# HBO Is Coming to Amazon Prime



## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

The war between Netflix and Amazon intensifies: (Netflix lost round one)

http://time.com/73525/hbo-is-coming-to-amazon-prime-whether-you-have-hbo-or-not/

"Prime members; this isnt HBO signing up to let Amazon charge you to watch these shows. Amazon says Prime members will have unlimited streaming access to shows that include:

All seasons of The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Rome and Six Feet Under, as well as Eastbound & Down, Enlightened and Flight of the Conchords

Miniseries, including Angels in America, Band of Brothers, John Adams, The Pacific and Parades End

Select seasons of current series such as Boardwalk Empire, Treme and True Blood

Original movies like Game Change, Too Big To Fail and You Dont Know Jack

Documentaries including the Autopsy and Iceman series, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib and When the Levees Broke

Original comedy specials from Lewis Black, Ellen DeGeneres, Louis CK and Bill Maher

Amazon says earlier seasons of HBO shows like Girls, The Newsroom and Veep will roll out over the course of the multi-year agreement, approximately three years after airing on HBO.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

In what way did Netflix "lose round one" ?

Yep the battle is on and a key feature of both contender's strategies is to raise the cost to the consumer somewhere between $1 and $2 per month. Hope it's worth it and hope it isn't the beginning of a growing trend.


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

dlfl said:


> In what way did Netflix "lose round one" ?
> 
> Yep the battle is on and a key feature of both contender's strategies is to raise the cost to the consumer somewhere between $1 and $2 per month. Hope it's worth it and hope it isn't the beginning of a growing trend.


 Prime already went up and it's inevitable that Netflix will raise prices, I'm surprised that haven't already. It's not strategy it's simple economics, costs go up, consider the energy bill of anyone running any amount of servers for starters.


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## Dan203 (Apr 17, 2000)

Anything that get's HBo content away from cable companies is fine by me. This is the first step in a good direction for consumers. Considering that I pay for about 200 channels and only watch about a dozen of them I'm all for more alacarte options.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

I think most people would prefer an a la carte selection. The reality is that the individual dozen or so channels would probably end up costing you more than an overall package containing the 200 channels you already receive. Providers make money by including shopping and religious chanels and get special rates by bundling lots of other channels in with the mix. That savings is passed onto the customer with the bundled packages. 

I'd rather pay for a bundled package that includes all of the channels I watch because I know that it will cost me less. It makes no sense to me to pay for a single channel at an inflated rate when there may be only one or two shows that I watch over the entire year on that channel. For example, I generally only watch the History Channel when they air Vikings, which typically runs 9-10 episodes per season. I'd rather not have to deal with adding and dropping channels with every start and stop of a season for a given show.

FWIW, I dropped HBO years ago because it's the most expensive single premium channel package offered. I only watched a handful of the shows they provided and never watched any of the movies (that's what I had NetFlix for), except one of their own productions on occasion.

What's funny is that you'll be able to stream HBO programs from Amazon that have been available on DVD and Blu-Ray from NetFlix for quite some time.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

Yeah, it's counter-intuitive, but a la carte would result in you paying probably the same for those dozen channels.


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## jcthorne (Jan 28, 2002)

Now if only Amazon Prime can come to Tivo.....


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

tenthplanet said:


> Prime already went up and it's inevitable that Netflix will raise prices, I'm surprised that haven't already.


They have announced a $1 to $2 per month price increase. That's what I was referring to.


tenthplanet said:


> It's not strategy it's simple economics, costs go up, consider the energy bill of anyone running any amount of servers for starters.


I think additional programming is the primary reason for the price increases, not server costs. My only hope is it will be a good value (to me of course). I would be happy to pay a lot more for Netflix and/or Amazon Prime **if** the additional programming would allow me to cut the cable cord.

BTW, what do you mean "costs go up"? The government says there is no inflation! Well actually they say it is around 1.5% per year. So that would justify Netflix increasing their price by only about 12 cents per month.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

Energy prices might be going up, but datacenter efficiency is also going up. I doubt that electricity is driving a $1-2 price increase at Netflix (especially since they use AWS instead of running their own datacenters and AWS pricing has gone down, not up)


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## gweempose (Mar 23, 2003)

tenthplanet said:


> Prime already went up and it's inevitable that Netflix will raise prices, I'm surprised that haven't already.


They just announced on Monday that prices will soon be going up for new subscribers:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/21/netflix-price-increase_n_5187461.html


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

I'm gonna cancel NetFlix. I can't keep up as is, and the only thing keeping me on NetFlix is House of Cards.


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## jmpage2 (Jan 21, 2004)

I don't see the point of "HBO is coming to Amazon Prime" when TiVo users have been given the cold shoulder by Amazon for years now.... this announcement does us no good unless we have secondary devices in all of our viewing areas.


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## dlfl (Jul 6, 2006)

jmpage2 said:


> I don't see the point of "HBO is coming to Amazon Prime" when TiVo users have been given the cold shoulder by Amazon for years now.... this announcement does us no good unless we have secondary devices in all of our viewing areas.


My guess is a majority of readers of this thread already have secondary devices, because Tivo has been such a poor platform for Netflix, YouTube and Amazon Video. This **may** be changing with the Roamio models.


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## telemark (Nov 12, 2013)

mr.unnatural said:


> I think most people would prefer an a la carte selection. The reality is that the individual dozen or so channels would probably end up costing you more than an overall package containing the 200 channels you already receive. Providers make money by including shopping and religious chanels and get special rates by bundling lots of other channels in with the mix. That savings is passed onto the customer with the bundled packages.


You hear the argument in the debate a lot, but here my attempt to see if that's accurate. Some Canadian carriers offer A La Carte. Pulling up one at random, they charge $2.80 for one channel. I remember other carriers offering discounts in blocks.

For me, I'd save a lot of money, like half to quarter my TV cable bill, because I prefer few (higher quality to me, rare to others) stations that normally get only put into higher price packages.

I can concede those who like many channels on the value cable packages are probably getting a good deal.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

Your goal is to spend less money and the cable's goal is you spend more money.
No matter how they restructure the packages they are not going to come up with something where you give them less money unless the competition forces them to.

Which is what is happening between ATT and Sprint right now.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

zalusky said:


> Your goal is to spend less money and the cable's goal is you spend more money.
> No matter how they restructure the packages they are not going to come up with something where you give them less money unless the competition forces them to.
> 
> Which is what is happening between ATT and Sprint right now.


Exactly. I don't know why everyone assumes that "over the top" or "IP video" is going to magically make things less expensive.

The content companies and cable companies are both in a position to prevent any disruption from ever happening, ever. They control the production of content, and they control the delivery of it. In many cases the same company owns both ends. So, if you decide you're going to watch crummy YouTube content instead of high quality NBC content, Comcast will just make sure that YouTube has to pay to get access to you, meaning YouTube will load it up with ads or charge you a subscription fee, and oh gee, you're right back where you started only the content now sucks.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

JosephB said:


> Yeah, it's counter-intuitive, but a la carte would result in you paying probably the same for those dozen channels.


I would gladly pay the same for the actual channels I want.. Turn off the religion & shopping channnels (which pay the cable companies), AND turn off the ones I don't actually watch.

I actually don't have a huge problem with bundles in general, if they were alongside a la carte. Some people can be dumb and buy individual cans of soda, I'll buy cases... (Though I realize in this example, I want to buy individuals..)


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

mattack said:


> I would gladly pay the same for the actual channels I want.. Turn off the religion & shopping channnels (which pay the cable companies), AND turn off the ones I don't actually watch.
> 
> I actually don't have a huge problem with bundles in general, if they were alongside a la carte. Some people can be dumb and buy individual cans of soda, I'll buy cases... (Though I realize in this example, I want to buy individuals..)


That makes no sense. Why would you pay the same for less? In what universe would that be a good deal for anyone? You are free to not watch something if you don't like it.

And like you mentioned, shopping and religious channels pay for carriage, so they will always exist.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

tenthplanet said:


> Prime already went up and it's inevitable that Netflix will raise prices, I'm surprised that haven't already. It's not strategy it's simple economics, costs go up, consider the energy bill of anyone running any amount of servers for starters.


But Prime is a totally different business model than Netflix. Prime is a shipping service for physical goods that happens to include streaming video. Netflix is a streaming video service.



Dan203 said:


> Anything that get's HBo content away from cable companies is fine by me. This is the first step in a good direction for consumers. Considering that I pay for about 200 channels and only watch about a dozen of them I'm all for more alacarte options.


This is an interesting angle. They are taking baby steps away from cable and towards monetizing their own content through their own mediums...


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

JosephB said:


> That makes no sense. Why would you pay the same for less?


I am not paying for less "I care about". So I am paying for exactly what I actually want/watch.

It makes things a meritocracy.

So I would be theoretically paying for _exactly_ the same as what I actually "get" (watch) now.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

mattack said:


> I am not paying for less "I care about". So I am paying for exactly what I actually want/watch.
> 
> It makes things a meritocracy.
> 
> So I would be theoretically paying for _exactly_ the same as what I actually "get" (watch) now.


Yep just hide the channels you don't watch and your there. The bottom line is they care what you watch they just don't want you to pay less.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

mattack said:


> I am not paying for less "I care about". So I am paying for exactly what I actually want/watch.
> 
> It makes things a meritocracy.
> 
> So I would be theoretically paying for _exactly_ the same as what I actually "get" (watch) now.


That would be a worse world. A "meritocracy" is not automatically a good thing.

You are getting *exactly* what you want for the same price now, basically you're advocating for "screw what other people watch"


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

zalusky said:


> Yep just hide the channels you don't watch and your there. The bottom line is they care what you watch they just don't want you to pay less.


This.


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## magnus (Nov 12, 2004)

Dan203 said:


> Anything that get's HBo content away from cable companies is fine by me. This is the first step in a good direction for consumers. Considering that I pay for about 200 channels and only watch about a dozen of them I'm all for more alacarte options.


+1 I've been saying this for years. 200 channels of crap and only 5 that have something that I want to watch. The math never added up for me.


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## mr.unnatural (Feb 2, 2006)

magnus said:


> +1 I've been saying this for years. 200 channels of crap and only 5 that have something that I want to watch. The math never added up for me.


The math is quite simple. If a huge number of channels gets paid for by thousands of subscribers, the average cost per channel goes way down for each user. Many channels, such as the shopping and religious networks, are included for free to the provider and, in some cases, may actually pay the provider to air them. The channel sees a return in online sales and donations which offsets their cost and the end user gets a further discount on their overall channel package. Without these channels included in the package your cost would be much higher than it is now.

If you subscribed to just a handful of channels, there would no longer be a bulk discount and the cost for those few channels would exceed what you're paying for the large bundle you currently receive.

Just because the channels show up in your guide doesn't mean you have to watch them. I believe you can set up favorite channels lineups so that only the channels you prefer show up in the guide. I know this is the case for WMC and I believe I used to be able to do it on my Tivos as well.


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## rainwater (Sep 21, 2004)

I think this thread title is misleading.

It should say "Old HBO Content Coming to Amazon Prime". If you want current HBO content, you will still have to subscribe to HBO through your cable company and use HBO Go.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

mr.unnatural said:


> The math is quite simple. If a huge number of channels gets paid for by thousands of subscribers, the average cost per channel goes way down for each user. Many channels, such as the shopping and religious networks, are included for free to the provider and, in some cases, may actually pay the provider to air them. The channel sees a return in online sales and donations which offsets their cost and the end user gets a further discount on their overall channel package. Without these channels included in the package your cost would be much higher than it is now.
> 
> If you subscribed to just a handful of channels, there would no longer be a bulk discount and the cost for those few channels would exceed what you're paying for the large bundle you currently receive.
> 
> Just because the channels show up in your guide doesn't mean you have to watch them. I believe you can set up favorite channels lineups so that only the channels you prefer show up in the guide. I know this is the case for WMC and I believe I used to be able to do it on my Tivos as well.


The problem is that model doesn't allow for the hundreds of channels of garbage to die their death, instead locking them up in bundles. We need some serious channel pruning.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

MikeAndrews said:


> I'm gonna cancel NetFlix. I can't keep up as is, and the only thing keeping me on NetFlix is House of Cards.


It looks like Netflix is good guys. Cancelling is easy. There's a link right on the account page.

"We'll keep your account data for one year. Come back at anytime."

As it is I can't even get through my recorded shows, much less Amazon Prime. Content overload.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

Bigg said:


> The problem is that model doesn't allow for the hundreds of channels of garbage to die their death, instead locking them up in bundles. We need some serious channel pruning.


Why? Your price isn't going to go down, so why do those channels need to die? Someone watches them, just because it isn't you doesn't mean they should go away. Someone else could probably say the same thing about programming you like to watch.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

JosephB said:


> Why? Your price isn't going to go down, so why do those channels need to die? Someone watches them, just because it isn't you doesn't mean they should go away. Someone else could probably say the same thing about programming you like to watch.


The one thing I would say on the other side is if we had less channels there would be room for better resolution. It will be interesting to see how the business model plays if we went totally OnDemand would the increased bandwidth by freeing up all the linear channels be more than enough to go onDemand. Now of course the traditional networks might suffer from the lack of watercooler moment as would this forum if everything essentially became Netflix. They would not know how to sell advertising in that space.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

I think the current video delivery systems needs to be blown up. 

If we all had access to reliable high speed Internet everywhere the concept of being limited to a few hundred choices of what to watch at any one time via a limited number of channels could die the death it deserves. 

Services like Netflix, Hulu, & Amazon are a step in the right direction, but to get to where we should be the current delivery systems need to be destroyed (OTA, Cable, & solid media). The reality is that with the Internet we should have "access" to every TV show and movie every made all the time. Sports and local/national news could be available via live feeds along with recorded material.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

atmuscarella said:


> I think the current video delivery systems needs to be blown up.
> 
> If we all had access to reliable high speed Internet everywhere the concept of being limited to a few hundred choices of what to watch at any one time via a limited number of channels could die the death it deserves.
> 
> Services like Netflix, Hulu, & Amazon are a step in the right direction, but to get to where we should be the current delivery systems need to be destroyed (OTA, Cable, & solid media). The reality is that with the Internet we should have "access" to every TV show and movie every made all the time. Sports and local/national news could be available via live feeds along with recorded material.


