'Hopper' named 'Best of Show' CES 2013 by CNET - award withdrawn due to litigation - Page 3

LOL. These are two of the probably 4-5 channels I actually watch. Besides ESPN and HGTV, I watch NESN (here in New England) for Boston sports, networks again when there's football on or some event and the kids watch Disney Channel. Really that's about it. But to get that I need to highest tier of "digital cable" with 100s of channels I never watch. There's probably a few dozen channels I don't even speak the language. Why can't I opt out ot those?

When we watch TV together. it's usually a movie once or twice a week. Other than that, I don't find anything worth watching.

At least I can pick my own VOIP provider.

As for the Hopper, if you can't skip the commercials until the next day I don't see how it's unlike anything else. I guess how it's not like anything else is the anything elses aren't advertising it as a big feature.

Your information is not correct. When cable TV first came on the market in the 1960s it was called "pay TV" and it was sold to the public as offering higher quality products (such as opera, Broadway plays, classical music concerts, and so on. It was in competition with "free TV" which was supported by commercial advertising. The original Pay TV was like a subscription service and it was non-commercial.

The notion that we must pay our money AND be subject to an endless barrage of advertising is a fairly recent one. It's gotten so bad that not only to we pay for cable TV and have to endure the same commercials as over the air ("free TV"), we even pay for admission to movie theaters and then are bombarded with ten or fifteen minutes of advertising as well! Three cheers for Hopper!

Nicely posted

Source for that information? It directly contradicts what the NCTA says about the history of cable and my own personal experiance with cable. Per The National Cable & Telecommunications Association, cable TV was started in 1948 to enhance poor reception of over-the-air television signals in mountainous or geographically remote areas. I remember getting Cable in the 1980's when it was being rolled out to major metropolitan areas and what we got on it was a mix of paid content (HBO, Showtime, etc) that ran no ads, a mix of 'cable specific' (MTV) channels that ran ads, and rebroadcasts of local and national OTA channels that ran ads - pretty much identical to what is on there today. The only difference I see today is that cable channels are allowed to replace specific ad segments with their own content so instead of seeing 'New York City' specific ads in Omaha, you see local ads instead.

http://www.ncta.com/About/About/HistoryofCableTelevision.aspx

Alright jdurbin we get it. You're a DirecTV employee. You could not make that any more clear. I'll also give you the benefit of the doubt that you are indeed in a position with DirecTV who actually gets input on Michael White's competitive strategies involving Dish. I will also assume you are not some ex-MS-13 tattoo faced ex-con install guy that, from my experience, has typically been the rude and hostile face of DirectTV to me the end user for many years.

But I sense the fact you took the time to post 12 replies on a single page on avsforum means that for all your bluster, Dish has you all a little bit scared with this. Because let's be honest there isn't REALLY all that much difference between your companies content wise. And the fact that we have practically no choice whatsoever in choosing content with either provider anyway, makes all those comparison charts on your commercials meaningless. Why do you care if Dish shoots themselves in the foot with this? More money for all y'alll.

I will also agree that Dish should rightly expect some blowback from the content providers for this. Absolutely. Monopolies wouldn't remain monopolies very long if they didn't know how to enfore discipline amongst their troops. Is CBS mightier that Dish? Interesting to see who will win. I do not think it would be the rout you claim it will be. Otherwise CBS would have just blocked their content straight-up and forced Dish to come crawling back on their hands and knees. Without going through long and painful legal action.

But let's get real here, there are five main advantages that you currently enjoy over DIsh:

(1) NFL Package exclusivity
(2) Costco
(3) Costco
(4) Costco

and finally
(5) Costco

I would absolutely guarantee that if Dish had these five advantages over you, and dropped CBS entirely, I am not so sure that you would still be king, so to speak.

PS: And since I have a DirecTV employee who has some demonstrable critical thinking skills reading this (no sarcasm), why are your bills so deliberately confusing with all the negatives / positives line items on it? From my experience you guys just whimsically sneak in arbitrary equipment insurance fees every 3 to 4 months anyway. So if your intent is to purposely confuse the customer into just paying the bill out of frustration anyway, why go to all this trouble? Why don't you just send the bill as a picture of Michael Whites middle finger with the transcript of the Goodfellas scene below:
Warning: Spoiler! (Click to show) Want HBO? (see above) Want CSI? (see above) Want ESPN? (see above)

How, in the year 2013, are we calling this "Hopper" feature innovative? Your telling me that people are sitting in a room, all watching all the big 4 local feeds all across America, and everytime a commercial block comes on they hit a button, then when the commercial block is over, they hit another button. Then, all this work is setup/downloaded or whatever and is able to be used past 1am the following day? The alternative to all this is hit the go fast button for about 5 to 10 seconds and bam, instant commercial skip. Don't get me wrong, I understand that "Hopping" is instant, all be it the next day, but I would hardly call any of this innovative. Am I missing something else in this great invention of the 21st century?

