Intel Will Lead Us to à la Carte Pay TV

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
Joined
May 9, 2000
Messages
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One day soon you may be singing the praises of Intel; not as a chip maker extraordinaire, but as a champion of the à la carte pay television movement. Intel is an upstart in the subscription TV industry, not even have launched its first subscription yet and is already making waves in the way pay TV packages are bundled.

Intel is the latest to jump into the subscription TV and set-top box game, a very impressive move when you consider the tech titan is taking on pay-TV juggernauts like Comcast, Time Warner and Dish. But it will use broadband, not coaxial cables or satellite dishes
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Thought it'd be Microsoft leading the charge into this impenetrable good old boys club market but if its Intel at least its someone. A real IPTV offering is so overdue and so many companies have announced grand IPTV plans before and you never heard a peep again because they didn't understand the power of the cable industrial complex.
 
So long as the price is right I look forward to a la carte. There's only ever a few stations I watch. It would be even better if you could pay for certain programs because I only watch a few programs on the few stations I watch. It boils down to what's offered and the price though. I don't subscribe to cable or satellite because with how little I watch TV the cost isn't worth it. Fortunately, some of the programs I watch can be streamed for free and the others, well I just gotta drop them. I can catch up on them if I wish by visiting friends and family though.
 
So it comes down to who has more power and influence. Intel or the entire television/broadcast industry.

I don't have much faith in Intel being able to pull this off. I hope they do.
 
based on my current bandwidth caps and the fact HD is a bandwidth hog I'll be able to watch like 12hrs a month! yay!
 
Smythe said:
So long as the price is right I look forward to a la carte. There's only ever a few stations I watch...
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Same here. I am in the process of giving Comcast the boot because they just jacked up my monthly bill by an additional $90. I never watch 90% of the channels they are forcing me to pay for. I'd love to be able to only pay for the channels I watch or even just the shows I watch.
 
Since Intel doesn't own the content I don't see them exerting too much power in this area ... personally what I'd rather see than a la carte is more on demand type options for these packages where you could buy a package for a day, or a week, or a month, or three months only rather than having to add it only as a recurring subscription ... I like HBO when True Blood is on but it is too expensive to carry the rest of the year ... now with all the electronic options we have I would prefer more flexibility in timing than trying to pick and choose individual stations ... but that's just me perhaps ;)
 
In related and equally likely news, I'm going out tonight with the world's hottest supermodel.
 
A la carte is just going to lead to an increase in individual channel programming cost. It might sound like you'll be able to pay a fraction for what you watch, but in reality you will not. The real fight is against the broadcasters who set the costs for this stuff. And Comcast is quickly becoming THE program provider.
 
glutto said:
So it comes down to who has more power and influence. Intel or the entire television/broadcast industry.

I don't have much faith in Intel being able to pull this off. I hope they do.
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The major factor in why you can't just order ESPN or whatever other channels you watch and skip the rest is because of the content owners, not your cable carrier. The cable company doesn't produce the shows, they buy the license to rebroadcast a network channel (like ESPN) from the content owner. However, the content owner doesn't just own ESPN, they also own 'The Glassblowing Channel', 'Vibe 7', 'The Sandpaper Channel', etc. If the cable network wants to carry ESPN, the content provider makes them buy ALL of their channels, and if they don't then they won't sell them ESPN. The content providers know that people will drop their cable company for dish or vice-versa to get access to the high demand channels, and thus they force the cable companies/dish to buy all of their channels. That is the reason you have tons of junk channels and a couple "good" ones.

*You can substitute ESPN for any high demand channel.

What make Intel think the media owners will just give them a better deal? What motivation do the content carriers have to cut their own throat?
 
It's worse than that with stuff like ESPN because ESPN and other content providers refuse to do per subscriber licensing, cable and satellite providers have to pay a fee for every subscriber they have, that's why a lot of networks like ESPN you can't get a cable package that doesn't have it, because Comcast has to pay them regardless if you watch or even receive it at all.
 
what i'd really like is a la carte shows (why bother with whole station) and that's a long way off based on the goal of "exploring smarter, smaller and more flexible bundles." even if the a la carte model is implemented, i fear they'll kill it in the crib with ridiculous prices.
 
glutto said:
So it comes down to who has more power and influence. Intel or the entire television/broadcast industry.

