Is Netflix streaming video the future of subscription based TV?
PaidContent speculates that the TV.com dispute might have been over the rights to display CBS videos on Hulu. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports today that cable companies are considering launching their own streaming video services as a value added proposition for subscribers.
Now Netflix CEO Reed Hasting is hinting that his company might launch a streaming video-only service later this year or early in 2010. Right now if you want to watch streaming videos from Netflix you need to pay at least $8.99 for a plan where the company will send you one DVD at a time using that old fashioned mail doohickey.
In other words, Hulu and Netflix and a thousand illegal BitTorrent and Flash video sites have shown that there's plenty of consumer demand for online video, even while audiences for broadcast shows seem to be diminishing. So rather than lose their core audiences, a ton of companies with some sort of relationship to TV and film are trying to launch their own services. And content owners are likely starting to realize that they can make more money if they strike separate deals with Netflix, TV.com, Boxee, and other companies, rather than allowing each company to just repackage videos from Hulu.
At first blush, I can see a lot of people getting upset at the idea that they'd have to pay Netflix, a cable company, or anyone else a fee to watch videos that are available for free at Hulu's web site. But as more and more full length streaming episodes of TV shows find their way online, it's starting to look like you really could save yourself $50 a month by cancelling your cable subscription and signing up for a service like Netflix that may (or may not) be able to ink deals with the producers of your favorite 5 or 10 TV shows.
Of course, right now most of the streaming videos available from Netflix are old movies and TV shows. So maybe if you want contemporary videos, you'll have to stick with your cable company in the hopes that it will provide on-demand web access to your favorite programs.
Or maybe the genie is already out of the bottle and it's too late for companies to insist that users should pay for subscription-based video streams and have to watch commercials in every TV show. Maybe the audience will stick with Hulu... or BitTorrent.
[via GeekTonic]
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
robotrock said 5:42PM on 2-20-2009
Comcast has it in the bag here...charge people for exclusive streaming TV shows. Ah ah ah...can't stream too much with that bandwidth cap.
Just upgrade to our newest tier for streaming TV for an additional $$$$.
bastards.
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Peter said 6:09PM on 2-20-2009
Comcast can bite my shiny metal ass. Their service stinks, their quality stinks and they keep raising the price. I switched to FiOS and am getting better service, faster speeds, better TV quality and it costs less. Gotta love competition.
Peter said 6:09PM on 2-20-2009
More to the point of the post, I've used Netflix's movie streaming service with my Blu-Ray player and it is definitely watchable. The quality is not quite up to DVD quality, and a far cry from good HD broadcasts or Blu-Ray, but it's pretty good. Not sure I'd want to watch all my programs that way, it kind of defeats the point of having a nice large HD set if you're not watching HD content.
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charles said 1:27PM on 2-24-2009
COMCAST already has a streaming web site. Its called FANCAST.
www.fancast.com
Its one of those weird things for me. I subscribe to Comcast, yet find myself using fancast.com to catch up on shows instead of using the DVR on my Comcast box.
I never hear folks talk about the fancast.com site. Why is that?
CharlesJR
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gonintendo said 6:32PM on 2-20-2009
test to get ff to remember password
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zerock said 9:24PM on 2-20-2009
this sucks. people are getting greedy, back to torrenting.
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moby said 11:13PM on 2-20-2009
I would rather pay a reduced rate to watch what I want when I want instead of being over charged for a bloated channel lineup I never watch.
Reply