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Cutting the Umbilical Cord to Broadcast TV

by , 2:15 PM EST, December 22nd, 2006

A technology writer took up the challenge from his editor. Cut the TV cable. Put the TiVo box in the closet. Marching orders: see if his family could meet their entertainment needs from the Internet alone. And it all worked according to article posted at Wired News on Monday.

A brand new Mac mini was purchased and connected to the HDTV. An iTunes account was set up, and the self described guinea pig and his wife set about seeing if they could live without broadcast TV for a month.

When iTunes charges built up and sports were hard to come by, the writer turned to some free video services and his Xbox to supplement his viewing. He found plenty of free video programming, but sports events were another story. He noted: "It turns out, watching a New England Patriots' game online is impossible."

Having admitted that he steered clear of the iPod because of its DRM, the author went on to, ironically, tell of his woes with Microsoft's video rental system which Microsoft said were "the realities of the content industry."

The bottom line in the experiment was that it took a Mac mini, the iTunes Store, an Xbox, and a little more money than his family had been spending on cable. But in the end, the cable line stayed cut.

He concluded, "In the end, getting videos from the internet is not the same as live television programming. However, in a few years, I believe it will be better."

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View Name:Guest
Subject: Free TV
Close Name:Small White Car Posts: 1950 Joined: 02 Jul 2004
Subject:

Quote
Guest wrote:
If TV has commercials, it's supposed to be free.


Says who? I pay for cable TV and I'm pretty sure they play commercials in the middle of 'The Daily Show' every night.

That's a nice thought, but it's pure fantasy.

View Name:Guest
Subject: Free TV
Close Name:algr Posts: 282 Joined: 07 Aug 2003
Subject:

This is indeed the future. The movie industry and set manufacturers have tied HDTV in so many knots that a good chunk of the viewing public will find broadcast, cable, and satellite to be unbearably complex.

A tech savvy friend of mine has an HDTV set and cable, but when I asked him to tune in the secondary channels that a local broadcaster was transmitting he couldn't do it because somehow his tuner wasn't compatible with his cable. It was also impossible for him to recognize what channel he was watching by looking at the channel numbers on his TV because the cable TV company stripped that info out of the broadcasts. He had hundreds of channels with nothing but 203, 204, 205, 206, ect to identify them. (Which also meant that he could never use a Tivo. Maybe that is why his cable did that.) He could get HDTV, but had to wait for a station ID in order to know what he was watching!

All Apple has to do is fill up iTunes as they have done, and up the quality when faster internet becomes more common. Then sit back, and wait for the rest of the industry to destroy itself.

View Name:Guest
Subject: Over the air HDTV for the Mac Mini
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