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Screw the cable companies. They know that eventually they will simply become dumb pipes like water and power. Better to let Apple and others (Boxee, Roku, Netflix, etc...) keep chipping away at the old model of television and bring us new ways to access content outside of the grasp of cable. Internet and podcast shows are getting better all the time. Let the dinosaurs go extinct.
 
If people think they're going to magically drop the TV providers and then not have that same company double their Internet price to be able to use the Internet as their TV provider, they're not living in reality.

Which is why Apple has to find the solution to this as well.

If I had months to think about this, I could figure it out as well. Apple has many people which are thinking about this right now. Possible solutions I've thought of (there are doubtless many, many more much better ideas):
a) have the networks pay for the usage they use, not consumers
b) have a national maximum-fee a provider may charge per hour/GB of video.
c) roll out a national public internet service (much like we had 'public airwaves')
d) Apple develops their own 'internet service', which is free, and which only works with Apple TVs
 
Even if you eliminated the TV part of your deal with the cable company, they will jack up their Internet prices due to the increased usage in bandwidth for streaming. That's the thing people don't think about. I pay $100 per month combined for my Internet and TV. Roughly $40-45 of it is my 24 Mbps Internet connection. The rest of it is 150 channels, including 75 in HD. HD bandwidth is huge, around 10-15 Mbps. If people think they're going to magically drop the TV providers and then not have that same company double their Internet price to be able to use the Internet as their TV provider, they're not living in reality.

Oh I think about that all the time. The Comcasts of the world will not lose out no matter what happens. To make the dream fly, it takes more than just making better deals with content providers. Apple needs to innovate a way to completely bypass the middlemen. While you have Comcasts, AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, etc dependencies in any Apple solution, you have tiered pricing tightening, bandwidth cap tightening, throttling at will, etc. The cable people typically have the monopoly/duopoly (with another cable tv provider) on Internet broadband for a reason.
 
Oh I think about that all the time. The Comcasts of the world will not lose out no matter what happens. To make the dream fly, it takes more than just making better deals with content providers. Apple needs to innovate a way to completely bypass the middlemen. While you have Comcasts, AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner, etc dependencies in any Apple solution, you have tiered pricing tightening, bandwidth cap tightening, throttling at will, etc. The cable people typically have the monopoly/duopoly (with another cable tv provider) on Internet broadband for a reason.


Yeah, there's a lot of delusion out there about how it would be handled. Either way we're going to be shelling out a lot of money to get the content. Just the way it goes. What I don't like is the cost of Internet in the U.S. compared to Asia. Insane to think I would pay $110 for 110 Mbps when someone in South Korea or Japan can get 10 times the speed for less than half the price.
 
And you know the price tag will be higher then .99, for arguements sake say even if it were priced similar to songs.. $1.29 (which is still on the low side) 4 shows you're already paying what you would with cable or satellite and getting A LOT less content!! because don't forget you're only getting the shows/episodes you paid for! so you're actually paying the same if not more for less...


I was also paying a lot to my cable provider (Comcast) for stuff I didn't watch. I do not want to give Comcast any more money than they deserve. I would rather give my money to Apple and only pay for what I want to watch. Plus Apple's hardware and GUI are much nicer than Comcast's.
 
Yeah, there's a lot of delusion out there about how it would be handled. Either way we're going to be shelling out a lot of money to get the content. Just the way it goes. What I don't like is the cost of Internet in the U.S. compared to Asia. Insane to think I would pay $110 for 110 Mbps when someone in South Korea or Japan can get 10 times the speed for less than half the price.

To get the Asian pricing Americans would have to agree to live in Asian-type housing (20+ story apartment buildings being the only option). You can't have suburbs and cheap broadband ;))
 
Why are people thinking that Apple is REDUCING prices for TV shows?

Apple is actually INCREASING prices for each individual network. For example, instead of Comedy Central getting 25 cents per subscriber, they'll get $1 per subscriber. If more than 25% of users subscribe, Comedy Central makes more money being bundled, if less than 25%, they lose money compared with being bundled.