Just think pretty soon we will be paying for bottled water....

I see where your coming from imagic, but thats been done before, a long time ago. Not by Dish or Direct, but its been done before. People have been able to this for a lonnng time. Hardly innovative!

Apple built up quite a business doing that very thing.

There were computers and GUIs before the Mac.
There were MP3 players before the Ipad.
There were PDA phones before the Iphone.
There were tablets before the Ipad.

What Apple did was make them pretty enough and user friendly enough so people would want them really, really badly.

As far as viewing content on a mobile device, that's been around for years - see Slingbox. I've had one for a number of years. In fact, I got it back when my 'smartphone' was a Motorola Q. I can watch whatever I want, whereever I want. My opinion, once you've paid for it once, you ought to be able to enjoy it anywhere.

If providers get with the program and realize that they have an opportunity here, they'd make it so that you could watch the cable channels you pay for in any hotel room you stay in. In fact, Time Warner is already heading that way by making content available to their subscribers on iPads at no additional charge. And if all other things are the same, wouldn't you be more likely to go with a provider that lets you watch your subscription whereever you want vs. one that tells you that you're paying to only have the content available in one 12 ft x 10 ft space of your house?

As far as commercial skipping... My FFWD button works just fine and allows me to 'steal' the shows I love to watch. The networks just have to wake up and realize that the old way of thinking doesn't function with today's modern technology. You want to force people to watch a commercial, then sign deals with the cable companies that force them to make their DVR devices so that there are non-skippable commercials - I'm sure that's an evolution we aren't far away from; after all, look at Hulu... You pay per month to have access to shows you want to watch, they have shorter commercial breaks, but you can't skip them. And if the cable companies are smart, they will negoiate those contracts so that they can offer 'premium' service that allows you to skip all the commercials. I also wouldn't be surprised to start seeing banner ads on your TV like they have in the free editions of Angry Birds - the only reason it isn't widespread yet is because the old farts that run these companies haven't woken up to the potential yet.

I also oppose the argument that if choices were a-la-carte that we'd loose all niche programming. If that were the case, then how is it that the independent film industry is still around? I believe the programming would still exist, it would just need to do some marketing via social media to get the word out to those that would be interested in buying it. Would I pay $15 a month for access to adult swim? No. But I would pay $2 or 3 bucks to watch an episode now and not mind being forced to watch a commercial or two. Would anyone pay for the junk they broadcast on MAV TV? Yes - because single guys like slutty TV. But if it takes more to produce that crap then people are wlling to pay for it, then let it die, that's capitalism baby!

I have no issue with the producers of content controlling how it is delivered. I do take issue with them clogging up courts with lawsuits because they weren't smart enough to see down the road and write it into their contracts. There is not reaso that CBS couldn't have seen this coming and writen into their contract with Dish something like, 'Dish shall not provide any technology or service that allows for the automatic skipping of or alteration of broadcast content'. By hey, they weren't looking more that 30 seconds down the road, so why not sue because we didn't like what they did.... The courts should tell them to go take a hike.

In general I agree with you. But as far as niche programming goes, it already has a hard enough time staying on commercial TV as it is. A switch to a-la-carte would 'break' the current model and a lot of programming (niche and otherwise) would cease to exist 'as-is'. You can't have an 'a-la-carte' system and keep the same spread of programming around that exists today in its current form/quality. Many channels and shows exist today only because they are part of a larger bundle of programming, break up the bundle and they become economically nonviable. As stated previously, I would not weep to see the current model go away - but a lot of people seem to think that a switch to an a-la-carte system would result in them watching the exact same shows they watch today, just at a lower cost and that just isn't going to happen. Many people begging for such a system now would be screaming that their favorite shows were gone or too expensive once they got their wish.

As a DIRECTV employee you should also know that your companys receivers likely have the software in them now to skip commercials... all DIRECTV is doing is playing the waiting game and when Dish wins they turn their version on...

This entire thread discussion confirms my decision to never use any pay TV service. http://articles.philly.com/2012-11-19/news/35187681_1_sports-channels-cable-tv-bill-college-sports This article backs up my thinking.
I get over 30 OTA channels and have been without a DVR for 3 months now. I would like to get one but it seems every option out there now has some drawback.
Back on topic -- interesting that this reviewer did not have time to test the skip feature http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/reviews/2012/10/review-dish-network-hopper.php

I'm cynical, can't help it. I consider the sources of information. The National Cable Television Association is bound to have their slant, and money is a big motivator. Not sure what the history has to do with advertising though. I think they deliberately left the subject out of their history.

