Absolutely. I was recently kicked off my cable provider's ISP for excessive DMCA violations (torrenting) after DVRing and their OnDemand services proved too shoddy to actually watch. (And I forgot to DVR one show, to be fair. That one's completely on me.)
It seems that they could ask you to sign in to a service, offer free show in segments, and build in local (or at least relative) advertisements.
I'm told web ads cost less than traditional ads. With growing numbers watching plus interactivity, I don't get that. But even so, for generations TV has made its job to take in insane amounts of money on the back of free programming. I find it amazing that given the ability to spread their show faster and cheaper the more people watch it, they're now having trouble with this.
Please, let me give you my time and eyeballs. Stop suing because we want to watch the shows you've told us are available for free, our entire lives.
Stop suing because we want to watch the shows you've told us are available for free, our entire lives.
Amen. They should be thrilled their product is getting torrented so much- it means people like their product so much, they will commit crimes to get it. Few businesses are blessed with the problem of too many rabid fans.
> I was recently kicked off my cable provider's ISP for excessive DMCA violations (torrenting) after DVRing and their OnDemand services proved too shoddy to actually watch.
I get around this by using a seedbox. Downgrade your internet service to save some money and share the seedbox with a few friends - you'll end up spending the same amount per month.
You can use SFTP to get the files from the seedbox to your computer and you'll be able to completely avoid detection by your ISP.
Yes, primarily because I wouldn't need multiple content subscription sources any more (HBO, Hulu, Netflix). Obviously I'm making some assumptions about how such a system would work, but I'd rather pick and choose content than pick and choose providers.
So long as the ads are a small portion of the video and the recording is high-quality, of course! I could probably even be talked into ignoring the equally high-quality rips without ads- I would love to encourage such a forward-thinking model.
Now, if we're talking 10 minutes of content and 20 minutes of advertising,... no.
But with ubiquitous PVRs on the horizon (which will compete on their merits) the ability for the unwashed masses to skip ads automatically is pretty much upon us.
I think that the problem for television broadcasters is that they realise if everyone gets used to downloading shows to watch on demand, they'll become increasingly irrelevant. So, instead of cannibalising their existing businesses to reinvent themselves, most of them will kick and scream to try to delay the inevitable.
It's mostly amusing, apart from the fact that all the kicking and screaming ends up in pain for us because part of it involves bribing congress critters to protect the incumbents failing business models.
I guess one of the issues here is localisation. If you insert a commercial in a video then everyone, everywhere needs to watch that same commercial.
Also, commercials tend to go stale. You want to switch commercials based on season or even current affairs. This doesn't allow you to do that, T.V. and streaming video does.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it but I think these are two major issues potential advertisers will struggle with.
You don't even need a custom client. Bittorrent is based on pieces (or was it parts?), which are relatively small blocks of data. As long as your ads do not affect the file otherwise (and they shouldn't) people can seed the common parts (= the actual content), and the incorrect ad pieces would be ignored.
I would watch streaming TV shows with targeted ads, but I don't think I would download a TV show with generic ads. If there's an advertisement before a YouTube video plays, I'll avoid watching it, but if it means that I can watch a TV show without paying $2-3 per episode, I'd feel a lot warmer about the idea.
I'd rather skip the ads and just pay some money directly for the shows I like and want to encourage to continue. Because I don't want to be tracked, I'd prefer bitcoin.
Because I don't want to be tracked, I'd prefer bitcoin.
Don't Bitcoin's encode all transactions that they have been used for into the coin? Unless you use some intermediary to launder your payment bitcoin provides the ultimate in publicising your spending. And if you use an intermediary they'll be tracking your transactions.
I get a kick out of www meaning "world wide web" but it's used on websites where I can't see anything due to my location in this wide world using the Web.
Thank you. I'm sorry to say this but the TV and music industry have time and time again shown that they are completely uninterested in new distribution models and if history rings true, they will never 'get it'.
