| Farewell Cable TV - hello Bit Torrent and MyChoice | | Date Created: 20 Mar, 2005, 08:02 AM |
 So I'm in the US, specifically in Irvine, very close to John Wayne Airport (SNA) which services Orange County.
Each time I come to the US and access the internet it reminds me of a time warp I feel I live in at home in Australia. When I want to access the first news of the day MacSurfer delivers at its local time of 9am, for me it's the next day at 2am. Things return to more "sensible times" (12am) when daylight savings time ends in Australia in two weeks from now.
Sitting here surfing in "real time" feels kinda strange. Knowing that some of the conferences I will be soon listening to (courtesy of Doug Kaye's IT Conversations) are happening not far away (one just occurred in San Diego the last few days while I was here) adds to the surreal sense.
The day we arrived in the US we tuned in to ABC TV (Channel 14) to watch "Lost", the series about the survivors of an airplane crash en route from Sydney to LA, which indeed we had done the same day - as you can see, I survived. (Actually, I did a podcast on board which I'll post soon).
Now I've been following Lost almost since it started in the US last year. It began its season on Australian television in February, so I'm several months ahead of my fellow Aussies.
All except those who managed to watch the same episodes ahead of time like I did, using technologies like Bit Torrent. Indeed, I have used the same technology to watch all the episodes of Desperate Housewives, Lost and Numb3rs. Rather than have United Airlines tell me what I can watch on the 14 hour journey across the Pacific, I sparingly used the Powerbook and its two batteries to judiciously spread my viewing times of these programs. A 2nd Gen. iPod with a Newer Technology battery refit gives me 20 hours of audio use to boot.
I'm prompted to make this blog entry by an article in the New York Times by Wilson Rothman (March 19, 2005) entitled Napster vs. iTunes: Let the contest begin.
Rothman writes about this experience using the Napster-to-go subscription service as compared to the iTunes pay per download service.
Apart from pointing out the differences in philosophy this entails - rent vs. buy - Rothman wisely speaks of the difference in performance, using Napster's clunky software versus iTunes/iPod.
He clearly states his preference for using the iPod over its competitors, and in order to show its superiority he discusses how possible it is to perform an iPodectomy by switching to another brand of mp3 player. He does this by demonstrating how he was able to downshift from the beauty of TiVo to a cruder Time Warner set top box:
"Compared with TiVo, the new box's interface is medieval-dentist-painful to use, but I use it and I don't look back.
If I could jump from TiVo to Time Warner, a switch from the iPod to the Creative Zen Micro ought to be easy by comparison. Yes, the iPod is a beautiful symbol of how cool I am, but an iPodectomy is scientifically possible."
In the end he saves face by suggesting there is weight to rumours Apple may release an iTunes music subscription service, so he may have his cake and eat it too.
Rothman's piece in the NYT allows me to write I have also orchestrated an excision: A Foxtelectomy.
What is that you ask? In Australia, the major if not singular cable TV network is Foxtel, owned by telco Telstra, Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and media magnate and Australia's richest man, Kerry Packer's Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd.
I have been a subscriber to Foxtel since it began more than a decade ago, seen it through a variety of changes and watched while it introduced digital services. It has now introduced a new hard drive recorder set top box, for which you pay outright $395 but you return the unit when you cease the service and kiss that money goodbye.
I didn't go digital and I didn't get the set top box, even though I was part of a market research group in 2003 questionned about what package of new Foxtel products might entice me to part with my money.
Of course, this was before most of us had heard of Bit Torrent, with its primary use with distributing Linux distros amongst developers and users, and Kazaa was the main peer to peer sharing model, principally for music.
I never used Kazaa, and stood by with amusement as my PC friends told me of their antics, while not connecting their spyware discoveries with using Kazaa.
For myself, with my home wirelessly equipped front and back with an Airport Express and Linksys router, I found I was mindlessly watching Foxtel while spending more time with the Powerbook in my lap, surfing, writing, emailing, and seeking news and views using RSS aggregators. Apparently, this is a trend being monitored closely by media watchers and measurers.
But I was attentive enough to notice one thing: the service I was paying almost $100/month for was increasingly adding advertisements to the mix. Now, promos. for upcoming shows I can manage. But the same advertisements I see on free to air was getting a but much.
So with my main news sources coming from the web, and my new favourite shows coming to me via Bit Torrent a few days after their initial airing on US TV (how weird it was for me to watch the Desperate Housewives Valentines day show just 48 hours after, while in Oz it will air likely in May), it was time to literally pull the plug on Foxtel.
The extra savings will be invested, while I also consider spending some of the savings on upping my cable internet limits, or purchasing a wifi-max setup through one of the new service providers, like iBurst, whose range extends to my home district. Heck if that works out, I may then get rid of the cable internet connection too.
When I've casually mentioned my farewell to Foxtel to friends, half ask why it took me so long to recognise the lack of value, a quarter look askance that an early adopter would commit such heresy, and the remainder look quizzically and wonder if they should consider their options once more.
So February 28, the plug was pulled and a few days later I got a bill for March in the post - weird since I have always paid by direct debit to a credit card. Their billing cycle was out of whack with their disconnection department it seems, and the charges were waived. So kind.
Now with the addition of a new dog that must be walked twice a day, and no television to watch (free to air is rather woeful I'm afraid) I'm told I have dropped a few pounds. And I feel like I'm participating in some "new media" experiment to boot!
I may return to Foxtel when I move home, or hear it offers some special value not yet available.
But I think I might represent a growing proportion of technology users questionning how and from where they get their information and entertainment. New technologies like Bit Torrent enable firstly those with tech savvy to change their behaviours; others follow once a much simpler almost pushbutton approach is developed.
The material I am downloading is free to air in the US, so it's no different than a friend mailing me a recorded VHS tape (which is how I got the final Seinfeld episode months before it aired in Oz. I couldn't handle trying to avoid reading about how the series ended). It would be pitiful if the TV networks saw this as piracy, since I am not disadvantaging anyone by watching it on my Powerbook, rather than my TV when the local Aussie station broadcasts it (with advertisements).
I'm part of a time-shift generation, watching and listening to what it wants to when it wants to, in much the same way that has given rise to the popularity of podcasting, which must have mainstream radio quaking.
Now the same is happening to commercial television, which in Australia has been abusing loyal viewers with last minute changes to schedules, moving programs around or cutting them mid-season, over running programs so as to interfere with switching channels to watch another show, and other abusive tactics in the service of ratings.
The contempt these broadcast license holders have for their viewers is quite palpable. At least Foxtel was smack on time with its scheduling. But in the end, the lack of personally absorbing content, frequency of advertisements, and pricing did it in for me.
Choice rules the day ultimately. In my case, fewer choices make more sense, but at least they're my choices.
(UPDATE - March 23, 2005: Back from Seattle/LA sans luggage - Ta, United Airlines - to discover friend and radio 774 computer guru Charles Wright has blogged that he has followed suit and offered Foxtel his middle digit, even though it cost him to break his digital contract. Me thinks there are many Australians tired of further enriching the richest men on the planet, for very little value in return. Boys, we don't need no stinkin' Pay-TV - at least not the way you're selling it.)
|
|
|
|
