Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

alent1234

macrumors 603
Jun 19, 2009
5,688
170
Cheaper to pay for cable tv and get watch espn access than pay for MLB tv and MBA streaming

I have MLB tv this year and won't renew next year
 

chrisbru

macrumors 6502a
May 8, 2008
809
169
Austin, TX
So you are demanding an explanation for why I like to watch news broadcasts? Ha-ha, good one. Lots of people watch programs I couldn't be paid enough to watch, and I'm not expecting an explanation from them.

No, the system is not in place. If a fan can't watch their home team games, then it isn't even close to being in place. As I explained above, the teams have already sold those broadcasting rights to a cable company, locking them up for years, if not decades at a time. Since the cable companies bid for these rights with the expectation that the costs can be passed along to subscribers, they aren't going to be even remotely interested in allowing MLB.com to stream them. Better yet for the cable companies, they get to charge their subscribers for sports teams they never watch. It's a deadlock. I don't see how it gets broken, short of legislation that forces the cable companies to unbundle their channel selections. And that's just not going to happen.

I'm not sure how you felt I was "demanding" something by saying "feel free to explain it." I'm just mildly curious to know what there is in a news broadcast you feel you can't get online. You seem to just want to argue though.

The delivery system is in place. There just needs to be a shift. I did not say it would be immediate, or even likely. We're on the same page here, we're just saying different things.
 

MacDav

macrumors 65816
Mar 24, 2004
1,031
0
That would be interesting. I don't know how that would work in practice. Maybe they could do something like Pixar. Set up an independent production unit that could provide content to theaters and such but also to Apple for internet access?

The problem with anyone (Apple, Roku, Hulu, ...) setting up an a la carte service is the existing web of contracts and licenses between the various studios and sports channels and cable companies. It makes it very hard for a new distributor to break into the business.

Presumably if Apple (or another outfit) started producing original content they could distribute this internationally. Even that would be difficult. If your movie or program uses anyone else's music or images then you have to license the use for that content country by country. You would really have to have 100% original content. I don't have facts to back this up but I would guess that major stars already have international license deals so that even if you produce an original show with original music if you hire known stars you still have to negotiate the release country by country. This is the problem of a new medium growing in the presence of established practices.

100% original content is the whole point. You don't need big star names to have great content. None of the actors on Breaking Bad were big stars. It is the most popular show around. They are big stars now. ;)
 

ERMarshall2

macrumors newbie
Jul 3, 2013
1
0
Manhattan
Nice Try

This entire thing is irritating. Before I comment, I’m going to have a short brag first - I wrote an MBA presentation on Apple around the time retina displays where introduced. I took it as a sign that Apple's end goal was to have common display tech across all devices so as to have the ability to stream anything to any device you have available. Also, at the time I figured it would also have pretty unique gaming applications (they hired some big wigs from Nintendo). I bet we’ll see a huge gaming announcement soon.

Now on to why this entire thing is sucks. How much are we going to be charged for each show? In essence itunes already lets us pay ala carte and I’m not going to make a purchase every time I have the urge to “change the channel”. A lot of people will end up paying more as it sounds like Apple is just the middle man getting the content from TWC then reselling it to you.

The cable companies have been fighting a la carte models for many years and basically used strawman arguments on why they would not go to la carte even if they wanted. I've read articles where they stated contracts with networks and content providers would make it impossible to sell individual shows and that solving the technical difficulties created by divvying up content would make the price of shows more expensive then the current bundles. I will say that it’s interesting to see the power Apple has over other industries now. Apple has gone from being laughed out of the VZW boardroom when Jobs demanded network changes for iPhone 1 exclusivity to today being able to turning around decades old and intensely held beliefs of an entire industry. It also annoying to me that others have tried this for a long time and been sued or had industry forces blocking the endeavors from taking off. Remember all the legal battles Slingbox had to put up with for doing basically the same thing? But Apple will release yet another derivative yet physically attractive piece of hardware, drones will fall in love and continue to believe Apple invented a new category in consumer tech when all they did was have the goodwill and clout that 130 billion dollars in the bank gives provides when talking to a business that must have begun to realize their old business model of TV schedules and single location based viewing is going to be dead soon /rant
 

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Jul 16, 2002
17,909
1,496
Palookaville
I'm not sure how you felt I was "demanding" something by saying "feel free to explain it." I'm just mildly curious to know what there is in a news broadcast you feel you can't get online. You seem to just want to argue though.

