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General discussion

Cutting the cord: a view from outside the bubble

Aug 23, 2010 3:41AM PDT
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/business/media/23couch.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

Here?s an interesting article that might make you rethink the prevailing wisdom inside the tech bubble. In my opinion, that wisdom is really more a knee-jerk assumption that we are quickly moving towards a future where cable providers will be dumb pipes and we will have all programming available to us 24/7/365 across the net via the channel of our choosing.

But as this article points this mass migration just isn?t happening in any significant numbers. I?ve seen this kind of frustration for years amongst most of my friends and family who have tried to do this same thing. They love the idea of giving up cable but the reality has serious drawbacks? and the content producers know how to work those drawbacks to their advantage. You can cobble together something but it?s such a hassle. Even I, sometimes wonder if all the jerry rigging you need to go through to live the cable free lifestyle is worth it and we haven;t had cable TV in our household for 4 years.

One of the things that I think often goes overlooked when these things get discussed is the role of age and mobility in willingness to cut the cord. It?s easy for a 25 year old who moves several times a year to be satisfied with watching TV on a laptop. And its easy to confuse that with a sea change for all people'ed viewing habits. But come back when that 25 year old is 35, has a spouse, kids, more expendable income, a home with room for a large TV and you have a very different situation. I remember living with roommates and being perfectly satisfied with a cheap 24? tube TV and VCR for renting movies. I couldn't imagine wanting to go back to that setup now.

Discussion is locked

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I couldn't agree more
Aug 23, 2010 5:08AM PDT

I've never seriously considered cutting that 'cable-cord', perhaps because I am in that older age band. But I have seen these apparent market trends, visions, and analysis' for some years now where the "Family TV" is dead or dying in favor of laptop or PC usage for every family members' independent needs, and I have never been wholly convinced it would happen.

I've seen the trend amongst younger people who live away from the family home to forgo land-line telephones, preferring mobile/cellnet access, and may be that will continue. Us older folks who have both, land-line and cell phone, will become the minority as time goes on. But telephone and TV are different things.

As you say, as younger people settle down and have children, the "family room" becomes more important, if not essential, and I can see that the TV as the focal point will continue.

What may change is the TV itself. It is already becoming more advanced in what it does whilst at the same time, becoming slimmer and less of a physical presence in the corner of the room. It is now a wall-hanging in many homes, like an animated painting. But it will still be the one-stop place for our news and entertainment.

Mark

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As you get older you also care more about ease of use...
Aug 23, 2010 10:35AM PDT

even if you have to pay for it. Your free time becomes precious and the last thing you want to do when you watch a movie is stop to troubleshoot your home network or your router and deal with buffering issues, etc. I know how to do all this but I would rather just pay more for a better experience.

The main reason I don't have cable however is not because of the price. Its because I am also a videophile and the way cable channels compress and butcher aspect ratios makes my hair stand on end. I'd rather just Netflix the blu-ray or DVD and get the movie or TV show with the best possible sound and picture than deal with all that. Streaming is fine for stuff that is never going to look very good or which I really don't care about that much.

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There is a solution to this problem.
Aug 23, 2010 9:08AM PDT

In Australia to get around a few companies dominating the market and its direction we have a Government that is putting in Fibre to the home. This means that the pipes for content will be there for every home.
All Internet Service Providers pay a fee to access those pipes to pay the taxpayers back.
This means that all service providers have equal access to the same market. This gives a level playing field for competition. This also means that News Limited Foxtel does not dominate this area or the provision of television to the home.

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I wish it could be that way here.
Aug 23, 2010 10:22AM PDT

Unfortunately we have this let-the-free-market-handle-it attitude in the states that lingers even in situations where there is no free market at all. So we wind up with conflicts of interests, oligolopolies and when we should really just need broadband to be treated like a utility.

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Treating Broadband Like a Utility
Aug 23, 2010 12:26PM PDT

is what should be happening in the States. This would solve the net neutrality issue. It also gives the same access provisions in the country as phone gets.

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A highly controversial project though
Aug 23, 2010 1:10PM PDT

Abbott and Turnbull criticise the NBN for wasting money, and picking technologies rather than letting the Market pick them. And creating a government owned monopoly.

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Not convinced...
Aug 23, 2010 1:14PM PDT

I think the ease of use argument actually favours a laptop and Internet. Isn't it easier to just open a web page, than to mess around setting up a DVR box? Additionally if you're on the laptop much of the day anyway.. you're an alt-tab away from Facebook and email.
I think the only reason to get a DVR and TV is to provide for ones family. So maybe it will go down that way as people grow up. But then what if one instead decided to buy laptops for everyone in their family? Maybe that'll make more sense this decade.

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Not only is a laptop a solitary experience
Aug 24, 2010 10:00AM PDT

you still have to go hunt around for the content you want and cobble it all together. No to mention size and viewing posture matters (especially with movies) and a laptop screen is a pale substitute for vegging on the couch with a 60" plasma with surround sound.

Cable brings it all to one place. People like one stop shopping. I totally understand why many people will just pay for someone else to do the aggregating for them. We watch mostly movies and HBO so Netflix discs works fine in our household. But we still watch together which means its on the TV and not one of the desktops, laptops, tablets or smart phones we have floating around.

Everybody sitting around in the living room on laptops staring at their own screens (presumably with headphones to not interfere with each other's viewing) a communal experience is not (it also sounds depressingly anti-social). This might be great for highly mobile 25 year olds who have neither the money nor the space for a larger TV, but its not so useful for when you have a family or a group of people who want to relax and watch something together.

