The future of pay-television

[muppetman11]

http://www.economist.com/node/21526367

[denphone]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

http://www.economist.com/node/21526367

A interesting read but l think pay tv is in very strong health in this country despite the economic climate.

[spankysmagicpian]

Only because there is no currently viable alternative Den. IMO, pay TV will start to decline in a few years. It wont vanish completely as people will still subscribe for the sports but everything else? Nah!

We haven't any Netflix or Amazon streaming ... no Blockbuster etc. Wait until YouView appears, Wait until Netflix arrives next year. Why pay Sky for the movie channels when you could pay Netflix say £10 a month for unlimited rentals?

Apart from the five terrestrial channels why subscribe to all those channels you don't watch when they might start to offer sometime soon micropayments for VOD. Great! You've got Discovery but you might only watch a few shows a week on it.

Pay-TV is linear TV and linear TV will be dead in the water in the not too distant future. Proof? Looks like VM will have had what... 1 billion VOD requests by year end?

[denphone]

Originally Posted by spankysmagicpian

Only because there is no currently viable alternative Den. IMO, pay TV will start to decline in a few years. It wont vanish completely as people will still subscribe for the sports but everything else? Nah!

We haven't any Netflix or Amazon streaming ... no Blockbuster etc. Wait until YouView appears, Wait until Netflix arrives next year. Why pay Sky for the movie channels when you could pay Netflix say £10 a month for unlimited rentals?

Apart from the five terrestrial channels why subscribe to all those channels you don't watch when they might start to offer sometime soon micropayments for VOD. Great! You've got Discovery but you might only watch a few shows a week on it.

Pay-TV is linear TV and linear TV will be dead in the water in the not too distant future. Proof? Looks like VM will have had what... 1 billion VOD requests by year end?

l am sorry but Linear TV is still going strong and will still be going strong in 10 years.

http://www.indiantelevision.com/mam/...g/augmam58.php

http://www.worldtvpc.com/blog/linear...-run-research/

http://www.cable.co.uk/news/thinkbox...-tv-800704130/

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by spankysmagicpian

Pay-TV is linear TV and linear TV will be dead in the water in the not too distant future. Proof? Looks like VM will have had what... 1 billion VOD requests by year end?

How many of those requests are as a result of people missing programmes on linear TV and thinking "Oh well, I'll catch it on On Demand later"?

The thing that concerns me is that if the Linear TV channels go, who is going to pay for those wonderful series the Economist mentions? All have been made for Linear channels. I've seen no evidence of the likes of Netflix working on new series. IIRC , Google made noise about developing their own TV productions, but I don't believe anything has come of it.

[zantarous]

Linear TV aint going anywhere and that is a FACT.

You can rant all you want about your Netflixs and you Lovefilms but they have huges problems to overcome. So far they are stuggling to get the rights to movies and cost of delivery is only going to go up. It is estimated that it cost Netflix more in postage to send DVDs by mail then it does to stream. And so far they are getting a free ride in streaming wait till there is a back lash and ISPs demand far bigger sums of money to deliver enormous amounts of data.

Oh and here is one metric that people need to remember, for linear broadcast it cost the broadcaster the same whether one person watches or 50 million watch. With streamed media the more people that watch the more expensive and problematic it becomes.

With very few exceptions all shows are made for TV and Pay TV in the States is turning out quality drama after quality drama at the moment.

And finally 1080i broadcast of on HDTV with 5.1 sound will always look and sound better then the highly compressed crap the Lovefilm offers.

[denphone]

Originally Posted by zantarous

Linear TV aint going anywhere and that is a FACT.

You can rant all you want about your Netflixs and you Lovefilms but they have huges problems to overcome. So far they are stuggling to get the rights to movies and cost of delivery is only going to go up. It is estimated that it cost Netflix more in postage to send DVDs by mail then it does to stream. And so far they are getting a free ride in streaming wait till there is a back lash and ISPs demand far bigger sums of money to deliver enormous amounts of data.

Oh and here is one metric that people need to remember, for linear broadcast it cost the broadcaster the same whether one person watches or 50 million watch. With streamed media the more people that watch the more expensive and problematic it becomes.

With very few exceptions all shows are made for TV and Pay TV in the States is turning out quality drama after quality drama at the moment.

And finally 1080i broadcast of on HDTV with 5.1 sound will always look and sound better then the highly compressed crap the Lovefilm offers.

l will second that.

