What's sad is that there isn't a rich and vibrant world of companies making DVRs. On modern computers, you don't have to do anything special any more. You can decode and play HD video in software! I suspect the absence of good competition in the market is all about two things.

In the satellite world, the standards aren't open. You can't just build a compatible box.

In the cable / OTA world, where the standards are relatively open (at least to the extent that CableCard can be called an open standard), nobody wants to up against TiVo's patent portfolio. The patents in question don't expire until 2018. Maybe things get interesting then.

It was almost possible to watch satellite on a PC, around the time DVRs started appearing. Gateway was in talks with Dish Network to add the capability to watch their programming on a Destination HTPC. Adaptec made the PCI card, and it was a stripped down version of one in use in hotel TV distribution setups. The overall project died when Gateway cancelled the Destination line in 1998. I worked with a friend to try and get our hands on one of the few cards out there to build a better DVR, but never could source them reliably.

On the overall DVR field, I don't see too much growth there at all. Pretty much every provider offers a DVR setup standard, and the market for standalone units continues to shrink. DVRs did help start the trend for people to be freed from TV network schedules, and the momentum continued forward into services like Netflix, Roku/AppleTV and others for some people like myself. 6+ years now, and I can't imagine going back to having a cable or satellite subscription, nor can I imagine being happy with any current DVR on the market. Returning to such a setup would feel restricting now that I can watch what I want on whatever device I have handy.

I do agree that the streaming services are the future in terms of content delivery, but though there are many things to hate about cable/satellite companies and their DVRs, the one good thing is that once you pick one, you get a consistent interface to all of the content you subscribe to, whereas if I want to find out if a given show is on Netflix, Hulu, or whatever, I need to first do some homework, and then deal with their own interfaces with their own UI quirks. Also, once I've recorded a show, nobody can really take it away until I delete it, whereas if Hulu can't come to an agreement with content provider X, it's gone, and I need to go find it somewhere else.

Another good thing is that you can still skip commercials pretty easily on DVRs, whereas the streaming services that do have commercials generally make you sit through them.

TV packages are still terribly overpriced for most people, but I'm not so sure the streaming plans are great deals either once you factor in the limited content on each provider -- suddenly you're playing the same game you do with the cable companies of buying a subscription for a provider just to get a couple shows you care about from each.

I agree TV packages on cable and satellite are overpriced, but streaming isn't in any danger of being a suitable substitute. Not only is content inadequate, but the Internet just can't handle that many people people doing that much streaming, particularly for big events like the Superbowl.

One wildcard in all of this is AT&T's U-Verse, which could well be reengineered around massive-scale streaming, since they've got the content distribution network and the final-mile bandwidth. Sure, Comcast and others offer 'on-demand' viewing, but if every Comcast customer tried to use it at once, I imagine the thing would collapse in a heap.

You hit the nail on the head, Tony. This is what I've been trying to explain to the folks crying "chord cutting." The experience I get with my Tivo is FAR more efficient than anything I can do by going "over the top."

One of Tivo's paradigms when they first set out was that they wanted to help their users create their own channel. Yes, you could channel surf just like we used to in the good old days, and you can tune into stuff that's airing now, but the idea was that the Now Playing list is your favorite/primary channel.

At the moment there's barely any services that will tell you which shows are on which online service, and that means that despite getting the content through the internet, we're actually taking a step backwards by going back to the channel model. I have to know that Show X is on Channel Y, and even worse, I have to know when it airs. If you asked me when House comes on I couldn't tell you, it just shows up in my DVR, and I see it.


Cutting the chord just doesn't work for everyone. I work the numbers every six months or so as technology in this space advances, and there's simply no way to match the experience and value I get from my Fios subscription by going to IP TV. Some might say I watch too much TV, but hey, that's my hobby. I love it. And so far, there simply isn't a better way to pursue my hobby than with the method I'm using now. That's why I'm sinking hundreds of dollars into yet another DVR with four tuners and 2TB of storage. I actually need it!

