29 Jun 2010
by ryanin Rants, Technology, Video, Web Tags: business, hulu, television
Is it any wonder broadcasters are afraid of the Internet? They don’t even understand it. Exhibit most recent: Hulu Plus, a $10 per month service which allows you to watch current and back-catalogs of television shows like X-Files, Modern Family, and others. Oh, wait, a $10 per month “ad-supported” service, something Hulu considers “revolutionary” and a price-point about which they’re “thrilled”.
Which would be great if they only had to eat their own dog food. But here in the real world, with services like Netflix already providing ad-free streaming (to more devices), the value proposition for Hulu Plus seems smaller. Add to this the ability to already see the same shows available on Hulu Plus through regular Hulu (with the same ads), things are looking oddly… off.
The big sell here is that you can watch all currently available episodes of a show, not just the three or five trailing episodes many shows currently allow. But, with movie studios clinging to old markets and training consumers that they’re going to have to wait for releases, people using the convenience of the Internet to view media are more and more willing to wait.
Essentially, Hulu Plus is almost 3 years too late with this idea. The market has better offerings with more value. Unfortunately, if Hulu Plus fails, look for calls of piracy and consumer readiness as reasons. Never mind the complete lack of any value presented and the complete ignorance of what consumers actually want.
28 Aug 2008
by ryanin Technology, Web Tags: bandwidth, business, caps, comast, ISP, throttling
Word on the street is that Comcast will be implementing a 250 GB/month usage cap on their internet service. This is, apparently, in response to the FCC smackdown they recently received for selectively blocking traffic on their network.
Comcast’s argument during that dispute was that blocking traffic (BitTorrent, to be specific) was necessary to maintain the integrity of their network. Their arguments touched on capacity and Comcast’s ability to maintain service levels. Essentially, they were saying that, if they couldn’t block BitTorrent traffic (and, by extension, any traffic they deemed necessary to block), their network wouldn’t be able to reliably support traffic.
And now, all the posturing has brought us back to the stupid days of the Internet; metered traffic. The industry that was supposed to deliver 45mbps to the home, upgrade their infrastructure, and develop better protocls (and failed) has fallen back to their old chestnut for management. Comcast has long had a mystery threshold for what constitutes “excessive usage”, but it appears they’re ready to codify it for all users.
On the one hand, this is a barbaric step in Internet service. Broadband in the US has long been advertised as unlimited, although the advertising rarely coincided with reality. On the other, it’s a hard number that Comcast hasn’t been willing to disclose before.
It also sets the precedent and an opportunity for Comcast’s competitors. If there’s a huge backlash against this move, other ISPs won’t be as eager to make the same move. The opportunity comes in not imposing their own caps, keeping the “unlimited” dream alive.
Personally, I have no idea how much bandwidth I use a month. But I do know this; if I get a overrage charge, I will leave Comcast as fast as I can.
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