The delivery system is in place. There just needs to be a shift. I did not say it would be immediate, or even likely. We're on the same page here, we're just saying different things.

Demanding, insisting, curious -- what's the actual difference? I get this quiz every time threads on this subject come up. You mean you watch news on TV? Yeah, I do. I watch the NewsHour on PBS every night. Me and about 12 other people. PBS runs segments of the program but mostly the next day, and not through a service I can easily stream to the TV. (My wife and I huddling around the iPad doesn't quite cut it.) Local news broadcasts, same problem. We watch this program because close to 100% of the news online and on TV is total trash, not that many people care or know the difference anymore.

On sports, the delivery system has been in place for some years. The problem isn't the delivery system, it's something far more difficult to solve. Nobody seems to even be trying.

Anyway the point of this discussion is to refute the arguments of those who tell us that cutting the cable is easy. It might be for a certain subset of viewers, but not for everyone. A lot of us would lose programming that we like, and there's no plan in place or even in discussion to make that programming available through streaming.
 

otisg

macrumors member
Jun 8, 2013
56
0
1. In essence itunes already lets us pay ala carte and I’m not going to make a purchase every time I have the urge to “change the channel”. A lot of people will end up paying more as it sounds like Apple is just the middle man getting the content from TWC then reselling it to you.

2. It also annoying to me that others have tried this for a long time and been sued or had industry forces blocking the endeavors from taking off. Remember all the legal battles Slingbox had to put up with for doing basically the same thing?

To these two points...

1. iTunes lets you purchase commercial-free episodes and seasons a la carte. However, I think most people are looking for an option to piece together a custom TV package with a la carte channel subscriptions, not shows. There are obviously problems with this in reality, as many have pointed out, but it is different than what you are suggesting. Also, if the TWC TV app for Apple TV is anything like the Roku, they aren't "reselling" the content, but merely providing a new means of accessing something to which you already subscribe. Fingers crossed that it is not merely an app like on the Roku, but it probably is.

2. Slingbox allows you to watch your own TV over the internet without side-stepping a cable/satellite provider. This, to me, should fall under fair use for a subscriber. That is very different than trying to create an internet-based TV provider... so I'm not really sure why you think they are the same thing (am I missing something?).
 

xcodeaddict

macrumors 6502a
Mar 2, 2013
602
0
Tv.... pffft... who needs TV? :p

Seriously, it's addictive JUNK, mostly, and I am sure it's 1,000,000x worse in the USA than here in the UK, in fact I am certain it is - we have proper production standards - the BBC!
 

Bensalama21

macrumors regular
Jul 17, 2011
234
3
Absolutely irrelevant news to anyone outside the US, i.e. most of Apple's market. So why is this on page 1?
And this post is irrelevant to this article... So why is it on the first page of comments? Why do you have the devices that you own as your signature? Why does anyone care that lives outside of your home? Why are you on an American forum on California based companies website?

A pretty selfish comment, don't you think?
 

chrisbru

macrumors 6502a
May 8, 2008
809
169
Austin, TX
Demanding, insisting, curious -- what's the actual difference? I get this quiz every time threads on this subject come up. You mean you watch news on TV? Yeah, I do. I watch the NewsHour on PBS every night. Me and about 12 other people. PBS runs segments of the program but mostly the next day, and not through a service I can easily stream to the TV. (My wife and I huddling around the iPad doesn't quite cut it.) Local news broadcasts, same problem. We watch this program because close to 100% of the news online and on TV is total trash, not that many people care or know the difference anymore.

On sports, the delivery system has been in place for some years. The problem isn't the delivery system, it's something far more difficult to solve. Nobody seems to even be trying.

Anyway the point of this discussion is to refute the arguments of those who tell us that cutting the cable is easy. It might be for a certain subset of viewers, but not for everyone. A lot of us would lose programming that we like, and there's no plan in place or even in discussion to make that programming available through streaming.


Do you have an Apple TV? You can airplay most things from the iPad to the Apple TV, and can mirror an Apple laptop running Mountain Lion if its new enough.

But I do agree that cutting the cable isn't as easy as some people suggest. I can do without home market games, but until NFL and HBO are available without a cable subscription I have no way of cutting the cable.
 

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Jul 16, 2002
17,909
1,496
Palookaville
Forget I even said anything...

Easily done, since your suggestion was useless.

