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- Time Warner Cable Tries to Turn Back the Clock on DVRs. Please, just give me back that one hour... Originally uploaded by SylV - like Sylvie... Cable companies may hate TiVo, but at least they've come to accept that digital-video recorders are here to stay. Or have they? Time Warner Cable is introducing a DVR-like service called Look Back that lets viewers time-shift shows but doesn't let them fast-forward through the ads. (Time Warner Cable is a sister company of my employer, Time Inc.). From a viewing-experience point of view, Look Back is a step backwards compared to a full-throttled DVR like TiVo. You can only watch shows from earlier the same day and you are forced to watch the ads. The whole point of DVRs is that they allow you to watch shows when you want to watch them, which might include catching up on a whole week's worth of The Daily Show at 3 AM on a Saturday. Being limited to one day's worth of TV sort of defeats the purpose. And don't underestimate the appeal of being able to skip through the ads. It makes the TV-viewing experience both more enjoyable and more efficient (you can watch more actual TV when you strip out the ads). So what are the folks at Time Warner Cable smoking? They are betting that people will put up with their hobbled, networked version of a DVR because it will be free. (TiVo, in contrast, charges an extra $13 to $17 a month for its service). It's amazing what people will put up...
(08/13/07 09:01 PM)
- Microsoft Plays With P2P TV. Video: LiveStation Demo Microsoft Research (MSFT) and a UK-based company called Skinkers are developing peer-to-peer software called LiveStation for streaming live television over PCs. Think of it as a Slingbox Without the Box. (See demo video above). Except that TV stations would have to sign up to stream their broadcasts over the service. Using P2P networks is the most bandwidth efficient (and least costly) way to deliver video over the Internet. Joost, Babelgum, and Veoh also all use P2P distribution techniques in one form or another. But they all deliver videos that are already stored somewhere (their servers or the computers of their members), as opposed to live streams. I'm not sure how difficult it would be for any of these services to offer live streams as well. It doesn't seem like that big a deal. Joost, for instance, is working on (or already has) the ability to synchronize the streaming of a particular show so that you and all of your friends can watch it at the same time while chatting over Joost. Making that a live stream should be easy enough. The bigger question is: On the Internet, does live TV even matter any more? The TV schedule is a product of the historical limitations of broadcast television, where you have to broadcast the same shows to everyone at the same time. But those limitations are falling away. Even in cable and satellite TV, the growth of pay-per-view and on-demand channels proves that if you give consumers more...
(07/06/07 09:01 AM)
