[mythtv-users] All clear QAMs gone in Portland, OR

[John Morris]

On Tue, 2013-10-29 at 20:20 -0400, Eric Sharkey wrote:

> I'm not really a fan of the push toward a la carte pricing.  I think
> the end result is that most of us would end up paying about the same
> amount, but getting fewer channels.

We might end up with fewer channels with a la carte.  But it would still
be worth it for several reasons.  One kinda important to us Myth users
so lets start there.  Suddenlink recently turned on the 'evil bit' on
all of the Comcast properties.  Imagine if I could have called them the
next day and said stop billing me for those channels you just blocked me
from viewing.  Now imagine a LOT of us doing that every time a channel
gets the 'evil bit' set.  Instant feedback and they have to decide if a
theoretical loss from 'piracy' by us former paying customers is worth
more or less than real tangible dollars in the cash register now.

The bigger issue is to ponder what the cable world would look like in an
a la carte world, especially now that they are scrambling everything
anyway.  They could do a la carte with almost no effort in the current
all digital and encrypted world.  It wouldn't just be what we have now
except you pick which channels you want.  A lot of channels that are now
on the dial would quickly die, they live only because their corporate
overlord can bundle them since nobody would actually pay money for them
if given a choice.

There are also channels you are currently paying for that you probably
HATE the idea of being forced to pay for.  How much would it be worth to
know you ain't subsidizing em anymore?

Or perhaps a new market would develop where channels realized that they
USED to make a good living from advertising alone, thus they drop the
price to cable systems to zero or even pay for carriage when launching a
new channel.

Now the cable companies can't really end up selling us half the channels
for the same money, not in the current competitive environment so what
gives?  New channels.  More targeted channels.  Or perhaps more on
demand or paying by the show.  Who knows what would happen but it would
almost certainly be better than what we have now, a hundred channels of
the same Law & Order reruns and reality shows.

Right now it seems the game is to pitch anything, get on a critical mass
of cable systems and then regardless what the name of the channel is,
begin 'original programming' which more often than not means super cheap
reality tv; knowing customers MUST pay.  What I'm saying is shaking up a
world that stinks is usually a winner.

As MythTV users we are often 'local experts' on tech issues others will
take advice from.  We should be pushing A la carte as a political issue
to throw the current system into chaos since the current trend is not
our friend.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
URL: <http://www.mythtv.org/pipermail/mythtv-users/attachments/20131030/281aed37/attachment.sig>