Breaking news. Corporations don't care what we want. They tell us what we want, then, we want it or else!
They've got my vote for that. I'm simply fed up of seeing social networking features being poured on top of apps like marmalade.
Actually, what I'd like to see is AD-FREE TV. Yes, this is what things like HBO generally offer (although they do show their own ads between shows for other shows), BUT this represents only a small portion of original content. I want ad-free TV for ALL shows. Yes, DVRs help a LOT, but you still have to manually fast-forward, etc. and it's still a PITA compared to say an iTunes collection of a show with zero commercials (not counting recent crap like Fox that includes commercials even on iTunes).
The problem is I don't want to necessarily OWN content (taking up valuable hard drive space (at least in a I don't want to have 4 hard drives running at the same time to keep track of) although the development of iCloud may rectify this to some extent). Either way it costs more to own than rent/watch once, but iTunes got rid of TV Show rentals so we're back to square one.
The point is that I want to only pay for shows I actually want to watch (not the wasted money paying for Cable/Sat 24/7 that I'm NOT watching) and I do not want my time wasted by being bombarded with tons of commercials either. Get a good solution to this for a "reasonable" price (should cost less than everything cable, but more than ad-filled content) and people with go for it. Do stupid things like adding commercials later on regardless of what users want and you will ultimately screw yourself over. People are SICK of Ads EVERYWHERE and I believe many are willing to pay for content free of them.
Meanwhile, I agree that social networking is a PLAGUE. I simply don't need to know when someone is sitting on the toilet nor do I care to read about such things and waste hours of my life "following" such garbage. One person's comment on the summary page mentioned that TV itself is mostly garbage and that the new generation isn't brainwashed with it and has better things to do...do they mean like following TWITTER???
Yes, I like TV, but I want to watch shows I'm interested in, not crap. This means funny comedies and interesting history/mystery shows, etc., not reality tv. Sadly, channels like History have switched to reality crap like "Pawn Stars" and moved any real history shows to H2 (which I cannot get in HD currently). Similar things happened to MTV, etc. (rendering music videos moot for the most part, making harder to find new music once again in favor of garbage like reality tv again; but then with newer cable boxes you cannot surf at light speed anymore, which is how I'd flick by MTV/VH1 to scan videos for something interesting sounding in the first place and only stop if it looked/sounded interesting).
Actually, what I'd like to see is AD-FREE TV. Yes, this is what things like HBO generally offer (although they do show their own ads between shows for other shows), BUT this represents only a small portion of original content. I want ad-free TV for ALL shows. Yes, DVRs help a LOT, but you still have to manually fast-forward, etc. and it's still a PITA compared to say an iTunes collection of a show with zero commercials (not counting recent crap like Fox that includes commercials even on iTunes).
The problem is I don't want to necessarily OWN content (taking up valuable hard drive space (at least in a I don't want to have 4 hard drives running at the same time to keep track of) although the development of iCloud may rectify this to some extent). Either way it costs more to own than rent/watch once, but iTunes got rid of TV Show rentals so we're back to square one.
The point is that I want to only pay for shows I actually want to watch (not the wasted money paying for Cable/Sat 24/7 that I'm NOT watching) and I do not want my time wasted by being bombarded with tons of commercials either. Get a good solution to this for a "reasonable" price (should cost less than everything cable, but more than ad-filled content) and people with go for it. Do stupid things like adding commercials later on regardless of what users want and you will ultimately screw yourself over. People are SICK of Ads EVERYWHERE and I believe many are willing to pay for content free of them.
Meanwhile, I agree that social networking is a PLAGUE. I simply don't need to know when someone is sitting on the toilet nor do I care to read about such things and waste hours of my life "following" such garbage. One person's comment on the summary page mentioned that TV itself is mostly garbage and that the new generation isn't brainwashed with it and has better things to do...do they mean like following TWITTER???
Yes, I like TV, but I want to watch shows I'm interested in, not crap. This means funny comedies and interesting history/mystery shows, etc., not reality tv. Sadly, channels like History have switched to reality crap like "Pawn Stars" and moved any real history shows to H2 (which I cannot get in HD currently). Similar things happened to MTV, etc. (rendering music videos moot for the most part, making harder to find new music once again in favor of garbage like reality tv again; but then with newer cable boxes you cannot surf at light speed anymore, which is how I'd flick by MTV/VH1 to scan videos for something interesting sounding in the first place and only stop if it looked/sounded interesting).
That's one of the problems, many people don't want the cable companies to 'pick shows' and they don't want their channels or packages of changes... they want to pick/pay for the shows or series themselves.
And to make it worse, in some regions you where can pick and choose and regions you can't. And when you finally do get the content, sometime you get HD and sometimes you get black bars, etc. ... Tough problem to crack to get everything to be consistent.
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The problem is a la carte is not as profitable as the current system. Everybody likes the concept of a la carte because they make the misguided assumption that they will spend less money watching the shows/channels they want..
What I'd like to see is free jewels sprinkled at the foot of my bed every morning.
Unfortunately TV production isn't magic, and producers can't just choose to give away content for any price they like. There are these boring things called economics. When it comes to TV consumption you have three choices:
PAY for it, WAIT for it, or WATCH ADS all the way through. You can pick and choose, pay more, wait less, even do a bit of all three, but you can't do none.
From your needs it sound like you just want to pay, and not endure the other two. But reading further in, it turns out no, you don't want to actually pay.
Let me get this straight....you think a 'reasonable price' would be something less than what you pay for cable now?
How could networks possible create and distribute shows to a smaller
fragmented audience and still bring in the same revenue without a significant increase in price?