Time Warner Cable Goes to Court for iPad App Content Rights

[Popeye206]

LMAO. They sell you a single episode for twice that.

Laugh now, but check back in 5 years... Cable companies are already feeling the pinch and soon they too will be dinosaurs as the model changes.

Think about it... this is a broadcasters dream... direct access to customers. Custom content and advertising. Direct revenue from distribution.

They see this and will try and make the change. It's too obvious from their perspective.

 

[kcmac]

This temporary "benefit" to consumers is merely a side effect. TWC is NOT doing this on behalf of consumers but to make its own services more attractive or competitive against those of others. Only being able to watch cable shows on your iPad within your own home is not a huge win anyway. Big deal.

If I were a content provider I would simply start offering my content directly to tablet users for a small monthly fee. Imagine not having a cable account but being able to pay HBO $15.00 a month to stream all programming.

However, the cable companies would be totally against that and either take them to court or remove them from the lineup. Cable TV is a dirty, dirty business on both ends make no mistake. In the long run consumers will not end up ahead.

Yeah. My eyebrows are raised here as well. Time Warner has something up there sleeve which will eventually come to light. I doubt it will hurt me but it will most likely be something I do not want. At least, that is the up side...

 

[Popeye206]

These lawsuits are missing one key piece; the consumer. Here we have digital content provider (Viacom) and a service provider (Time Warner) over which devices I bought being able to tune into set service of content that I'm paying for.

Neither one of these companies represent the consumer or doing it for anything else than their self-serving benefit. Damned shame...

Ahhhhh.... "Duh!" comes to mind! They are a business you know?

Also... even as a business they are trying to improve their service for their customers... so how are they not taking the consumer in mind? Neither one has talked about additional charges for the App access.

 

[bobbleheadbob]

When is Verizon FIOS TV going to come with an iPad app for their subscribers?

 

[AlligatorBloodz]

LMAO. They sell you a single episode for twice that.

If you are referring to the apple tv, you have to keep in mind it is ad free. But it is definitely overpriced for one episode.

If it was $3-5 per channel, and up to 5 devices could access it, that would still be worth it to me. I'd get ESPN , discovery, history, cnn, CBS NBC FOX ABC. that's all I would need.

 

[vartanarsen]

My prediction... the networks want to go direct.

Cable companies and satellite providers are a sales channel for them. With the internet, they can have direct access to the customers without cable or satellite. So... my guess is there are several looking to go direct soon.

Personally... I'd love it if it was $.99 per-channel per-month. My TV bill would drop below $10 per-month in no time.

Agreed...I watch CNN 80% of the time, and other 20% TBS, Comedy, maybe 2 others..... $5 a-la-carte cable bill a month...sweet.

 

[hitekalex]

Money is the only difference, from all sides. Time Warner (or other provider) doesn't lose a time for Slingbox viewing besides upload bandwidth. You're out the $150 or whatever the device costs, plus the app charges for mobile device viewing ($30 for my iPad. Providers (and this is where it gets tricky) think they deserve more money from Time Warner because TWC is sending the programming out over 'another medium.'

Yes, and so does SlingMedia, Elgato, and any home Media Center software that streams TV programming to extenders or portable devices. if Viacom wins this one - this would imply that none of these Home Media Center companies have a right to exist.

 

[marksman]

At least some companies have a spine. Hope TW wins!

Me too, but any victory will be relatively short lived.

Content providers ultimately get to decide how they want their content used.

This means the next time they negotiate with the cable companies the language will be such as to either not allow this or for them to be compensated more for those rights.

 

[jonhaxor]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8G4 Safari/6533.18.5)

Cabelvision app is siq!

enjoy it while you have it .. Viacom is going after Cablevision next!

Viacom is evil

 

[Full of Win]

TV programs are paid for by we the consumer. That is the reason commercial TV exist. Now, when cable streams TV programs, the networks and the cable people are triple dipping, as a whole into the pockets of the consumer.

