Globe & Mail talks about Cord Cutting

I was reading the Globe & Mail a couple weeks ago in between feeding my newborn daughter and catching up on sleep. The article in question was this one: Globe & Mail - This is Where we Leave Cable Behind.  I found it pretty interesting given my past experiences within the cable business.  I'd expected the article to be all about digital streaming over the internet, but rather it talked more about how digital cable is slowly being supplanted by the newer and cooler sounding IPTV.

The majority of the article talked about how IPTV is being deployed aggressively by a number of telecom companies to go on the offensive vs. the big canadian cable stalwarts.  And it seems that despite the limited footprint of the product they are making inroads.  This is basically the Telco's punch in the nose after getting bullied by the cable folks for so long in the realm of mobile phones.

The part of the article that I latched onto was when it was quoting from someone they'd interviewed who was using the IPTV service from one of the providers.  The whole article was talking about the great new features and web-like experience that this new IPTV technology could provide.  But at the moment the offerings provided in these early markets where the service is available they have a very cable-like experience thus far.  And the guy they are interviewing doesn't really care about that.  What he's excited about despite all that is the fact that the program guide and other software that he interacts with on the device provides a user experience more like what you'd expect from a product built in the last 4 or 5 years and not like it was built in the 80's using Atari games as the design aesthetic.

If I were a cable operator...and I'm not, but if I were I might want to consider getting a new program guide experience as soon as possible.  I know my feelings are similar to the guy in the Globe's article.  If my provider had a much nicer user interface with a well laid out and simple flow of control for searching, browsing and discovering content on my TV I'd be a lot more satisfied than I am today.  So what I'm saying is that in terms of short term bang for the buck the cable companies really should consider just giving their guides a real facelift.  Let a real designer go to town on it.  Let a real software company build it for you and deploy, deploy, deploy.

I'm not saying that IPTV is a waste of time.  Not at all.  I believe it's likely where all paid TV is going to go and needs to go.  But it's more of a longer term strategic thing as far as I can tell.  But if they want to stop the bleeding.  And I'm thinking they do, they would be well served to bring their guides into the 21st century.  They don't even need to add new features....just make the ones they already have work better.

I'd love to be a cord cutter, but my morality gets in the way...

I have a hard time with "cord-cutting".  I would love to stop giving my service provider so much money for a service that I think I'm over-paying for, but I also don't have a clear alternative that provides the same level of service without going outside the law.  The frustrating part isn't that no one else can provide the service at the same level of quality or even better.  It's that government regulations and the entrenched telecom companies keep blocking competition any chance they get.

Just across the boarder services such as Hulu, Amazon On Demand, VUDU, and others provide access to a lot of high quality streamed content that I can't have for a number of political and legal reasons.  I could do as a number of my tech savvy friends have done and setup a Usenet account or use Bit torrents to get at the content I'd like.  Or more recently some have tried services which allow you access to US services through a VPN like service so the service provided doesn't detect you aren't in the US and as such allows you to stream content to you're hearts content. The last option is probably the most morally ambiguous.   The first 2 are pretty clearly stealing.  And I have a hard time with that since I love the content.  I want to pay those who produced it their due.  They provided me the entertainment value and I feel obligated to pay them for that value.  This is why the last option is more palatable to me.  At least in that case the producers of the content are still getting paid.  You're just subverting their contract with the contents owners to not distribute the content outside certain geographic boundaries.

I find that as time passes and things like UBB have come to a head my moral arguments are carrying less and less weight with me.  I'm starting to feel like the only way we'll be able to change the way video content is delivered is to hurt them where it seems to matter most, even if that will in turn still hurt me, in that the content I love may not have the funds to be produced any more. I could quite easily sign up for  a Usenet service, pick up a Mac Mini with HDMI out and install Plex or another XBMC varient quite easily.  I know the programs to install that can automatically download the content I'd want and it's all pretty easy to find.

However it's not all doom and gloom.  There's still a chance that my provider will learn something here.  For me the UI and the UX matter a great deal more than the feature list.  If they can just spend some time focusing on that they would find someone like me a lot easier to please.  They already provide a pretty impressive feature set.  I can deal with VOD shows that are handcuffed by not allowing me to fast-forward through the commercials.  I can also deal with a DVR that doesn't have all the bells and whistles that a TiVo can provide.  Just make it easier to use, make it drop fewer scheduled recordings, make it easier for me to find the VOD content you have, and make it not so horribly ugly to look at on my big screen TV.  I don't think I'm asking for too much here.