Cable Forum - The future of television

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Re: The future of television

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfman (Post 36100463)

You've completely missed Andrew's point.

Apple want to push Apple
Netflix wants to push Netflix
Amazon wants to push Amazon.

None of them have any incentive to be this altruistic platform offering all of the content in a neutral manner. For the same reason your Sky EPG has all of the Sky channels near the top (with the exception of PSBs).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris (Post 36100469)

OB, as per, you’re arguing that black is white and up is down, on the basis of your own, extremely limited, experience and very personal preferences.

As with most aspects of this topic, we have been here before, at some point, though frankly I lack the will to go and search for it. What’s at issue here is commoditisation. What service are you actually buying? A load of streamed TV shows from Virgin Media or a streaming experience provided by Netflix, or Apple, or whoever?

What you’re demanding is commoditisation of content in favour of a single, Virgin Media branded experience. But streamers that have invested a fortune in their brand awareness have absolutely no incentive at all to sacrifice that to the Virgin Media EPG. Each streamer has a unique character, driven by its app functionality and its content acquisition strategy. Netflix, in my opinion, is particularly strong on this point.

Amazon Prime can overcome this to a great extent as long as it’s the only streaming brand doing full integration. As Amazon commissions far less original content than Netflix, has a much smaller free-to-members back catalogue than Disney, and lacks the high-end reputation of Apple, there was a distinct commercial advantage in it going down the integration route. Certainly on our living room TV, which has all of the major streamers but no integration, Prime is the least accessed of the lot.

Commoditisation is what all brands fear and what they all expend a great deal of effort trying to avoid. This is why, for example, you will occasionally see a member of Walkers staff surveying the crisp aisle in your local supermarket. Walkers is a major brand and it has the clout, which many smaller player lack, to dictate even to the likes of Asda and Tesco, how their product is to be displayed. Many smaller brands get whatever placement they are given and often have to make sale-or-rebate promises to the supermarkets in order to get any shelf space at all.

Netflix has no incentive to surrender control of its brand to a search engine in your 360 box. The personal preferences of some random Old Boy are really irrelevant here. At the scale they are interested in (I.e. the entire viewing market, not your lounge) there is greater value in maintaining brand strength and awareness.

I don’t buy that at all, Chris. As far as branding is concerned, when you pick a programme from the watchlist, the system takes you to the streamer’s logo, so it is very clear who it is providing the content.

This is not just me saying this - there have been a number of findings that viewers want everything in one box. Those streamers who don’t promote this will ultimately lose out on viewers.

Re: The future of television

Quote:

Originally Posted by OLD BOY (Post 36100499)

Yes, and if you recognise that many people have at least two or three streamers, you want your subscribers to be constantly reminded of their content that they want to see by being reminded of those programmes through their watchlists.

If two streamers are integrated but the third isn’t, who do you think is going to get less hits?

---------- Post added at 20:14 ---------- Previous post was at 20:10 ----------

I don’t buy that at all, Chris. As far as branding is concerned, when you pick a programme from the watchlist, the system takes you to the streamer’s logo, so it is very clear who it is providing the content.

This is not just me saying this - there have been a number of findings that viewers want everything in one box. Those streamers who don’t promote this will ultimately lose out on viewers.

It is just you saying this I'm afraid. You're conflating demand with supply.

We're not disputing that demand exists for a single search facility, as the surveys probably do indeed show. We're pointing out the commercial reasons as to why streamers aren't jumping up and down to become part of such a service.

Re: The future of television

Quote:

Originally Posted by OLD BOY (Post 36100499)

I know you don’t buy it - the very essence of all this forum’s “future TV” threads is your inability to differentiate between your preferences and market trends. If you had some sense of how what you like is not necessarily what drives the industry, we’d have little to discuss.

In the real world beyond your sofa, businesses that have spent millions on bespoke search, watchlist and recommendation algorithms in order to create an end-to-end user experience, do not easily give that up and tell themselves a 5-second studio ident at the start of the reel is an adequate substitute. That you claim that is adequate really only demonstrates how blinkered your personal preferences have made you here.

Re: The future of television

A sign of the future as Google are threatening to remove YouTube from Roku? Rumours Amazon could go too.

Re: The future of television

Quote:

Originally Posted by jfman (Post 36100542)

A sign of the future as Google are threatening to remove YouTube from Roku? Rumours Amazon could go too.

