Not Watching For The Asteroid

Nice because of its ability to destroy yet another Hollywood profit source. But there still won't be anything on worth watching.

And the load on the Internet backbone... yeah baby! All the telcos will be kicking themselves for not running fiber optic to the end users these last 20 years.

Too bad the terrorists at the CRTC will ensure this won't be available here. Can't have too much competition that would damage Bell/Rogers/Shaw's grip on the Canadian bube tube/mind control.

Don't matter, creapingdeath. Can't program your brain if you're not watching, can they? Just shut off the tube and cancel that cable, baby. Lack of income will ensure they get the message.

Netflix, Hulu Plus, and pirate torrents. Haven't had cable in over ten years.

Also, Phantom? I've had fiber optic to my apartment for a couple of years now. The speed limits are at the backbone switches, not the cable, and your ability to buy FO speeds is limited by regulatory capture, not the technology infrastructure.

But we in Canada exist to make the coffers of Bell and Rogers bulge. This sort of consumer-focused service simply won't do in Canada.

I imagine the CBC / CRTC will have something to say about this if it finds it cannot force the CBC into people's homes.

I don't subscribe to any cable Tv bundlers at the moment, but may look into this Intel service if I could pick and chose the very few channels I'd like to watch. Can't see having more than a dozen still.

Mississauga Matt... good to see you're "still at it" on your Youtube page..

I'm not sure how the CRTC can block it, unless they get into full net censorship mode. Perhaps they'll get around this by enacting a levy on every home high-speed internet subscription, then hand over the revenue to CBC and CTV/Bell.

Overall a pretty pessimistic article.   As well it should be.   The content providers love that fact that they can get broadband providers to 'pay' and charge for all the crap we don't want.

I realize Intel has a lot of industry pull, but the arm twisting required to get Big Entertainment to go along with this type of unbundling is going to be a monumental task.
.

Won't happen. The big cable companies like Comcast OWN all the content providers. Intel owns nothing.

Comcast ALONE owns:

MLB
E!
Style
G4
NBC Sports
NBC
Syfy
USA
Bravo
CNBC
MSNBC

Difficult to see how the cable cos and content originators will take this lying down.

What it may trigger is a very different billing process - maybe on a pay per view basis like Apple TV? In sum it is a good thing but it won't be "free" just more accurately billed and the losers will be the content generators that no one watches - CBC I'm looking at you...

Next announcement: Intel enters the porn business, share prices surge

JDN, i c pron via Intel. U must be AMD?

"So if you unbundled ESPN, the per-subscriber cost might shoot up to $20 or more, to account for the 75 percent drop in its customer base."

And IF you don't want ESPN,or any other "leech" channel, you don't have to take it. Those who MUST have a certain channel, can pay for it without me subsidizing them.

There are more channels available than ever, but way too often I turn the TV off,muttering,"there's nothing to watch".

It's absurd in this era that we should have to buy something we don't want.

@Gord Tulk: If they're smart, the cable companies will read the writing on the wall and adapt. They should be making themselves competitive with this kind of model BEFORE it arrives, to blunt Intel's thunder and retain customers who can't be bothered to switch to a new service that now doesn't offer anything particularly special.

If they're smart. Which past behavior doesn't indicate. I cut my cable nearly a decade ago, went to piracy. Netflix and Hulu are my preferred choices these days; the low price, convenient selection and minimal commercial intrusion has largely trumped my piracy habits. (Except for those networks who still don't get it, and use Hulu as a platform to run commercials and promos for their shows, but not the shows themselves. Then it's back to tried-and-true piracy).

Satisfy yourself with a modest piece of the pie, or go hungry. Either way, you guys need to get over this idea that you're going to be able to gorge on the entire thing.

Daniel Ream said: "I've had fiber optic to my apartment for a couple of years now."

Lucky you. I've got crappy Bell DSL and lucky to have it, many out here in Hooterville are on Shaw WiMax. Not good.

No, I was referencing the telcos failure to steal a march on the cable guys and string fiber optic on their poles. The infrastructure is there, why not use it, right? But they don't. Whenever a pole or a run gets replaced they could be including fiber on it, the stuff costs considerably less than copper. Nuh uh.

As I understand it the previous "reason" not to run fiber to the home was the photoelectric detectors used. The old version was/is about $200-$300 per unit, Intel announced one four years ago that costs less than ten bucks.

http://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.ca/2008/12/future-is-hammering-on-door-again.html

Switches are a problem, but the real bottleneck of internet video is the server/client model. Netflix is hitting the wall with that right now, their service is so popular they make up nearly a third of all internet traffic all by themselves. Other companies are likewise finding that their server farms are becoming enormous energy hogs and money pits.

The guy who figures out the solution to -that- problem is going to be stinking rich.

I'm sure Shaw, Rogers and the rest will start worrying once Intel starts laying cable. That is why the big providers have a monopoly; they own all the hardware needed to deliver the content. At best Intel will be some sort of add on to your existing service.

