andrewducker | My square eyes are now widescreen

Like brick and mortar stores television channels will be around as long as baby boomers are around.

Their numbers are huge and they are uncomfortable with change so as long as they have the ability to spend money traditional outlets for advertising (such as television channels) and shopping (such as malls) will continue to flourish.

That said, expect a huge shift in television advertising from beer ads to cool adult diapers and laxatives.

Agreed, with the proviso that these things will last slightly longer if media companies etc do a few complete balls-ups when it comes to customer service. I'm actually switching from eMusic to buying physical CDs from a local independent record shop, because eMusic treat their customers like shit (and they're the least-worst of the online music retailers, god help us...)

The thing is - I think most people under, say, 50, won't react to bad online customer service from music or video companies by going to brick and mortar stores. They'll simply pirate what they would have otherwise purchased saying to themselves "Fuck it. If I'm going to get treated like shit I might as well just pirate the stuff."

Good point. The stuff I want generally isn't available on torrent sites, so that's probably skewed my viewpoint somewhat...

Gotch. I'm male, a nerd and a pop culture whore, which means that pretty much all content I could possibly want is on kickasstorrents.

If I was female, interested in independent programing, not into the type of shows geeks like and/or looking for arthouse movies I'd be screwed by the torrent sites.

Case in point - just try to find that Coca Chanel movie staring the Amelie girl in it on any torrent site. Because it doesn't appeal to the geek male crowd it's nowhere.

But, because Black Swan has lesbian sex in it, the damn thing was up on kick ass torrents 12 hours after it hit the theaters.

Arthouse is downloadable *if you know where to look* (cough, cough). That said, my source for such downloads relies heavily on r*p*dsh*re or similar, with all the associated drawbacks; and the site itself borders on the NSFW with some of its links.

I didn't think you could search for files on rapidshare. I thought you had to actually know someone with the file to have them send it to you?

You can't - but there is at least one site that does post up aggregated links to arthouse films via RS and similar.

http://isohunt.com/torrent_details/189639445/coco+before+chanel?tab=summary

Maybe you were just misspelling it?

Thanks!

The last time I checked there was only one download and it didn't have the subtitles and had no comments so I couldn't be sure it wasn't a rick roll. And, since I was looking for it for my girlfriend who doesn't speak French the no subtitle version didn't help me.

Downloading now.

There are lots now. :)

I think I'll download it myself, come to think of it.

For what it's worth it's sometimes easier to find subtitles separately than torrents that include them - but then you face the danger of getting a subtitles track that's about a minute out of synch with the actual dialogue, which is massively frustrating...

Well there you go. I'm female and interested in independent programing, but I appear to be sorted anyway, *grin*. Go lesbianism!

The implosion of eMusic is interesting because it's pretty much a textbook example of companies *just not getting it*. And I have been with them for nearly a decade; sufficiently long that my £11/month is buying allegedly £37 worth of downloads, and I am still considering leaving.

Exactly - I'm in the same position. If you haven't already, cancel your subscription - they'll offer to put it on hold and give you a free month. Take your free month and then decide...

Also, the context of a TV channel is likely to change. Think user curation.

Yes, but the desire to click buttons on a remote to see what is on right now, rather than downloading or recording of otherwise DVRing won't go away.

The boomers have spent 50 plus years scrolling through their TV to see what's on. That's too ingrained a habit to change.

Although a decent interface helps a lot. The cable TV interface we have is a simple scrolling block of programs (a bit like this.

At the moment you press up/down to choose a show, and you can also scroll right to choose a show in the future to record. The new interface (due any month now) also allows you to scroll left and choose a show in the past - and then will automatically use Video On Demand to show it to you.

Simple enough that even old people can use it.

As in YouTube channels?

I can see those being a nice niche, like public Spotify playlists, or last.fm telling people what you've watched recently.

Is bascially what I'm thinking. Channels as we know them today won't exist, but everyone will be creating their own channels, similar to Spotify &c.

Lots of people will simply subscribe to a channel created by a friend of trusted source and watch their stuff, some will create bespoke lists, etc.

