[mythtv-users] TMS <-> SD deal makes LifeHacker.com

[Phill Wiggin]

On 8/10/07, Patrick Ouellette <pat at flying-gecko.net> wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 09, 2007 at 10:11:58PM -0400, Michelle Dupuis wrote:
> >
> > Goals are great...but $20/yr is only one possible future.  The reality today
> > is $60/yr.
> >
> > This is not a criticism - just an observation that the current price may be
> > a deterrent to many.  Consider the initial BLUE RAY dvd drives at $3000
> > each.  The price was high, and even "justified".  Sure the price came down
> > over time...but the initial pricing kept the mainstream out.  As for myth,
> > losing the mainstream Myth user (from EPG data) could have a serious
> > negative impact...
> >
>
> How exactly could it have a "serious negative impact?"  MythTV is not a
> commercial venture.  Loss of market share is completely meaningless.
> As long as the developers are satisfied with what they are doing, they
> will keep doing it.  When they no longer desire to work on Myth, they
> will move on.

Actually, the landscape has changed somewhat from when listings were
free.  When listings were free, Myth devs didn't need to be concerned
with the number of users.  However, now Myth's usability (well, ease
of usability) is dependent on the SD effort.  Now, the more 'market
share' Myth (and the other SD-using FOSS) has, the less each user has
to pay for the SD content.  If Myth loses a drastic amount of people,
it'll change the price structure for SD and eventually it could lead
to a prohibitively expensive subscription rate for SD. (And the more
that leave, the worse it gets.)

So, while MythTV isn't commercial, the devs _will_ have to be somewhat
concerned with keeping users happy in order to keep those SD
subscriptions up (and the price down). Otherwise, if we lose too many
Myth users and can't sustain SD, we'll be back to the other  less
usable alternatives (being discussed in other threads).