It wouldn't be a problem if anyone would actually use multicast.

Don't get me wrong, cord cutting does have it's own issues too. The AppleTV does present a pretty unified interface to multiple services, including Netflix. The shows I buy show up when they are available, just like a DVR. For full seasons of shows, I simply go into the Netflix area and pick the show and resume playback where I left off. Work could be done by the other platforms to help unify things as well as a DVR can. I know how well this works from having a ReplayTV (RIP ) that seamlessly combined two different subscription services into one interface and it is an important point.

I just don't personally see much change in the subscription market and the way it works. DVRs changed it the most, but what is ahead for a medium that relies on airing shows on a specific schedule? Streaming or outright buying via the internet is still a very malleable setup, and the experience will change (and hopefully improve) over time. The two sides will likely blend more and more over time, with many providers already offering a wide selection of on demand content. Only difference there is that it's streamed from some box on the cable network, vs on the open internet.


It will in time. CDN distribution is advancing very quickly, and demand for more speed will widen the pipes eventually. There is now pressure to expand bandwidth not only for the home/business markets, but also the mobile side. LTE rollouts require a lot of new runs to support the towers out there.

Is cord cutting for everyone? Nope. Just as subscription TV isn't for everyone. There were plenty of "cord cutters" before the internet. The methods to access content are always changing, with different benefits and weaknesses when compared to subscription cable services. Sometimes those methods are regional. Technically, I did watch Battlestar Galactica on a regular schedule following broadcast via a Tivo. It just happened to be a Tivo sitting in a projection room beaming the image onto a large screen in a theater

Wasn't fixing (patching?) that problem supposed to be the value add of Boxee over XBMC?

GoogleTV tries to paper over this mess, allowing you to search for what you want and give you a list of places (free, for-pay, and otherwise) that will stream you want you want. It almost works.

Yeah, they failed. I'm moving away from my Boxee Box, and now for me it's pretty much just a device for playing vudu.



Even having to switch between different providers is too much. Even switching between your subscribed iTunes content and Netflix is too much, IMO. What happens when the show you've been paying for on iTunes becomes available on Netflix, or the other way around? It's a pain. I like that Google lets me search for things across providers, but they don't actually have a great variety of providers to search through.

iTunes/AppleTV does solve one problem that I don't believe Hulu or other services do, and that's keeping up to date. Does Hulu have a no-effort way of telling you when there's a new episode of a show you like available? If not, that means that you have to keep track of when all your various shows have new episodes, and that just sounds like a chore that I got rid of when I got my first Tivo. Again, we're going backwards. But again, even though subscribing through iTunes would take care of that issue, it's cost prohibitive to someone like me, because I just wouldn't save any money at all (I'd probably spend more).


Then there's one last issue that internet TV simply cannot address yet: ESPN. I watch a show every single day called Pardon the Interruption. It was a show my dad and I watched a lot together when he was stuck in a chair and couldn't go anywhere, and we both loved it and I continue to love it. I like that I can get all my sports news in a 30 minute, humorous presentation. Unfortunately ESPN is so ridiculously tied to the cable TV industry. I can't imagine how they'd make a transition to internet TV.

ps-before you mention it, yes, PTI has a podcast version of every one of their shows. Here's the fun facts about that:

- the shows are audio only, so you miss the funny/incredible videos they talk about
- the episodes are ~22 minutes long and come to whopping ~5MB file sizes
- as a result of the compression, it sounds like the podcast was created by holding up a microphone to a TV playing the show

It all depends on how far away from the initial schedule you move as to if it's a backwards or forwards movement. For the DVR method, you still somewhat care about the base schedule for setting up what to record to avoid conflicts. And long term you care due to possible space constraints. For my method with Netflix, I just don't care at all. I don't track new shows in the fall, and I don't track when a season ends. I just look for shows that might interest me and start watching. Sometimes it's a show that is only a few years old, and sometimes it's one that is now decades old that I never saw.