What do you mean by "their stuff"? And how would I watch it? I can see shared recommendations working, but spotify playlists are 3 minute bursts of songs - I'm not goign to watch a bunch of different shows in the order that you recommend them, that'd be barking.

OK, just thinking it through.

TV production company makes show A that I like, and announces show B I might like, and that it'll release an episode a week, or fortnight, or whatever.

I subscribe to it and put it on my channel. You, as a man of taste, subscribe to my channel.

Thus, if you want to watch something on TV, you look at my channel to see what's on that you haven't seen yet. If there is, you can watch it either by show or by broadcast date.

I've already, for example, shared OPML files of my podcast subscriptions to a few people, I'm guessing there will be easier ways to do that over time.

Some people will put effort in to finding out new shows and deciding whether they want to subscribe or not. Others will simply want to turn on t'telly (or equivalent entertainment device) and watch something.

I suspect some of the big channels will continue to exist in some way or other, so many many UK people will subscribe to the BBC Comedy channel, or Dave, or similar. But they won't exist in their current broadcast form.

Aaah, so as a recommendation system, not a channel as we know it today. Yeah, I'll go with that.

I'm sure that brands like the BBC will continue to exist, particularly the ones that commission/produce shows.

Phone calls are still around, but the technology underneath them has been gutted and replaced by moving bits over the internet.

Likewise, TV channels will remain as an optional legacy view, a compatibility layer over the sea of on-demand and streaming video.

Odd that so far three out of three of your readers are TV-less...even where I work (a tech company) I'm the only one who doesn't bother watching *any* broadcast TV.

Possibly just the ones that are fastest to the poll are the techiest :->

I have a TV. The vast majority of the stuff I watch on it is either recorded (V+ box) or downloaded (and then played on a hacked Apple TV running XBMC). I can't remember the last time I watched something in real-time. I expect that as more people fill in the poll the "recorded from broadcast" option will take the lead. I could be surprised though.

Only real-time TV I've watched in six years has been when visiting friends (occasionally to watch a new episode of Doctor Who) or when staying with the in-laws for Xmas. I've not missed it either - but then I'm not a hugely visual person, and watch far less video than most people.

I have a TV, but it only broadcasts shows in French and I'm an English speaker so I download or buy DVDs.

It's sorta grating because the cable company does have options to switch the audio on most of the shows that are not French produced to Spanish, Dutch, German, Portuguese and Italian i.e. all of the original Euro Zone languages except English.

I think they are trying to punish UK vistors/expats for sticking with the pound instead of the Euro.

I do not miss my TV in the slightest. Even when I did, mind, I used it to watch On Demand rather than broadcast. (and some recorded)

But I want to be honest - the UK doesn't have a service comparable to Hulu. And until it does, as long as you have to go to individual services (iPlayer, 4OD &c), I suspect Brits will hold on to their TVs for longer.

(Which is a good thing, until the BBC works out a new way of funding)

I suspect things will get easier on that front once YouView appears.

Yes, that's exactly what you want.

I hope it's as good as Hulu, which is bloody marvellous, even if I end up watching crap 80s films a lot.

I have a TV. Its sitting in my cupboard, and has been for a fair while.

I noticed that the vast majority of what I was watching was either on Channel 4, or on the BBC, and I could just watch those online. So, I put my TV in my cupboard, and switched to streaming.

I've not had access to a TV since I moved out of my parents house in 1996 as a student, and it's never occurred to me to buy one since.

I have a TV, I use it to watch streaming video via Netflix :-)

In the UK you have to pay a TV license to fund the BBC if you have a TV, even if you only use it to watch streaming video from websites. On the other hand, if you *don't* have a TV, but watch BBC programming ten hours a day via your computer, you don't legally have to pay a penny. I suspect this will account for a significant difference in US/UK TV possession rates here.

(BTW and completely off-topic but first time I've talked with you in a while - you really should come over and visit the UK again soon, we've not seen you in *years*).

(Just to emphasise, though, I watch essentially no iPlayer material because using GNU/Linux makes it too awkward, so I don't feel bad about not paying the license. I do buy a LOT of BBC DVDs though...)

