[mythtv-users] US Pay-TV loses subscribers for the first time ever

[Another Sillyname]

On 24 August 2010 19:12, Phil Bridges <gravityhammer at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 24, 2010 at 1:51 PM, Ben Kamen <bkamen at benjammin.net> wrote:
>> On 8/24/2010 12:39 PM, jedi wrote:
>>>
>>>     These aren't the best arguments for keeping cable. Both are
>>> quite readily available if you are willing to be a little patient.
>>> The homepage for Dexter on Showtime even advertises the iTunes
>>> version.
>>
>> Especially the “I guess it comes down to laziness on my part”
>>
>>>     $130 per month covers a lot of purchases from Amazon, iTunes or
>>> Walmart.
>>
>> That it does!
>>
>> I could buy a new computer like every 3-4 months (building from parts).
>>
>>  -Ben
>
> If it weren't for sports (College Football), I would probably go the
> Netflix route.
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Sports is probably the one area that Cable will continue to protect
it's content as it attracts a huge price premium and has substantially
less value when not live, therefore Sports rights will continue to
protect the availability.

The rest of the market IMHO is just in a slow death spiral.  While all
the cable companies have in effect local monopolies customers can't
get material from other sources, however as broadband speeds increase
and processor power increases (Intel recently showed of a 50 core, yes
that's fifty core processor) by 2013/2014 the video compression
algorithms will be in their next iteration and Intel have said they'll
be shipping a production 32 Core processor by then.  With higher speed
and better compression it's inevitable that either legal services or
torrent like services will be feeding more and more customers.

It would already be fairly easy to integrate a MythTV plugin that
could pull from somewhere like isohunt or eztv using an rss feed and
automate the whole process.  The only reason it hasn't happened
already is the legal issues.