An On-Demand Life (So Close We Can Taste It?)
Image via apple.com
Right now we’re mid-cycle when it comes to new and exciting technology. At the Consumer Electronics Show that wrapped up last week in Las Vegas the “sweeping technological innovation” seemed to be ridiculously thin televisions, a product whose actual benefits can be measured with a six-inch plastic ruler. Even my beloved Apple couldn’t find a way to properly dazzle us Tuesday at this year’s Macworld Expo. What was the big product? A thin laptop. Are we really this short on space? (Those who have seen my bedroom… ladies… probably shouldn’t answer.)
Having a couple days to mull it over, I’ve started to realize that the gem of Macworld was not the MacBook Air, but instead the companies revamped Apple TV — a product that still isn’t quite ready for prime time but does give us a very realistic look at how the television experience could change (soon). More after the jump…
A couple years ago, after Apple announced it was going to be selling television shows on iTunes, my friend Matty decided to figure out how much it would cost to dump his cable and watch all of his television via (legal) internet downloads. For someone who watches a moderate amount of television it was (and still is) way more expensive to buy the content via iTunes (or Amazon or XBOX Live) than to simply fork over $60 a month to the cable companie for a digital-basic package (let’s not even get into the fact that NBC content is no longer available on iTunes — thanks Hulu). Plus, there’s always the argument that having an actual cable television provides the viewer with an experience downloads could never achieve because it encourages random flipping. I’d never BUY Celebrity Rehab on VH1, but if it’s on, I’m not above watching.
Then Apple went ahead a did something we were all expecting them to do: they started offering movie-rentals not only through their iTunes software, but also via a slightly revamped Apple TV set-top box. During Jobs’ keynote presentation (something that, I hate to admit, is kind of like my Super Bowl), he admitted that the seven million movies the company had so-far sold “…did not meet our expectations” and that “we looked at it, and we think there is a better way.” Movie rentals. As far as this site is concerned movie rentals are a much more cost effective way for us to consume content we really don’t have any particular need to keep, but ultimately, who cares? This is not a new development. Cinema Now, Movie Link and even Netflix has been streaming content for months (though none of these companies yet have a box that can deliver the content to your living room). Frankly if I had the choice (and for the most part I do), I’d see all movies in the theater because that’s where they were meant to be seen. MagneticMediaFed is concerned about “television,” a word that used to describe a physical piece of technology but now is about an experience. It is that experience in which I am most interested.
So what about television rentals?
Here is where things start to get exciting. How long do we think it’ll be before Apple applies it’s new rental technology to television content? America is quickly learning that “ownership” doesn’t mean a damn thing in a world where everything is available all the time, so why should it continue to pay two bucks an episode for a series they really like watching but don’t plan on watching again (and again)?
Imagine the following scenario: Apple TV begins allowing television rentals for maybe half-price ($1) under the same guidelines as its current movie policy (you have a month to start watching the video and then 24 hours to finish it once it’s started). All the major networks get on board. Content is available, say, six hours after it’s initial broadcast. Suddenly the average viewer could easily watch all of their favorite programs, and maybe even a few they’re just mildly interest in, for roughly the same cost as their cable bill (the beauty would be that some months — like December, when no one is watching anything — you’d pay far less, and maybe in October when all the new series premiere you might end up paying more. Either way you’re paying for what you’re watching, not what you aren’t). Plus, you wouldn’t be swallowing up your hard drive with hours and hours of video you will never watch again. It is the inevitable future. At least it should be, but there are problems.
It’s hard to say whether the networks will embrace this move or not, but amazingly, I don’t see them as the biggest threat (they’re clearly already supportive to a certain degree). The way I see it, the biggest obstacle that could get between us and our on-demand life is not the content distributors, but the cable companies. This is not in their best interest. They want us to keep their box so they can sell us their on-demand movies and content (which in a way isn’t much different from the Apple model, except with it we’re forced to sign up for all of these extra packages and channels for which we have no use. In the cable environment you can’t get something you want without getting five things you don’t). It’s also somewhat problematic that, for the most part, these the people we have to go through in order to get the high speed connections that make internet streaming a possibility in the first place. But if the cable companies are the gate-keeper’s to the information (by either owning the box or owning the pipe) what is to keep them from jacking up the cost of their service? Take, for example, this little chessnut of bad news: in Beaumont, Texas, Time Warner Cable will be testing out a new pricing model that charges consumers per-byte instead of a flat internet fee. This, to say it mildly, is disasterous, and could very well cripple our technological god-given right to get what we want when we want it (for a small fee). All of this awesome (and some not-so-awesome, but readily available) HD content isn’t small. It’s massive, and if one is pulling down in the upwards of five gig worth of video through their pipe each night, one can only assume the cable company is going to find a way to make you pay for it, rather, make you pay them for it.
We’re rapidly approaching a scenario where the standard broadcast model will cease to be profitable for content distributors and yet the new media, our on-demands lifestyle, could potentially be so financially crippling for the consumer they’ll rebel from the medium altogether. Why even watch television when you can drop fifty bucks on some other form of entertainment that isn’t tying up your living room with boxes, your credit card with a la carte programming charges and your cable bill with outrageous overage fees?
We’re so close to a world where all of the barriers have been broken down. A world where a small, independent production company can easily distribute episodic television to a large audience without the need of an actual broadcast or cable network to get the product seen. It’s exciting. It’s thrilling. It’s in HD! And yet the people with the power, the people with the pipe and the control, are going to bleed us dry to make it happen.
Oh well, at least I’ll be able to save those four inches with my new super-thin TV.
