Unbundle our archaic cable TV system | Hacker News Reader

Unbundle our archaic cable TV system

scripting.com

9 pointsdavewiner7 comments

I'm a bit unclear on this one. He wants cable unbundled but then ends up complaining about the bad Comcast UI.

If you want ala carte cable you can get most every show you want via Amazon or iTunes, maybe with a Netflix and or Hulu plus subscription. Don't complain too much about the cable co's not allowing ala carte subscriptions, the large networks don't want you doing this either. They negotiate their carriage deals with large cable operators across all their properties so if you want Scripps Food Network you're going to have to get HGTV and DIY too..

If you want a better UI then look at GoogleTV. It ads a new layer on top of your existing guide to enhance the experience.

Also look at Comcast's Fancast and TV Everywhere initiatives (TV Everywhere is not Comcast specific) they are allowing subscribers to stream a lot of TV over the web negating the need for a Slingbox.

Wow, did you actually just say "If you want a better UI then look at Google TV." as a sentence? Just...WOW.

Compared to Comcast's current guide? Yes.

For many products which have zero marginal cost, bundling turns out to be much more efficient from an economics perspective than a la carte selection. This link illustrate the idea with a very simple model of New York City parks:

http://makeanysense.blogspot.com/2010/07/more-choice-is-less...

This is a very handy model to keep in mind when thinking about zero-marginal-cost economics.

This issue has gone all the way to congress a couple times, but no real fix has ever come of it.

Fortunately the market has already solved it for us. With Itunes and Hulu and DVD season box sets, we've gone all the past a la carte per channel and straight to a la carte per show and per episode.

I say that each person simply vote with cash and unbundle yourself from the system. As a consumer, use your power and control what you consume. So long as people just complain but still keep the system profitable by staying as customers, then we will get the economically efficient bundles that we dislike. You may miss a few shows, but you can catch them in a year or two. If you really love live sports, reconsider radio or even go see a game in person.

Excellent suggestion! And to extend that logic yet further, if you like using the Internet but don't want to pay for unwanted services bundled on top of Internet access (voice, etc.), you can simply dig your own trench from your home or business to the nearest neutral data center, drop a fiber pair in, light it on both ends, buy some routers, negotiate an arrangement with the data center and interconnection agreements with the other networks onsite, and then run the whole thing yourself forever! Hey, you might miss a few generations of programming and media formats completely, but that's the price of freedom! And there's always better to come... no need to weep if you end up missing HDTV or 3D altogether, because in the long run fully immersive holographic TV will be so much better anyway!

Alas,if only we could have always had the courage of your convictions! Back in the mid-1970s when the private corporation AT&T was the only national-scale provider of any kind of communications service in the US, a bunch of short-sighted whiners argued that forcing AT&T to unbundle was necessary to improve existing (voice) services, drive down extortionate pricing, and give the universe of non-AT&T employees a shot of their own at at innovating. But anyone who remembers those days knows that the complaints were LIES: everyone had access to a wide variety of alternatives, ranging from CB radios to postcards to tin cans interconnected with string! So what if that whining ultimately made it possible for the Internet grow beyond the confines of a few university campuses, and for the US to become the world leader and hub of Internet development? Now all of that growth and wealth and innovation will forevermore be tainted by by poisoned circumstances of its illegitimate origin. Ahh, if only we could turn back the clock so that we might do it right from the beginning.... Four decades later we might still look a bit like those countries in landlocked Africa or Central America that are still waiting for widespread consumer access the the Internet and other services, but at least our virtue would still be intact!

Given the fact that any Internet-based response would be inherently self-contradictory, please don't sully yourself any further by replying!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com