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Thoughts On Future Home Video Entertainment Platforms?

Towen7

Towen7

Well-Known Member
Staff member
Moderator
I think it's clear that the future on home video entertainment will be pretty different than what is typical today. Many (most?) high school and college aged kids have made it clear that they will not enter into the traditional pay-tv market.

I've read and believe that most consumers watch only eight to twelve channel. But I don't believe that most will pay for eight to twelve separate apps with mixed functionality. The market is, IMHO, begging for a "platform" to deliver on-demand access to a la carte channels to any device; TV, tablet, phone. The current on-line offerings are a mess of sometimes overlapping and generally inconvenient separate apps.

This week I wanted to watch a specific movie. I had to search Netflix but it was not available there, so I searched Amazon Prime where I found it but the only option was to but it for $15, so I searched the HBO and Showtime apps and couldn't find it on either. As a last resort I search the on-demand library for my TV provider and to my surprise I found it there on Epix on-demand.

What do you guys think the future will bring? Will a handful of large companies like (Apple, Google, Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, etc.) be able to bring all the separate option under one roof? Will the market support dozens of individual apps without the ability to cross-search? Will a new provider come along to curate all the options and/or at least provide a single search hub?
 
I think channels are dead and content is king. Live TV is circling the drain. The future is on demand for everything but sports and maybe news (for those who still labor under the silly fantasy that cable news channels are news and not infotaining propaganda). I for one have no interest in wasting 20 minutes of every hour watching ads and am certainly not interested in paying a huge amount of money for the privilege of doing so. We subscribe to Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Funimation, Drama Fever and Viki, which costs us around $40/month. We also use a quad-tuner OTA DVR for network shows. If there is current season show that we really want to watch and cannot get OTA or from one of our subscription services, we just buy it on Vudu. If it is not available for purchase yet, there are other means of acquisition (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) that I can use until it becomes available.

One of the best things about Roku as a platform is that it neatly solves the search problem Towen7 raised. The search feature on the Roku searches across all of the major streaming and pay per view services and will tell you both where you can find something and how much it costs. It will tell you whether it is on Netflix, included with Amazon Prime or available for a $2.99 rental on M-Go, $3.99 from Vudu, etc. That can be extremely useful, especially with the voice search feature on the new version of the Roku 3.
 
What Scott said, along with a (soon-to-be-developed) service like Trivago has done for booking hotels.
 
When I read the part of T7's post where he was trying to find a movie, my first thought was "search for it on a Roku". That device certainly solves some of those problems.

I've been pondering a lot of the same issues he brought up. On demand could be the answer to the ala carte request the public has been stammering years for. However, will the public embrace using a separate app for each channel? That's a mind shift because now we typically turn on the TV to see what's being force-fed to us, especially during the day. That's when channels such as HGTV, DIY, Hallmark, etc. are typically viewed, I bet.

If the standard becomes on demand and people have to choose a program, what will they do? They may just turn on Pandora or put the remote down all together. This may lead to companies offering a "shuffle" type service of subscribed channels. The content provider (think a TV version of Pandora) would then randomly select favorite shows from subscribed channels, which will surely be bundled together, and play those shows. This would be full circle to where we are now...

John
 
I really don't think users are all that interested in having to check a ton of different apps to see what they wish to see. It's one thing to pay $100/mo or more for a TV package. It becomes something else when it's $5 here, $8 there, and each one with different usernames and passwords, different layouts and rules, different everything. The new Star Trek show coming to CBS' streaming service is an example of this- who the crap wants to buy CBS' service just for that?

If anything this fractionalization is turning me off of streaming. I'm getting tired of assembling a viewing queue, starting in on it, getting busy with life, then going back a couple months later and learning that show I was into is no longer available on that service. It's to the point where I don't even bother with it because I know that by the time I fire it up what I wanted to watch will be gone. I get this is all a thing dealing with rights, but I don't want to have to resort to binge-watching shows if I ever want to see them. I'd rather be able to count on them on a lazy weekend and then not have to worry about it still being there two months later. And this is BEFORE worrying about what kind of data caps I have and what the streaming is doing to them.

As much as I dislike the whole "buy it all or get none of it" system we're currently in for traditional content providers, the developing environment for streaming content is even more unlikable.
 
^^ I'm in agreement with the sentiments above...but I don't think we're too far off from having better options. Right now I'm just staying with Dish, as much as I loathe the monthly bill, my setup is incredibly convenient and I'm fairly certain if I "paid to view" the shows I watched the most via streaming, I'd damn near approach my current monthly expenditure with A LOT less content.
 
Akula said:
As much as I dislike the whole "buy it all or get none of it" system we're currently in for traditional content providers, the developing environment for streaming content is even more unlikable.
Click to expand...

That's exactly where I was going when I started this thread. I'm getting closer to Rammis's solution every day. I don't think it'd take me long to adapt if the wife would allow me turn it all off. I would desperately miss the cable sports channels, the rest I can do without.
 
rammisframmis said:
My solution which works great for me; I don't watch TV at all. Too many other interesting things to do.
Click to expand...

:text-yeahthat:

If I do watch any TV shows, I watch them on disc or netflix. This is as much to avoid commercials (which I DESPISE with a passion) as it is to save money on tv service.
 
I think the best deal out there for non-sports fans is Netflix + Amazon Prime + Hulu (Ad Free). An OTA DVR is a nice add-on if you live in an area with good reception, but the combination of those three services will give you more content than you could ever begin to watch.
 
I keep Directv but have just their cheapest package as the slowly migrated all the good channels you had to upgrade to finally down to their cheapest package. A year ago if I wanted AMC I had to get the next tier up and they would bundle that with 10 channels I never watch (pretty sure I don't watch Al -Jazeera but thanks for making me pay for that along with AMC. Directv to keep up with people bailing finally put all the good channels on their cheapest package. I don't need any movie channels as I pay for Netflix and have my massive collection on Vudu and I my brother in law shares his Hulu account with me as I share my Vudu account with my twin sister and him. Granted I could give up Directv and almost did when my DVR bit the bullet last week but Directv sent me a new DVR and I have to say for 40.00 I get a ton of local and great channels. I don't watch any sports so I don't need to pay for any higher channel packages as everything I now watch is on my cheapest package.

I thought about sling with Dish but you can't DVR and after adding the news package and the entertainment package I'm at 30.00 so it's worth the extra 10.00 for me to DVR shows and keep up yah in that's going on and naturally keeping the girlfriend happy with her lifetime and Oprah crap.
 
Don't know why I love football......my Longhorns & Cowboys keep losing.
I just stick to free OTA, Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Vudu. Waiting for all the early bugs to be corrected before we get a Roku 4.
 
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