[muppetman11]

Originally Posted by zantarous

Linear TV aint going anywhere and that is a FACT.

You can rant all you want about your Netflixs and you Lovefilms but they have huges problems to overcome. So far they are stuggling to get the rights to movies and cost of delivery is only going to go up. It is estimated that it cost Netflix more in postage to send DVDs by mail then it does to stream. And so far they are getting a free ride in streaming wait till there is a back lash and ISPs demand far bigger sums of money to deliver enormous amounts of data.

Oh and here is one metric that people need to remember, for linear broadcast it cost the broadcaster the same whether one person watches or 50 million watch. With streamed media the more people that watch the more expensive and problematic it becomes.

With very few exceptions all shows are made for TV and Pay TV in the States is turning out quality drama after quality drama at the moment.

And finally 1080i broadcast of on HDTV with 5.1 sound will always look and sound better then the highly compressed crap the Lovefilm offers.

Excellent points , we watched films via streaming services on our connected TV and as you say the quality just doesn't come close to a 1080i linear broadcast.

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

Excellent points , we watched films via streaming services on our connected TV and as you say the quality just doesn't come close to a 1080i linear broadcast.

Maybe so, but technology is improving all the time, and so will the quality of video streaming services.

I see pay-tv and linear channels surviving for a good few years yet, but there will be a steady growth of VOD and ultimately, I am pretty sure that the preferred way to watch for the majority will be on a TIVO-like box with walled garden internet streaming through subscriptions or pay per view.

The greediness of Sky in trying to milk everyone for all its worth will encourage this shift to a less expensive way of accessing the programmes individuals really want to see. Unless, of course the Competition Commission surprises us all and does something about Sky's exclusivity deals....

Originally Posted by muppetman11

Excellent points , we watched films via streaming services on our connected TV and as you say the quality just doesn't come close to a 1080i linear broadcast.

But it will be very soon. We have 100mb now and 200mb is in the works. Full 1080p quality like you would see on a Blu-ray peaks at 50mbps and broadcast quality 1080i I believe peaks at about 15mbps.

So currently VM are essentially the only provider who could support broadcast HD quality streaming, (maybe with the exception of BT Infinity depending where you live) but how long do you think that will last?

I don't see linear TV going anywhere but I see streaming becoming a seriously credible competitor.

[Chad]

The internet will kill traditional TV broadcasting as we know it.

[denphone]

Originally Posted by Chad

The internet will kill traditional TV broadcasting as we know it.

There will be space for both of them in my mind.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Jameseh

But it will be very soon. We have 100mb now and 200mb is in the works. Full 1080p quality like you would see on a Blu-ray peaks at 50mbps and broadcast quality 1080i I believe peaks at about 15mbps.

So currently VM are essentially the only provider who could support broadcast HD quality streaming, (maybe with the exception of BT Infinity depending where you live) but how long do you think that will last?

I don't see linear TV going anywhere but I see streaming becoming a seriously credible competitor.

You are looking at it from the Consumer's point of view. I doubt that any of the current streaming service providers would have access to the bandwidth required for a couple of thousand people to stream at 1080p at anywhere near Blu-ray bandwidth. Even Apple with their bright, shiny, new and state of the art North Carolina data centre is limiting it's streams to 720p.

For 1080p streaming to become a commercial reality, we need a major breakthrough in compression technologies. That will come, but not for a while.

[Matth]

For non-premium channels, pretty sure eventually people will resent paying for channels that also break up the programs with adverts, because it seems you end up playing a lot of money for a few programs you actully want, AND those are interrupted by ads... with boxes that support online catchup, one of the big pluses of VM's TV oferring is eroded, so going freesat (or even the freeview box with catchup feature) would be less of a shock.

Linear broadcast TV creates the market for VOD services.

In a commercial environment, either subscriptions, or advertising, or both, pays for the content to be created. The subscription/advertising money is only available because the linear distribution model guarantees a sufficiently large audience. Having created the content in the first place, the linear broadcasts also act as a massive advertisement for the existence of that same content on VOd services.

Do not underestimate the passivity of a British TV audience at 8 or 9 pm on a weekday evening. The overwhelming majority of us still pick from the choices that involve least effort, namely the linear terrestrial public service channels. This is the case across all homes, even those that have access to subscription and VOD services.