Submitted by acohill on Tue, 11/17/2009 - 09:03
If you ever wondered how the "free" video channels on the Intertubes could make any money, it is becoming apparent that the plan all along was to turn them into TV, complete with ads. And you can't turn the ads off. The stop button on the players does not work while the ads play.
It's not really surprising--someone has to pay for the bandwidth to deliver video. But with the emergence of ad-supported online video, it is another nail in the coffin of old-fashioned analog TV. The cable companies, in the early and middle years of this decade, bet many billions that they would be able to maintain control of their TV monopoly, but they are being squeezed because their business model for delivering Internet is broken--no matter how much bandwidth a cable customer uses watching online video instead of old-fashioned "TV," the cable company does not make a cent more. And even the newer cable systems, because they used an antiquated shared bandwidth model, can't keep upping the amount of bandwidth indefinitely without degrading their TV service.
They could quickly and easily dig themselves out of this hole by changing their business model to an open access, service-oriented architecture, but so far, they seem to prefer trying to hold on to their monopoly instead.
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When we first tried Hulu for
When we first tried Hulu for watching TV, we loved it. It was basically like using our DVR, which has been a household must since we got our first in 2004. We hardly ever watch live TV anymore, except sports. Even when we do watch 'live' programming, we tend to pause at the beginning, get some food together, and then watch once a good buffer is established, so we can skip commercials most, if not all, of the way. The short ads on Hulu are tolerable, and for the time being, were politics free during the campaigns this year, though granted none were national. I can live with short 15, 30, and 60 second commercials for online streaming video...what I can't go for is the 3-4 minute commercial breaks with the Sham-Wow guy.