St. Louis, MO - HDTV - Page 404

Aiming at Movie Downloads, AT&T Imposes Broadband Caps

From Home Media Online:
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As expected, AT&T will soon impose limits on the amount of broadband data — notably movies and TV shows — subscribers can download from the Internet on a monthly basis without paying additional fees.

AT&T's residential DSL plans will have a usage allowance of 150 gigabytes (GB) per month, while residential U-verse plans will have a usage allowance of 250GB per month.

The caps amount to about 100 hours per month of TV programming for DSL users and 200 hours for U-verse. The caps would limit users to 20 movie downloads in standard definition (25 for U-verse) and 10 (13 for U-verse) in high definition.
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Full Text: http://www.homemediamagazine.com/dig...ge-may-2-23620

At the risk of getting flamed, if you accept the reality that broadband is not an infinite resource, this actually seems like a reasonable level for limits, though I'm not sure the SD/HD equivalents in the article are valid.

Of course, there is an issue of changing service terms in the middle of a contract, especially if there are subscriber term commitments and cancellation penalties. If this change were imposed in the middle of a 2-year commitment and I wasn't happy with the new policy, I would expect to be able to opt out without penalty. Not sure how AT&T would handle that, but I suspect it might be tough sledding, based on past AT&T practice.

Anyway, it looks to me that AT&T is not really aiming to shut down movie downloads entirely, as the limits seem like they would allow the average household a reasonable number of Netflix (or other source) movies per month. Am I wrong (not for the first time)?

But I do wonder about how this works out when all web activity, apart from movie downloads, comes into play. And I also wonder about the accuracy of the monitoring tools that AT&T is providing to its customers.

It will definitely be interesting to see how this plays out.

Interesting snippet from an article at The Hill.com, regarding regulation of the telecoms sector.

The following quote comes from former Obama White House Technology Adviser Susan Crawford:
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"Unfortunately the world where regulating these guys into to an inch of their life is exactly what needs to happen."
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In a way, this is real progress -- it's unvarnished honesty, at least.

See, regulation isn't about protecting consumers. It's ultimately about punishing successful businesses and threatening their livelihood through legal means. It's about payback and payoff.

Full article with more interesting stuff can be found here.

Discovery HD Theater To Be Replaced By Male-Focused Velocity

I remember when Discovery HD Theater was the ONLY channel where you could be sure that you could catch some HD images. But that was more than 10 years ago...

From Broadcasting and Cable online:
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Discovery Communications will launch Velocity, a new network aimed at an upscale male audience, in the fourth quarter of 2011. The new all-HD channel will replace the current HD Theater network and be available in about 40 million homes at the time of its launch.

Velocity will have more than 400 hours of programming in the categories of automotive, sports and leisure, adventure and travel. Current car-themed HD Theater series including Inside West Coast Customs, Mecum Auto Auctions, Café Racer and Chasing Classic Cars will anchor Velocity's initial primetime lineup.

"We started noticing some good ratings with some of our more upscale lifestyle programming, especially in the auto arena, and we just felt let's keep building on that, now's the time," Discovery COO Peter Liguori told B&C of the timing of the rebrand.
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Full Text: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/art...hp?rssid=20065

DISH DVRs Headed for Blackout?

From the Morning Bridge:
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The long-awaited US Court of Appeals decision on TiVo v. DISH/EchoStar came down split ... but with the scales weighted to TiVo.

The court gave DISH a victory by unanimously vacating the district court's contempt ruling on its software design workaround. However, it gave TiVo the bigger victory in backing (by 7 to 5) the lower court finding that DISH is in contempt of the disablement provision.

That leaves DISH faced "with an imminent shut-down of millions of DVRs," noted Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett. That, he posits, could leave the DBS operator with a "gun-to-the-head settlement requirement" which could run into the $3B range for disabling and replacing the infringing DVRs. (No one really knows how many infringing DVRs there are and Charlie Ergen, quite naturally, isn't saying.)

Don't expect the DISH/EchoStar crew to give up easily, though. They're now talking "stay of injunction," taking it all to the US Supreme Court and a "motion to dissolve the injunction."

So it's not over yet although the market made its judgment clear, boosting TiVo by nearly 30% to $10.86.