I don't have much faith in Intel being able to pull this off. I hope they do.
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Then again, who owns Intel? We don't really know.

---

I don't watch TV since late 90s and I find it absurd that people actually spend money in order to watch ads lol.
 
I think a la carte TV will be just like the old joke about Flex time ("we have Flex time, you can come in anytime before 08:00 and leave anytime after 17:00 you want" :) ) ... they will give you as few channels as you want so long as you pay the same or more than you pay now ;) ...

people can talk about the models changing all they want but it isn't like you can easily create your own content and even the bootleggers prefer to copy the most desirable offerings, not every singe show available ... so ultimately the content owners are still in the driver's seat more than the distributors or the consumers, unless consumers decide to stop consuming (which so far they haven't been willing to do) ;)
 
I really don't see the point. As it is all the cable companies are moving to more on-demand style of television. On top of that, lots of web based services that offer this, damn near for free in most cases.

All Intel is doing is putting what you find on the web into a neat little set top box, with a monthly subscription fee. As it is I never watch television. I keep cable around cause my family does watch TV. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't teach it how to use the HTPC.

I'm surprised they even have the Oscars tonight. The only good thing about the Oscars is that the nominees are a great list of movies you'll never wanna watch. It's just another chance for Hollywood to make some cash in DVD sales, as people race and buy movies that won awards. Otherwise, they wouldn't give two f*cks about it. In the end, the movie still sucks.
 
Ehren8879 said:
A la carte is just going to lead to an increase in individual channel programming cost. It might sound like you'll be able to pay a fraction for what you watch, but in reality you will not. The real fight is against the broadcasters who set the costs for this stuff. And Comcast is quickly becoming THE program provider.
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This is what I fear will happen should a la carte ever become reality. In fact, I'd be shocked if the price isn't higher for the service. Still, one can dream...

Ashbringer said:
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't teach it how to use the HTPC.
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Haha, nice. HTPCs are awesome. It's too bad people are willing to learn how to use a tablet, but immediately throw their hands up in frustration before they've even tried to learn an HTPC.
 
I welcome any more competitors to the bureaucracy that is television. If it weren't for my wife I would just spend 20 bux to stream everything as opposed to the bigger bill with only a handful of channels I actually watch. :rolleyes:
 
Ashbringer said:
I'm surprised they even have the Oscars tonight. The only good thing about the Oscars is that the nominees are a great list of movies you'll never wanna watch. It's just another chance for Hollywood to make some cash in DVD sales, as people race and buy movies that won awards. Otherwise, they wouldn't give two f*cks about it. In the end, the movie still sucks.
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I think there is a generational element to the Oscars ... although they don't seem to be as popular with the coveted 18-25 year old segment they do well with the 30+ segments ... they also do well internationally ... people worldwide worship celebrity and I think actors appear to be the most accessible celebrity profession ... even if ratings in the USA trail off a little they might just adjust it to make it more appealing to a worldwide audience ;)
 
A la carte will not work as intended because most stations/channels are owned by a few parent companies who will only sell their channels as complete packages not individually.
 
I've been waiting years for this to happen! If Intel can pull it off, I might actually consider going back to having cable (or whatever it will be called) again. My days of paying $150 a month for 200 channels I don't watch are over. Its time for the industry to adapt or die.
 
Smythe said:
Haha, nice. HTPCs are awesome. It's too bad people are willing to learn how to use a tablet, but immediately throw their hands up in frustration before they've even tried to learn an HTPC.
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I have it setup really stupid proof. I use a MCE remote that if you hit the green button, starts up MediaPortal. From there you can browse the 2 TB hard drive for every movie we have. A Netflix shortcut on the desktop, as well as a YouTube shortcut.

If it gets used, it's mostly as a web browser and to play some kids videos to keep the children occupied.
 
i'm really crossing my fingers for this to happen. Though the longer I go without access to ESPN, the more unlikely it will be that I'll pay for the justs sports package if it ever materializes.
 
B2BigAl said:
I've been waiting years for this to happen! If Intel can pull it off, I might actually consider going back to having cable (or whatever it will be called) again. My days of paying $150 a month for 200 channels I don't watch are over. Its time for the industry to adapt or die.
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How can Intel "pull it off"? Think about it.