Live feeds? I certainly don't want to go back to watching TV like I did in the 70's. I've been time shifting my TV watching since the mid 80's. The only way this would work is if I could still time shift everything. There is nothing out there that I need to watch live. Especially sports. That is the last thing I want to watch Live since there are two to three times as many ads as there is playtime in many sports. That is much worse than TV shows. And there is nothing in the news I need to see in real time. Anything that is very important locally will come over my cell phone with the emergency alert system.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

aaronwt said:


> There is nothing out there that I need to watch live. Especially sports. That is the last thing I want to watch Live


I am the exact opposite about sports. If I'm not watching sports live then I really don't see the point. If the game is already over then just get the score and highlights on espn.com


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

aaronwt said:


> Live feeds? I certainly don't want to go back to watching TV like I did in the 70's. I've been time shifting my TV watching since the mid 80's. The only way this would work is if I could still time shift everything. There is nothing out there that I need to watch live. Especially sports. That is the last thing I want to watch Live since there are two to three times as many ads as there is playtime in many sports. That is much worse than TV shows. And there is nothing in the news I need to see in real time. Anything that is very important locally will come over my cell phone with the emergency alert system.


I actually agree with you in regards to watching news/sports live, which is why I noted both live feeds and recorded material. Just wanted to point out there no reason to use the channel model of OTA/cable to deliver any type of content live or recorded if we built out robust Internet delivery systems.

Regarding the commercials issues, this is where I see the current system finally failing. Right now advertisers are still willing to pay unbelievable amounts of money for adds that I really doubt many people watch. The current systems die when advertisers stop paying. I think there will still be a place for people to choice some adds versus no adds, something like Hulu. But many other people will want add free options. Honestly if I didn't have a DVR I wouldn't be able to stand watching OTA TV, when advertiser decide too many people are doing what most of us on these forums do something is going to have to change.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

JosephB said:


> Why? Your price isn't going to go down, so why do those channels need to die? Someone watches them, just because it isn't you doesn't mean they should go away. Someone else could probably say the same thing about programming you like to watch.


The problem is, channels other than HBO and the other premiums are isolated from market forces by giant, bloated packages. Why does HBO have such amazing content? Because you can add/drop HBO alone without affecting any other channels (other than the 17 other HBOs that they throw in, but no one really cares about), so they have to compete for the consumer dollar. If other channels had to do that, some would die off, because no one really wants them, and others would provide far higher quality content.



zalusky said:


> The one thing I would say on the other side is if we had less channels there would be room for better resolution. It will be interesting to see how the business model plays if we went totally OnDemand would the increased bandwidth by freeing up all the linear channels be more than enough to go onDemand. Now of course the traditional networks might suffer from the lack of watercooler moment as would this forum if everything essentially became Netflix. They would not know how to sell advertising in that space.


That too. Full 19mbps MPEG-2 streams. The "watercooler", i.e. bullsh*tting in our cube now on Monday is all about HBO's Sunday night lineup. I don't watch GoT, but I do chime in when they get to Silicon Valley.

Otherwise, NO! OnDemand is horrible. They don't let you FF anything, they just delete stuff from the library whenever they feel like it. Linear TV is here to stay. Also, what about live events?



aaronwt said:


> Live feeds? I certainly don't want to go back to watching TV like I did in the 70's. I've been time shifting my TV watching since the mid 80's. The only way this would work is if I could still time shift everything. There is nothing out there that I need to watch live. Especially sports. That is the last thing I want to watch Live since there are two to three times as many ads as there is playtime in many sports. That is much worse than TV shows. And there is nothing in the news I need to see in real time. Anything that is very important locally will come over my cell phone with the emergency alert system.


Most of the US would disagree, especially on sports. I enjoy the commercials for a bit, until they start repeating (the March Madness ones repeated so much that they drove me NUTS after about the 10th game, and by game 20 or 30, it was really bad). But really, I want to watch the sport, so I'm going to watch live. I'm a huge advocate of time shifting, I've never really watched live my entire life, but sports are sports... Basketball isn't that bad, as there is a lot of play time.



atmuscarella said:


> I actually agree with you in regards to watching news/sports live, which is why I noted both live feeds and recorded material. Just wanted to point out there no reason to use the channel model of OTA/cable to deliver any type of content live or recorded if we built out robust Internet delivery systems.
> 
> Regarding the commercials issues, this is where I see the current system finally failing. Right now advertisers are still willing to pay unbelievable amounts of money for adds that I really doubt many people watch. The current systems die when advertisers stop paying. I think there will still be a place for people to choice some adds versus no adds, something like Hulu. But many other people will want add free options. Honestly if I didn't have a DVR I wouldn't be able to stand watching OTA TV, when advertiser decide too many people are doing what most of us on these forums do something is going to have to change.


