Streaming may be worth it, even when it does cost more

SpaethCo

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Pub Member / Supporter
Nov 7, 2005
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Minneapolis, MN
There is an endless supply of threads, blog posts, and articles talking about how to save money by "cutting the cord." Looking at how services are shaping up with package bundles, price increases, and carriage disputes, in a lot of ways this is turning into more of a "cord switch." With the content producers calling most of the shots, eventually this is going to lead to price uniformity for content between cable, satellite, and streaming providers. One key disadvantage the streaming providers will have at scale is that their distribution costs will continue to increase linearly with their number of simultaneous viewers. Eventually we're going to hit a scaling threshold where linear distribution (live TV) streaming will be more expensive to the consumer than cable or satellite.

Even knowing the costs will increase, here are what I think the "killer features" are that will still make streaming worth it in the future.

Unified TV Interface
For years I've used Harmony programmable remotes to control my entertainment devices. For the most part, the solution works okay, as long as everything responds correctly to the remote inputs. Occasionally the AV receiver will ignore an input change, the TV won't turn on, the DirecTV receiver will ignore a power on command, but 95% of the time it works the way it should. Still, the remote still presents an uphill battle for anyone else who uses the remote (wife, kids, house guests).

As you switch between services, each device has its own slightly different navigation interface, different icon set, and you have to hunt on the remote to find things like the "red button" or "yellow button."

In my current setup with an AppleTV 4k, everything works with a single 6 button remote. A single button press of the remote engages HDMI-CEC to turn on the receiver, set the input, turn on the TV, and also set the input there. With that single remote, 100% of our entertainment options are unlocked.

Want to stream a movie off the home NAS server? Launch "Infuse"
Want to watch local OTA stations live? Launch "Channels" which taps into an antenna connected HDHomerun
Want to watch "cable" networks? Launch "YoutubeTV" or "Philo" (this fragmentation is still necessary in the streaming world, unfortunately)
Apps are available for all our subscriptions, from Hulu, to HBO, to Netflix.

Across all the apps, text input can be done either through voice dictation or via iPhone/iPad text input. Siri voice commands like "Fast forward 30 minutes" can be used.

When anyone is done watching, just hold the "Home" button, select "sleep" and everything turns off.

1 remote. 1 interface.

Watch anywhere, full experience
Perhaps the best benefit of online streaming with "cloud DVR" is having a centralized playback index. You can start watching a show on TV, pick it up right where you left off on your iPad, and finish up watching it on a phone. It's all the magic of DirecTV multi-room viewing, extended to any device you can use anywhere with an Internet connection.

User profiles

Sometimes it can be annoying to dig through a long list of DVR programs just to find the one thing you specifically recorded and wanted to watch. One of the best features of online streaming services is individual profiles for DVR content, channel lists, and preferences. This is an area where YoutubeTV really shines, because you can customize the order of your live channel guide. I can put the channels I care about most at the top of my list, meanwhile, my other half can arrange her channels in a way that appeals to her the most.

As YoutubeTV learns the things we each tend to watch, it makes personalized suggestions of other programming that might appeal to us individually. As a discovery tool for content, this is a huge win over traditional TV.

The end of DVR management
This didn't present itself as a huge win until we got to services like Youtube TV and Philo. It's surprisingly nice to not have to think about deleting DVR content ever. Similarly, it's nice to be able to do "blanket recording" with services like YoutubeTV, where I can just select "Record all NHL games." I might not watch half of the games, but it doesn't matter. There is no space allocation that I'm taking up, and I don't have to worry about deleting recordings to make sure I have room. Most importantly, I don't have to be selective about what I record out of fear it will purge things off my list too quickly.

Faster rollout of picture quality enhancements

Unlike their broadcast counterparts, streaming services inherently have the ability to present multiple stream types to clients. This means that they can more quickly add things like h265/4k streaming options without having to completely revamp their entire infrastructure to do it.

YoutubeTV has come a long way in the last 18 months. When I first looked at the service, there was still a lot of limitations around frame rate and bitrate. Now they're offering streams of NBCSN de-interlaced into 1080p60 hitting bitrates north of 7mbps. This is the first year that I've gone primarily to streaming to watch the NHL playoffs instead of DirecTV. This time of year seems to be rough with DirecTV (satellite) compression, and there are nights where the picture quality of YoutubeTV blows DirecTV away. Here's an example of a particularly bad night for DirecTV:

DirecTV: https://live.staticflickr.com/7874/33712441738_d30851f0f3_o.jpg
YoutubeTV: https://live.staticflickr.com/7818/40623425183_2f4ae976a5_o.jpg
 
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Unified TV Interface
What are the chances that a unified interface is possible?