Actually, if you have a TV that is never used for watching broadcast TV (or TV that is streamed simultaneously with the broadcast) then you don't need a license.

To use any TV equipment to watch or record any TV programmes as they are being shown on television.
* This includes watching or recording streamed services and satellite TV broadcast from outside the UK. If you only watch on-demand services, then you don't need a licence.

Yeah, but you still need a license if your TV is *capable* of picking up a broadcast signal, even if it's never used for that.

Nope, not true. I've known people that showed they only had their TV hooked up to a DVD player and didn't have to pay. The rules I quoted are quite specific - you only need the license if you're using it to watch TV at the same time as a broadcast.

How odd. I know it used to be that if you were capable of receiving a broadcast signal, even if you didn't, you had to pay. Wonder when that changed?

It never did, IIRC. But TV Licensing claimed you needed one because, well, division of Crapita.

I didn't have a licence when I lived in Torquay despite having a TV used for DVDs. I'd known that was perfectly OK for ages.

I think though, thinking about it, that there might have been a court case confirming it, thus Capita had been enforcing it on people up until someone took them to court over it.

I actually think that's changed. Possibly in the last year. I think now a laptop/computer counts for a license, and I don't think broadast time matters.

I'm totally wrong and you're totally right:

http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/check-if-you-need-one/topics/technology-top8/

What's the fucking point in that? That's insane. And what's 'at the same time'? If I have 300ms lag, is that later?

I went and checked my facts before I left the original comment, because I was sure that whatever the rule was it would be Completely Bloody Stupid.

And the point, I'm sure, is make sure that people don't switch from a TV to a PC and thus escape paying the license fee. Frankly, they should abolish the license fee and put up tax by £100/year. It'd be cheaper to administer and fairer.

Yeah the TV license thing probably would be enough to convince me to drop the TV and watch via the computer instead.

Sorry about the not visiting, our travel budget has been cut back pretty severely the last few years - only made one trip this year (to Hawaii), we'll be back eventually though.

No need to apologise - I know how it is. Just letting you know you'd be welcome ;)

I can't help but feel that people don't always like having all the choice. Personally I can have a lot of trouble deciding what to watch when there's only 20 channels to choose from. Should I ask "what's on tv?" and someone replies "everything", I can imagine I would become somewhat frozen by the magnitude of the task of merely choosing what I would like to see.

Though allowing us to watch everything all the time would not be constricted enough to make people do things like buy the media we could perma-stream. So I imagine that you'll never be able to watch "anything". I guess you might end up having channels which are "what's on" in the same way as we have now, but with no denotion of when it's on. Although with new media, when it's on becomes "when it's released", as I can still see a lot of people wanting to gather around the box (which becomes increasingly misnomered given my current screen has a width to depth ratio of 40:1 and that will get even more ridiculous with OLED and, eventually, QLED) to watch the latest new thing as soon as it comes out.

Oh, absolutely. You'll always have event TV, and people will flock to that as it appears. It would make sense to use broadcast-ish standards to get stuff like that out to a large chunk of the audience cheaply.

But, even with "everything" to watch, people are self-limiting. Me and Julie are 1/3 of the way through season three of Chuck, and in the middle of season four of How I Met Your Mother, and we're happily following those. Once we've finished them we'll find something else to watch instead.

True, you will always have tv guides to guide you or friends or online reviews or tivo telling you what you like, so there'll be enough out there on the fringe of your perception that you'll have a limited pool out of which to make a decision.

"I can't help but feel that people don't always like having all the choice."

True - this is a well-known thing - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice:_Why_More_Is_Less . I like it myself - it gives me more opportunity *not* to do things.

I'll explain. When I moved to Manchester to go to university, from a very small town, suddenly there were a lot more opportunities to *do* things. If someone who did one single I'd quite liked once had ever played the town where I grew up, I'd have been excited about it for weeks beforehand, but now I could go out pretty much every night and see someone whose music I'd bought. So I only went to those gigs I *really* wanted to go to. The same with music. As a teenager, growing up with scarce music, I would buy *every* record I might conceivably ever want to listen to, because I wouldn't know if I'd ever see it again and I couldn't pick and choose anyway - hence I have dozens of charity-shop Johnny Cash albums and so on.

