3 ms·

actually, it's distribution decoupled from actual value creation that has given us things like 4 hour football games with 10 minutes of live play. I would pref

actually, it's distribution decoupled from actual value creation that has given us things like 4 hour football games with 10 minutes of live play. I would prefer that content is sold without need for a middle man. Seems easy when spotify does it and there are no commercials but they aren't doing 4k streams. I think top quality spotify is 240 or 320kBPS. Netflix needs 4x that for their lowest, "wouldn't watch it on my phone" quality stream. It's just going to cost more for these products in a non-broadcast world.

shmerl 9y ago
> I would prefer that content is sold without need for a middle man. Not everyone can afford a CDN and a lot of other things in between the source and the user, especially creators. Sure, in theory they can just sell video from their sites, but in practice infrastructure costs a lot of money. Unless video will move to decentralized distribution (pirated one did already, so why can't legal one too), distributors will have their piece of the pie.
- jethro_tell 9y ago
  I don't doubt it. Pirated distribution has nothing in the way of hosting cost so I don't see how that would work with decentralized distribution. What is the set up you are advocating for? People automatically upload content from their streaming apps? How are you going to police amazon/netflix/hulu/whatever service I have to do the uploading in a fair way? My fire TV has 8GB hdd. I don't know what my chrome cast has but it's less. You need real hardware to store the catalog. Torrenting works because it has a bar to entry.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    The scale adds up. Cost of entry can be the price paid instead of large monthly subscriptions or higher prices per individual title.
    - jethro_tell 9y ago
      Sure, we've had access to distributed internet for the whole life of the network and people have chosen over and over to use centralized, convenient systems. That's not going to change for TV.
      - shmerl 9y ago
        Well, it already happened as I said, except for pirated content.
        jethro_tell 9y ago
        Right, so if people want the convenience, they are going to have to get off their wallets. Broadcast was so cheap because we had central distributions with set times and they just shot it out there and you could watch if you want. I'd rather providers compete on content and service so I can drop people who shove commercials in my face. People have spent years complaining about all the channels and nothing to watch and this trend starts to reverse that because the providers are going to have to compete in content.
smogcutter 9y ago
I don't know about that, distribution decoupled from actual value creation sounds a lot like division of labor, ie the way we've been doing things since the industrial revolution to generally great success. What's the alternative besides inefficiency and duplicated effort? Middlemen are great, they connect buyers and sellers at scale. Without the broadcasters the NFL wouldn't expect to get paid any less, they'd just squeeze the money out of you directly. Or show you ads. Or both!

shmerl 9y ago

> I would prefer that content is sold without need for a middle man. Not everyone can afford a CDN and a lot of other things in between the source and the user, especially creators. Sure, in theory they can just sell video from their sites, but in practice infrastructure costs a lot of money. Unless video will move to decentralized distribution (pirated one did already, so why can't legal one too), distributors will have their piece of the pie.

jethro_tell 9y ago
I don't doubt it. Pirated distribution has nothing in the way of hosting cost so I don't see how that would work with decentralized distribution. What is the set up you are advocating for? People automatically upload content from their streaming apps? How are you going to police amazon/netflix/hulu/whatever service I have to do the uploading in a fair way? My fire TV has 8GB hdd. I don't know what my chrome cast has but it's less. You need real hardware to store the catalog. Torrenting works because it has a bar to entry.
- shmerl 9y ago
  The scale adds up. Cost of entry can be the price paid instead of large monthly subscriptions or higher prices per individual title.
  - jethro_tell 9y ago
    Sure, we've had access to distributed internet for the whole life of the network and people have chosen over and over to use centralized, convenient systems. That's not going to change for TV.
    - shmerl 9y ago
      Well, it already happened as I said, except for pirated content.
      - jethro_tell 9y ago
        Right, so if people want the convenience, they are going to have to get off their wallets. Broadcast was so cheap because we had central distributions with set times and they just shot it out there and you could watch if you want. I'd rather providers compete on content and service so I can drop people who shove commercials in my face. People have spent years complaining about all the channels and nothing to watch and this trend starts to reverse that because the providers are going to have to compete in content.

smogcutter 9y ago

I don't know about that, distribution decoupled from actual value creation sounds a lot like division of labor, ie the way we've been doing things since the industrial revolution to generally great success. What's the alternative besides inefficiency and duplicated effort? Middlemen are great, they connect buyers and sellers at scale. Without the broadcasters the NFL wouldn't expect to get paid any less, they'd just squeeze the money out of you directly. Or show you ads. Or both!