

TV After YouTube - rfreytag
http://www.cringely.com/2010/05/tv-after-youtube/

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spudlyo
_You can’t pause it, you can’t record it, you just have to watch it, like
broadcast or cable TV pre-TiVO. And that makes it an ideal commercial medium
and one very good for preserving intellectual property rights, unlike all
those others._

There's just one little problem, consumers don't want to go back to a pre-TiVO
world. Emulating broadcast TV on the web isn't going to fly. It reminds me of
'push technology' which ultimately failed because consumers didn't want it.

~~~
physcab
Well, it might work if you could deliver the content when the consumer wants.
Broadcast TV works because I know every half hour something new is beginning
or I can look up in the TV Menu when something is going to come on.

P2P Broadcasting will always be chaotic in nature and thats the underlying
problem. If they could somehow guarantee order and reliability, then they
could pull it off.

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ugh
I sure hope the future of consuming video content is more similar to YouTube
than TV. There are still obvious economic problems, that’s why I only hope,
not predict.

The continuos nature of broadcasting always seemed like a big downside to me.
Being able to watch the same content whenever you want – not whenever the
broadcaster wants – seems like a obvious advantage to me. That just wasn’t
feasible until a few years ago. Maybe it still isn’t feasible. But I sure hope
we are coming closer.

P2P TV might still be the future for all the stuff that really should be
broadcast live (breaking news, ceremonies, sports) but I don’t think we will
need more channels in the future. What we have now might do.

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jerf
The future of "online television" isn't YouTube or Veetle, it's Netflix On
Demand and subscription Hulu. Quality, organized content, modest subscription
prices, and while I'm not stupid enough to hope "no ads" I hope there's at
least a "no ads" option for $$$.

~~~
ugh
Both of which is as of yet only available in the US :(

I also don’t hope that the future is exactly like YouTube, just that there
will be YouTube-like (i.e. on demand) services – like Hulu or Netflix.

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Jun8
I think he's spot on when he says "The aha! moment with Veetle is when you
realize it is just like having a cable TV system with a million channels."

However, what Cringely doesn't address is how these programs will be
_discovered_. Discovery and search on TV is still in the Stone Age although
there is abundant metadata. The situation is already bad with the current ~200
cable channels. Having thousands (or millions) of channels will necessitate a
Google for TV.

~~~
bobbyi
Apparently 200 channels has already necessitated a Google for TV

<http://www.google.com/tv/>

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xenophanes
> that can’t be interrupted, paused, or changed and can’t be very easily
> recorded, either.

Umm, it's very easy to record anything on your screen, e.g. with Snapz.

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warfangle
He's saying YouTube isn't profitable because it's content is crap, at least
partially.

The counter-point, of course, is that in the age of targeted advertising..
isn't broadcast advertising (in terms of CPM) completely over-rated?

I have a feeling that contextual video advertising is currently underrated,
just as traditional broadcast advertising is overrated. In terms of dollar
amounts spent.

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physcab
Youtube though is almost always reliable. The problem with P2P TV is that if
you are in the middle of watching your favorite show and your broadcaster's
computer goes down because their cat is walking on the power cables, you blame
the _service_ for its bad quality, not the broadcaster.

~~~
sosuke
Wouldn't a traditional delivery model for video work as a failover if the P2P
traffic is not high enough and have that always acting as one of the P2P video
seeders?

~~~
physcab
I'm not sure what their model is going to be. If they are going to host video,
then yes, that will make it much more reliable. However then they will be
liable for DMCA takedown requests and whatnot.

