Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Windows Vista HTPC

Actually, it means walking away from some media distribution forms such as cable, which is exactly what I have done.

I get very annoyed by all the crap I have to go through just to get a few decent channels. I won't be going back until such time as I can watch ONLY the content I want when I want to. Anything less is not worth it to me.

Add DRM and it just pushes me further away.

If DRM software is going to force me to re-boot my too often because its poorly implemented I will walk away from that as well. I get very annoyed when DHCP informs me that there is something wrong with my hardware on a 480p movie.

At some point, bandwidth will no longer be an issue, and stations can offer me content directly again. That will make things interesting. If that dosn't happen, oh well.

You speak of a utopia that I am fairly certain will never happen. Actually being able to choose only the material you want is not in the best interest of the providers, as too many people would only a select few channels and the provider's revenue/profits would drop.

I remember satelite TV was supposed to be this utopia, a pick only what you want type of medium and now look what they have done, bundled everthing up into specific packages to force you to pay for channels very few people actually want, but still allow you to pay more for the higher packages to get all the channels you are truly interested in.

Perhaps. Cable and satalite companies are only middle men. They make their money because there is no way for the content producers, the stations, to get to their audience directly beyond a certain geographic area.

With the internet, we have more content pipes coming into our homes. As I understand it, cable companies have never paid the stations for the content that they deliver to us and I bet thats a real sore point.

If people like PBS were to be able to come to some agreement with the telcos for delivering on-demand content they would jump at the opportunity.

And if its a big pipe dream, oh well. I'll find other ways to amuse myself.

FWIW there is already a hint of change. Cable operators are starting to offer channels on an ala-carte basis. Still gotta pay for the first 30 channels of junk, but its a step in the right direction.