Whereas now, I know that should I ever want to listen to Johnny Cash singing Christmas songs, I can hear it with two clicks, so I save my money and time for the things I actually care about, or the few things that are still scarce (things that are too unpopular to torrent, generally).

I think it's awesome to be able to get at exactly what you want, when you want it, with very little hassle. Once you're there then there's normally links to other things that other people have thought are similarly great and you can click on forever. I guess I was thinking too much in the sense of unlimited options and no filtering, which would never be the case.

Also, according to the poll you never watch things on shiny disks! Why, then, am I buying you some for Christmas?

I didn't note those were multi-clicky rather than mono-clicky, so I clicked on the one I do most at the moment.

Also: I need coasters.

It is possible that video content will diversify into stuff which really takes its meaning from being broadcast fresh to a mass audience - 24 hour news, Doctor Who Christmas special, World Cup Final - and that which is more like a novel which lots of people read in the same year.

I'm very even now between streaming and shiny disks, thanks to V+. Downloading is well behind because I tend not to download if the thing is readily available on shiny disks (nothing I want is ever available to download legally for money at a price I'm happy to pay -- I do sort of hope this changes soon, but I do not understand why they think I'll pay the same price as the Blu-Ray for something that is lower quality and *cannot be watched on my TV*), and I have quite forgotten that it's possible to record video.

I still watch less than one show a day on average though.

I agree about legal downloads. Stupidly overpriced. V+ (and the Virgin VoD) are a good start, although I'm seriously looking forward to the Tivo going on general release, because the interface is so much better.

The timing of your poll changes my answer. Two months ago I'd have answered "shiny discs" as my major source of media... in the mean time I got Netflix for my Xbox, which has skewed my viewing patterns hugely. Who knows... in a couple of months I could be back to shiny discs after the new-service honeymoon is over, though I doubt it.

-- Steve thinks that the concept of channels will outlive its original meaning for at least another generation, perhaps two. Perhaps it'll finish dying after the last of those who remember when MTV actually broadcast music do.

Postscript: my "downloaded" isn't "torrented" these days; they're purchases or rentals from the Zune Marketplace. Dunno if that matters to anyone but me, but there it is.

-- Steve's a bit prudish on these sorts of things.

I think the concept of channels will disappear when someone has a better idea. Channels are already reorganising themselves by theme rather than just by broadcaster - so if you talk about something being on Dave or Sky Sports or CBeebies you're specifying genre quite narrowly already.

Radio has done this rather more for rather longer - I might listen all day to Radio 3 and never to Radio 1 because that's a reliable way to get a consistent type of content.

A better idea is "shows". I don't care what production studio produces Chuck, or which channel it was originally broadcast on. I just want to watch the show.

Sure, but if you had a mix of shows of consistent type (or even eclectic but tailored to your tastes), the outlet that sells it to you (broadcaster/ISP/web-service/cinema) might well brand it a Channel, even if it was a one-of-a-kind Andrew Ducker Channel. ISTR last.fm uses that sort of language, or used to?

Edited 2010-12-14 13:52 (UTC)

Yeah, but why would anyone be interested in the Andrew Ducker channel? I mean, a couple of friends might be, just so they could laugh at my taste, but other than that?

People follow your posts of web links, no? I can imagine following the channel of someone I felt had good taste in whatever, for the same reason as I keep an eye on some people's link feeds, and for the same reason that people follow the likes of BoingBoing.

Or perhaps they wouldn't and I'd watch the

pseudomonas channel instead, or one of several custom channels depending on whether I was after news or entertainment.

Edited 2010-12-14 14:02 (UTC)

But you watch shows based on reviews or recommendations, right? I know your tastes pretty well, so if I heard of a new show about, say, redheads in tech support fighting Lovecraftian monsters and having difficulties with a range of assorted lesbian fuckbuddies... where was I?

So, the Buffy fanfic channel, eh?

My point would (kinda) be that that isn't a channel, it's you recommending stuff to me. It might be slightly channel like in some ways, but it's nothing like the experience we currently have of "So, what's on channel five right now?". Recommendation engines are clearly the future of, well, all kinds of consumption.