The issue this brings up though is possibly being exposed to spoilers if a show is popular and talked about at the workplace. And of course sports and news are time sensitive, so this solution doesn't work for those. Thats why I have the blended approach pulling some from iTunes, and others I just wait. I still haven't watched Lost, but it's on my list. Now that the entire series is out, I can consume it at my own pace, avoiding cliffhanger delays. When I initially cut the cord, the streaming solution wasn't really there. I was forced into at least waiting a season to watch something when the show came out on DVD.

There are of course very specific examples of shows/networks that just aren't internet friendly. Over the 6 years of being a cord cutter, I've watched that list shrink dramatically, and expect it to continue on. I've also watched online only content grow more and more, mostly indy stuff like TwiT.tv. Netflix and Hulu are making steps now to have original content, and I'm betting more companies start doing this in the future (Amazon is another one I'm figuring will try this).

Essentially, I see the current internet cord cutters as the ones willing to live on the bleeding edge. The industry as a whole appears to be moving forward to making it more mainstream though. The lineup of TVs this year pretty much all feature internet connectivity as standard, even down to the lower end units like Visio. Sure, a lot of it is crap currently, but it will improve and grow. You have Internet companies like Netflix pushing hard, TV manufacturers also pushing hard, it's only a matter of time before the big content creators are forced to be on both sides more then they are today.

Tom, I don't think you got the point I was making. You're addressing something else.

I was arguing that with cord cutting, the task of tracking when a new episode is released (and to a lesser extent which episodes you've already watched) is a far more difficult task. The mere fact that you have to pull content from different sources means that you don't have a central place to keep track of everything. Heck, you wouldn't even know if your favorite show took a week off.

Your response seems to be arguing that VOD is more convenient. Well I'm not refuting that! If every show I watched was available from a single source, like Netflix, I'd be a happy camper even if I couldn't track new episodes. But that's not the case and I don't see how it will be for a LONG time.

Look, as usual we all have our preferences. I see the appeal of your system, but I'd wager you're a different kind of TV viewer than I am, and I'm 99% certain that there is no better alternative to my current setup out there. Not for me.

I did miss the point a little bit, curse of trying to write that up at work and having a few distractions. Though I'll keep my post there, as what I was aiming towards is that scheduling doesn't matter to me at all now, and is a benefit VOD/cord cutting brings even above DVR usage. Well, I suppose it shifts the scheduling concern to when Netflix is going to lose a license to something. But caring about when a new episode is released is something my mind isn't occupied with very often. When I initially cut the cord, I did track new releases for a bit and knew when to go to the store for a specific show. Over time though it changed to just going every once in a while and browsing whatever was on the shelves. Once I started carrying an iPhone, it became easier to look up info about a show on the fly and decide if I wanted to take some plastic discs home.

As for keeping track of what I've watched, true, there currently isn't a grand unified list at the top level of what I interact with, and I have no idea if Hulu tracks this decently. My experience there was limited, as I disliked the cost with ads still being present. Netflix does a good job of saving playback position for TV shows, even when I change over and watch something else. And iTunes is the same way, presenting me with fully unwatched, partially unwatched and watched indicators.

And agreed, everyone has their preferences on how to watch TV. I'm not trying to attack your position in any way here. It's simply to share my experiences and perspective as a cord cutter.


One other comment I will make is that I'm glad more and more shows are offering their pilot episode for free on iTunes. I'll go browse that from time to time to find new things to watch. It's worth looking into for others out there, even the non cord cutters.

I think this Wired piece covers that topic pretty well. I don't think it breaks down quite as cleanly into "Community vs. Two and a Half Men" as the article seems to indicate, but certainly, it makes sense that the more passionate fans would be willing to jump through the hoops to find out which of the eleventy streaming services their favorite shows are on. I am, in fact, a passionate fan of Community, but I am also a much more casual fan of other shows that I wouldn't bother to go through the effort of searching for if they weren't delivered to me by my DVR with little or no effort.