Shirley Márquez Dúlcey wrote: > I don't expect any alternatives to Comcast to immediately surface in > my neighborhood. Verizon never did bring FIOS to Boston and has > stopped pursuing new markets, and RCN seems to have abandoned any > further expansion in the city...
By alternates I didn't mean local suppliers of packaged video programming. I meant "over the top" services, like Sling TV (https://www.sling.com/, also marketed as http://www.dishanywhere.com/), or Sony's similar service: http://www.multichannel.com/news/tv-apps/sony-take-viacom-over-top/383701 But these are still limited packages of channels, just cheaper. What I'd really like to see is an open standard for IPTV delivery, rather than the proprietary app model. Then I can take my Kodi media player, go to one of several independent TV listings services, search for desired programming, select a show, and the URL loads up in the media player without requiring any special hardware. Then sprinkle in a bit of infrastructure to handle things like encryption, logins, and micro payments. You can even have third parties creating packages, using an authorization scheme similar to Google's OAuth, where the content provider checks with the third party (whom they've made a licensing deal with) to see if you are authorized. So when you visit the Discovery channel, for example, they give you the most recent episodes for free, but charge a micro payment per episode to access their back catalog, or verify that you have a valid subscription with one of the third party package resellers. Even if old media companies like Discovery and HBO don't jump on this bandwagon, we need this infrastructure for the small upstarts. We have already seen a wave of fairly high quality original programming being distributed through YouTube, and many of those providers are now bumping into the limits of how YouTube lets them monetize and they're looking for new delivery mechanisms. > The longer term hopes are Google Fiber or a municipal network, and > in the unlikely event that the latter happens it would probably be a > data-only network with no TV offerings. That's a different, but related problem. Yes, you need unfettered bandwidth and better choices. Just as well if they don't bundle video. -Tom -- Tom Metro The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA "Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting." http://www.theperlshop.com/ _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@blu.org http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss