[mythtv-users] MS finally gives up on OEM for cablecard

[Richard Morton]

Sorry Brian,

I cant agree with your statement cable companies in many territories
give the cable boxes away or sell them at a loss; Sky TV and Virgin
Media are two examples.

Secondly selling great software would be just as profitable but that
opens up the code to more rigorous re-engineering and hacking by a
wider community of people with those skills. (Hacking common PC
software is a wider skill than reverse engineering embedded
hardware/firmware.

The reason for cable boxes is simply control; control over media and
its distribution and a protectionist mentality.

Now I also don't subscribe to everything should be free. We should all
be worried that the flexibility of DVRs (especially commercial
skipping techniques) in general erodes the number of eyes viewing
adverts. This means less revenue for TV companies, and smaller amounts
of money to pay for content to be produced. Production costs having to
cut leading to...
Less money will mean wages getting squeezed - no bad thing for
overpaid successful actors (not that good actors shouldn't be paid
well; they should be paid well but no-one is really worth 8 figures a
year).
and
Lower budgets for special effects and other high expense items.

Lower quality will only reduce our viewing pleasure.

R

2009/9/10 Brian Wood <beww at beww.org>:
> On Thursday 10 September 2009 15:50:00 ryan patterson wrote:
>
>>
>> Same with all the restrictions placed on the use of CableCards.  The
>> only reason to have CableCard tuner support on a computer is to
>> watch/record cable TV (which is paid for by the computer owner).  Why
>> would anybody in the cable TV industry want to discourage people from
>> buying/using cable TV?
>
> Because they want to make money renting you crappy equipment. You are
> threatening a large revenue stream if you use your own gear.
>
> --
> Brian Wood
> beww at beww.org
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>