But what's the difference between a handful of people deciding they like Top Gear, Brit comedy and Top Gear and... some other people doing the same?

Commissioning?

Options. The reason channels exist is that they were the only way to get a show from "them" to "us". When that was the case (or still is for a lot of people) they watch whatever's on BBC1 at 6, if that's when they turn the TV on, followed by whatever's on it at 7pm, unless they choose to turn over to watch whatever is on at 7pm on ITV. It's not just "something from the BBC", it's "whatever is on at that time on the BBC".

With recommendations from your friends, you see that "Simon likes Top Gear Season 5 Episode 17", and can watch that right now, if you fancy it, or use it as a launching board into the entirety of TV, depending on what you want. Completely different experience.

Yeah, this is what I was thinking. You will continue to have Channels for a long time but those channels will be a content and spin demarcation.

I watch a lot of broadcast TV as-broadcast; I like to knit in front of the TV in the evenings and some times prefer to watching new-things and sometimes I prefer to watch things-I-loved-and-bought-the-DVDs-of but I rarely have effort to download or buy-on-DVD shows that I do not already know and like (mostly I like to watch shows on TV to find out if they are good before paying for them).

I also watch a lot of broadcast news at the gym.

We watch a lot of films on DVD via lovefilm. Which is great. Would be better to have it streaming, but that might be tech faff...

As to channels disappearing I'm not sure. I think they'll change a whole lot; I don't think the whole notion of broadcast TV to watch at the moment it is broadcast will go away entirely, people like to discuss what they saw last night with others who also saw it, TV people like to have audience participation (phone-in shows, audience votes etc) that require the audience to all be watching at (roughly) the same time, news happens when it happens, weather reports are for now...

The main recent shift in my video-behaviour is from recording stuff to streaming it, mostly iPlayer.

Most of what I want to watch is available that way, and there's no video content I care enough about to go to the effort of recording it. (Partly because my recording system is (a) fiddly and (b) rubbish.) And making an effort to fit my life round the TV schedule seems almost outrageously silly and backwards now.

I keep wondering about getting a nice shiny PVR setup, but my broadcast TV is exclusively via Sky-Freesat-ripoff service, which doesn't play nicely with any PVR but Sky+, and I'm not planning to get in to a monthly-regular relationship with Mr Murdoch any time soon. My house is in a dell, and has poor analogue TV signal and totally rubbish digital. I might at some point switch over to actual-Freesat with a PVR thingummy at some point, but the motivation isn't quite strong enough. OTOH, the bandwidth you get on digital broadcasts is pretty staggering and not to be sniffed at, especially since I'm on a capped Internet connection.

DVDs ripped to harddisk. I don't have a TV or watch live TV on the web.

I'll count that as shiny disks :->

The idea of channels will be around forever, though they will eventually stop being instantiated as separate broadcast frequencies of television transmissions. Even that will take a very long time to complete, though not too long before it's true of 95% of the people you know.

Channels will become less important, but long-established channels will continue to exist as brands defined by the aggregation of certain types of content.

That said, some channels have effectively assumed the mantle of others; BBC4 is what we used to call BBC2, etc.

I certainly agree that the brands will continue to exist - particularly the ones that are actually production studios/commissioners of content.

My real answer to #1 is "Shortly after Rupert Murdoch dies".

Channels are needed to discover new or mildy interesting background things, same as with radio. It gets sort of stale and canned to use recorded tv all the time, and the choice gets... too rich.

Mind you, I'm part of the problem, because I record every single thing I want to watch and then watch half an hour later to cut out adverts.

I believe channels are here to stay for the same reason weekly sport is here to stay. Why weekly sport is here to stay I don't know, but channels provide it live for a price now and they're going to keep that market by hook or by crook. Seeing other stuff when first shown doesn't matter quite so much, but it's very important with sport.

We've also the example of radio, which despite being free has done fine over the years despite an increasing range of alternative entertainment. I don't see why broadcast TV can't survive too.

Radio exists because people listen to it in their cars. For everything else there's podcasts :->

My square eyes are now widescreen

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