I live in Europe, but absolutely "need" to watch American television. My only option is Hulu via a US VPN or Usenet. Currently, I choose the Usenet route. I would be glad to pay for some 3rd option. I have disposable income to give away, but if giving it to you is worse than my 2nd best option, you lose.
I just forked over nearly $100 today to buy access to Big Ten Network live streaming of football games for the 2011-2012 season. I did this because I need this access and there was no better option. There were free options, trust me, a little googling and I can get any NCAA football game for free, but Big Ten offered the best quality of service at a great price.
Regular TV. Why can't you learn from the football guys? I honestly have no idea how to access American broadcast TV from Europe. Outside of waiting 20 years for reruns of Twin Peaks to appear on basic cable.
I have an honest question why should I pay when the product they are offering is inferior in every way to the setup I have been using for the last 2-3 years? For the past few years I have used a irssi script that is setup with the tv shows that I want to download and the quality i wish to have them downloaded in this takes about 5 minutes to setup and about the same to maintain every season after this five minute time investment I’m getting shows less then a half an hour after they air on the east coast in 720p with no commercials that means when I’m ready to watch them that night or later that year they are ready to go with no hassle no worrying about whether or not its on netflix or waiting a week to see it on hulu if i want to see breaking bad i can watch it 15 mins after its done airing on the east coast and be done before its even done airing in Texas until they can offer up something to match that I don’t see any reason to meet them half way.
No. I would not do that. Advertisements are just distractions. Paying a reasonable amount for reasonable conditions (like no available way to recall or restrict media) and high quality would be a better and viable option for me
I wouldn't. And I'm guessing a lot of other people wouldn't either. I think it's better if TV companies found different ways of making money rather than forcing their customers to watch ads that they don't want to see.
No. Why would I watch content with ads when I can already watch the same content without ads?
Content middlemen: you've lost. The 21st century has no place for you. Distribution is now dirt cheap and dirt simple. You can't add any value because you don't solve any hard problems. All you've done for the last 10 years is make content harder to pay for.
Content creators: make content, add it to your website, charge $2 (or whatever) for a DRM-free download, and enjoy money forever. People will pay you for making things if you let them. No, you won't get a billion-dollar lump sum just for coming up with an idea. Sorry, those days are over too.
(Also, I'm not willing to share my 'net connection with big companies. You have money, buy your own bandwidth.)
$2 seemed way too little to me, but I just did some back-of-the-napkin calculations, and it looks like two bucks would actually be a huge bump in revenue for some TV shows...assuming they were able to maintain the same number of viewers.
Case in point (and I know these numbers are a little faulty, but...):
The Simpsons in October 2010 charged $253,170 for a 30 second spot[1]. Meanwhile, during the previous season, they had an average viewership of 7.2 million per episode[2]. This works out to about $0.035 per spot per viewer.
Well, there's the whole "I'd rather buy it than pirate it" thing. Plenty of people want to buy content, it's just that the content makers are stuck in old-fashioned business models.
My issue was with jrockway saying "why should I download a file with ads for free when I can download it for free" and then saying that the solution is to charge for it... when it will also be available for free.
Because, fundamentally, most people aren't assholes.
I vacillate between both sides of the piracy issue. I used to pirate, when I was 14 and had no money. About the time I turned 16 or so I realized it wasn't a good idea and pretty much went without if I couldn't buy it; I saw no reason why other people couldn't do likewise, and got pretty annoyed at the casual piracy at the time. Having graduated from college and moved into a nice job, I buy stuff pretty much on the basis of "it looks interesting and it's only two bucks," and I can't bring myself to care about the pirates at all anymore. They're not part of my worldview.
