HDTV Almanac - Willing to Pay for Internet TV

At present, at least for me, the Internet just isn't reliable enough for me to pay to watch streaming TV. If I can download the program and watch it later would be different and there are quite a few where that can be done. They also need at least 1080i, if not 1080p.

However, I have to wonder about band width availability as the video providers and networks move to more content being available via the Internet, particularly with some major ISPs throttling throughput. With out Net Neutrality, those same providers can throttle content provided by the competition.

Some ISPs are calling users who use the bandwidth as it was advertised, bandwidth hogs, (which they are only using what they paid for...whether the ISP can deliver it or not) With these companies, the end user would be hard pressed to watch more than a few movies per month. Once the capability, bandwidth, and user base expands I expect to see those prices tier based on band width and much more expensive than at present.

However, I have to wonder about band width availability as the video providers and networks move to more content being available via the Internet, particularly with some major ISPs throttling throughput. With out Net Neutrality, those same providers can throttle content provided by the competition.

Yup, I'd say that was their initial motivation for their endless calls for the ability to "shape traffic". That power can be used for far more...wicked...purposes, but I do believe that is their immediate driver.

When the FCC betrayed rural America and forced the transition to the shorter-range, line of sight signal of digital TV, that put Big Cable in the catbird seat, for many Americans found themselves with no way to get "free" TV. I know the price for my cable television went up almost immediately after the transition.

Yup, it took a big hit about the same time I was discovering that even multistory antennas would not work for me or anybody else in my town. I'd love to see cheaper TV piped via the 'net...but rather doubt that cable wants competition souring the milk of their ever more productive cash cow.

Various thoughts and responses:

Cable prices have gone up steadily. I don't think it's linked to any single event; they're saddled with an aging infrastructure and agreements that require blanket coverage for the communities that they serve. Their satellite and fiber optic competition are not encumbered with these problems.

The market will determine whether bandwidth throttling survives or not. Some providers offer truly unlimited data transfers; competition may force others to follow suit. I believe that cable companies will become information pipeline utilities within five to ten years. They will get out of the rebroadcast of content business, and just offer bandwidth the way the electric company offers electricity. You will either pay on a simple metered basis, or there will be flat rate monthly fees plus usage beyond your monthly limit. I expect the flat rate plans will win, so you can get a discount when you use more.

Cable is in a tough position, because it cannot survive with a la carte pricing, yet the Internet is essentially offering that to viewers now. Their current business model is not sustainable.

Alfred

I pretty much agree that cable is going to have a rough road to hoe. They are using an outdated business model to support what is rapidly becoming an outdated and limited technology.
I do think the move to Digital was the right direction to go for OTA. I realize the results of that change depend on the location, but for me, I get almost twice as many stations as I did before the change.
Admittedly my antenna system is not typical, but it is the same system we had for analog.

Whether throttling proves viable in the long run remains to be seen. Typically the cable companies and many ISPs have over sold available bandwidth, just as the airlines overbook. Many, if not most, could not support a fraction of their uses if they used all the band width they paid for. With customers watching more and more shows...and movies their bandwidth usage is going to be well into the gigabyte range. Quite likely many will be into the hundreds of gigabytes. I think it will come down to using either a tier system based on monthly use, with penalty prices for going over what was paid for, or the likely hood of a class action suit if they continue to sell by connection speed with mo limitations and then throttle. There is a third option and that would be a failed business model.

We have a good antenna system for OTA plus satellite and cable. The only reason we have cable is for the high speed internet. We do occasionally watch the local channel that has city and county meetings so we can keep up with that. I had DSL with a static IP which meant a dedicated modem at both ends. By the time it was all put together I was spending $250 a month just for the Internet connection plus domain hosting. The same service is now much less. The local cable company does not throttle and if they start I'll just go to one of the local ISPs that do not.

As more and faster internet connections become available the cable companies are going to be hard pressed to keep up with that service as well.

I think the OTA local and regional stations will be around for quite some time, but I think it's just a matter of time for the cable companies.

I don't know of any utility that has sufficient capacity to serve all their customers if they were to use the service in large volume at the same time. We get loss of water pressure on water systems, brown-outs or black-outs on electrical systems, and there's another utility that will just back up if overused (or it rains too hard). So I don't have a problem in theory with cable selling more subscriptions than it has capacity to serve at once, but I agree that in many cases they don't have nearly enough capacity for the number of subscribers. And this will get worse as consumers want to increase their Internet usage.

