by Lysander » Tue Nov 20, 2007 2:15 pm
http://www.synctv.com
why I'm so excited about this is that they aren't making you pay a fee fore each episode, or offering it for free but at the expense of bloated DRM and custom clients that suck and ads everywhere. What they're offering is $2-$4 for a channel, and on that channel is all sorts of programming.
So, in other words, it's the subscription model of standard cable, but brought to the internet, and--most importantly--you can choose what channels you want. I refuse to pay for cable, for that reason alone; you're paying $50 up for five channels that each have one or two marginal shows and then 63 channels of utter shit.
Sure, the computer isn't the optimal viewing platform, but an HDTV is, which can be hooked up to a modern Vista PC with a compatible video card. The service seems really geared towards home theater markets, too; they talk about having it having DVD or higher quality and in surround sound. Hell, that beats cable right there; Comcast digital cable is compressed and squashed beyond belief with macroblocks everywhere.
The issue, of course, is bandwidth. Even so--I was going to buy an HDTV anyway, so you get that, and the ability to actually watch TV shows on it without it being ruined by compression artifacts, plus the, at most, 10 dollars a month for accessing the shows, and you've still got a good $40 a month or more left over that you can poor into getting a blazingfast internet coonection. Of course, then you're not saving a whole lot of money, but faster internet > cable any day of the week.
They're also not clear on how the content will be played back--is it a custom client? Or can I play it in winamp?--or how restrictive the DRM is going to be. And, they're being quiet about what TV shows will be made available on the service--and selection is the most important part of this. What good is the perfect business model for products I don't want? They've already got showtime, though, and that's just for the beta, which *I* think is promising, and they're Pioneer, not some vague startup, so I imagine they won't have too big a problem negociating contracts with other channels.
So, I am going to keep a very close eye on this. If you, like me, are frustrated with the throwing-good-money-after-bad mentality of modern cable companies, you might want to as well.
http://www.synctv.com
why I'm so excited about this is that they aren't making you pay a fee fore each episode, or offering it for free but at the expense of bloated DRM and custom clients that suck and ads everywhere. What they're offering is $2-$4 for a channel, and on that channel is all sorts of programming.
So, in other words, it's the subscription model of standard cable, but brought to the internet, and--most importantly--you can choose what channels you want. I refuse to pay for cable, for that reason alone; you're paying $50 up for five channels that each have one or two marginal shows and then 63 channels of utter shit.
Sure, the computer isn't the optimal viewing platform, but an HDTV is, which can be hooked up to a modern Vista PC with a compatible video card. The service seems really geared towards home theater markets, too; they talk about having it having DVD or higher quality and in surround sound. Hell, that beats cable right there; Comcast digital cable is compressed and squashed beyond belief with macroblocks everywhere.
The issue, of course, is bandwidth. Even so--I was going to buy an HDTV anyway, so you get that, and the ability to actually watch TV shows on it without it being ruined by compression artifacts, plus the, at most, 10 dollars a month for accessing the shows, and you've still got a good $40 a month or more left over that you can poor into getting a blazingfast internet coonection. Of course, then you're not saving a whole lot of money, but faster internet > cable any day of the week.
They're also not clear on how the content will be played back--is it a custom client? Or can I play it in winamp?--or how restrictive the DRM is going to be. And, they're being quiet about what TV shows will be made available on the service--and selection is the most important part of this. What good is the perfect business model for products I don't want? They've already got showtime, though, and that's just for the beta, which *I* think is promising, and they're Pioneer, not some vague startup, so I imagine they won't have too big a problem negociating contracts with other channels.
So, I am going to keep a very close eye on this. If you, like me, are frustrated with the throwing-good-money-after-bad mentality of modern cable companies, you might want to as well.