If you can make the process of buying something simple enough and pain-free enough, I think that most people who can afford it will buy it. Others will pirate it because they can't afford it, and I think that there's a compelling argument to be made that many of those will eventually become regular consumers when they've got the money to do so. There surely is a group of dyed-in-the-wool douchebags who will never buy anything they can pirate because they are, at their cores, Bad People, but them's the breaks--I've come to the gradual understanding that these people are shitty human beings who will screw others so long as they don't have to look them in the eye to do so, and all you can do is write them off.
But I think that, for the most part, if you treat your potential customers right, they'll do right by you. (The same is not true, I think, of "donate what you want"--I strongly feel that method of revenue generation encourages people to pay as little as they can rationalize, and what even nominally 'good' people can rationalize is really really small. But that's another topic.)
> Because, fundamentally, most people aren't assholes.
I think that the concept is that piracy is a symptom of a broken market, not the cause of a broken market.
If something costs more than someone thinks it is worth, or they have difficulty obtaining it in an 'easy enough' manner, they will revert to piracy. However, if something is available at an appropriate price point with easy access, then piracy will diminish (down to people who only think that everything should be free).
As far as the 'donate what you want' concept, Panera Bread has a few locations that are like this [1]. I can't remember the details, but I think that it all ended up evening out. They would give you a suggested cost, and you paid what you wanted/could.
People will pay money for convenience and speed. Media companies good delivery fast high-quality downloads with an easy one-click process. Joe User doesn't want to deal with slow downloads of torrents with unknown quality, sharing their bandwidth and possibly exposing themselves to malware.
I'd pay for the certainty that what I download contains what I want it to contain, in the format that I want, at the download speed I want. Downloading torrents is a game of chance, where you regularly end up with a version you don't want at a much lower speed than anticipated. I also pay for Spotify.
Surprised nobody else has said this in the three hours this has been up, but: Can I skip them? Are they just embedded into an mp4 file that otherwise has nothing special about them? Yeah, sure.
Are they in some DRM'ed format with a player which mandates playing the ads without skipping? No, absolutely not.
It's a null issue anyhow because it's not on the table. Everybody wants to stream you stuff so you can't keep it, and can't accidentally derive any unanticipated value from it. I honestly have no idea what would get people to give up the idea of streaming stuff to you.
The main problem I see with not doing the latter option is targeting ads. You simply can't give the same ad to someone in Boston as you give to someone in LA.
I would. Presumably the less informed will have to endure the ads, but I and others like me with the know-how will find a way to skip them if they are too intrusive. One or two 30 second ads... maybe I wouldn't even bother skipping them.
I don't know what the situation in the states is right now, but in the UK the majority of the big channels have Flash-based streaming versions of their shows available online very soon (hours) after they've aired (in the case of the BBC some of the shows are available live). The BBC is publicly funded - so no ads - but ITV and Channel 4, the other big players, do have ads, and most people, anecdotally, have no problem with this given the convenience.
I still download episodes of US shows I or my partner enjoy regularly, but if the networks were to offer these shows on their sites with ads I'd be more than willing to watch them there.
For overseas viewers the problem, as other posters have mentioned, is region locking. If the show is sold to overseas markets they cannot then offer the show to viewers in that market. The model needs to change and incorporate revenue sharing with these other markets - but history has shown us these big businesses are unable to do this sort of thing in a timely manner. And that could ultimately be their downfall.
I think they can still get paid pretty well for them. For one, if these releases occur, they're better than nothing; right now, media companies derive no advertising revenue from torrented files with ads embedded because they don't offer them at all. Even if they have to sell for a reduced price, that's better than zero.
Furthermore, "skipping the ads" isn't that big of a deal. People do it on TV all the time by getting up to go do something else, changing the channel, muting the television, etc., when the commercials play. Those with DVRs or VCRs fast-forward, as a VLC user might. VLC doesn't really offer much better fast-forward features than the VCR; unless you also download a pre-defined chapter file (and I don't think many people hate ads that much), this is no different than using DVR/VCR and there's no point in paying less for these ads. VLC users will still visually see your logos, commercial, etc., while watching and I think that has value too, and again, the situation in that respect is no different from conventional methods.