Alfred

I have no problem with the so called over booking *IF* that is part of the contract. Statistically at any specific time of day they will have a certain % of their users on line. They should have enough band width to handle all of those users. They will also have a specific % of users on line 24 X 7 and again they should have the bandwidth. However as the networks along with video and music providers gain more customers both of these groups are going to increase in size so the overall percentage on line at any given time will increase. Few, who sign up for these services are going to tolerate pauses in video and audio playback. Last night I was watching some streaming video, and had to pause it at least 6 times for the data to catch up with the player near the end. Otherwise the image was moving in steps, the audio would get out of sync, and the image would even pixelize at time. Pausing the payback for even 5 seconds might give me up to a minute of good viewing before it went back to playing "catch up". "To me" that would be unacceptable for a pay service and that will be happening unless band width capacity is increased substantially.

Pausing the payback for even 5 seconds might give me up to a minute of good viewing before it went back to playing "catch up". "To me" that would be unacceptable for a pay service and that will be happening unless band width capacity is increased substantially.

I agree that this is unacceptable, Roger. It is possible that your ISP is at fault, but there are also other bottlenecks that could be the source of the problem, from your computer all the way back to the host server.

It doesn't matter where the blame lies, however; consumers aren't going to tolerate that sort of performance. So everyone involved in the delivery chain will have to work together to make quality of service (QOS) the top priority for streaming content delivery.

Alfred

Surprising, to see people claiming that Big Cable is the poor little victim faced with aging infrastructure and outmoded business models...because it flies in the face of the facts. Consider Comcast, whose clamor for the ability to "throttle" and "shape" traffic is astounding:

"Comcast's profit climbs; demand increases for broadband" (MarketWatch, Feb. 3, 2010, 4:16 p.m. EST)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/comcasts-profit-more-than-doubles-2010-02-03

By David B. Wilkerson, MarketWatch

CHICAGO (MarketWatch) -- Comcast Corp. said Wednesday that its fourth-quarter profit more than doubled as costs declined and it gained new subscribers for its digital video, broadband and telephone services.

[...]

Philadelphia-based Comcast (CMCSA 18.82, +0.47, +2.56%) (CMCSK 17.82, +0.47, +2.71%) said it earned $955 million, or 33 cents a share, compared with a profit of $412 million, or 14 cents a share, in the year-earlier period. Earnings in the latest three months include tax benefits of $130 million, or 4 cents a share.

(And "tax benefits"? lollll...corporate welfare.)

Here we go again talking about one of my favorite(?) rants re broadband. I receive DSL from AT&T, and I'm close enough to the C.O. that my signal is consistently around 1.1K download. And yet... I can't watch a live CFL game on ESPN3 without the regular stoppages because the buffer has been overrun and the just-as-often skips because the buffer has gotten out of sync. I'm convinced the whole process is going to have to be much better before I can accept watching a program of any length on my computer or TV from broadband will be worth it. Now that U Verse is available here, and the broadband portion is considerably faster, maybe I'll be convinced, but I'll believe it when I see it.

When it comes to the poor speed, it is possible to get the IP of the source and run a "Tracert" to check all sections and nodes in use while trying to stream or download although just running that app changes the environment. It's also possible to check the performance of the computer.

As far as Comcast they are more than just a cable company and are quite diversified across the entertainment industry. Much of their profit from cable comes from cutting corners and poor service as they are rated quite low by their customers. But like most cable companies in any area they are pretty much a monopoly which leaves customers looking for better. So far, I have nothing to complain about DISH Network, or Charter cable. Both have fixed what few problems I've had in short order and seemed genuinely interested in seeing that the problems were fixed promptly. Both called back two days later to make sure I was satisfied.

Here I have the latest multi-core computers which have enough horsepower to not only run AVI, but can run other stuff in the background at the same time. I have tuners in two of them for OTA viewing, but unfortunately I've never been able to get HD into them except for the 1080i and 720 OTA signals. Now if I could just get a good HD signal from the DISH receiver to the computer in a form it could use.