The companies that own the content sell it to cable/dish for $XX dollars per subscriber. Why would they sell it to Intel for $XX - YY dollars per subscriber? They'd end up losing out on YY dollars per subscriber, plus any rates for bundled channels.

As soon as people had a cheaper option to get the same service, they'd go that route. So instead of the cable company paying them as an example $10 per subscriber for their channel set, they'd get $8 per subscriber from Intel. Why would they want to make less money? To be nice? Because they are fans of IPTV?

It's not dish / cable that are preventing ala-carte affordable TV, it's the content producers. think about it, if the cable company / dish could sell ala-carte and make the same amount of money they would. The copper pipes / airwaves only have so much bandwidth. If they could free up spectrum by not carrying 'The Sandpaper Channel', they would. It would make maintaining their network cheaper to run (lower QAM required to deliver content) and/or more bandwidth for other items like higher speed broadband they could sell for more money.

This is dead before it even hit the ground.
 
It really is a vicious circle. The broadcasters set the rules, charge x amount for 20 channels. The customers want maybe 2 of those 20 but have to pay the price the cable/sat company charges to pay the broadcasters and make a profit. I read a while back that all the cable co's wanted the FCC to setup regulations as to how much broadcasters can up their rates (saw one time that one broadcaster, forgot who, raised their rates by over 50%). When you mix in that cable companies are charged PER digital subscriber vs a flat fee for analog, it makes it harder to move everyone over to digital, which would help setup a pay-per-channel setup. Analog makes its impossible as you would have to have a filter for every channel. By making it more expensive to have digital vs analog the broadcasters are keeping it harder to switch.

In the end its not the cable/sat provider that is evil, its the broadcasters. If regulations were put in that prevented them from doing channel bundling and set individual prices, it would be a win for everyone. The only customers that would be hurting just a bit would be those that have 3-5 tv's but only one set top box, they would be forced to get at least a basic set top box per tv (talking about cable). But, in the end a la carte would benefit everyone but the broadcasters.
 
Hmm, even if they did end up charging the same/more for a la carte at least you know your money is going to support programming you like, as oppose to subsidizing crap you couldn't give 2 shits about (I'm looking at you OWN).
 
For those of you dissatisfied with cable/satellite, drop it. It's the only protest that will ever be effective. Grab subs to Hulu+ and Netflix, and fill in the shows that aren't available there with reasonably priced download options from places like Amazon. For shows not available (legally) via download/streaming, just live without them until they're available in a reasonably priced format - increasing copyright violations via Bit Torrent will only give the A-holes an excuse for more over-reaching legislation and price increases.
 
pelo said:
In related and equally likely news, I'm going out tonight with the world's hottest supermodel.
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Damnit! Stealing ma woman! Prepare to be all murdered (I don't normally advocate relationship murder, but I have been playing violent games so i'm pretty murderous!)!
 
Well, guys, at about 5:30 this morning I was murdered by DP.

Thanks again, Intel.
 
glutto said:
So it comes down to who has more power and influence. Intel or the entire television/broadcast industry.

I don't have much faith in Intel being able to pull this off. I hope they do.
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This.

Intel's venture won't mean much if NONE of the major networks make their stuff available to them, and the opposition has the money and influence to make that happen. Intel needs to have at least Apple and 1 or 2 more heavy hitters (in terms of money and branding) to make this feasible.
 
This will work, simply because the demand is too high. This is going to do for the video industry what the mp3 did for the music industry. People are sick and tired of the bullshit, 20 minutes of garbage commercials per show, waiting 7 days between episodes, everything censored since broadcasts are omnidirectionally projected into your homes, etc.

Just finished watching House of Cards on netflix and this is the single greatest endeavor ever. Just release an entire season of a show all at once, let the viewer watch how they wish, and begin production on the next one. I fully support direct to stream and pay per view type programming.
 
Instead of $100 a month for 297/300 channels you don't watch, it will be $60+ for the 3 you do.
 
I would pay for cable again if I could select the few channels my family watches for a good price. I don't pay $50/month plus taxes for 800 channels I never see.
 
