Cutting the Cable/Satellite Cord

[TimeForGuinness]

i hope this never happens

[SHOW]

I may be too cynical, but I think with the courts striking down net neutrality rules it's a possibility if not a certainty.

Doubtful...most of those websites are billion dollar entities as well. Why would they want the possibility of limiting their exposure to customers?

It's gonna be a huge fight if ISPs starting tiering the internet.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Couple quick things, none of which are about legal issues.

Mainstream residential internet is just a bit short of being able to broadcast live tv to the masses...especially in rural areas. Google is obviously experimenting on ways to aleviate that issue which, along w everything else, makes me think cable tv is soon to go the way of the do do....

If aereo wins, and fox, cbs, et al move to cable, think of the rovolt there will be among the cable cutting masses. At that point, fox, cbs, et al open up their content to online subscribers (cbs and abc already do actually, not sure about fox nbc), cable cutters flock back to cable or ratings take a hit. My bet is against the later two. Once that happens, and people rely on the internets instead of antennaes for their local news and sports, its just a matter of time before everyone follows suit as the need for cable tv dissapears. No?

That's not to comment on what type of online programming and packaging will be a vailable.

[33anda3rd]

A-Dub that's a good take on it.

I'm a cutter and have been very happy going a la carte on iTunes, using Netflix, Hulu+, mlbtv, NBA league pass, and AppleTV apps. Plus Amazon via PS3.

Net neutrality from the user end won't effect me much as a consumer of entertainment, since I pay $90/month for Internet and the bundle will probably be in that ballpark.

But for producers of content online, it's scary. Where do independent sites land? Can we get FanGraphs and BBREF results as easily via search, or will those sites be in the wilderness? It's frightening to think of the internet, long a level playing field, as being tilted toward corporate providers of content, information, and opinion.

[33anda3rd]

I think the hola plugin for Netflix has been figured out by the Netflix folks. I tried Tarantino's Death Proof and few others on my laptop, via Chrome and using the hola plugin to say I'm in the UK and got an error message on all of them. Turned off the plugin, tried streaming something from the US version, and it ran as normal. That's a bummer, there's a lot of content on the UK Netflix that's not available to us. Ah well.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

But for producers of content online, it's scary. Where do independent sites land? Can we get FanGraphs and BBREF results as easily via search, or will those sites be in the wilderness? It's frightening to think of the internet, long a level playing field, as being tilted toward corporate providers of content, information, and opinion.

I finally did a little digging on this.

Do you really think it's a level playing field right now? With major corporations like google, facebook, et al paying service providers to directly connect to their services, isn't that tilted toward large corporations? I just can't fathom a world where there won't be a way to get to baseball reference or fangraphs or GRB or whatever. If ISPs, including future google, don't provide the infinite amount of content now available (or limit it to only the major suppliers), the internet becomes less popular and ISPs lose business, no? Sure, google could tilt the scales to push the masses to their content, but 1. they're already doing it and 2. it seems illogical that they would cut off the majority of the world wide web or harm the core thing for which they are known (as a search engine) to get more hits on their own baseball page or whatever sector you want to use here.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

So, here's my questions regarding chromecast. Who is it that doesn't allow chromecast to work (mainly for sports, but I'm sure there are other examples)? For example, ESPN. They have a popout for Watch ESPN online to show the games such that you can't broadcast the game from a computer to the chromecast and therefore the TV. But, you can connect an HDMI cord from the computer to the TV and, as such, have the game on the TV. This is true for smartphones and laptops as well..... Why force users to do that extra step of physically connecting the devices and not just allow the connection to Chromecast? Same with NCAA Mens Basketball app for the tournament? I mean....it's just silly to force the user to physically connect a cord as opposed to just wirelessly broadcasting it....Super silly. The only people that gain from it are possibly cord making companies as they become a little more needed.

But....come on, the cord companies don't have much if any clout in this business....

[33anda3rd]

Do you really think it's a level playing field right now? With major corporations like google, facebook, et al paying service providers to directly connect to their services, isn't that tilted toward large corporations? I just can't fathom a world where there won't be a way to get to baseball reference or fangraphs or GRB or whatever.

I'm not worried about getting to the stuff that I know about now, and that I want to get to.

I'm more worried about start-ups who have a great product available to me that I might not ever find out about because they don't pay for Facebook advertising or Google placement or for special treatment from an ISP.

Example: Warby Parker. Jeez, what a freaking great company. Prescription glasses, $95. You go online pick five frames to try on at home, they send them to you, free of cost, with return shipping covered. You can do this as many times as you want. When you're ready you get your prescription to them, the glasses are in your home in like 5-6 days. Great product. Really nice frames. For every one you buy they give a pair of glasses to someone in need. Their customer service is unparalleled, they've helped me when I've messed up my order and when they've messed up my shipping and they're always friendly. I've had now 4 pairs of glasses and 2 pairs of prescription sunglasses from them and I can't imagine ever getting glasses from anyone else.

So. When they first get started up. If they're not greasing someone for placement and I can't find them via Google search because they're buried. Would I ever know about them? I don't care about stuff like FanGraphs that doesn't have competition from big corporations, esp since I already know to go to that site when I want some info or opinion there. I'm worried that I won't find the next Warby Parker.

(BTW they now have Harry's, which sells German-made razor blades at about 1/3 the price of Gillette blades, and inexpensive shave creams, soaps, razor handles, etc. They're using the Warby Parker style of business for razor blades. It's brilliant, you guys should try it out.)

[ghostrunner]

I'm about 2.5 years into this (sorta*). Happened to catch about 10 minutes of ESPN yesterday and it was 3 guys talking about LSU's ranking in the upcoming SEC football year. It's really jarring once you've been away from it. Not that I didn't think this before, but why does it take 3 guys to talk about one team's SEC season? Same goes for cable news on the occasion I see that. Sometimes it's up to 5 people speaking on a subject and nobody gets a cogent, fully explained thought expressed. I don't miss flipping by that (or flipping in general).

*I actually picked full basic cable back up last year because I wanted to be able to use the Xbox ON Demand app in addition to keeping the HBO subscription I already had, so I have a box that I don't even have hooked up. I wanted to dump it again because OnDemand is near useless, but when I try to cancel Comcast always makes it cheaper for me to not even deal with it.

[pioneer98]

I struggle to understand why the FCC is struggling with this. If it's just about lobbying, Silicon Valley should be able to outspend the cable companies, I'd think. Pretty much all the tech companies want net neutrality. And pretty much all consumers are in favor of it.

Behind the scenes, tech firms tell US internet regulators: Make the internet a public utility

On July 15, at the Brooklyn office of the handicrafts e-commerce site Etsy, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler met with executives from tech companies. Attendants included Kickstarter CEO Yancey Strickler, Tumblr CEO David Karp, Vimeo CEO Kerry Trainor, and representatives from Spotify, Reddit, Foursquare, General Assembly, Buzzfeed, and Warby Parker, participants told Quartz. While the FCC declined to comment on the event, it will be filing an official notice of an outside meeting on its website later this week.

Wheeler has been meeting with different internet stakeholders as his agency moves to write rules designed to preserve the “open internet” this year, but what that means and how to do it remains far from a settled matter. While internet service providers, or carriers, want the freedom to charge different rates for different kinds of data, these technology firms were asking Wheeler’s agency to treat internet communication as a public utility with no discrimination allowed, a so-called “Title II reclassification.” US regulators are, at the moment, caught in the middle.

But I do find it kind of ironic...The tech companies have a big Libertarian streak, and here they are basically asking the government to take over the internet service providing business.

[Jocephus]

I'm about 2.5 years into this (sorta*). Happened to catch about 10 minutes of ESPN yesterday and it was 3 guys talking about LSU's ranking in the upcoming SEC football year. It's really jarring once you've been away from it. Not that I didn't think this before, but why does it take 3 guys to talk about one team's SEC season? Same goes for cable news on the occasion I see that. Sometimes it's up to 5 people speaking on a subject and nobody gets a cogent, fully explained thought expressed. I don't miss flipping by that (or flipping in general).

i know that "sensation" too. its been about 9-10 years for me without cable and i dont miss it for a second.