I fully agree that UI will be the sticking point for many, if not most.

I think pretty much everyone recognizes that anything based on Siri is fraught with frustration. Persistent rumors are bubbling about Apple considering using Google Assistant because they really need help that badly. In the end, I believe that a voice-based UI is among the poorest options for active viewing.

Apple may well be the reason that a UI can't move forward as their zeal to propagate unique design metaphors has put their customers in a corner. Easy becomes exponentially complicated as the complexity of the task increases.
 
Actually Apple's TV app on the AppleTV is a pretty good step in the right direction. Easy to use and it either plays the video from the app itself or calls the app needed. Almost seamless and more so for those videos that it directly supports like subscriptions via Apple. It's as close to a unified UI as there is these days.
Tivo does something similar, but not quite as smoothly. Search for a movie/show that is on a streaming service it supports and it calls the app and starts the video. But it leaves you in that app and it does take a bit of time to load the app. The AppleTV does it quicker.
 
Roku is trying a similar approach with their Roku Channel. They're bringing together Roku's ad-supported content along with all the movie plexes and some other premium content that you can subscribe to through Roku. There doesn't seem to be a way to jump directly to an particular title. Amazon does maintain a last watched but it doesn't include add-on programming from HBO or CBS All Access for example.

As favorites lists are typically pretty difficult to construct, I don't think the answer lies there unless the lists literally build themselves.
 
What are the chances that a unified interface is possible?
I’m not sure it will ever be 100%, but I have to say the AppleTV is surprisingly close.

I’m not sure how I skipped it on the initial post, but one of my favorite features of the Apple UI is better playback navigation. On YoutubeTV and Philo, you can “soft tap” the remote touchpad to skip through thumbnails to easily find the end of a commercial break and then “hard click” the remote to re-join playback at that point. That user interface feature alone turns skipping commercials into a 3-4 second affair, and I don’t constantly overshoot re-joining my program like I do on the DirecTV client with 30 second skip. Also, since the primary interface is a touchpad, you can easily scrub along the playback timeline if you want to do something like jump 75% into a recording quickly.

You can get a lot of the same functions on other platforms — FireTV and Roku will both offer up thumbnails for video timeline navigation. That function alone is a huge win from a user experience standpoint.

This mostly started as a “If DirecTV gives me problems, I can always fall back to streaming” venture for me, and it’s ultimately turned into a “Streaming first, with a fallback to DirecTV” solution mostly for the user interface benefits.

It’s really disappointing to me that DirecTV is so buried in the dedicated client mindset. Years ago they started on the path to open that up with DirecTV2PC, and then eventually that got shutdown because they wanted to focus on $7/mo clients instead. If I could use an AppleTV (or Roku or FireTV) app that could interface with my Genie server like the client units do today, scaling back my use of DirecTV services wouldn’t even be a thing. I don’t hold out hope for that changing though, because even with their streaming service they’re focusing on developing a box specifically for streaming DirecTV.
 
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I don't trust Live Streaming services to keep their commercial FF abilities in the long run. Plain and simple, if I cannot skip commercials on every channel, I am not interested. I'd rather pay for a month's access to something like CBS All Access without commercials to catch up on all the shows from a particular network than live with a service where I cannot FF commercials because my recording has been replaced with the On Demand version. I had heard YTTV wasn't doing this any more, but recently I've heard they are again. Not sure what to believe TBH.
 
When I speak of a unified UI, I'm thinking across all hardware platforms and one that doesn't depend on anyone to be particularly dexterous, quick to react to force feedback or other UI shortcuts widely employed in gaming and gadgets.

Apple tells you that all that matters is their ecosystem but that's perhaps not practical in a world where you have to buy multiple units at $100 more than an Amazon UHD stick each. You can get a 50" Roku enabled UHDTV for $80 more than an ATV4K 64MB model. Maybe not a superior solution, but surely good enough for most.

DIRECTV as a DBS platform isn't exciting anymore. It seems like hardware development has ground to a halt and software is perhaps one step back for every step or two forward. I'd really be surprised to see the C71 released. The proof that Android TV (the presumed foundation of the C71) is the future certainly remains to be seen outside of those who love their Sony TVs.

As for the two-bite-sized remotes, I hate them and I believe that I'm not alone.
 
I don't trust Live Streaming services to keep their commercial FF abilities in the long run.
If skipping commercials goes away for streaming DVR, I don’t see it it lasting long for cable and satellite DVR either. Honestly, you don’t control the software in either case, and they clearly have commercial markers working on the satellite feeds because you get local commercial insertions on the DVR. DirecTV already enforces no skipping for OnDemand downloads.

I had heard YTTV wasn't doing this any more, but recently I've heard they are again. Not sure what to believe TBH.
They only do the next-day OnDemand swaps for CBS and the CW these days, and within a couple weeks for some content on Smithsonian. (So CBS, and networks that CBS has an ownership stake in) This changed last fall when they worked out deals with all of their content providers, except CBS.
 
When I speak of a unified UI, I'm thinking across all hardware platforms and one that doesn't depend on anyone to be particularly dexterous, quick to react to force feedback or other UI shortcuts widely employed in gaming and gadgets.
That’s fair. The Apple interface isn’t for everyone, and as you say, Roku is probably good enough for most use cases. The real gain is in being able to aggregate all of your content through a single device so you don’t have to keep changing inputs.

As for the two-bite-sized remotes, I hate them and I believe that I'm not alone.
I hated mine until I bought a silicone case for it. Once you have texture to work with to be able to feel top and bottom, and not have the stupid thing slip out of your hands, it gets way better.
 
If skipping commercials goes away for streaming DVR, I don’t see it it lasting long for cable and satellite DVR either. Honestly, you don’t control the software in either case, and they clearly have commercial markers working on the satellite feeds because you get local commercial insertions on the DVR. DirecTV already enforces no skipping for OnDemand downloads.

They only do the next-day OnDemand swaps for CBS and the CW these days, and within a couple weeks for some content on Smithsonian. (So CBS, and networks that CBS has an ownership stake in) This changed last fall when they worked out deals with all of their content providers, except CBS.

Yeah, Dish doesn't allow commercial FF on some OnDemand titles. All this will do is push me towards watching more and more content on services/channels which do not have commercials. I want to be engaged in the show, not be sold something. I don't care one whit about their need to make Wall Street happy by growing advertising revenue. I am already paying plenty for the content. Heck, I'd go so far as to just buy seasons of the shows I now have to FF through commercials on Amazon or iTunes or Vudu. The only problem with that is having to wait until the next day to watch certain things.
 
The real gain is in being able to aggregate all of your content through a single device so you don’t have to keep changing inputs.
I submit that this isn't far enough. I believe that many want the same interface throughout their viewing experience; not changing TV inputs is imperative but having the transport controls (an old tape machine term) and menu metaphor work the same across the board is awfully important.

The ability to quickly add new streaming sources will probably also be important.
 
If they end skipping commercials on Dish DVRs, including previously recorded stuff, I think it would be the end for Dish. And I think they know it. Why would I bother paying for something when I lose the second most important reason I have for having the service in the first place? Time shifting being the most important.

There’s so much free on YouTube and Amazon Prime Video that I’m having second thoughts about keeping Dish. Sure, we’d lose some programming we like, but there’s just so much more out there.


Sent from my iPhone using SatelliteGuys
 
There’s so much free on YouTube and Amazon Prime Video that I’m having second thoughts about keeping Dish.

Curiosity Stream is quite a deal as well when you buy a year's subscription direct from them. Not so great if you go through Dish.
 
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To me one of streamings big pluses is it's cross channel on-demand capabilities as presented on Amazon Prime's front end. I can add shows or movies to my watchlist from any of the channels I subscribe to on Prime and they all appear in one list, accessible on the home page, irregardless of which channel they're offered from. It beats having to launch a seperate Amazon, Acorn, or Britbox app just to see what I have stored on each individual watchlist before deciding what to watch. That's pretty much "unified" to me. :)
 
If they end skipping commercials on Dish DVRs, including previously recorded stuff, I think it would be the end for Dish.
I think this will be a call made by the content producers, not Dish. When Dish announced autohop, they got sued by the major broadcast networks. ABC and CBS settled to re-ink carriage contracts, with only NBC hanging in the fight for a while before ultimately settling as well.

Now that all the networks are building their own distribution platforms with CBS All Access, NBCUniversal streaming, and Disney/Hulu they aren’t fully dependent on cable and satellite to push their content beyond OTA broadcast limits. With that shift in bargaining power, I wonder if forced ads might be something that will come up in future contract negotiations.
 
FWIW: All I want is FF or 30 second skip. I don't need autohop. As it is, I almost never get take advantage of it.
 
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Cut a cord, sorta

Quality PC program to rip Blu-ray's for easier access?

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