I think the real logistical issue here is that it'd be much more difficult to insert localized ads. Hulu et al can use IP geolocation to target local ads (I don't know if they do or not, but it's possible), but a nationally distributed mp4 file would only have nationally distributed advertisements. This causes some havoc on the current pricing system, as it cuts affiliates, who manage the advertisements on conventional TV, out of loop. Perhaps the corporate guys like this, but as long as terrestrial broadcasts are the predominant form of distribution, corporate is always going to be careful not to disrupt the affiliates' revenue stream too much.
No, not a chance. A lot of people say that torrents are inconvenient or unreliable, but that hasn't been my experience. If you use a good private tracker, you are guaranteed good & fast downloads, no strings attached.
After not watching TV except when with friends and using ABP in my browser for several years, I've become hypersensitized to ads. I simply cannot stand watching them.
I would definitely do that. I'd be highly attracted and would use it instead of pirate trackers because there wouldn't be any potential negative legal ramifications. I can't stand the streaming experience provided by most vendors; I find Flash the most detestable component thereof, but I also strongly dislike being forced to redownload data if I want to watch again or even make significant seeks. I don't necessarily have a problem with ads.
However, I would prefer to patronize a tracker that required subscription fees and didn't display ads. I have thought about launching a startup that would provide media companies with the platform to do this. There are a lot of interesting possibilities for both producers and consumers there.
At the same time, advertisement is so deeply ingrained in the operation of TV companies that I am not really sure they'd ever be comfortable moving to a model of distributing TV that didn't rely upon an advertisement as a revenue stream.
As jerf mentioned, these companies love streaming because it gives the same kind of control they get from "streaming" the broadcast to your television; all the content is retained server-side and the user doesn't get their own copy without special initiative (DVR/VCR). They are still able to consolidate control of distribution under the streaming model (or the iTunes model, where they ask Apple to remove the file and it's apparently gone forever) and I find it unlikely that they'll be willing to give that up.
This is primarily hypothetical as I consciously avoid almost all TV and movies.
This is what I don't understand about cable TV (as I've used it in the UK, Australia and the Netherlands anyway; not sure about the US model). It's rammed full of adverts, yet we're already paying a subscription for the service. I'm sure there is a simple explanation for this, but what gives?
Essentially, they do it because they can. People expect advertisements on TV so they accept it even with a subscription to cable; cable offers value that otherwise wouldn't be available by offering a lot of channels that are not accessible over-the-air in any market. It's not like a website with a premium ad-free subscription where the content is the same, only without advertisements. Cable also prevents fiddling with antennae/reception, etc.
The cable company I'm sure would argue that your subscription fees pay only broadcast and signal transport costs and that the individual channels run advertisements to pay for their operation and production.
115 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] threadIt seems that they could ask you to sign in to a service, offer free show in segments, and build in local (or at least relative) advertisements.
I'm told web ads cost less than traditional ads. With growing numbers watching plus interactivity, I don't get that. But even so, for generations TV has made its job to take in insane amounts of money on the back of free programming. I find it amazing that given the ability to spread their show faster and cheaper the more people watch it, they're now having trouble with this.
Please, let me give you my time and eyeballs. Stop suing because we want to watch the shows you've told us are available for free, our entire lives.
Amen. They should be thrilled their product is getting torrented so much- it means people like their product so much, they will commit crimes to get it. Few businesses are blessed with the problem of too many rabid fans.
I get around this by using a seedbox. Downgrade your internet service to save some money and share the seedbox with a few friends - you'll end up spending the same amount per month.
You can use SFTP to get the files from the seedbox to your computer and you'll be able to completely avoid detection by your ISP.
Now, if we're talking 10 minutes of content and 20 minutes of advertising,... no.
The only way to do this would be a custom filetype and player, no? And the chances of of being able to stream that to your xbox or media player...