Do you have an Apple TV? You can airplay most things from the iPad to the Apple TV, and can mirror an Apple laptop running Mountain Lion if its new enough.

But I do agree that cutting the cable isn't as easy as some people suggest. I can do without home market games, but until NFL and HBO are available without a cable subscription I have no way of cutting the cable.

Yes we have AppleTV. We use it to Airplay quite often, mostly from the PBS iPad app. It works well, most of the time -- but of course only on the content they provide this way. All programming that is made available this way appears a day or two after it is aired by the affiliates (for obvious reasons). Not a problem for most programming, but not a workable solution for news broadcasting. Also, when it doesn't work right the first time (not uncommon) it can take some technological knowhow to get it straightened out.

My sense is Apple has been working for years now trying to bust the cable hegemony over programming but has not succeeded. Turning the AppleTV into a cable box is sort of a weak Plan B. And even this has to work well enough to allow us to ditch our clunky rented cable boxes. Remains to be seen.
 

cmwade77

macrumors 65816
Nov 18, 2008
1,071
1,200
Dream on, someone has to pay for that content and they're never going to give it away. Whether you pay a cable company or you pay Apple/Netflix/Hulu you will pay in some way for the content you watch, that aspect will never change.
I am not saying that we shouldn't have to pay, I am saying that we should have the option to buy subscriptions on a per channel basis.

For example, I would want HGTV, History Channel, Food Network and Disney Channel. I don't want to pay for any others, I can get OTA programming for free (and I should be able to stream that for free too). So, say they charged $2 a month for each channel, I would pay $8 a month, instead of the astronomical cable/satellite prices out there now, which I won;t pay for, so they would be making $8/month more than they are now and that just from me.

I also believe that if you pay for a channel, the channel should be commercial free.
 

rocknblogger

macrumors 68020
Apr 2, 2011
2,346
481
New Jersey
I am not saying that we shouldn't have to pay, I am saying that we should have the option to buy subscriptions on a per channel basis.

For example, I would want HGTV, History Channel, Food Network and Disney Channel. I don't want to pay for any others, I can get OTA programming for free (and I should be able to stream that for free too). So, say they charged $2 a month for each channel, I would pay $8 a month, instead of the astronomical cable/satellite prices out there now, which I won;t pay for, so they would be making $8/month more than they are now and that just from me.

I also believe that if you pay for a channel, the channel should be commercial free.

You're dreaming if you think you'll pay $2 per channel. I believe if it does happen it'll be $10-$30 per channel depending on popularity. You will also always have commercials. It's the networks that sell ad time; not the cable companies.
 

e²Studios

macrumors 68020
Apr 12, 2005
2,104
5
I am not saying that we shouldn't have to pay, I am saying that we should have the option to buy subscriptions on a per channel basis.

For example, I would want HGTV, History Channel, Food Network and Disney Channel. I don't want to pay for any others, I can get OTA programming for free (and I should be able to stream that for free too). So, say they charged $2 a month for each channel, I would pay $8 a month, instead of the astronomical cable/satellite prices out there now, which I won;t pay for, so they would be making $8/month more than they are now and that just from me.

I also believe that if you pay for a channel, the channel should be commercial free.

I think a lot of people are pointing the finger at the wrong party. Cable companies dont care, its the content providers that say "if you want x popular channel you have to take y and z channels too with the same or greater price per subscriber" This is what makes the packages, many channels are owned by the same entity, they don't sell it to the cable companies as individual channels, they sell them as a package. You're barking up the wrong tree with the cable providers, the real culprit and reason why its not "pay per channel" is the content providers.
 

ericmooreart

macrumors regular
May 14, 2004
214
0
NY,NY
If Apple could pull off getting a live NFL deal without being a Direct TV subscriber, they would sell Apple TVs like hot cakes
 

expectdelay

macrumors member
Mar 6, 2010
92
209
Its all very nice when you're into watching blockbusters. If you taste for movie content goes beyond what Hollywood has to offer then you still have a "problem".

That's one of the reason's why I still by blu-rays and dvd's. The movies I watch are not being broadcasted by any of the companies that will be on Apple TV. And quite a lot of them are also not available for download. I still see a good market for companies like Criterion Collection and Masters of Cinema.

But again, if you're into blockbusters and popular movies then this is need.

Hulu on Apple TV has the Criterion Collection. iTunes on Apple TV has plenty of indie movies and other non-"blockbusters".
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.