I say:

The providers can charge twice the price and ONLY give internet access with NO tv at all (absolute full bandwidth with absolutely NO caps). Every channel owned by the content owners/producers can come in through It's own website (with secure login). Each "subscriber" pay individually through PayPal or something directly to the content owners. The owners would likely make alot more money with the removal of the middle man (provider). Anyone without an internet connected computer would still get "free" tv over the air (limited and would not change from it current state).

Every tv be made with a NIC/WIFI (as smart tv's are anyway), the ONLY set top box would be a computer (if even that), give the people what they want, make Neilson easier, could be all integrated into a single "broadcaster site", take the provider off the hook, no more rented boxes from the provider (except for just one and that one be a "new "one that isn't refurb...maybe even something purchased by the subscriber instead of rented), no more need for coax cable/splitters as it would all be done via ethernet (gigabit), have coax feed ONLY one device for the home, could be easily setup as a fiber instead of coax (in the home) to feed that one device, and put an end to all this completely ridiculous non-sense that everyone has to deal with.
 
Ashbringer said:
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't teach it how to use the HTPC.
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Both the wife and my 11 year old had no problem learning how to use a Windows 7 HTPC, so it's not that big of a deal.

Ashbringer said:
The only good thing about the Oscars is that the nominees are a great list of movies you'll never wanna watch.
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Agreed. I'm acutally shocked when a movie wins an award and I've actually seen it :)
 
Probably won't change anything in my "consumption" of TV, as I don't watch it. Might be useful for some live events, like sports or elections, but I don't watch the former either, and the latter is better covered interactively and for free from the TV networks' web sites. I like the idea of subscribing to a specific TV show though, as long as it comes ad-free, as commercials are the main reason I can't watch TV. I read a fun thread yesterday asking "why did they interrupt the commercials with the race?" The other reason I don't watch TV is it's such a waste of time, when you could just as easily waste your time on the Internet.
 
This will in effect push cable company content pushers out of the way and make them really work for the dollars. They will either have to compete or get shut out. I for one applaud this effort and if Intel can pull it off in a meaningful and smart way to bring real ala carte to the television market then I'd be for it. There are only 10 channels or networks that I even watch, so let's say each one cost me $10, it's still a deal for me.
 
I would pay 25 a month for just a sports package with ESPN and regionals....

Everything else I need I get OTA.

Pretty please?
 
King of Heroes said:
.Intel's venture won't mean much if NONE of the major networks make their stuff available to them, and the opposition has the money and influence to make that happen. Intel needs to have at least Apple and 1 or 2 more heavy hitters (in terms of money and branding) to make this feasible.
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Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Hulu, and a whole host of other corporations have already attempted this and failed miserably. What in the world goes through peoples' heads when they think this idea is original and that Intel even has a chance to succeed, I have no idea.
 
canna said:
How can Intel "pull it off"? Think about it.

The companies that own the content sell it to cable/dish for $XX dollars per subscriber. Why would they sell it to Intel for $XX - YY dollars per subscriber? They'd end up losing out on YY dollars per subscriber, plus any rates for bundled channels.

As soon as people had a cheaper option to get the same service, they'd go that route. So instead of the cable company paying them as an example $10 per subscriber for their channel set, they'd get $8 per subscriber from Intel. Why would they want to make less money? To be nice? Because they are fans of IPTV?
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Here's the thing. For this to work Intel would need to do one of two things.

#1 Sue the crap out of ISPs so Intel bandwidth isn't counted against bandwidth caps.

#2 Setup your own ISP and compete against cable companies.

First one is if Intel is lazy and just want quick profit. The second though is more ambitious, but has chance for greater profits.
It's not dish / cable that are preventing ala-carte affordable TV, it's the content producers. think about it, if the cable company / dish could sell ala-carte and make the same amount of money they would. The copper pipes / airwaves only have so much bandwidth. If they could free up spectrum by not carrying 'The Sandpaper Channel', they would. It would make maintaining their network cheaper to run (lower QAM required to deliver content) and/or more bandwidth for other items like higher speed broadband they could sell for more money.

This is dead before it even hit the ground.
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Doesn't help that cable companies still use MPEG2 as well. Everyone wants subscriptions, cause they make guaranteed money. Why you think online sites want you to be billed automatically?

You certainly don't need TV taking up space in the cable line. They could do what phone companies use and go VOIP, or Cable over IP.
 
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