1) We pay for TV programs by buying the goods and services advertised on TV.
TV programs are actually commercials for commercials.
2) We pay for Cable. So we pay our cable bill that gives us access to those already paid TV shoes by way of good ole shopping at Walmart.
3) We pay a surcharge to the networks through our cable bill(mine is a $1.83 a month through Atlantic broadband) to compensate them mother******* at the networks for being able to access their sh** through our cable provider.
This is greed incarnate!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't like it - don't subscribe. We dropped our cable and could not be happier. There are plenty of alternatives out there; iTunes, Hulu and Netflix to name a few.

 

[jonhaxor]

Yeah. My eyebrows are raised here as well. Time Warner has something up there sleeve which will eventually come to light. I doubt it will hurt me but it will most likely be something I do not want. At least, that is the up side...

Time Warner owns HBO (who's always said that content is king [baby!]) .. we're entering into the content wars now.

 

[srxtr]

Right but you are at home so you can watch the TV.

This isn't a service for sending your TV channels to you when away from home. It only allows you to watch it on devices around the home. But why not watch on the 40" TV instead of the ipad at home?

So that you can watch while you poo

 

[cdembek]

I really hope that TWC wins this case b/c is it complete b/s

 

[rgspb]

Weird = Unusual = An iPad app that only works in your house.

How many other apps do that? If there are many I'll withdraw my 'weird.'
I don't know of any others myself.

The app connects wirelessly to your cable box. You have to have a login to view the content. If you are outside that wireless range, you cannot view the content. Thus the app "won't work". Is it really that hard understand?

 

[Robin4]

My prediction... the networks want to go direct.

Cable companies and satellite providers are a sales channel for them. With the internet, they can have direct access to the customers without cable or satellite. So... my guess is there are several looking to go direct soon.

Personally... I'd love it if it was $.99 per-channel per-month. My TV bill would drop below $10 per-month in no time.

I agree.

My wish, pay $4.99 for an app to watch The Good Wife season, go ahead add a few short commercials. Next year, I'll pay again.

No 500 channels of crap to tie me down at $100.00/mo for the rest of my life.

 

[Coleman2010]

That sounds better than what Time Warner is offering.



Right but you are at home so you can watch the TV.

This isn't a service for sending your TV channels to you when away from home. It only allows you to watch it on devices around the home. But why not watch on the 40" TV instead of the ipad at home?

You can setup the same thing. Just like the TW app, the cablevision app allows you to watch LiveTV while on your home network. I setup one of my Macs as a VPN server so I can get a secure connection to my home network from my iPad and watch TV over 3G or public WiFi. With the secure VPN connection the cablevision app thinks I'm at home.

 

[charlituna]

This is a big deal. Interesting to see what happens. It all depends on how the contracts are worded.

Yep. I suspect that TW is using a 'the contract doesn't say we can't' defense while Viacom etc are using "it doesn't say you can"

ANd in the end it could be the judge that makes the call of whether the contract has to spell it out. Which could be affected by the fact that TW didn't ask first. They just did it and then got mad when they are slapped over it. Had they asked, were told no, went to court and got the sign off and then done it, things would be a lot different.

I can understand where the nets are coming from. All their money is tied into the ratings system and if even one Niesen viewer uses this app instead of watching on their metered tv, it could have big repercussions on the ratings for shows.

Not to mention simply if they let TW do what they want now what's to stop the next thing the company wants to do

EDIT: And, interestingly, it looks like the way TW is wording their complaint they could win this but be required to only let your TW iPad app work when you're logged into your TW-supplied wifi router in your own home.

That's already how it works. You have to be connected to your TW wifi and have both their internet and their cable. What sucks for me is that I was grandfathered from comcast on a 'broadcast only' plan so they don't consider that having cable so I can't even use the app just for the broadcast stuff

As a non-cable customer, I would rather have Viacom sell their content directly, or strike a deal with a internet pureplay supplier (hulu,netflix,youtube etc) for distribution.

hulu etc are just as bad in their own ways. But I agree that I wouldn't mind if the nets came out with their own packages. Either via individual apps or some common interface. Let me pay them directly for their package of stations. Either live play or day after or how about a tiered system where the basic package is day after and for a little more you get live play.

but then give us accurate numbers. No more of this sampling caca. Servers can be set up to tell you how many folks hit what content and win. Put your hulu like ads at the top and breaks (please no more than 1-2 each time) that we can't avoid if you must. But then credit the shows with literally what they earn and if it is enough to cover the budget the show stays. If not, then goodbye. Even with having to let us opt in to be surveyed you'll likely get much better info than the skimpy Niesens with their 10 year old demo details

 

[Thunderhawks]

So that you can watch while you poo

Slam dunk LOL

Only place you are safe from the spouse and kids

Except for the :

What are you doing in there?