For his part, Citi's Jason Bazinet thinks "With today's partial TiVo victory, the odds of an outright victory for Dish just got slimmer. However, given Dish's push to swap out older MPEG4 boxes, coupled with it's efforts to implement a new work-around, it seems clear the two parties are unlikely to reach a negotiated settlement."
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What is with FOX Sports these days? The Saturday afternoon game coverage includes a camera that thinks it is supposed to be part of a Susan G. Komen charity walk, as both the Cardinals and Reds uniforms are showing up as PINK!

Clearly they can see this in the control room, so why do they continue to use that camera? Geez! Fix it or shut it down.

Really pathetic work from this network these days.

It was a pleasure to watch the Cards last night on ESPN. For the first time this season during a Cardinals home game (and a majority of road games), all of the colors pretty well matched in going from one camera to another.

I should note that the FOX Network on Saturday did attempt to correct the "pink" camera (see my previous note here), and while they definitely improved it, they never did get it to be a good match with the other cameras. Just wanted to acknowledge that they tried to fix the issue; they just weren't entirely successful.

Not sure why this should be so difficult for FOX Sports and FOX Network. It was never a problem (at least nowhere close to this degree) in past years.

Charter Reported Readying Sale of Los Angeles System, Subscribers

From TV Week:
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Charter Communications is getting ready to sell its Los Angeles system in an auction that could attract $2 billion or more, reports Multichannel News.

The move comes after Charter failed to reach an agreement with Time Warner Cable to swap systems, with Charter seeking to swap its L.A.-area systems for Time Warner Cable's Wisconsin systems, the story says.

Charter’s systems in the city of Los Angeles and outlying areas reach 551,000 customers. Time Warner Cable, which has about 560,000 subscribers in Wisconsin, balked at the swap, the article says.

A Charter spokeswoman declined to comment. Charter's Los Angeles systems could attract bids between $2 billion and $2.5 billion, the story says.
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Link: http://www.tvweek.com/blogs/tvbizwir...to-sell-la.php

It's no secret that one of my major pet peeves with network television is the gnat's width attention span and patience of the people in charge of prime-time programming decisions. They have regularly pulled the plug on programs that I liked, leaving me wanting more and getting, at best, something else promising that likewise gets snuffed out before it reaches its potential.

So, it goes without saying that I enjoyed Paul Reiser's appearance of the Tonight Show last night. I don't normally watch Leno, but I was channel surfing and came across Reiser in mid-rant and found it pretty irresistible.

Finally, something on NBC that I can identify with!

From FOX 411:
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Comedian Paul Reiser, who had a long-running hit on NBC with “Mad About You,” is not pleased about the network canceling his new show.

The funnyman’s self-titled comedy lasted just two episodes before getting the axe from NBC honchos. On Monday night, Reiser laid into the network with his appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno”—which the network had previously booked for him to, ahem, promote his new show.

"NBC, to my knowledge, they don't traditionally make bad decisions. Have you heard that? I don't know what your experience is," Reiser deadpanned to Leno, who suffered his own humiliation at the hands of NBC over the confusion of whether Conan O’Brien was replacing Leno on “The Tonight Show.”

"It turns out they said we enjoy missing you more than actually having you," Reiser joked. "But listen, I don't take it personally. Listen, when you're the last place network, you don't want to jeopardize that. You've found your niche. Stay there. So I get it."

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Full Text: http://entertainment.blogs.foxnews.c...#ixzz1KeMlfTJz

Reiser also made the point that NBC initially dragged its feet in scheduling his new program and then suddenly turned on a dime and abruptly called to let him know it was going to be added to the lineup -- the following week against "American Idol. " He also pointed out that this was without the extensive promotion that was promised beforehand.

He also joked that he received the cancellation phone call in the same abrupt manner as the news that his show was being added -- on Good Friday.

"Really, not such a good Friday, for me."

Comp,

I'm sorry to hear about the damage caused to your business and the outages at home. I hope that things get back to normal for you as soon as possible.

I'm sure if you have questions about Charter vs. Uverse that there are guys or gals here who could answer your questions or give an opinion. Likewise, I'd be happy to address any questions you might have about the DirecTV option, assuming that is an option for you at home.

In the meantime, hang in there...

Correct.

I think this may just be an issue with AT&T and DISH. Charter has actually been running radio ads about being the only source for all Cards' games. I don't think the ads mention HD specifically, but I may have missed that. I don't know any reason that DirecTV would not have all games and have them in HD.

Maybe DISH and AT&T should negotiate to carry just the first eight innings of the Cards games...