Many networks will make more money, many less.

It's like if McDonald's forced you to buy a value meal instead of each item individually. We should have a choice. With McDonald's, we have a choice right now. With Television, we don't.

If I bought all 200+ television stations, my 'Apple Bill' would be at least double what the same cable bill would be. But if I chose LESS ENTERTAINMENT, my bill would be LESS. The current situation won't last forever.

Some television stations are undervalued on TV, those will win. Some are OVERvalued - those will lose (and those are the ones that won't join Apple's selection of TV stations right away - but be forced in once Apple's model is found to work)

You're thinking too simply. It doesn't work like that. Our subscription dollars are not the only dollars that support the existence of a channel like comedy central (hereafter CC). Let me try to explain...

CC is a Viacom channel. The Viacom "package forced on us" includes all kinds of channels (the various MTVs, VH1s, TV land, CMT, BET networks, Palladia, Logo, Viva, Spike, various Nickelodeons, etc). Like you, I like CC too, so let's say I'd pay for it in an a-la-carte model. Now let's also say that I wouldn't pay for any of the other Viacom channels in the al-a-carte model (I'm so over Sponge Bob, etc).

So, now instead of getting my 25 cents times say 20 channels (or $5/month) from me, Viacom will only get $1. That's an 80% cut in revenues from me to them. Can Viacom survive an 80% cut in their revenues if many agree with you & me and only buy CC al-a-carte. Probably not. Which means CC folds too. So we get our new al-a-carte system but Viacom can't make enough money with it to keep giving us CC. Did we win or lose?

Many see cable packages as forcing us to pay for a bunch of channels we don't watch. We don't see it as getting a bunch of channels we many never watch as an added bonus for the channels we are paying to watch. Glass half full or glass half empty? Either way, the existence of other channels generates other revenues for the production houses that makes the shows we don't- and do- watch. Wipe them out by al-a-carte survival-of-the-fittest and shows we don't and do watch will go away.

And again, $54/month per U.S. household is paid by companies running commercials on channels we watch and channels we never watch. Kill off the channels we never watch with al-a-carte and that $54/month needs to be made up somewhere (as it too pays for production houses to make stuff we do and do not watch).

While I can love the concept of al-a-carte, the math to make it a reality is very messy. I can say with great confidence that we wouldn't end up with only the shows we each want to watch, as big cuts to revenue flows would put most production companies out of business. My guess is that CC wouldn't be priced at $1 al-a-carte but probably something more like $8-$12. Why? Because Viacom would want to make up for the revenue loss by no longer getting 25 cents times about 20 channels in it's portfolio by pricing it's more desirable offerings at sufficiently high prices to maybe do that.

End result: instead of having 10 channels we watch and 90 we don't for $100, we end up with 10 channels we watch for $100. Or if Apple is somehow able to motivate the content producers to cut their costs of content solely to help Apple be more successful (think about that), we end up with 10 channels we watch for $50 and a broadband price increase for us "heavy video streamer" users of $60+.
 
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I was also paying a lot to my cable provider (Comcast) for stuff I didn't watch. I do not want to give Comcast any more money than they deserve. I would rather give my money to Apple and only pay for what I want to watch. Plus Apple's hardware and GUI are much nicer than Comcast's.

Of course you'd rather give money to Apple. Because they are good and Comcast is evil?
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A405 Safari/7534.48.3)

More power to you Apple. Would love an ala carte system myself. Always thought $0.99 per channel/month would be a good place to start for someone like me who may want the Tennis Channel but not the Cooking Channel
 
To get the Asian pricing Americans would have to agree to live in Asian-type housing (20+ story apartment buildings being the only option). You can't have suburbs and cheap broadband ;))


I live in an apartment so that's not a problem for me. Even with the space issue, our technology itself is lagging behind.
 
