robertm wrote:

\1) The internet cannot handle that kind of traffic it would take to stream to 120+ million homes. The only reason why your experience has been fine is because so far the adoption rate of streaming has been manageable.

"the internet" doesn't handle the traffic on long haul links, it comes from nearby CDN nodes. (Exception being those with bad DNS who get cross-country CDN delivery and then complain about service.) The limiting factor tends to be ISP provisioning rates. Are some ISPs desperately oversubscribed and underprovisioned? You bet. Are there others that are doing well? Definitely. My connection is in one of the areas of the country with the highest penetration of streaming users, but it's also on one of the best ISPs in the country (verizon FIOS) and streaming has always been rock solid. Scaling up has simply not been a problem. There seem to be a lot of ATT uverse customers getting the shaft, on the other hand, but the same thing can happen to cable subscribers. (I already recounted how my old cable company would manage to simply lose one channel for days at a time.) Would the infrastructure be able to handle everyone cutting over today? Of course not. But can it handle people transitioning over time? Sure--though some providers will be truly lousy, and service won't be satisfactory for those customers unless there's a competitive provider they can jump ship to.

And that's what I mean with local ISP/Utilities perhaps picking up this traffic - If 50% of people switched to online streaming ISP's could handle the traffic directly having their own servers for their clients, much like newsgroups used to be before the proliferation of the internet - on usenet you would connect to your local isp's newserver, not just a few choice bigboys like you do now. In this case, things scaled down, but it used to be that news servers were swamped, so isps picked up the slack and offered their own. Heck, how many already do it with replay on cable? It would be the same thing. And if the service wasn't good, well, you shopped around - but for most people it would be more than adequate.

robertm wrote:

vmps wrote:

robertm wrote:

Where did I say the internet won't work anymore? I said it can't handle the traffic now.

Works great for me, and a lot of other people. Some providers seem to have issues, hopefully they'll catch up.

In my many years the cost of entertainment has only ever increased. I see no reason to think streaming will change that much, if any.

I guess you haven't heard of $1 music tracks. Studios said music couldn't be made without $20 albums, now it is. And when was the last time you paid a hundred bucks for a movie on VHS or Beta?

1) The internet cannot handle that kind of traffic it would take to stream to 120+ million homes. The only reason why your experience has been fine is because so far the adoption rate of streaming has been manageable.

Which means it never will? Please...

2) $1 per track is still substantially higher that it used to be. For older music it is highway robbery. What we have done is gotten rid of the bargain bin where you could get a whole album for a couple of bucks. It may be that new releases are cheaper than a few years back but the overall cost of music is higher.

Which was his point. The music industry survived the change, and consumers now have more options. How many people bought $20-25 cds just for the one or two songs they actually wanted to listen to? How many people bought $80-100 cable packages for the 5-7 channels they actually wanted? See the picture now?

I never paid a hundred bucks for a movie. If you want to win the point by using pre-normalized pricing go ahead. Everyone else knows what I meant.

Winning points. I'm understanding why you frequent these forums more and more. Didn't you recently purchase a different device? Don't you want to go frequent their forums now? Please?

But just so everyone knows why you're wrong, the point was that technology tends to become cheaper. If you have a counter example, please share it with the rest of the class.

My apologies to vmps for butting in, but this guy's everpresent misinformation is really getting to me lately.

I cut the cord and am saving about 100 bucks a month. At first I was worried it was going to be tough on my wife and 3 year old but after using the Roku to stream Netflix and Amazon, I am finding that both of them made the transition very well.

My wife and I had this discussion a few days ago. I am a tech head, my wife is not. My daughter is 3 so that explains here technical stance. I asked my wife "So now that we don't have TV anymore, what are your thoughts? It has been about 6 months now - do you miss it? Does the Roku fill the shoe?"

She told me that Netflix was plenty for her and my daughter - my daughter can navigate through Netflix like a true pro. She told me that she cannot stand commercials and being without them now is glorious because she can watch her shows in less time (she liked watching reruns anyway). She said that getting NBC, CBS, and ABC via the laptop is just fine (although we both get pissed when they make the commercials there extremely loud like they did with cable TV also). In the end, she was very happy without having TV. She said she watches more stuff this way - with TV, there were too many channels and nothing was on at the time she wanted to watch it anyway. Oh yeah, she also told me that she likes that our kids don't have to watch underwear, victoria secret, alcohol, and other, um, "adult" commercials anymore. I mean really - take a look at some of the commercials our kids are forced to watch on TV.. Bye bye!

In my eyes, I watch more TV now than I did with cable. I hated cable. I found myself surfing for my kind of shows more than watching them. Yeah, they had certain free on-demand stuff but still.. Oh, that reminds me - another gripe I have with Cable. Verizon changed me 150 bucks a month for my package deal. Now, here I am stuffing 150 bucks in their pockets and if I wanted to download an on-demand new release (or even old movies for that matter), they would charge me 5 or 6 bucks to watch it on-demand. WHAT?! Really?! Screw that - now I do all my on-demand at Amazon. I don't pay Amzaon 150 bucks a month but yet I can download new on-demand videos at a fraction of what Verizon was charging me. Go figure. I feel like Verizon is laughing as they were telling me to bend over.

I will never go back to buying cable TV unless they start lowing costs and stop with all the friggin commercials. If NBC/CBS/ABC take away on-line viewing, we may have a lot more discomfort with my wife but even then, i could assemble the crappy digital antenna and get some local shows (another gripe - airwave TV is a complete joke - they make it sound like it was going to as it was with analog - I barely get any signal and how frustrating to see the screen go black every 35 seconds due to low signal strength. But that is another topic )

krisbee wrote:

And that's what I mean with local ISP/Utilities perhaps picking up this traffic - If 50% of people switched to online streaming ISP's could handle the traffic directly having their own servers for their clients, much like newsgroups used to be before the proliferation of the internet - on usenet you would connect to your local isp's newserver, not just a few choice bigboys like you do now. In this case, things scaled down, but it used to be that news servers were swamped, so isps picked up the slack and offered their own. Heck, how many already do it with replay on cable? It would be the same thing. And if the service wasn't good, well, you shopped around - but for most people it would be more than adequate.

And I think this is very likely. My own phone company offers IPTV but it is still packaged deals like the cable company meaning there is no real improvement or savings. In this scenario you have only replaced one middle man for another.

SuetyStanes wrote:

Which means it never will? Please...

Which was his point. The music industry survived the change, and consumers now have more options. How many people bought $20-25 cds just for the one or two songs they actually wanted to listen to? How many people bought $80-100 cable packages for the 5-7 channels they actually wanted? See the picture now?

You should really have read my posts more thoroughly. I never said the internet won't catch up I just said it can't handle 120 millions streaming customers currently. The last estimate I read said it could handle about 2 million concurrent streams but even that information is a year old so it is likely more now.

Also, buying singles tracks was quite popular in the vinyl days. Of course the music industry survived the change. The way I see it they are making more now than ever before on all but the latest releases.

robertm wrote:

SuetyStanes wrote:

Which means it never will? Please...

Which was his point. The music industry survived the change, and consumers now have more options. How many people bought $20-25 cds just for the one or two songs they actually wanted to listen to? How many people bought $80-100 cable packages for the 5-7 channels they actually wanted? See the picture now?

You should really have read my posts more thoroughly.

I think I did just fine.

Also, buying singles tracks was quite popular in the vinyl days.[/quote]

and how much were those 45s?

What IS your point exactly? You seem to drift a lot. Maybe to "score points?"

SuetyStanes wrote:

What IS your point exactly? You seem to drift a lot. Maybe to "score points?"

Actually this entire tangent was created by VMPS who had to challenge my comment about entertainment being increasingly more expensive. I am not the one trying desperately to win this debate. I find it sort of funny how passionate people are about this subject. I made 3 base comments:

1) The internet is not yet ready to handle the load of taking over for cable and satellite completely.

2) There is no system yet in place to replace cable original programming.

3) We have no idea if streaming will end up being any cheaper.

Are any of them false? My point was and is until we know how number 2 will be handled is it a good idea to actively encourage cord cutting?

I think it might be interesting to see if a cancelled show tried to stick around by selling itself directly to the public. If the average show cost around 2 million per episode to produce could it survive in a PPV model with maybe a few ads?

I will never go back to buying cable TV unless they start lowing costs and stop with all the friggin commercials. If NBC/CBS/ABC take away on-line viewing, we may have a lot more discomfort with my wife but even then, i could assemble the crappy digital antenna and get some local shows (another gripe - airwave TV is a complete joke - they make it sound like it was going to as it was with analog - I barely get any signal and how frustrating to see the screen go black every 35 seconds due to low signal strength. But that is another topic

You have to have an outdoor channel - always did. Up high (on the roof at least). And directional... always did, but people expect for radio waves to just magically change with the times, and it ain't gonna happen. Once you invest $150 or so for a proper setup, you will get all the channels.

Also, many are using mythtv and the roku together to stream video from their computer media server to the roku, and I am working on this myself - my hope is to have network shows automatically record and transcode and then be available on the roku by the next day. Plus, the picture won't be a horribly compressed jumpy signal the local broadcast over cable is now. I might even set it up to remove the commercials (it can do that!)

Here's the deal: I will buy what i want when i want as long as i have the means. Price increases or decreases will have influence on my decisions. If any entertainment costs go beyond my reach, i will put my money toward a roof over my head and food in my stomach. Right now i have cable, ota and roku, but that could change at any time. The dewey decimal system still exists at my local library if needed.

I have a question.Maybe someone knows the answer.Does cable and cable internet arrive at your home via 2 differnt wires is it all one?(Yes I am clueless)Just wondering.

mommom wrote:

I have a question.Maybe someone knows the answer.Does cable and cable internet arrive at your home via 2 differnt wires is it all one?(Yes I am clueless)Just wondering.

I haven't had cable internet in quite some time but way back when it was one wire.

mommom wrote:

I have a question.Maybe someone knows the answer.Does cable and cable internet arrive at your home via 2 differnt wires is it all one?(Yes I am clueless)Just wondering.

Cable TV and cable internet both arrive to your home via one cable. Once in your house, the cable can be split and sent to different rooms to connect to TV's and and a modem.

vmps wrote:

West Ham wrote:

vmps wrote:

I guess you haven't heard of $1 music tracks. Studios said music couldn't be made without $20 albums, now it is.

Music is NOT making money. Itunes and it's pricing are killing the music industry.

hahahaha. if you believe the music industry execs, they've never, ever, in the history of recording, had an album make a profit. AND their profits are down due to piracy/streaming/apple/vampires/demons/whatever. yet people keep singing, and the execs keep making their rent.

So how do you explain music sales declining by 55% in the past ten years?

West Ham wrote:

So how do you explain music sales declining by 55% in the past ten years?

Remember there are many more revenue streams in the music industry than just sales of cds/mp3s