Arrianna

Here is a new thought so bear with me.

Pirating music became very popular, but because of file shareing we now have legal sites where you can pay-per-download music.

So is TV the next on the list? You can find and bit-torrent just about anything seen on TV these days. So how soon before Channel companies set up an official membership site where for a subscription fee you can download/bit-torrent select shows legally?

It could eventually make Cable obselete as well as video recorders. The company can still make their money on commercials by including them in the download just like a regular show. The veiwers would no longer have to worry about when their show is on. Have a subscription? Download it when you want (within a timeframe) and watch it then. The number of downloads can even be used to figeure out their veiwer rating, by itself or added to the TV veiwership rating. It should still be covered under copywrite laws and usuable only for home veiwing. It would also allow them to test market their pilots. They could put them up for subscribers with a feedback rating systems attached so that they could find out before paying for additional episodes just what the public would actually think.

So, what do you all think?

__________________

l Stone Hold l Now We're Cooking! l

Hassun

It is certainly not the wave of the future for me alot of other people in Europe. You see, we have a funny little thing called bandwith limit.

E.g. I'm limited to 10Gb of traffic every thirty days and only 1.5Gb of that amount can be upstream traffic.

BT has the great system of automaticly making you seed any part of the incomplete file you have already downloaded. This system keeps the BT system alive but it also prevents me from using it.

I have downloaded files before using BT but downloading one anime episode is equal to using pretty much all of my available bandwith for a month... :Thumbd:


Also, the proposal you made sounds a whole lot like digital televsion.
In the (near) future it will also be possible to:
Watch shows whenever you want, connect to the internet for access to any channel in the world, watch multiple channels at the same time, record programs on a HD, skip commercials, etc.

So basically all those possibilities are already work in progress, not with BT though.
The big problem with it is the loss of income from commercials but they'll find a way around it just like what they did with the TiVO video recorder...

__________________

Dark.

Sheesh I don't know, I personally never do it, but it seems possible, but I don't know if it will ever really happen. Lots of hurtles to jump when it comes to T.V. viewing...

__________________
"Have you ever had a dream, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world?"

Miroku4444

I don't think it will be the wave of the future either. I rather buy my stuff on dvd if I'm going to be paying for it. Why would you want to pay as you DL, Tv or cable shows when you have things like tivo? it has a monthly fee, but is still cheeper than paying as you Dl. Also some media center PC's have that feature built in, with no monthly fees. It may make VCR's obselete, but thats about it. Plus ppl are lazy, wouldn't you rather tivo something rather than going to the hassle of DL something. With tivo, its done automatically for you and ready to go when you get home. With Dl of tv programs there too much effort involved for ppl of today.

__________________


See Ya Later Space Cowboy....

Raven Omega

For me, Bit-torrent offers me a Try-before-I-buy type of deal. I see TV shows that I may have missed, watch new anime's not out in US or check out some anime's dubs before making the decision to take the leap into buying a DVD. Yes I still download music without paying via torrents, and it's more often than not to see if something is worth buying. Torrent's are not the future of anything, They've been around for a while, if anything, torrents'll soon be the past at the rate P2P programs have been evolving lately (eXeem, anyone?).

__________________

LenMiyata

Grumble Grumble Grumble

Actually, download on demand Video is starting to become a reality, but it won't happen with bit-torrent. The current trend with the cable industring is 'Video IP' to tranfer a video stream (on demand) from a server to your TIVO/set-top box over high speed (read custom cable) broadband. The problem with bit-torrent is the available speed/bandwidth of the download, and legal problems with copyright management support....

__________________

Arrianna

Do you ever feel like you are talking and nobody's listening?

Hassun, I covered the continued use of commercials to prevent loss of income.

kastelic, I only mentioned pay-per-dl in reference to music. The rest of the post concerned subscription fee's to a "channel" similar to TiVo. It would allow people to "choose" their channels unlike cable and would download just like Tivo only you would do it over the internet instead of cable (though for some of us it's the same thing).

Raven Omega, P2P (including eXeem) is bit-torrent or bit-torrent based.

LenMiyata, I fail to see the difference copyright wise between the 'Video IP' and a legal download. If both come from the same company why wouldn't they both be covered under personal use laws (which I mentioned)? After all they're both digital.

However...

LenMiyata & Hassun, I agree, bandwidth could be a problem. Hassun gave an especially good reason for that. I suggested bit-torrent as a possible way around that. If 'Video IP' proves to be more effective I am sure that the industry will use it instead. However the ability to download larger and larger files at faster and faster speeds keeps evolving. How long would it really take before it became viable?

But the real question is, how long before entire "channels" become a subscription for download or simply legally availible for distribution over the net and do you believe the industry is headed in that direction? I have heard there are already channels out of England looking into useing PtoP for a secondary distribution. Is this the future of the industry? Will it happen?

__________________

l Stone Hold l Now We're Cooking! l

jaderabbit

I myself like bittorrent... but i wouldn't use it to watch shows with. so for me it wouldn't work.

__________________

narrator

yeah i definately agree with you on that Raven. eXeem is quite the program, but im more of a Soulseek guy myself. Great thing it is..

__________________

jao

I think the idea of wiping out the infrastructure that is in place now would mean the loss of millions of jobs, dollars and advantages companies hold over it's customers. I'm not saying there won't be a change in a direction similar to what you express but companies aren't going to do it without some fighting first.

[J]

sukotsu9

When Napster went under, I was dreaming of seeing the RIAA embrace the technology and offer songs for pennies (only they could! AND they'd reap trillions!!). Slowly, private enterprise has found a way to work with the system. I agree that file transfer will be video rental of choice in the future (next 10 years). I read an article on a plane recently that the mailorder DVD rentals, although today's hot topic, are already on companies' back burners. They're focusing on file transfer options. Netflix at the head, Blockbuster shortly behind.