We don't have the bandwidth to do that. Imagine if everyone tried to stream stuff at the same time! Yes, any individual house that's getting 50-100mbps has plenty of bandwidth on its own (my roommates and I combined had HBO Go and 2 Netflix HD streams, plus some donwloads going all at the same time the other day), but if all of them stream at once, even if you shift TV QAMs over to streaming, the core of the network would still have a complete meltdown. "Broadcast", i.e. cable still has a technologically relevant role to play. Yes, it's online MPEG-2 encoding, so it's way less efficient than offline MPEG-4, but I probably suck down 100-150GB per week of content from cable without any impact on my internet connection, much of which I don't even watch, but I still have it locally to watch what I want when I want. And during the Olympics, that was at 1TB/week of video, during the beginning of March Madness that was upwards of 200-300GB over the course of a long weekend... Those numbers don't scale over streaming.

They still have live events, i.e. sports to tie commercials to. And a surprising number of people still watch TV live, even though they have DVRs. A lot of people still view the DVR as something that they record a show on if they're going to be out that night, not something to use full-time like TiVo users do.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

To make a conclusion to all that discursive babbling, I envision the ideal system being a linear model using linear channels over QAM or satellite, but de-bundling the channels, with a massive "die-off" of channels with a few channels, maybe even some new ones, providing high-quality content, far fewer re-runs, and the like, and then maybe a really cheap bundle (~$10/mo) of crappy channels with low-value content or old re-runs.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

zalusky said:


> Yep just hide the channels you don't watch and your there. The bottom line is they care what you watch they just don't want you to pay less.


But they *aren't* caring what I watch, because I *HAVE TO HIDE THE CHANNELS*. I do NOT want to have to hide the channels, I want to pay for exactly the right channels.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

JosephB said:


> You are getting *exactly* what you want for the same price now, basically you're advocating for "screw what other people watch"


Yes, that's exactly what I am saying. You make that sound like it's a bad thing.

I should not be subsidizing other people's channels.


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## zalusky (Apr 5, 2002)

mattack said:


> But they *aren't* caring what I watch, because I *HAVE TO HIDE THE CHANNELS*. I do NOT want to have to hide the channels, I want to pay for exactly the right channels.


Except what you really want is to pay less and the cable company does not want that to happen so even if you get Alacarte they will configure it so you pay the same.

They might say there is a base fee which is high then you can add non premium channels in packs of 5 and in the end it will wind up being the same price.

Cell phone companies do this all the time. They do not want you to pay less period. They don't care what you watch!

Now play nice!


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## tenthplanet (Mar 5, 2004)

atmuscarella said:


> I think the current video delivery systems needs to be blown up.
> 
> If we all had access to reliable high speed Internet everywhere the concept of being limited to a few hundred choices of what to watch at any one time via a limited number of channels could die the death it deserves.
> 
> Services like Netflix, Hulu, & Amazon are a step in the right direction, but to get to where we should be the current delivery systems need to be destroyed (OTA, Cable, & solid media). The reality is that with the Internet we should have "access" to every TV show and movie every made all the time. Sports and local/national news could be available via live feeds along with recorded material.


 That a recipe for internet slog, streaming needs it's own network before it chokes out all the edu.. the org., the internet was never intended to be a video distribution network, cable networks are actually a better idea for moving just video content, a closed controlled system.
That being said you may get what you want, and you are going to hate what it's going to cost.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

mattack said:


> Yes, that's exactly what I am saying. You make that sound like it's a bad thing.
> 
> I should not be subsidizing other people's channels.


But people are subsidizing your channels, too.

Your cost isn't going to go down, not a penny. What does it matter that you "get" some other channels you never watch? Is it that offensive that you don't want to have available to you some content that you will never watch?

I really cannot wrap my head around you and bigg's argument here. It just makes no economic sense.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

JosephB said:


> But people are subsidizing your channels, too.
> 
> Your cost isn't going to go down, not a penny. What does it matter that you "get" some other channels you never watch? Is it that offensive that you don't want to have available to you some content that you will never watch?
> 
> I really cannot wrap my head around you and bigg's argument here. It just makes no economic sense.


It only starts to make sense with a mass die-off of crappy channels, so that there's less content to support, and market forces start to apply to individual channels.


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## mattack (Apr 9, 2001)

JosephB said:


> But people are subsidizing your channels, too.
> 
> Your cost isn't going to go down, not a penny. What does it matter that you "get" some other channels you never watch? Is it that offensive that you don't want to have available to you some content that you will never watch?
> 
> I really cannot wrap my head around you and bigg's argument here. It just makes no economic sense.


It makes economic sense that any other meritocracy does. The channels should cost what they cost to make (including profit). I don't want religious/shopping channels subsidizing me, just like I don't want to subsidize ESPN for other people. (I would likely subscribe to ESPN for the months it has the WSOP... just not the rest of the year.)


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

mattack said:


> It makes economic sense that any other meritocracy does. The channels should cost what they cost to make (including profit). I don't want religious/shopping channels subsidizing me, just like I don't want to subsidize ESPN for other people. (I would likely subscribe to ESPN for the months it has the WSOP... just not the rest of the year.)


