But don’t hold your breath on it happening yet: Peter Kafka has “yet to hear of a single programmer that has made a firm commitment”. As he points out, while networks are constantly looking for new revenue, like those arsehole aliens in Independence Day moving from world to world consuming every natural resource, they’re nervous about the idea for a lot of reasons.
A lot of it has to do with the icky, sticky relationships between networks and pay TV operators, where everybody’s worried about losing out as people start to watch more and more TV content online, not in their living rooms — where streaming video eats up bandwidth, and advertising revenues aren’t nearly as rich (which is why Hulu wants to figure out new ways to get you to pay).
While these little complications might slow the process down, the exodus is inevitable. There’s no stopping this. The internet is the new pay TV: Netflix, Hulu, BitTorrent. Apple might not get to launch it in a few months, but it will happen. Just give it time. The actually crazy part, if you ask me, is that the Apple TV might even live up to its name. [Hulu]
Drew Mewburn
Wednesday, November 4, 2009 at 4:51 PMThis actually sounds like a really awesome idea.
I’ve been saying for a long time, that I would happily pay a subscription fee to access the TV shows that I want, when I want, for as long as I want.
I’d even put up with a certain amount of Ads, as long as I didn’t have to wait weeks for the shows to turn up in Australia, and their weren’t any stupid media access rights embedded in the files.
Neil
Tuesday, December 22, 2009 at 2:29 PMI too would love this, I suspect Aussie ISPs would be worried about their networks being overloaded… I wonder if apple could let them setup mirror servers, like a linux mirror, to ease the download out of country… hmmm.
Agustin
Saturday, May 19, 2012 at 1:35 PM53 years ago that TV would spoil our lives as we knew them. Sure enough, peolpe stopped visiting one another, they had to stay home to watch the next episode of Gunsmoke or whatever sitcom they were in to. Kids became couch potatoes instead of going outdoors to play. We resisted getting a TV for a long time, but finally gave in. Even so, time in front of it was limited. I will say its a blessing, if you can find something worth watching, for those who are handicapped or elderly who are limited in their activities. Newspapers are becoming passe as peolpe are getting their sanitized, cryptic news from biased reporters on TV. and so forth and so forth. Technology is not all its cracker up to be. It has its down side.