Even if you eliminated the TV part of your deal with the cable company, they will jack up their Internet prices due to the increased usage in bandwidth for streaming. That's the thing people don't think about. I pay $100 per month combined for my Internet and TV. Roughly $40-45 of it is my 24 Mbps Internet connection. The rest of it is 150 channels, including 75 in HD. HD bandwidth is huge, around 10-15 Mbps. If people think they're going to magically drop the TV providers and then not have that same company double their Internet price to be able to use the Internet as their TV provider, they're not living in reality.

Then switch to a non-cable ISP that doesn't have any vested interest as a TV provider?

For instance, I can switch from my existing package (140 euros per month for 30Mbps broadband phone & TV) to a fast DSL provider (80 euros for 24Mbps but no contention, and phone). The DSL package is actually faster, it costs slightly more, but without paying for TV it comes out much cheaper.

That said, there is something very broken about many ISP's business model - the more demand goes up, the more their entire model falls apart and they start whining.
 
TV industry resistance

This New York Post maybe completely unfounded but its speaks sense. I can definitely see Apple doing this.

What is important is that if you don't like the current subscription 500 channels of ads model, we have to jump on whatever Apple puts out. Even if that means backing an incomplete content list. Lets vote with our wallets as consumers to tell those TV networks and cable operators their time is up. Evolve or die.

OnBdDck
 
Satellite Broadband

If Apple does not plan to use DSL or Cable Internet, the only choice they have is satellite broadband. Unfortunately, the geostationary satellites have too much latency and the speed is limited to about 2mbps, which is not suitable. There are some new technologies that are capable of much higher speeds, around 10-15mbps and low latency that target specific areas of North America, about 500 different areas. Prices are a little high right now. ViaSat-1 is the system for North America, and the same technology is used for other systems in Europe and Asia.

http://www.viasatresidential.com/

I don't think Apple should get into this business, but, rather use it.
 
Then switch to a non-cable ISP that doesn't have any vested interest as a TV provider?

For instance, I can switch from my existing package (140 euros per month for 30Mbps broadband phone & TV) to a fast DSL provider (80 euros for 24Mbps but no contention, and phone). The DSL package is actually faster, it costs slightly more, but without paying for TV it comes out much cheaper.

That said, there is something very broken about many ISP's business model - the more demand goes up, the more their entire model falls apart and they start whining.


You're in Ireland. The situation you describe isn't even available to a vast majority of Americans, including myself. Our government supports the cable companies, subsidizes them, and creates HUGE barriers to prevent competitors from jumping into the market. In most cases, you have only two or three options and all of them are cable/satellite providers. In my case, my apartment complex has an agreement with one cable provider and I literally do not have a choice. I will say that this particular cable provider is better than the other one in my town, so at least I'm not stuck with the worse option of the two.
 
Cable/Satellite menus

I was just thinking this when I watched my cable this morning about how awful their menu system is not to mention the look of the menus makes me feel like its 1995.

...then the controller.. I wish apple would develop those too because for some reason these TV providers think we want a remote that is the size of a 19" tv with 800 different and useless buttons.

The worst part about the cable and Satellite menus is that even when you "customize" your menu to show only what you're subscribed to, it doesn't show ONLY what you're subscribed to!

I hate when I'm at my parent's house flipping through the menu and say "hey, that looks like it might actually be worthwhile to watch! Only to find out it's not a channel they have!
 
What is stopping Apple from becoming a Virtual MSO?
They can get the same raw content from the networks,
and assuming the licensing allows them to, convert it
to Apple media format.

I would like to see the commercials ripped from the stream,
but doubt the networks will license it that way.
 
I live in an apartment so that's not a problem for me. Even with the space issue, our technology itself is lagging behind.

I thought they were using "our" (Cisco) technology? It's just that the amount (and cost) of hardware required to provide good broadband to US-style housing is much greater. On a bright side, where I live (West Coast) we just got 100Mbps broadband at no extra charge (around $40). So things do improve.
 
Yeah, there's a lot of delusion out there about how it would be handled. Either way we're going to be shelling out a lot of money to get the content. Just the way it goes. What I don't like is the cost of Internet in the U.S. compared to Asia. Insane to think I would pay $110 for 110 Mbps when someone in South Korea or Japan can get 10 times the speed for less than half the price.

Near it's end, capitalism begins to fail consumers when the few own/control so much that there is no longer any real competition. When it is permitted that an area can have just 1 or 2 broadband providers, there is virtually no reason to compete on price. Price moves only 1 direction in this scenario.

In this thread, there seems to be universal disgust for the cable monopoly because prices only go one direction. More competition would be the remedy but you can't be a new competitor through the Internet pipe if the cable company is also the gatekeeper of that pipe.

Our system struggles because we have too much owned/controlled by too few. The few likes their cash flows "as is" or better so they will do anything to persist the status quo. For example, if a new broadband upstart pops up in your town, watch how long they last until they are either crushed or bought out. But that's the bigger problem we live with.

If capitalism was working as its supposed to work, we'd have lots of competitors working hard to compete, driving down the costs of things like broadband, wireless communications, food, energy, etc. Instead, the big dogs keep swallowing the pups until there is no competitive pressure to do good for consumers.
 
To get the Asian pricing Americans would have to agree to live in Asian-type housing (20+ story apartment buildings being the only option). You can't have suburbs and cheap broadband ;))

Where there is lots of competition for broadband in America, there is much cheaper pricing. There's just not many places left where there is much- if any- competition.
 
Go Ahead and buy Dishnetwork and Direct Tv and create your own set top box and cable network will follow.

How do you propose Apple providing internet service ?

There's been satellite based internet for awhile .. you use the phone line for the uplink request to send data. Works find for connections that don't need a lot of uplink bandwidth (ie, classical media consumption).


I can't see Apple buying a cable company but Dish or DirecTV could be a possibility. I've read that both are looking for a buyer.

That only solves part of the problem for part of the world. It's not a business model that can easily expand internationally.

So just launch more satellites, right?


Trouble is - the cable companies have large stakes in all of the content providers. For example: Comcast owns part of E! Entertainment Television, Style Network, G4, The Golf Channel and NBC Sports Network.

Comcast now owns 51% of NBC. [edited for clarity] and GE owns 49%

And there's also Anti-Trust laws that makes collusion a no-no.

We manage 3 cable channels and let me tell you... Apple wants the impossible.

We have been in the market for 5 years, and takes one or more years of negotiation to put the signal of one of our channels in certain area and each cable operator works differently.

Not to mention that negotiations are soooooo complicated adn aggressive and soooo many different interest with each cable operator and they are so disorganized and there are so many interest involved.

Apple is dealing with the most dysfunctional market ever. Too many people making decisions per cable operator, too greedy and selfish.

I really would like to see Apple coming up with something. Specially because the Apple TV is not as the iTunes.

iTunes store was a solution for the music piracy and it worked. But Apple TV is not a solution for cable operators, is a solution for Apple only, a totally different approach.

Not necessarily. The situation that you describe suggests that the current business practices are rife with inefficiencies. Inefficiency is something that capitalism - - by definition - - is supposed to destroy.


-hh
 
Comcast has little choice or they will face some significant anti-trust problems.

Hahahahaha. Do you really think our government will protect us from the monopolists/duopolists? Like they do from the Wall Street banks? Like they do from the wireless players? Like they do from the energy monopolists? Remember those massive "too big to fail" bailouts? Did we subsequently make ANY of those "too big to fail" companies break up so they couldn't put us in that position again? Any of them? (no we helped several of them get a lot bigger than before).

The Gov likes campaign dollar flows. The communication industries flow a lot of dollars into campaigns. That last antitrust breakup in communications that I know of was the AT&T split in about 1981. After that, everyone got the message to be sure to flow some of that lucrative money to both party's political campaigns. Even AT&T has been allowed to merge it's way right back into heavy dominance barely 30 years after being broken up. Will they be broken up again? Not by our government.
 
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