"Meritocracy" 

It seems like you don't have any idea how TV works.


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## tarheelblue32 (Jan 13, 2014)

mattack said:


> It makes economic sense that any other meritocracy does. The channels should cost what they cost to make (including profit). I don't want religious/shopping channels subsidizing me, just like I don't want to subsidize ESPN for other people. (I would likely subscribe to ESPN for the months it has the WSOP... just not the rest of the year.)


You don't want to be subsidized huh? Advertisements are subsidizing you too. If everything was a la carte and there were no ads, ESPN alone would probably cost you $50/month.


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## moonscape (Jul 3, 2004)

JosephB said:


> Why? Your price isn't going to go down, so why do those channels need to die? Someone watches them, just because it isn't you doesn't mean they should go away. Someone else could probably say the same thing about programming you like to watch.


Exactly. I remember when Bravo first came on the scene and I loved it! It was loaded with art films and substantive (to me) arts programs. Viewership wasn't as great as other channels so in time it started dropping great films and migrated more and more to (to me) junk.

Some of the most popular channels are sports and I don't watch those. My viewing is eclectic and I find programming bits on many less popular overall channels. A la carte would be a disaster for me, as would pruning channels down to the 'most popular' which would leave lots of niche, and quality, programming in the dust.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

moonscape said:


> Exactly. I remember when Bravo first came on the scene and I loved it! It was loaded with art films and substantive (to me) arts programs. Viewership wasn't as great as other channels so in time it started dropping great films and migrated more and more to (to me) junk.
> 
> Some of the most popular channels are sports and I don't watch those. My viewing is eclectic and I find programming bits on many less popular overall channels. A la carte would be a disaster for me, as would pruning channels down to the 'most popular' which would leave lots of niche, and quality, programming in the dust.


That you don't watch sports is important. Not everyone watches ESPN, which currently charges about $4.60 per subscriber, and every single cable subscriber has ESPN. With a la carte, you can expect that people who actually want to watch ESPN will probably have to pay upwards of $10-15 just for ESPN, and nothing else.


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## NYHeel (Oct 7, 2003)

Bigg said:


> To make a conclusion to all that discursive babbling, I envision the ideal system being a linear model using linear channels over QAM or satellite, but de-bundling the channels, with a massive "die-off" of channels with a few channels, maybe even some new ones, providing high-quality content, far fewer re-runs, and the like, and then maybe a really cheap bundle (~$10/mo) of crappy channels with low-value content or old re-runs.


The problem is that every channel out there is going to start putting out new content and then you're right back to where you started. HBO puts out new content because they're competing for customers directly. These other marginal channels would do the same. Already obscure channels are putting out new content now. Heck, even WGN is putting out a new show. You're going to have the problem of having 1 show you like on each of 25 different channels as opposed to 5 shows each on 5 different channels.

My point is that I don't want to have to subscribe to the Sundance channel because there's 1 show they put out that I like. I'd rather the system now where I don't care what channel a show is on because my Tivo records it. I don't want ot worry about subscribing to 25 different channels because I like 1 or 2 shows it puts out.


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## NYHeel (Oct 7, 2003)

tarheelblue32 said:


> I am the exact opposite about sports. If I'm not watching sports live then I really don't see the point. If the game is already over then just get the score and highlights on espn.com


Do you enjoy watching the game? You can always just wait and get the score and highlights on ESPN.com. I enjoy the experience of watching games much more than just looking up the score. Therefore, I will use discipline to not look up the score and watch the game in a way that provides me with the most enjoyment possible.

I watch a lot of Carolina basketball that way. The game starts at 7 but I'm putting my kids to bed between then and 8:30 so I'll just start watching at 8:30 from the beginning.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

NYHeel said:


> The problem is that every channel out there is going to start putting out new content and then you're right back to where you started. HBO puts out new content because they're competing for customers directly. These other marginal channels would do the same. Already obscure channels are putting out new content now. Heck, even WGN is putting out a new show. You're going to have the problem of having 1 show you like on each of 25 different channels as opposed to 5 shows each on 5 different channels.
> 
> My point is that I don't want to have to subscribe to the Sundance channel because there's 1 show they put out that I like. I'd rather the system now where I don't care what channel a show is on because my Tivo records it. I don't want ot worry about subscribing to 25 different channels because I like 1 or 2 shows it puts out.


The thing is, with a la carte, a big chunk of the middle of cable would either get WAY better, or they would go clean out of business within months. There are dozens of channels that have degraded to low-value programming that people aren't going to pay for. It would probably also kill off all of the tertiary channels that various networks have started up, like most of the 13 Discovery channels, several of which are basically trashbins for re-runs, and turn over on a pretty regular basis. It would also kill off the channels that just re-run old movies. Lastly, it would force networks to be much more topic-centric and not wander all over the place, in order to make a good value proposition to a specific type of viewer.