So I have OTA, Cable, Cable with high speed Internet (15 Mbs), and DISH Network satellite. Downloading Fedora 13 last night and again about an hour ago (7:00 AM) I was seeing download speeds of over 1 MBs (8Mbs) and those are about 3.5 Gig downloads. The 32 bit version I downloaded this morning took less than an hour. Those were direct downloads, but it's also available P2P. So in less than 12 hours I've downloaded nearly 10 Gig, which is probably a normal day for my usage. That works out to about 300 Gig of traffic per month and I'm not into the pay per view or subscription services ... yet.

In short, you will be a target of "traffic shaping" and "throttling" whether you get into 'net TV or not. The goal of the cable companies in pursuing the ability to throttle does include precluding competition from non-cable companies for their lucrative TV business - but it also includes plain old-fashioned motives like "increasing their revenue stream without incurring the expense of additional infrastructure investment".

The easiest way to do that is to calculate the average or mean usage for all customers, and then ding anybody whose usage comes in above the standard deviation. I.e., you, me, and anybody else who does a lot of software/operating system work, heavy research, or accesses large data sets - and also those who are downloading movies and television shows.

The FCC and members of Congress can be easily snowed with the use of the statistics (it does sound like you took the interests of all of your customers into consideration when you use words like average and mean), and if the cable companies succeed they increase their revenue stream while reserving capacity for future customers without investing in infrastructure.

That is, the best of all worlds for Big Cable: The ability to increase their margin while anchoring their investment - and infrastructure - in the past. Sad, really...we're already falling behind many parts of the world when it comes to bandwidth availability at a reasonable cost. And given the fact that those with the fewest constraints upon their access to information and knowledge are necessarily advantaged when it comes to learning - and creating - the new, what we are really seeing is the United States of America being handicapped yet again by greed.

Sad, really...we're already falling behind many parts of the world when it comes to bandwidth availability at a reasonable cost.

The wild card here is wireless Internet access and the current administration's commitment to providing broadband services to a wider market at a reasonable cost. The FCC is actively negotiation to free up broadcast spectrum for this. Cable is at serious risk of being made redundant, as high speed wireless networks could become a reality and covering a large majority of the population -- maybe 90%? -- within the next five to ten years. Comcast is big enough to diversify, though it may not be nimble enough to respond to the changes. The really small cable companies are going to be challenged with simple survival over the next ten years. Keep in mind that Charter, which is not a small company, went bankrupt last year and is in business today only because it was able to erase its debts and void its stock.

I agree that we are well behind some other nations in terms of broadband access, speeds, and price, but most of those other countries are a tad smaller than us, which makes some of these problems a lot easier to solve. Some of these others also came late to the party, which also gives them the advantage of not being saddled with an older infrastructure.

Alfred

4G will be a game changer,as will broadband carriers without cable TV interests

Unlike many, if not all of those countries that have a greater percentage of broadband *available* to their populations, the US on average has a far lower population density. Once you get away from the population centers it can be a long way between homes. Whether it's in mountainous terrain like Appalachia or the Rockies a great deal of the area is pretty much unreachable even with wireless broadband at anything near being economically viable. This even applies to areas in New England. Take Michigan for instance; Draw a line across the state roughly half way up the lower peninsula around M-20. North of that line (with a few exceptions) it's mostly heavily wooded swamps and hills. However it is an area where most of it could be covered with wireless broadband albeit the population density would likely make it uneconomically viable. The majority of the land in the country is nothing but miles and miles or more miles and miles.

On thing I've noted is there is a segment of the population that has no interest in becoming connected. As an educated guess I'd say if we could blanket 100% of the country with broadband there would be some where between 10 and 20% that wouldn't hook up even if we gave them computers and free access.

I know a number of individuals and families who do not own computers and they have broadband available. No, I do not know how their children survive in school. OTOH I know a number of Farmers who run their entire operations on computers and would welcome broadband.

I'm not saying the drive to get broad band *available* to the entire country is a lost cause, but getting much more than 80 to 90% connected is. OTOH we'll be able to claim we have broadband available to everyone.

Roger-FYI-there are programs out there that will let you download or rip any streaming media on the web.Many are free and "clean" .So ,with all respect ,if thats stopping you from cutting the cable-jump on in the waters fine

Unlike many, if not all of those countries that have a greater percentage of broadband *available* to their populations, the US on average has a far lower population density. Once you get away from the population centers it can be a long way between homes. Whether it's in mountainous terrain like Appalachia or the Rockies a great deal of the area is pretty much unreachable even with wireless broadband at anything near being economically viable.