All I can offer as a source is my own memory. I grew up in rural WI. My experiences with cable TV go back to the early '70s - before MTV and before Ted Turner's WTBS/TBS, TNthis and TNthat . I see that HBO started in '72, and a friend had cable TV a couple years or so before MTV. In fact, programming was very limited in those days. We got cable soon after MTV's launch. Cable TV was being marketed in Wisconsin (ironically over free to air networks) as a "commercial free" alternative to free to air, without the reception problems and not being at the mercy of the weather. The closest thing to an ad on cable or pay channels was their own upcoming shows/events calendars - which they used to fill blanks in coverage. In those days the free to air programs(and their commercials) weren't on cable, because as I remember it, they couldn't come to an agreement. It wasn't until I returned from the service in '78 that I saw a commercial on cable, on a free to air channel no less. Other than MTV pushing the boundaries early and the free to air channels bringing their luggage along, commercials were still few and far between. Cable had already been around for almost 2 decades by then, and survived completely commercial free - although expensive and had limited availability until after '72.

That was the brilliance of their approach. Had they just tossed full blown commercials at us, we would have jumped ship before it had a chance to really take off. Instead, they agree with free to air and count on people just not noticing. And some of us did, but we didn't raise much fuss. Shame on us.

From your own link, statistics say that from the '70s to the '80s (which I take to mean January 1970 and January 1980) subscribers went from less than 1 million to over 16 million. How did less than 1 million subscribers build and sustain infrastructure and content costs just fine for 2 decades? They got some investors, but that wouldn't have been huge.

Now subscriptions of cable and satellite TV in the USA are estimated at around 103 million households, using the same infrastructure that 1 million, and then 16 million did.

Ok, they did a major upgrade in '90s and that cost around $20 billion all up. With that upgrade/expansion they were thinking 100 years in advance. So you know what else they did, was put copper and fiber-optic in those cable lines. So now they can soak you for broadband and TV, and claim both costs go to infrastructure - and of course they still need advertising because 100+ million TV connections + internet connections just isn't enough.

Anyway, seems I'm not alone in viewing cable TV well before commercials took over.

I remember being fascinated with MTV when it first appeared and watching "Fish Heads" over and over, but that was later - and another story. :-)

@Dark41 - I also first got cable not long before MTV started in 1981. It wasn't widely available where I lived until then so I can't speak to anything prior. The actual content may have also differed greatly by region since you were in another part of the country. All I can say is that where I lived we had the mix of 'premium' channels, 'cable' channels with commercials, and OTA TV with commercials that we still have today. The only thing that has changed over time has been the volume of commercials - but that is across the board and not cable specific. In the last few decades we have gone from 9 ~1 minute long commercials per hour of content to 36 ~30 second commercial per hour of programming (9 minutes of commercials to 18 minutes of commercials per hour on average). Seems I am also not alone in this experience so it may just be regional differences coloring our views.

I've been noticing for a while now that many shows put in fake content (or teasers, call them what you like), to fake you out into stopping the ff on the dvr during commercials. What does this accomplish other than to annoy and mess with the viewer?

I have a hopper, I love the tech. However, I have a bad feeling we'll end up with something much worse. My gut says that the content providers will shake down the cable/sat companies and they will force them to have non-skippable ads, ala hulu, inserted every 10min the dvr is powered on. Regardless of the show is live or recorded, just a break every 10min for a 1min commercial that you can't skip. I'm only hanging on to sat for F1 and Indycar. The sooner those properties offer an online streaming sub, I'm out of pay TV.

Panasonic should have won best of Show

Being a Sony loyalist I hate to say it but I agree with you! And I will take Directv anyday over Dish.

But Sony is also a big media company, and will cripple the PS4 as a set top box in the name of 'piracy' protection.

This is one commercial that definitely needs to be skipped. So annoying!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kI7TsHKaksA

CBS could pull themselves off of DISH and I wouldn't care since I receive them via OTA on my DISH Hopper... and guess what it still skips the commercials on the Prime Time Shows even though I am receiving it via OTA.

The only thing CBS is doing so far is helping DISH promote the Hopper even more. If they would have shut up and let CNET give them the award that they won, none of us would still be talking about it.

This was better then any advertising DISH could have purchased.

Never seen it before, sounds catchy. *shrugs*

Commercials don't serve any purpose any more. Even if I'm forced to watch, my mind is elsewhere and I can't remember any of them after a few minutes.