NYHeel said:


> Do you enjoy watching the game? You can always just wait and get the score and highlights on ESPN.com. I enjoy the experience of watching games much more than just looking up the score. Therefore, I will use discipline to not look up the score and watch the game in a way that provides me with the most enjoyment possible.
> 
> I watch a lot of Carolina basketball that way. The game starts at 7 but I'm putting my kids to bed between then and 8:30 so I'll just start watching at 8:30 from the beginning.


I can't handle DVR'ed sports... just knowing that it's not live makes it bad enough, even if I isolate myself from everything else. I need the excitement of LIVE!


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## aridon (Aug 31, 2006)

Different strokes for different folks. A la carte sounds good until you realize that you'll end up having to watch the crap the masses watch when there aren't enough subs to your particular channel to justify keeping it. 

Personally the shopping channels and religious stations can sit there and collect dust and the people that watch / enjoy them can subsidize my experience while I remove them from the guide and never think twice about them.

If you think corporate America is going to stop its gravy train to break out of the status quo only to save you money and screw themselves out of big profits you're nuts.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Bigg said:


> The thing is, with a la carte, a big chunk of the middle of cable would either get WAY better, or they would go clean out of business within months. There are dozens of channels that have degraded to low-value programming that people aren't going to pay for. It would probably also kill off all of the tertiary channels that various networks have started up, like most of the 13 Discovery channels, several of which are basically trashbins for re-runs, and turn over on a pretty regular basis. It would also kill off the channels that just re-run old movies. Lastly, it would force networks to be much more topic-centric and not wander all over the place, in order to make a good value proposition to a specific type of viewer.
> 
> I can't handle DVR'ed sports... just knowing that it's not live makes it bad enough, even if I isolate myself from everything else. I need the excitement of LIVE!


Live or recorded the excitement would be identical. Besides with a DVR your are never watching anything live. There is first a delay in the transmission from OTA, cable, or satellite. Then on the dvr it is written to the hard drive first and then read off of it. So it is never actually live.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> Live or recorded the excitement would be identical. Besides with a DVR your are never watching anything live. There is first a delay in the transmission from OTA, cable, or satellite. Then on the dvr it is written to the hard drive first and then read off of it. So it is never actually live.


Don't be pedantic.


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## atmuscarella (Oct 11, 2005)

JosephB said:


> Don't be pedantic.


Sorry I am with aaronwt on this one. The only way you are actually watching live sports is if you are at the event watching it directly. Otherwise it is recorded and it is delayed even if it is only a few seconds. The assertion that it changes anything because you are watching a recording that has been delayed a few minutes instead of a few seconds is what is ridiculous.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

atmuscarella said:


> Sorry I am with aaronwt on this one. The only way you are actually watching live sports is if you are at the event watching it directly. Otherwise it is recorded and it is delayed even if it is only a few seconds. The assertion that it changes anything because you are watching a recording that has been delayed a few minutes instead of a few seconds is what is ridiculous.


Maybe I misread the original post regarding not DVRing sports, but I believe he was referring to recording something and watching it much later, like hours or days later. Not "delayed a few minutes"

I always "DVR" my sports, but I also watch it "live". It being delayed by a few seconds or minutes (I'm almost always behind by a few minutes because I often trickplay) is not worth mentioning. But, I too cannot watch a sporting event that happened hours ago or days ago. Just not the same.


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## javabird (Oct 13, 2006)

Bigg said:


> It would also kill off the channels that just re-run old movies. Lastly, it would force networks to be much more topic-centric and not wander all over the place, in order to make a good value proposition to a specific type of viewer.


I actually like the old movies. I remember when I first got cable, AMC ran old movies without commercials. I also enjoyed the commentary and background about the movie they gave before the show started. Watching a movie was a popcorn event then.

Now there are a couple of local channels in my area that run old movies and I record them, especially the old film noir.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> Live or recorded the excitement would be identical. Besides with a DVR your are never watching anything live. There is first a delay in the transmission from OTA, cable, or satellite. Then on the dvr it is written to the hard drive first and then read off of it. So it is never actually live.


Of course there are transmission delays. But if I'm watching it later, it's far less exciting, as I know it's not live.



javabird said:


> I actually like the old movies. I remember when I first got cable, AMC ran old movies without commercials. I also enjoyed the commentary and background about the movie they gave before the show started. Watching a movie was a popcorn event then.
> 
> Now there are a couple of local channels in my area that run old movies and I record them, especially the old film noir.


It's a waste of channels. That's what Netflix is for.


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## Johncv (Jun 11, 2002)

Bigg said:


> Of course there are transmission delays. But if I'm watching it later, it's far less exciting, as I know it's not live.
> 
> It's a waste of channels. That's what Netflix is for.


Except, because of exclusive deals like this between HBO and Amazon, Netflix is now having a hard time obtaining material to stream.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

Johncv said:


> Except, because of exclusive deals like this between HBO and Amazon, Netflix is now having a hard time obtaining material to stream.


