PRPOV

My good friend Mr. Biggs over at Crunchgear.com just wrote a novella about (my words) the future of on demand programming vs. the bloated channel line-ups most of America is forced to purchase with cable.

While I agree that this is ultimately a losing scenario for cable companies, I think that the majority of Americans are still in the rosy glow of HD programming and HD On Demand that there is still time for cable companies (or telco companies) to look at changing how they do business. But how should they evolve?

Telco companies are certainly evolving to bring more choice into the market. But as much as I love AT&T UVerse, at the end of the day (no offense to the engineering marvels here), it’s just an IPTV version of what cable is offering. Same content, same channels, but with some nice multi-room DVR controls.

But it’s still just a box. A box that does not play well with other content services — not to mention my own personal content.

So I have a TiVO and the future promise of a hacked Apply TV to solve some of these issues. However, I am not a case study for the average American.  Most American are still discovering the joys of time shifting with their cable (or telco) DVR.

So there is still time to evolve. But not much time. As more and more of the Gen-Y are getting jobs, their first apartments, and getting married, there better be some changes — because they will  will gladly choose iTunes On Demand to get their shows pushed to their TVs than pay for 200 channels they don’t want.

When Cable first arrived, people never thought people would pay for what they got for free (read this great article on the history of cable television). Well they did. And over time, the networks have lost a lot of power to the original “paid” programming offered by Showtime, HBO and others. And cable became the 800 pound gorilla in content distribution.

So what’s keeping things from evolving as fast as we are? When talking about cable companies, a lot of this is technology driven, a lot of this is copyright (see my previous post on copyright/drm and content), but a lot of it is that the modern cable company is a giant network of regional operations, mom and pop acquisitions, and nightmare processes for rolling out new programming — not to mention the customer service issues. It’s a monster with many heads where even something simple can not be simply integrated.

This gives a leg up to AT&T, which has brought to market the first IPTV offering with its remotely controlled home network. A network that update itself and easily role out new services. Lets give them a chance and see what happens!

Was just reading a story by Chris Foresman at Ars Technica about the future of AT&T sans iPhone exclusivity.

There is no doubt that AT&T gambled (a lot) and won (a lot) with their bet on the iPhone. So let’s call it a success and move on.

What I think is a more interesting question to ponder: when will AT&T better leverages its quad-play (home phone, cell, Internet and IPTV) offerings to begin really owning the digital home. I am not talking about discounted package deals and single billing statements. Yawn.  What I am talking about is going into an AT&T store seeing a big, beautiful HDTV and getting it for free or near free (say $20 per month) for signing a 2 year commitment for new IPTV and Internet service.

When this happens, AT&T would not only drive up subscribers, but drive HDTV sales and services through the roof. I love going into Best Buy, but if AT&T was willing to off set the cost of a new HDTV like they do for cell phones, I’d be the first in line.

If you are a tech-nerd like me, take a step back before you blast me on the disadvantages of bundling. I know the customer service issues needed to be dealt with first! But most people don’t want to be CIOs of their house. They want a simple solution to bring everything together. And think — what’s the next logical step once all these things are connected together? Access to advanced content and services. Not just movies, but critically needed services such as remote home network management, off-site file back-ups (documents, movies, photos and videos), managed DRM so you can move content from one device to another (legally), and much much more.

I am not the first to prognosticate about the future of telco and cable companies (sorry satellite), so believe this isn’t a matter of if this will happen, but when. And when it does… that will be a hell of thing to be able to promote. Much more interesting than bundled billing!