archives, or as a service provider they do get paid, just in a different form and a lot of that depends on their contracts as well as the competition.

In many areas of the country you have the option for at least two if not three high speed Internet providers and content will eventually cease to be free. NetFlix is likely to be on a much more even cost footing in the near future when they renew contracts. Their business model may need to be revamped according to recent poor earnings reports released and that will only worsen when they have to pay *much* higher prices for the content they provide.

Also, the bandwidth of content is not just determined by the number of servers at the provider. We have reached the point where often the bottleneck is some where along the Internet pipeline/backbone, rather than at either end and that varies widely by location. Theoretically routing should be automatic, but I still have problems with streaming video, particularly at busy times and I have rarely found the slow parts to be at my ISP or at the source using tracert. I expect the bandwidth problem to be greatly eased with time...and money. By the same token I fully expect to see a lot of the free content to disappear, depending on how well the advertising model holds up.

As to one other comment: ALL media providers are biased! Each of us posting is biased depending on our backgrounds and experiences. My profession and degree are/were in CS as well as electronics and having been retired for some time (meaning I come from a different era) my age colors my view. I have also been a pilot with several thousand hours as pilot in command which also colors my outlook. So my views differ strongly from younger generations and those with less technical education and life experiences. Thus I often see the Internet, streaming, and the cloud in a different perspective than the average individual who is mostly clueless about technical subjects.

[alfredpoor]

If so, my Kindle will get a lot more use because most of the programming I watch won't be there anymore.

Actually, I think you make my point. What will you be reading on your Kindle, and why? Will it be the blockbuster best-seller that millions of other people are reading? Or will you be picking and choosing the works you want based on your particular collection of interests? Book publishing does not work well for small, niche topics; it's inefficient to print them (at least it was before print-on-demand), and physical distribution remains a challenge because there are limited bookstores and other retail outlets. The Kindle and electronic publishing mean that anyone with access to the Internet can search for and find even obscure titles. And authors who can sell 1,000 copies a month of an ebook can make a comfortable living if they have a catalog of five or ten related titles that their readers also want.

My vision of streaming video is similar. You won't need a big share of the audience to make a comfortable living producing content, if you can find a steady way to reach a narrow but interested niche. We don't need 500 channels; we need 500,000 channels. (Does this sound like YouTube, perhaps?) An advertiser of some product or service for a very narrow market won't want to advertise on the SuperBowl (and can't afford to, either), but would be very happy to shell out a reasonable sum to be associated with a quality program that relates to that market and gets enough viewers.

Just as you don't read most of the books -- ebook or in print -- that are on the market because they do not interest you, so I fully expect that you won't watch most of the video programming. But I expect that you will read the books and watch the shows that engage you around specific interests that you have. And therein lies the future of entertainment, I believe.

Alfred

[ccclvib]

And therein lies the future of entertainment, I believe.

If your view ends up being reality: a)I hope it doesn't take too long, because the interim will be very painful! b)There are a lot of content providers (broadcast networks, for instance) who won't like giving up their "control" for a system that is absolutely buyer-driven. c)The ISPs will try very hard to control who sees what and how - otherwise their view of themselves will have to be ratcheted down considerably. and finally d)The end result will have to involve usage pricing of "megabytes/hour" for the ISPs to be able to make enough money to maintain and grow their networks.

Egalitarianism is nice, but leaving the decisions in the hands of the masses is a big step. The existing stake holders won't like it at all, and the changes to get from here to there will be complicated!

[alfredpoor]

I expect that "complicated" will turn out to be an understatement. Any time there is a massive paridigm shift, it is hard for the encumbants. I suspect that the railroads were upset when they discovered that they couldn't control when and where people went, and their investment in towns along rail lines dropped in value. By some accounts, Amtrak now loses $32 on average for every passenger on all its lines combined.

Change can hurt. And people tend to get angry and lash out when they are hurt; businesses are no different. I've no doubt that there will be big losers as a result of this shift, but that also means that there can be big winners. Whether the studios and networks will decide to put their energies into defending the old ways, or into finding new and creative ways to respond to what the consumer really wants, that is probably what will determine if they will win or lose.

Alfred