True, Netflix isn't the source of movies it was a few years ago, although they still have a LOT of stuff.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

Bigg said:


> Of course there are transmission delays. But if I'm watching it later, it's far less exciting, as I know it's not live.
> ....


I still don't get that. If you don't know the outcome or anything about the game, how can it be less exciting watching it from a dvr that has already recorded it?

What makes a live game less exciting for me is all the commercials. Which is why I don't want to watch it live. Take the NFL. Actual game play where there is any action is only around 12 minutes of the actual sixty minute game. The rest of the 48 minutes are mostly players standing around. Then you add time outs, commercials, and talking heads and that adds another two hours of mostly nothing to the three hour plus game that is broadcast.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

aaronwt said:


> I still don't get that. If you don't know the outcome or anything about the game, how can it be less exciting watching it from a dvr that has already recorded it?
> 
> What makes a live game less exciting for me is all the commercials. Which is why I don't want to watch it live. Take the NFL. Actual game play where there is any action is only around 12 minutes of the actual sixty minute game. The rest of the 48 minutes are mostly players standing around. Then you add time outs, commercials, and talking heads and that adds another two hours of mostly nothing to the three hour plus game that is broadcast.


Just because I know it's not live. I like seeing some commercials, but if they put the same ones on over and over it gets pretty bad.

Basketball is a lot better than NFL for actual gameplay time...


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## javabird (Oct 13, 2006)

Bigg said:


> Of course there are transmission delays. But if I'm watching it later, it's far less exciting, as I know it's not live.
> 
> It's a waste of channels. That's what Netflix is for.


"Waste" is a subjective term. It's not a waste to me because I don't have Netflix and I enjoy them. I think paying $8 extra for Netflix is a waste, if I can get the same thing free. Again, value is subjective.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

javabird said:


> "Waste" is a subjective term. It's not a waste to me because I don't have Netflix and I enjoy them. I think paying $8 extra for Netflix is a waste, if I can get the same thing free. Again, value is subjective.


That bandwidth could be used for something that isn't kicking around in a zillion other places.


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## slowbiscuit (Sep 19, 2006)

Bigg said:


> Otherwise, NO! OnDemand is horrible. They don't let you FF anything, they just delete stuff from the library whenever they feel like it. Linear TV is here to stay. Also, what about live events?


That's not true, FF in Comcast's On Demand depends on the content provider. All HBO can be FF'd, for example. Agree that with the other limitations it can only supplement QAM delivery now.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

slowbiscuit said:


> That's not true, FF in Comcast's On Demand depends on the content provider. All HBO can be FF'd, for example. Agree that with the other limitations it can only supplement QAM delivery now.


Fair enough. But most of it is un FF-able now. Not sure why anyone would even use XoD. It really sucks. For TV content, I'll just DVR it. For movies, I'm not going to watch a crummy MPEG-2 stream when I can stream VUDU HDX.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

slowbiscuit said:


> That's not true, FF in Comcast's On Demand depends on the content provider. All HBO can be FF'd, for example. Agree that with the other limitations it can only supplement QAM delivery now.


Why would HBO not allow you to fast forward through their content? The whole point of restricting fast forward is to force you to watch advertising, which HBO doesn't have.


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## aaronwt (Jan 31, 2002)

JosephB said:


> Why would HBO not allow you to fast forward through their content? The whole point of restricting fast forward is to force you to watch advertising, which HBO doesn't have.


But don't they have VOD where you can't fast forward through anything? EVen though there are only a few minutes of commercials you can't FF through the content or the commercials? AT least that is what my co-workers sometime complain about when watching VOD on Comcast.


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## CrispyCritter (Feb 28, 2001)

My understanding in my area is that recent network shows on most, but not all, networks cannot be FF on TiVo Xfinity On Demand, but archived shows can be FF. It's been a while since I tried it out, and I won't be back in Comcast-land for another month so I can't test it.


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## JosephB (Nov 19, 2010)

aaronwt said:


> But don't they have VOD where you can't fast forward through anything? EVen though there are only a few minutes of commercials you can't FF through the content or the commercials? AT least that is what my co-workers sometime complain about when watching VOD on Comcast.


Maybe, I don't know. It would make sense that it's based on the individual content and not disabled system-wide. I've never had a cable company provided set top box so I couldn't tell you.


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## MikeAndrews (Jan 17, 2002)

JosephB said:


> Maybe, I don't know. It would make sense that it's based on the individual content and not disabled system-wide. I've never had a cable company provided set top box so I couldn't tell you.


It's part of the deal with the content provider so they can sell teh ads.

On UVerse VoD you sometimes get the message "Fast Fording may be disabled." but sometimes FF works anyway. Rewinding and jumpback always work.


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## Bigg (Oct 31, 2003)

VOD is a cluster. I love TiVo, since I don't need to use VOD, since I have a TiVo.


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