But with ubiquitous PVRs on the horizon (which will compete on their merits) the ability for the unwashed masses to skip ads automatically is pretty much upon us.
I think that the problem for television broadcasters is that they realise if everyone gets used to downloading shows to watch on demand, they'll become increasingly irrelevant. So, instead of cannibalising their existing businesses to reinvent themselves, most of them will kick and scream to try to delay the inevitable.
It's mostly amusing, apart from the fact that all the kicking and screaming ends up in pain for us because part of it involves bribing congress critters to protect the incumbents failing business models.
Also, commercials tend to go stale. You want to switch commercials based on season or even current affairs. This doesn't allow you to do that, T.V. and streaming video does.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for it but I think these are two major issues potential advertisers will struggle with.
i.e. Hulu.
Don't Bitcoin's encode all transactions that they have been used for into the coin? Unless you use some intermediary to launder your payment bitcoin provides the ultimate in publicising your spending. And if you use an intermediary they'll be tracking your transactions.
Thank you content industry...
The advertising has to be short and not take up a huge portion of the video. Also, smartphone and tablet compatible formats, please.
I just forked over nearly $100 today to buy access to Big Ten Network live streaming of football games for the 2011-2012 season. I did this because I need this access and there was no better option. There were free options, trust me, a little googling and I can get any NCAA football game for free, but Big Ten offered the best quality of service at a great price.
Regular TV. Why can't you learn from the football guys? I honestly have no idea how to access American broadcast TV from Europe. Outside of waiting 20 years for reruns of Twin Peaks to appear on basic cable.
It's actually easier to skip ads while watching downloads.
Content middlemen: you've lost. The 21st century has no place for you. Distribution is now dirt cheap and dirt simple. You can't add any value because you don't solve any hard problems. All you've done for the last 10 years is make content harder to pay for.
Content creators: make content, add it to your website, charge $2 (or whatever) for a DRM-free download, and enjoy money forever. People will pay you for making things if you let them. No, you won't get a billion-dollar lump sum just for coming up with an idea. Sorry, those days are over too.
(Also, I'm not willing to share my 'net connection with big companies. You have money, buy your own bandwidth.)
Case in point (and I know these numbers are a little faulty, but...):
The Simpsons in October 2010 charged $253,170 for a 30 second spot[1]. Meanwhile, during the previous season, they had an average viewership of 7.2 million per episode[2]. This works out to about $0.035 per spot per viewer.
[1] http://adage.com/article/ad-age-graphics/american-idol-spots...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Simpsons#Criticism_of_decli...
I vacillate between both sides of the piracy issue. I used to pirate, when I was 14 and had no money. About the time I turned 16 or so I realized it wasn't a good idea and pretty much went without if I couldn't buy it; I saw no reason why other people couldn't do likewise, and got pretty annoyed at the casual piracy at the time. Having graduated from college and moved into a nice job, I buy stuff pretty much on the basis of "it looks interesting and it's only two bucks," and I can't bring myself to care about the pirates at all anymore. They're not part of my worldview.
If you can make the process of buying something simple enough and pain-free enough, I think that most people who can afford it will buy it. Others will pirate it because they can't afford it, and I think that there's a compelling argument to be made that many of those will eventually become regular consumers when they've got the money to do so. There surely is a group of dyed-in-the-wool douchebags who will never buy anything they can pirate because they are, at their cores, Bad People, but them's the breaks--I've come to the gradual understanding that these people are shitty human beings who will screw others so long as they don't have to look them in the eye to do so, and all you can do is write them off.
But I think that, for the most part, if you treat your potential customers right, they'll do right by you. (The same is not true, I think, of "donate what you want"--I strongly feel that method of revenue generation encourages people to pay as little as they can rationalize, and what even nominally 'good' people can rationalize is really really small. But that's another topic.)
I think that the concept is that piracy is a symptom of a broken market, not the cause of a broken market.
