I've worked in the TV (set top box) business. Oh, god.
The cable companies (a) despise their customers, (b) hate to innovate, and (c) their /short term vision/ is on the order of five years.
Cable Labs? A firewall against companies that think they can intrude on the space. Want to do something new and whizzy? No problem, just pass some compliance tests . . . which takes months or years.
Also: TV is harder than you think. Think "legacy network with some interesting regulation thrown in" (e.g., handling emergency broadcast signals, batshit insane limits on use of bandwidth) and that's for starters. Comcast's back ends are running horrible software stacks, and interoperability with that stuff is really hard; you get to build your own back-end for testing, probably millions of dollars . . . and then you get to integrate with Time Warner's stuff, which is all different, and Rogers, and so on.
TV is all about smiling people circling each other with knives. It's full of entrenched players who are happy to screw anyone, including big companies who think they can do end-runs around carefully erected defenses. TV is war.
> Also: TV is harder than you think. Think "legacy network with some interesting regulation thrown in" (e.g., handling emergency broadcast signals, batshit insane limits on use of bandwidth) and that's for starters.
Well fuck that. Just do it all over the internet. The ideal system would be one where you don't purchase channel subscriptions, but individual shows. Then you can watch the shows you've purchased as many times as you want, on any devices you own. Of course, you will get "live" broadcasts in the form of being able to play it live when it normally airs for the first time on TV.
This is exactly what Apple's vision is, and I hope they find a way to make it happen, but I'm not very optimistic.
- You have to get content. Those people want to be paid. You are in competition for this.
- The cable companies control your air supply -- the bandwidth to your customers -- and unless you make them happy, your customers are screwed if they watch your stuff. Bandwidth caps on the order of 25GB / month are just crazy small for any amount of TV watching.
Apple could probably afford to buy Comcast (and Warner). That would suddenly be interesting.
That's why I said I'm not optimistic. I have the confidence that Apple can do an excellent job of creating a solid and intuitive UI and service. I have very little confidence that they will be able to make the sort of content deals necessary to make it have practical value.
I don't think the bandwidth caps are a big issue, because 720p video is probably 1 GB/hour. You would have to watch 8 hours/day to hit a 250 GB limit.
The cable companies (a) despise their customers, (b) hate to innovate, and (c) their /short term vision/ is on the order of five years.
Cable Labs? A firewall against companies that think they can intrude on the space. Want to do something new and whizzy? No problem, just pass some compliance tests . . . which takes months or years.
Also: TV is harder than you think. Think "legacy network with some interesting regulation thrown in" (e.g., handling emergency broadcast signals, batshit insane limits on use of bandwidth) and that's for starters. Comcast's back ends are running horrible software stacks, and interoperability with that stuff is really hard; you get to build your own back-end for testing, probably millions of dollars . . . and then you get to integrate with Time Warner's stuff, which is all different, and Rogers, and so on.
TV is all about smiling people circling each other with knives. It's full of entrenched players who are happy to screw anyone, including big companies who think they can do end-runs around carefully erected defenses. TV is war.