Cable TV as you know it is finally coming to the end of its road

https://medium.com/@IanCody/cable-tv-as-you-know-it-is-finally-coming-to-the-end-of-its-road-8290d526bc7

2 4 11 years ago

mtuncer• 11 years ago

except that it is not.

Apple and freedom to operate is rarely used in the same sentence. I really doubt claims in this marketing document are accurate.

dsmithatx• 11 years ago

I don't think this is any different from the Roku I've been using for a few years now. Anyone can develop for it. The problem is getting content providers to want to.

On another note I'm about to sign back up for cable again. AT&T is getting super cheap in my area now and I miss a lot of things on cable having internet TV. Plus Sling, Netflix, Hulu, Vudu movies. Internet TV is costing me slightly more than cable will at this point.

markbnj• 11 years ago

Ok, yes, it's going to be cool to have a Youtube-like platform for video on Apple devices. I agree with other commenters who suggest it's not that revolutionary. This is the sound of another brick being knocked out of the wall, but it is not the sound of the wall falling.

> Simply put, the cable industry in its current state is comparable to us still buying CDs, paying for e-mail, or renting a video from BlockBuster.

It's comparable to those things if the CD store, pay email provider, and Blockbuster all had municipal monopolies on their equivalent of last-mile coax.

The wall is going to fall, but the cable companies have a lot of life left in them, and they still have many opportunities to use their wealth and monopoly power to try and lobby their way out of danger.

hwstar• 11 years ago

It was the ads coupled with the 5% yearly price increases which caused me to disconnect cable back in 2008.

When 20 minutes of the time is spent in a 1 hour program is spent showing advertisements, it becomes irritating to watch, and the time to summarize all of the events prior to the ads, takes away from the depth of the programming.

We have Netflix, but the quality of the programming has gone downhill in the last couple of years (at least as far as non-fiction programming is concerned). I'm considering cancelling and just using Youtube for most of my viewing.

Cable TV as you know it is finally coming to the end of its road

Related Stories