The only reason we still have satellite is my wife. iTunes has been meeting my viewing needs for two years now. Not sure what the Intel scheme offers that Apple hasn't already been delivering for years now.

Don't get too excited. We're behind the maple curtain so we will only be allowed to get the content the CRTC wants us to see (the same substandard Can-con channels that have made Canadian cable an expensive wasteland) on an intel box. They did it to cable, thn Satellite then sat radio and they will do it to the Intel spectrum as well. Forced Can-con.

Choices are limited in the soviet socialist wasteland of Kanuck TV.

sounds really nice, but there are only two reasons why we have cable anyhow:
#1 - for an internet connection
#2 - for baseball during baseball season.

It's reason #1 that's the Catch-22 for us...

Telcos (Bell/Telus) are running fiber and expanding their high speed services to the local nodes. It is slowly happening, but it takes time and its costly. New subdivisions and new MDUs (condo buildings) are going FTTX (look it up). Existing neighbourhoods? Fiber fed to the node currently supplies up to 50mb service in some limited areas. Lab tests show 500mb thru copper, but those are ideal conditions for DSL, real world will be less. But provides optimism that we will see 100mb local service soon.
Cablecos gave a different architecture (coax), but similar fiber to node distribution in the neighbourhood, then up to 100mb thru their DOCSYS system. It too has limitations, that only FTTX will cure.
Third party providers are limited to rental space and charges, enforced by the CRTC. As much as you despise the CRTC, gutting it will result in less, not more competition. With the CRTC, it is gubmint enforced competition. Kind of a catch 22.
With the Conservatives lack of action gutting the CBC, they certainly aren't going to tackle the CRTC either. Disappointing, from a small C conservative POV.
As said earlier, the channel companies (another oligarchy of Rogers/Shaw/BCE)) will not allow certain channels to be chosen individually, you have to take the group. I want just History (and HD) or Discovery, but I'm forced to take the 12 other "waste of bandwidth" stations. And the CRTC seems to be a lapdog for them, rather than be a consumer advocate.

Occam has nailed it. The CRTC has never believed in "choice". In fact, most Canadians who are "pro-choice" are generally only in favour of one choice.

I am less concerned that CBC is on my television than that I am forced to pay for Vision, APTN, W, TLC, and Teletoons, as well as at least 30 other unwatchable channels that could not survive without the forced contributions of cable/satellite viewers. This is especially frustrating when our major cable provider in the region won't offer Sun News Network in any bundle.

I have cable only for internet as well as ADSL since I need redundancy and for large downloads involving multiple files I can halve the download time by using both. Telus does keep track of how much one uses the service and we've had a few words over my 100 Gb/month use (my surveillance camera was a bit of a bandwidth hog). I like the idea of paying for what one wants to watch and presumably that will be sans commercials. There's no way the CRTC can block this as that would mean cutting Canada off the internet.

The best thing I've found is to watch no TV at all. I have HDMI connectors on my new laptops and it's so nice to have a second 1920x1024 screen when I'm programming. At least I'm getting some use of the big screen TV I have (the other use is to display background photographs). The only show I watch is Big Bang Theory and I'm a year behind as I buy the DVD with all of the episodes at the end of the year and then watch an episode when I have time.

With pretty much anything available through bittorrent, the only reason to pay for a particular movie is if one wants it NOW. I've left my torrent server running for days before it will finally obtain the complete version of obscure movies or CD's that I want.

We're way behind the rest of the world in download speeds in Canada and I get jealous every time I see the average internet speed in S. Korea. Once we have cable laid to most homes, then it will be nice to have 100 mbs download speeds and hopefully upload speeds that are close to that. There's no way that the CRTC can force people to watch CBC although a tax on internet service might be one way. If they try that, then watch for the worlds largest DDNS attack on the CBC's servers by very pissed off users.

Oops, I meant once we have optic fiber laid to most homes (not cable).

Since I posted that entry I decided to try my new Beagleboard -xM system out and this tiny embedded system uses a full HDMI TV screen as it's terminal display when it boots up a Linux system. For all you chipheads out there, it's TI's DM3730 processor which combines a 1 GHz ARM with a TI DSP on a chip. Not quite as compact as a friends cell phone that had HDMI output and just needed a tiny keyboard to make it a very nice Linux box but this is the most use of my TV I'd had in months.

When one has toys like that to play with, who'd want to watch conventional TV?

If supermarkets were under the purview of some bureaucracy and operated like cable companies you would have few options when grocery shopping. There would be pre-loaded carts loaded with some fresh food and some that's well past its best before date. Take it or leave it. What if you want a prime rib roast? Sorry, it's over-priced and comes bundled with a 10 lb. bag of old wrinkly potatoes. Want fresh potatoes? No problem, they'll cost you extra but you'll have to take the old ones as well.

The big miscalculation is cableco thinking we
are prepared to watch and pay for any and all
garbage packages while we wait for a la carte.
Come spring out it goes.

Several have mentioned HDMI please check it out as well as HDCP.
This, I think is why Intel will get into the club.
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI"