You can't disable the router function and put it in bridging mode? If not, I guess AT&T is out as anything I will EVER consider for home internet!
Yeah, you can. I'm sure it's a very small percentage of customers who do though. Actually, there's a sort of "halfway" bridge mode called DMZ+ that allows you to use your own router but that still lets the AT&T gateway properly handle special traffic like IPTV and VOIP. You may also be allowed to do a full-out bridge mode too, where the AT&T gateway just blindly forwards everything to your own router. I haven't delved too deeply into it all since I'm happy with my BGW210 gateway after having initially assigned static IPs for certain devices on my LAN.
I agree, but there's no advantage to building it in and several disadvantages like added cost for all the people who DON'T want OTA, early obsolescence when ATSC 3.0 arrives, etc.
Given that locals cost more than $10/month now it would be an easy sell to customers if they let people shut off their locals and save money. The first step to selling people on that though is to break out the charge for locals like Mediacom does, so you can see how much they really cost and watch that price keep going up, up and up. Though I wonder if dropping locals is even an option for them - their contracts might not allow it or might specify that they pay x dollars per month per customer not "per customer who receives locals". The local stations know that if everyone getting cable/satellite who could pick them up OTA chose to do so, they'd lose a ton of money. Directv has been busy trying to get streaming rights for all local stations, they might have been forced to accept some terms that limited their ability to let customers drop locals to get those streaming rights...
Yeah, the big issue for MVPDs is the contracts that they make with the network owners. In the largest markets, the broadcast nets actually own and operate their local affiliates, accounting for a huge chunk of viewers nationwide. "Hey DirecTV, you wanna carry ESPN? Then you better include WABC in every package tier for all of your subs in the NYC area, and KABC for all your subs in the LA area, and KRTK in the Houston area, etc." Yes, if every DTV sub had a built-in OTA tuner and antenna in their existing DTV set-up, it would give DTV a much stronger hand when negotiation stand-offs lead to blackouts. But I guess they figure that the actual benefits they'd see there don't justify the cost to include ATSC 1.0 tuners in every STB or home server tower. (As for ATSC 3.0, who knows how that's really going to end up playing out.)
Now, if AT&T launches this proposed $15 skinny bundle (dubbed "AT&T Watch"), then I can see them doing a bit of legwork to let viewers integrate ATSC 1.0 signals. That bundle isn't going to include any locals or any cable channels owned by those companies (nothing from Disney/ABC, Comcast/NBC, CBS or Fox). So why not make the AT&T Watch app capable of integrating those DLNA-compliant streams from HDHomeRun OTA network tuners? I have one of those tuners and can use it with apps from HDHomeRun as well as Channels, Plex and probably others. Heck, to my amusement, I even found that my old Panasonic smart Blu-ray player was able to detect and display live channels from the tuner, I'm sure because the streams are DLNA-compliant.
Perhaps we'll see AT&T even sell their own low-cost retail Android TV streaming box, as Sling TV has done with their AirTV Player, with either a built-in or optional USB ATSC 1.0 tuner. And maybe they'll let the user plug in a USB hard drive so that local TV channels can be DVR'd. Everything -- OTT and OTA live TV, plus cloud DVR and local DVR -- could be elegantly integrated into the same UI.
Why would AT&T do this? Assuming the Time Warner acquisition happens, I think their main strategies with regard to video distribution going forward are threefold:
- Use video subscriptions as something to bundle (at reduced cost or even free) with their mobile and broadband services, as a way to enhance those products and reduce churn
- Make money from subscription fees, both on their premium a la carte services (e.g. HBO, Cinemax, Filmstruck, Boomerang, etc.) as well as their basic cable networks (CNN, TBS, TNT, etc.) distributed through other MVPDs and vMVPDs
- Maximize ad revenue from their ad-supported networks (CNN, TBS, TNT, etc.) by expanding distribution as much as possible and charging more per ad impression via targeted ads on those networks when distributed through their OTT services
When AT&T Watch was initially announced, I thought, "Why give this skinny bundle its own brand and separate app rather than just sticking it in DTV Now as a new starter bundle? Putting it in DTV Now would make it easier to upsell those new subs to a more expensive bundle later." Then it hit me: maybe AT&T would actually prefer that they
didn't upgrade to a bigger DTV Now bundle. Sure, they make a
bit of extra money in carriage fees on those extra channels but not much. The margins are VERY thin, especially among OTT vMVPDs. (As
this piece puts it, "the business of bundling and distributing live networks—either through traditional managed networks or over the top—is not that good anymore.") And the more non-AT&T-owned channels that a viewer has in his bundle, the less time he is likely to spend watching AT&T-owned cable channels (and the ads they carry). The more basic cable channels he has, and the more he is spending on them, the less likely he is to subscribe to HBO.
So why not sweeten this $15 bundle even more by letting the viewer integrate whatever free OTA TV he can receive into it? Imagine spending $100 or less on new hardware (either an HDHomeRun OTA network tuner or an Android TV box packaged with an OTA tuner) and then you could spend just $15 per month going forward (or completely free if you're an AT&T Unlimited wireless subscriber) to have the following:
all the HD and SD locals you can get via antenna (ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, PBS, The CW, Me-TV, Antenna TV, Cozi TV, etc.)
TBS*
TNT*
CNN*
HLN*
Cartoon Network*
TCM*
TruTV*
Audience*
A&E
AMC
Animal Planet
BBC America
BET
Bloomberg TV
C-SPAN
C-SPAN 2
CMT
Comedy Central
Discovery
E!
Food Network
Hallmark Channel
Hallmark Movies & Mysteries
HGTV
History
Investigation Discovery
Lifetime
MTV
MTV2
Nick Jr.
Nickelodeon
Ovation
Paramount Network
RFD-TV
TeenNick
TLC
TV Land
Velocity
VH1
Viceland
WE tv
Weather Nation
Now, none of us know yet exactly what will be in the $15 AT&T Watch bundle. But the above list is a good guess, I think. It's everything in the cheapest $35 DTV Now bundle but without any locals or anything owned by the big four networks. The asterisked networks at the top of the list are those that would be owned by AT&T after the acquisition of Time Warner.
[EDIT: I would add that another reason that AT&T may want to segregate the $15 bundle under its own app/brand is because it may have a different feature set/usage rights than DTV Now has. Perhaps AT&T Watch will not offer a cloud DVR, or -- more likely, IMO -- it will have one but without the ability to FF past ads as you can always do on DTV Now. Remember, AT&T's main strategy with those Turner nets they plan to acquire is to use them to sell as many targeted ads as possible. Fresh targeted ads can be inserted just as easily and effectively in a recording from two weeks ago as on a live channel.]
Could DTV OTT and DTV NOW easily get the local HD sub-channels rights?
I don't see them fooling around with all those subchannels, which only add to the complexity of contracts with locals. However, we are seeing some of the diginets, such as Decades, offer a national feed to vMVPDs. Some, like Comet, live stream a national feed on their websites. Apparently their agreements with local stations do not preclude them from OTT distribution.