Once upon a time, America did things because we always faced forward into the future; we wanted to lead, not follow; we wanted to strengthen ourselves lest we decay.

Nowadays, though...if an opportunity to build the foundation for a better future will slow somebody's rate of wealth accumulation in the now, we get excuses...we get "not economically feasible", which is simultaneously both "The projected ROI is too small to attract the interests of our board and our major shareholders." and "Somebody else can worry about tomorrow.".

We're not even talking about causing somebody to stop making money....all it takes is for somebody to argue that they can make more money by turning their backs upon tomorrow, and the national interest is forsaken.

Hence, places like China bloom and grow stronger while we quibble over whether or not the unemployed should receive sufficient money to survive even as we completely ignore the urgent need to address the reasons why they are unemployed...the reasons why we grow steadily weaker....the reasons why it is artificially cheaper to produce goods and provide services elsewhere.

Greed is not a planning tool; it is a vice.

I am unfortunate in that I can remember the days before America's government was "a government of Business, by Business, and for Business". Had the transition occurred only a little sooner, Neil Armstrong would have said "One small step for a man....and the next thing you know, you're a cubicle pilot.".

Cable is also my Internet access. Charter has a package where you can get broad band with basic cable for a very good price. I have 15 Mbs service and it really does it. We were going to drop the basic cable as we rarely watch anything on it, although we do occasionally watch the city and county meetings to keep track of what's going on. Mercury Networks does my web hosting. I've been with them since they started. They just can't reach the speeds of cable...yet. I do know they use a tiered system and also have wireless, but don't know how the prices would compare.

So the only reason they keep me on cable is for the high speed Internet.
Some years back, before cable had Internet, I went to ISDN at 128K, then on to DSL when it became available. With Domain hosting, a dedicated phone line at both ends, and modems at both ends which required a commercial rate, the Internet was costing me about $290 a month and that was for a whopping 256K. ( That was when I was working and not on a pension<:-) Now that DSL is in wide use, I could get the whole works for about a quarter of that which is still pricey compared to 15 Mbs for cable.

Near as I can see, to stay viable the cable companies are going to have to diversify. However as competition becomes more prevalent they are going to have to provide a much higher level of service or customers will move to the better provider.

I don't see satellite becoming a major competitor due to band width limitations and latency.
Another factor is the hundreds of thousands of miles of "dark fiber" out there with far more bandwidth available than with wireless. OTOH there are drawbacks to fiber as well.
Of course with wireless they may have the possibility of a major portion of that space in the high UHF range that has been vacated.

Roger, I agree completely about the density issues and personal preferences. I do not expect that we'll ever get much beyond 90% coverage for broadband in this country.

However, the bulk of our country's population is concentrated in higher density areas. I remember an old statistic that I can't retrieve at the moment, but it was along the lines of "90% of all U.S. residents live within 10 miles of a public school". I'm not sure of the numbers, but as I recall, the percentage does not drop off much as you get closer to the schools. So if we put wireless broadband transceivers on all public school buildings (not that I'm advocating that specifically), we would be able to reach an enormous portion of the population. (More precise citing of the transceivers would likely be more efficient and effective.) But so long as we're not trying to achieve 100%, something less than that should be manageable.

Alfred

Another factor is the hundreds of thousands of miles of "dark fiber" out there with far more bandwidth available than with wireless. OTOH there are drawbacks to fiber as well.
Of course with wireless they may have the possibility of a major portion of that space in the high UHF range that has been vacated.

The dark fiber will be key to the "backhaul" portion, making the connection between the wireless broadband transceivers and the Internet. The available radio spectrum plus the additional frequencies that the FCC is trying to buy back could make wireless broadband viable.

Alfred

It's been too long and my math is failing me... In networks classes we used to have to calculate the bandwidth for a given string of characters...plain language text and it was difficult even then.
I don't think I could do a derivative or integral to save my neck now days.

How's your math?
How many simultaneous 20 Mbs connections running at capacity could fit into the 4 MHz occupied by a TV station?

There was a time when I might have had a clue on this -- I got pretty deep into data device interfaces -- but I bet that everything I knew then is wrong. New compression algorithms, new redundancy techniques, new multiplexing and encoding technology: they probably have changed the game significantly by now. But I bet that the network operators have a pretty precise idea what the answer is to that question.

Alfred