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Ok, but...
Aug 27, 2010 1:08AM PDT

I've found that the whole "watching together" scenario can be a bit overrated in terms of being a shared social experience. Unless you're having tons of conversation while watching --which is pretty annoying for those who want to actually follow dialogue-- it's still a solitary experience in that sure, you're actually in close proximity, but you're not really interacting much.

Yes, I know that I'm totally ignoring "cuddling" for lovers, but if I want to watch a movie at home, I don't want to invite friends over to watch it with me. It's a socializing killer. Darkening the room while everyone pipes down to watch a movie? That's hardly a house party. Now, a football game? That's another story, as there's no need for quiet during those telecasts.

Plus, there's the matter of personal tastes in what people want to watch. I'll watch a couple of shows with my wife because I know she likes them, but there's only so much "Project Runway" I can handle. She records every Ellen show, too, and while I do find Ellen funny, I just don't like the daytime talk show genre. And let's face it, she doesn't want to sit through every Star Trek Next Gen rerun I want to watch, or Mets baseball (admittedly not much of that going on anymore since they stink). And if I let my wife rule the Netflix queue for awhile, I'm in for a ton of chick flicks that I fall asleep watching.

So, in my view the emphasis on entertainment viewing as a cohesive factor in families is getting more overrated by the day. We should strive to have more interpersonal relationship time OUTSIDE of entertainment options, like, say the dinner table, or family outings.

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One of the reasons people go to the movies
Aug 28, 2010 1:15AM PDT

is the "communal experience". Just because you don't talk much when you watch something does not mean watching en masse is the same as plugging into a laptop with headphones. Lots and lots of people invite friends over for a movie so they must feel there is something worthwhile about the experience. if movies were nothing more than a solitary experience we would all go to theaters on our own.

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Not me...
Aug 28, 2010 4:07AM PDT

I refrain from going to movies now because by and large people are increasingly rude and think nothing of chatting all the way through the flicks, or texting --or even taking calls on the phone, not to mention young moms who bring babies to the theater and idiots who like to kick seats from behind. It's a shame, too, because there's something to be said for the "big screen" experience vs. someone's flat panel TV, but that's just the way it is now. So, if that's a communal experience, I'll pass it to the communists.

And again, I'm not really getting the "invite people over for a movie" thing unless everyone's on an outing together somewhere or something or someone just happens to have a pre-release copy of a movie (not that that ever happens). When I'm with friends, I want to have conversation and laughs, not the quietude that politeness requires of a movie viewing. But, to each his own.

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Bad behavior is bad behavior.
Aug 28, 2010 5:31AM PDT

but that still doesn't change the fact that the movie experience is a communal one for most people. The fact that movies theaters are largely filled with couples, families or groups of friends is proof of that, There is always that random guy or girl who is sitting by themselves on the front row, but they are not the norm. And given the number of people I know who have friends and family over to watch a movie on their home theater I'd be willing that the human impulse to do this activity together is not some weird fluke,

I take a good quality flat panel and well tuned surround sound system over a so-so mega-plex movie experience any day. Not because I dislike people or am cheap. Its mostly because around here, the digital projectors are all so dim. Several movies I have seen in the theater lately were so dark I could barely make out any detail (Inception, Avatar, and Harry Potter come to mind). Yet when we watched some of these films on blu-ray on our home system they looked and sounded astounding. But I'm also a videophile and audiophile so I understand why these issues is not a concern to most people. They just want to watch movies together.

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True, it is bad behavior
Aug 30, 2010 8:37AM PDT

But bad behavior --in my area theaters-- is becoming more the norm than the exception. And when I see groups of people at theaters together, it's almost universally teens and slightly older than teen aged people. I never see groups of 30ish, 40ish and older people going to movies in groups. That's my experience.

And of course couples are going to go to movies together. I'm not characterizing couples in the communal sense, though. I'm talking about a group as in four or more people.

At the risk of sounding contradictory, I do have to say that while some movies benefit from the large screen experience, I am generally NOT impressed with the picture quality at theaters. And, I've also noticed that on occasion the surround mix has far too much surround vs. center dialog, which is annoying. I do agree with you that a finely tuned audio and video system brings out the best in movies, particularly with Blu-Ray. I had my plasma panel calibrated by an ISFTV dude a few years ago and it's still a phenomenal picture. And while I'm an audio engineer by trade, I live in an environment not conducive to listening at any volume I want, so cranking up the surround sound has to be tempered most of the time.

I'm in no way saying there's anything wrong or weird about people getting together to watch movies. I personally just don't think it's a very "social" thing to do, given that the movie requires one to pay complete attention to both audio and video. So, that puts the big clampdown on what I consider to be socializing, like talking and interacting with friends. Again, that's just me. I'll cop to being a loner in that regard.

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Remember, "social" and "communal" are different things.
Aug 30, 2010 10:09AM PDT

I think I was saying that films are a communal exprerience.

But I really dislike the audio mixes at theaters too. I have a nice 5.1 system (Aperion Audio bookshelf speakers with dual firing 12" Aperion sub and a Onkyo 706 AVR) and luckily for me we can really crank it where we live. Going back to apartment living would be really hard.

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The videophile thing is another reason
Aug 28, 2010 5:38AM PDT

I won't subscribe to cable. The compression artifacts, the sub par sound quality, the constant stretching and cropping of aspect ratios make watching movies on cable a less than stellar experience (and an expensive one at that).

But again, to regular people the picture looks just fine I guess. And everything they want is there in one place. The mainstream audience will choose the path of least resistance for entertainment and, for better or worse, that still happens to be cable TV.

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Just a note.
Aug 27, 2010 7:08AM PDT

Spam post about selling shoes deleted.

Just in case you wondered where the post went, Happy

Mark