If something costs more than someone thinks it is worth, or they have difficulty obtaining it in an 'easy enough' manner, they will revert to piracy. However, if something is available at an appropriate price point with easy access, then piracy will diminish (down to people who only think that everything should be free).
As far as the 'donate what you want' concept, Panera Bread has a few locations that are like this [1]. I can't remember the details, but I think that it all ended up evening out. They would give you a suggested cost, and you paid what you wanted/could.
[1] http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2011-05-16-pan...
Are they in some DRM'ed format with a player which mandates playing the ads without skipping? No, absolutely not.
It's a null issue anyhow because it's not on the table. Everybody wants to stream you stuff so you can't keep it, and can't accidentally derive any unanticipated value from it. I honestly have no idea what would get people to give up the idea of streaming stuff to you.
I don't know what the situation in the states is right now, but in the UK the majority of the big channels have Flash-based streaming versions of their shows available online very soon (hours) after they've aired (in the case of the BBC some of the shows are available live). The BBC is publicly funded - so no ads - but ITV and Channel 4, the other big players, do have ads, and most people, anecdotally, have no problem with this given the convenience.
I still download episodes of US shows I or my partner enjoy regularly, but if the networks were to offer these shows on their sites with ads I'd be more than willing to watch them there.
For overseas viewers the problem, as other posters have mentioned, is region locking. If the show is sold to overseas markets they cannot then offer the show to viewers in that market. The model needs to change and incorporate revenue sharing with these other markets - but history has shown us these big businesses are unable to do this sort of thing in a timely manner. And that could ultimately be their downfall.
Also I'm not actually going to watch the ads. It's not very hard to skip ahead. So how much can they really be paid for those ads?
Furthermore, "skipping the ads" isn't that big of a deal. People do it on TV all the time by getting up to go do something else, changing the channel, muting the television, etc., when the commercials play. Those with DVRs or VCRs fast-forward, as a VLC user might. VLC doesn't really offer much better fast-forward features than the VCR; unless you also download a pre-defined chapter file (and I don't think many people hate ads that much), this is no different than using DVR/VCR and there's no point in paying less for these ads. VLC users will still visually see your logos, commercial, etc., while watching and I think that has value too, and again, the situation in that respect is no different from conventional methods.
I think the real logistical issue here is that it'd be much more difficult to insert localized ads. Hulu et al can use IP geolocation to target local ads (I don't know if they do or not, but it's possible), but a nationally distributed mp4 file would only have nationally distributed advertisements. This causes some havoc on the current pricing system, as it cuts affiliates, who manage the advertisements on conventional TV, out of loop. Perhaps the corporate guys like this, but as long as terrestrial broadcasts are the predominant form of distribution, corporate is always going to be careful not to disrupt the affiliates' revenue stream too much.
After not watching TV except when with friends and using ABP in my browser for several years, I've become hypersensitized to ads. I simply cannot stand watching them.
However, I would prefer to patronize a tracker that required subscription fees and didn't display ads. I have thought about launching a startup that would provide media companies with the platform to do this. There are a lot of interesting possibilities for both producers and consumers there.
At the same time, advertisement is so deeply ingrained in the operation of TV companies that I am not really sure they'd ever be comfortable moving to a model of distributing TV that didn't rely upon an advertisement as a revenue stream.
As jerf mentioned, these companies love streaming because it gives the same kind of control they get from "streaming" the broadcast to your television; all the content is retained server-side and the user doesn't get their own copy without special initiative (DVR/VCR). They are still able to consolidate control of distribution under the streaming model (or the iTunes model, where they ask Apple to remove the file and it's apparently gone forever) and I find it unlikely that they'll be willing to give that up.
This is primarily hypothetical as I consciously avoid almost all TV and movies.
The cable company I'm sure would argue that your subscription fees pay only broadcast and signal transport costs and that the individual channels run advertisements to pay for their operation and production.
I would however consider paying to download shows without ads if they were cheap.