I wish Netflix captioned stuff. I’d love to be able to use Netflix’s Instant Viewing services especially considering I’m an Xbox 360 owner. Deaf subscribers to Netflix are getting screwed in that area. We can only watch foreign language films with English subtitles on there. That shit needs to change.

chuck

I understand the point of the networks competing on Thursdays. I’m obliquely making another point, which is that they’ve overdone it to such an extreme that they’re pushing their viewers into getting comfortable with watching online instead, which is not a good thing for either them or their affiliates in the long run.

So I don’t think the TV world will fall off a cliff like the music industry did. I do think there will be a transition.

For example. the premium channels offer no value to me. I subscribe to the most basic cable package that gets me espn and fnc. I do think there are increasing #s of people like me. And if, for example, I could easily stream live sports and news, then I probably would cut my cable entirely. (There are ways, but I don’t want to be uploading anything and expose myself).

So I see a steady stream of 20 and 30-somethings foregoing paying for those premium cable packages — depressing cable, and thus tv, revenue. I also see this eating into DVD sales.

I’m still curious what you think the impact of the one-click hosting sites (megaupload, sendshare, rapidshare, etc) will be. They have almost completely replaced my torrent usage.

Of course Thursday is ridiculous. Winning that night is just plain HUGE.

Personally, I would pay Hulu like a monthly fee for no commercials.

Or if the network web sites stop giving it away for free, people will just go to pirate sites.

Which is why Hulu can’t have to many commercials: to many and people turn to pirating.

I’d say that torrents are more convenient than Hulu or other streaming sites. You don’t have to be that computer savy either, that’s just a myth.

Look at movies. A scifi fan will easily be able to download and have on his $100 home media server all of the important scifi movies ever made. An action movie buff will be able to do the same. Same with musicals, horror movies, thrillers, crime, etc, etc.

Older people are too busy/not tech savvy, sure. But teens and 20-somethings will easily do it. And all they need to do is hand their mom and dad a $100 media server with all the movies.

Or the TV back catalog. Right now you flip through channels and, hey, you stumble on Seinfeld or NCIS or Friends or MASH. You could easily have every episode of those shows on your home media server.

I think movies are at bigger risk since they have higher repeat view value, so are worth collecting. TV shows less so except for fans or genre fans.

Look at it this way, for a lot people, cable is a rip off.

It’s ridiculous to pay $100+ a month if you watch maybe one network. Or even just one show on one network. But you can’t get a la cart programming. All you can get is a bundle with a bunch of stuff you don’t need.

Hulu is great for this because you can pick and choose what you watch and when.

So if it is a choice between paying for a bunch of stuff you don’t want or need, or watching it online it’s pretty much a no brainer. If Hulu is no longer an option even with ads then people will either Torrent or you could always buy it off of iTunes.

Regardless I think they are going to have a really hard time trying to sell people low quality streaming video. Hulu is great for it’s convenience and price(free), once those two things go away, why bother?

If it pursues this model, Hulu’s subscription service would most likely compete with Netflix. I don’t expect Hulu to take the route of selling downloadable videos to own, alla iTunes.

And I’m not trying to be snarky. Just saying that the vast majority of TV viewers don’t have the know-how, patience, or motivation to download shows for free.

Comparing TV to the music business is flawed. The online music audience is/was dramatically younger and more tech-smart than the general TV viewing population, and the scale of the two businesses are very different. If 100,000 people pirate a record that’s devastating to an artist’s revenue. If 100,000 pirate a network TV show, well, it’s annoying but it’s not even a rounding error in the total viewership.

I could also see part of this “Premium” package consisting of better video quality as well.

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/140/the-unlikely-mogul.html?page=0%2C5

The whole article at FastCompany is worth reading. Tells the story of Hulu’s founding.

When this was originally about cable shows I think there was a point, but now that it’s descended to cable deserves to be protected because it has to pay retrans fees for something broadcasters give for free over the air, then I think the argument loses a lot of its bite.

Anyway, internet isn’t free. I have to pay $60 a month for it, to a satellite tv provider no less.

But because the cable companies are remorselessly greedy and controlling, I give the “entitlement” people who want it free online a free pass ethically.