It would be a sad development but not a shocking one. As several of us have repeatedly stated in this and other threads, big streaming brands are primarily interested in defending and promoting their brand. It leads the likes of Google to leverage its brand awareness in order to try to get preferential treatment and it leads Amazon to use its powerful brand to promote one of its less well-known properties. Roku, meanwhile, will resist, hoping the wide adoption of its devices in homes will make the streamers think twice about removing themselves from the platform.

They will most likely achieve a compromise of sorts, however this does clearly demonstrate just how important leveraging the brand really is. None of them will surrender it easily.

Re: The future of television

John Skipper (formerly President of ESPN and who oversaw DAZN entering the US market) has been lamenting their failure in the US market to Sports Business Journal.

Some of the boxing they were trying to charge for nobody was watching for free* on ESPN never mind being willing to pay for an over the top subscription service. Aggregating secondary rights hasn’t worked out and the absence of first tier rights (like the NFL) is costing them.

On streaming services replacing cable bundles:

Quote:

Eventually you’re going to get less and pay more

*by free I assume he means on a basic cable package.

On this side of the Atlantic the farce in Italy continues with supporters threatening a boycott as DAZN seek to reduce piracy by limiting users to viewing on one device at one time. Certainly with Sky, BT and Virgin users currently get to enjoy premium content at home and “on the go” on multiple devices.

https://sport.periodicodaily.com/daz...-e-andata-giu/

Apologies but you can use Chrome to translate. One social media campaign is pushing the idea that three months would be long enough to boycott for the service to fail.

Re: The future of television

This may be the answer to the difficulty in bringing broadband to remote areas.

https://rxtvinfo.com/2021/return-of-the-squarial

Re: The future of television

Quote:

Originally Posted by OLD BOY (Post 36101753)

This may be the answer to the difficulty in bringing broadband to remote areas.

https://rxtvinfo.com/2021/return-of-the-squarial

It'll certainly bring broadband to remote areas however the problem satellite faces is that there is finite bandwidth shared among users - similar to a 4G mast.

Existing "affordable" satellite broadband packages come with bandwidth caps for this very reason. While th average internet user may not hit these caps a few hours of 4K will.

It's also somewhat counterintuitive to replace satellite television with... satellite television.

Re: The future of television

Speeds are not too bad, if you get them.

Quote:

SpaceX says that users of its service can expect download speeds of up to 200 Mbps. Latency is as low as 20 milliseconds. Upload speeds are around 13 Mbps.

20 ms isnt bad either, thats always been a problem with satellite based stuff.

No mention of price that I could see.

Re: The future of television

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul (Post 36101837)

Speeds are not too bad, if you get them.

20 ms isnt bad either, thats always been a problem with satellite based stuff.

No mention of price that I could see.

It’s certainly better than nothing.

Re: The future of television

It is better than nothing for internet connectivity. What’s less clear is why it would be better than the unlimited, high bandwidth satellite tv broadcasts people in these locations are receiving already. The extra cost and complexity might be worth it for the additional utility of on demand IP-TV for some people, but it just isn’t a simpler, cheaper or more robust solution for delivering mass-audience entertainment.

Re: The future of television

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paul (Post 36101837)

Speeds are not too bad, if you get them.

20 ms isnt bad either, thats always been a problem with satellite based stuff.

No mention of price that I could see.

There's an article here that explains more and includes the present price (August 2021) but it doesn't mention the new square dish which is said to double (or almost) the speeds.

https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/gu...t-is-starlink/

Plus the new satellites have laser interconnect which again will increase speeds and reduce latancy. ATM it is still a BETA project.

Re: The future of television

So its not nearly as good as it initially looked ;

Quote:

Starlink once said that in perfect conditions — which would be periods of low consumer demand while there are lots of nearby orbiting satellites — it could reach consistent speeds up to 150Mbps download and 40Mbps upload. SpaceX itself tells users to expect between 50-150Mbps.

.. and the price :Yikes:

Quote:

Starlink's beta project is said to have an upfront cost of £439 for equipment and setup, and a subscription cost of £84 [per month].

You would need to be pretty desperate for internet at those prices, you can probably get better from 4G or 5G.

Re: The future of television

Yes, that’s pretty steep!

Re: The future of television

This is an interesting development. My assertion that TV channels as they are presented now will disappear by 2035 was based on terrestrial TV being provided by way of IPTV.

Now it seems that 5G broadcasting is being considered. There is no guarantee we will pursue that route, but if it happens, clearly TV channels will carry on as they are now. That is, provided the TV channels decide that it is still worthwhile to do so given the streaming alternative.

https://rxtvinfo.com/2022/how-5g-bro...terrestrial-tv