Planting a rose bush!

Doesn't smell like it!

conversation

 

[qtx43]

I hear what you're saying, but disagree too.

I do agree some channels would die. Big deal. They would be the ones with no value anyway. These channels make some money from cable distribution, but remember, most make money from advertising.

For the good channels, they would probably make more.... what do you think they get now? 150 channels divided by their share of $30 a month (the base cost on Direct TV today). So, let's assume Direct TV takes $10 for their cost, then splits up $20 by 150 channels, that's only $.13 per-channel for their share. Something tells me it's less than that too. So, at $.99 per-channel, they would make more money per-subscriber and have direct control over the customer.

So... again... I disagree and think this is what some of the more popular channels are looking for.

Well, now you're speculating, unless you know how their contracts work, so I'll speculate too. Probably the "good" channels get a much larger share of the money. So, if 3 good channels you want to see make $10 (the rest get the other $10), you'll pay $10 (I know, over simplifying). Except they'll have fewer subscribers since not everybody likes the same 3. Look at you! You're only paying $10 a month instead of $20, that means they're making less revenue. So they'll raise prices and lose some subscribers, and now you'll only get 2 channels for $10. It's impossible to predict the future for sure, but I can't see how this works out.

Now, if somebody like hulu or netflix or whoever got a big enough package of channels together, they could act like a wireless 'cable' provider. That's much more likely, which is why cable wants to throttle service for some things.

 

[ten-oak-druid]

So that you can watch while you poo

LOL

Fair enough

 

[notabadname]

A screen is a screen in my home, as long as they aren't streaming over the Internet for me to use away from home. There are already TVs out there that use Wi-Fi streaming to make wall mounting a cable-free affair. I bet the cable company wins this one.

 

[RawBert]

I just get their newsletter. They're adding Pay-per-view to the iPad App.
Seems like TW is really putting a lot of effort into this App. I used to dislike TW. Not anymore.
Nice.

 

[marksman]

My prediction... the networks want to go direct.

Cable companies and satellite providers are a sales channel for them. With the internet, they can have direct access to the customers without cable or satellite. So... my guess is there are several looking to go direct soon.

Personally... I'd love it if it was $.99 per-channel per-month. My TV bill would drop below $10 per-month in no time.

YOu won't see them doing it for 99 a channel.

You might see a group of channels owned by NBC, for example, say NBC, MSNBC, Bravo, and some others packaged for like $15-$20 a month.

That is most likely going to be the first foray into direct programming.

For 99 cents a channel you need some kind of middleman who can deliver volume viewers to the networks.

The problem is with direct to viewer or ala carte programming, we will at first see prices being too high, because all tv networks think they are worth more than they really are.. So they all will overcharge, until they realize they have to get people to pay.

 

[Popeye206]

YOu won't see them doing it for 99 a channel.

You might see a group of channels owned by NBC, for example, say NBC, MSNBC, Bravo, and some others packaged for like $15-$20 a month.

That is most likely going to be the first foray into direct programming.

For 99 cents a channel you need some kind of middleman who can deliver volume viewers to the networks.

The problem is with direct to viewer or ala carte programming, we will at first see prices being too high, because all tv networks think they are worth more than they really are.. So they all will overcharge, until they realize they have to get people to pay.

We'll see. I'm sure it's coming.

The only part I disagree on is the price. They want viewers. They make money off of advertising not broadcasting and cable distribution.

 

[thelonelylimo]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/8G4)

Wait wait wait.

There's a lawsuit involving a cable-tv company and I'm on the cable-tv's side?

Does...not...compute

EDIT: And, interestingly, it looks like the way TW is wording their complaint they could win this but be required to only let your TW iPad app work when you're logged into your TW-supplied wifi router in your own home.

That'd be kind of weird, but it's something, I guess.

That's how it works now. I can only use the TWC app. when I'm on my TW Internet. I had to put in my account number after downloading the app. on release day.