I tried BitTorrent but found it too slow. So I taught myself how to download from Usenet and now I pay to a Usenet provider what I would gladly pay to content owners if I had the choice.

I have a fiber optic connection at home, so regular TV shows download in 60-90 seconds and HD shows download in 3-5 minutes.

Isnt 3 and 4 the same thing?
oh and
7.) Don’t have to worry about having enough space on your harddrive
8.) Don’t have to worry about downloading a virus/malware(I guess this one might be covered under 6)

I used to watch torrents all the time. Just queue a bunch up and watch them the next morning. But now I watch Hulu and other sites like megavideo and the like.

One advantage torrents have over Hulu is a lot of the new content on Hulu is on a 8 day waiting period. Torrents are available within 24 hours … most of the time 3 or 4 hours after a show has aired.

Hulu is just convenient… its easy to hop on the site and watch a show. But if they started a pay program I wouldnt go back … its only slightly more inconvenient to watch the same programing on other sites and much sooner than Hulu can provide the same content.

If HULU starts to charge, give me the ability to download, let me put the shows onto a portable device. Even if they’re temporary.

While the genie may not be able to be put back into the bottle, I don’t think it’s fair to assume that the sense of entitlement about “this should all be free” really has any logical basis anyway. Sure, it was nice that it’s been free all along, and I think the networks are to blame for getting themselves in this position, but to give away something of value and then AFTER the fact complain about losing that value should not come as a surprise to either side.

I often have had to use port forwarding to get torrents to work with my cable equipment .. that would stymie 95-99% of people right there.

I think the one-click hosting sites (megaupload, sendshare, rapidshare, etc), in combination with the aggregators (tvshack, surfthechannel, etc) is a pretty huge threat.

And the cheap little media players like WDTV are getting very slick. Now I can watch the shows on my nice TV.

All I really need from cable is live sports and news. ESPN and FoxNews. TBS, VS and TNT often have live sports, too. Everything else is online somewhere.

And going forward hard disk size is getting so huge. For a scifi geek like me it’s getting to the point where a small portable hard drive can have every episode of every scifi show I like.

In the past my friends and I would share DVDs of shows. I lent my Firefly DVDs to one friend, he lent me BSG, SG-1 to another. Now I could just let him copy a single hard drive.

In a few years we’ll have portable 5-10 TB drives. Those could hold tens of thousands of episodes. A 2 TB drive today can hold almost 3,000 movies at DVD quality or 6,000 hour long tv shows.

What does the media landscape of 2015-2020 look like when I can hand you a $100 portable drive that holds every scifi movie and tv show ever made?

Also, as noted by Mikey the broadcast networks (NBC, FOX, ABC, CBS, etc) are looking to get more in “retransmission fees” from cable and satellite companies for their content. This winds up meaning a monthly payment across all subscribers and there is a school of thought that if the content — even over the air broadcast network content — is free on the Internet, it will be harder for the broadcast networks to capture the retransmission fees.

Those retrans fees would be quite lucrative compared to the small revenue currently generated online.

I do agree about the cable shows possibly being in the realm of pay subscription content along with older shows not currently being broadcasted.

CBS got the $.50 cents even with much of its content being available online. I agree if it’s either/or and they can’t make anywhere near $.50/sub online, they’ll do what it takes to protect the $.50. If CBS stopped providing online services would the fee been much/any different than what they got?

What I don’t get about all of this is the advertising factor. Get a person hooked on a show and maybe they will watch on their TV or buy the box set or if possible subscribe to cable. Make it more difficult to watch and maybe you have lost a potential viewer.

Soon a new free hulu type site will replace it. Not smart of hulu

Because they’re competing with satellite services that will have this programming.

If you’re in the business of selling a package of television programming you can’t compete effectively without the most popular shows.

Look at Cablevision. They just agreed to pay CBS 50 cents per home per month for their signals in NY and Philly. Obviously they recognize the value even if they are writing that check with gritted teeth.

Robert, I think this will all play out much more quickly than that, but who knows? You may well be right. I suspect that at least one major broadcaster – if not all four – will stop offering free programming online within two years.