Head of Time Warner Cable Unfamiliar With Apple's AirPlay | Hacker News Reader

Head of Time Warner Cable Unfamiliar With Apple's AirPlay

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50 pointsiProject41 comments

Today we want to be on every screen. Today it’s a little bit clunky to get programming from the Internet onto the TV — not so hard to get it on your iPad

This is horrifying. Outside of Airplay virtually every HDTV you buy these days is going to have an internet app platform built in. Something like a Roku is dead simple and both Verizon and Comcast/Xfinity stream IP based content via the Xbox. Getting Internet onto the big screen is painfully easy. Not understanding the threat posed by these devices isn't acceptable for the head of a major cable operator.

One might consider such comments as little more than posturing. Recall Steve Jobs explaining that the iPhone could not have apps because users would not tolerate a rogue app taking down the mobile network. However, his statements are so obviously false that he must either think his listeners are fools or be one himself.

My first thought was "What an idiot", but then I realized just what you said, his statements are propaganda to lull the less informed segments of the market that still cough up the bucks for ESPN (and a few other channels), not what he believes or knows (most likely).

He's selling to my wife. My teenagers just plug HDMI into the computer (from the TV) and go find the shows they want. He's already lost, but it will take him 5 to 10 years to know it.

To answer one person down there, yes, I had to tinker with the PC about 5 minutes (Ubuntu 10.04) to get drivers and settings correct, but HDMI works great after that. (sound, aspect ratio, it's all good!)

I actually use my HDTV as a monitor. Sure, it's low resolution compared to some 19" monitors in its price range at only 1920x1080, but it's 42 inches and higher res than my 17" 1280x1024 monitor it replaced. With this in mind, it's trivial to load up WMP or VLC and use it as a TV as well.

That's more credit than I personally am willing to give the head of a cable company at this point. If they constantly act like they have no idea what is going on, perhaps indeed they don't.

Recall Steve Jobs explaining that the iPhone could not have apps because users would not tolerate a rogue app taking down the mobile network

I remember thinking how offensive it was when Jobs said that and then announced the App Store only a few months later. It was obvious that they couldn't have pivoted that quickly, so Jobs must have been lying through his teeth.

It was only later that I learned that the App Store infrastructure was already being built with the iPad in mind, so they could indeed have retargeted it to the iPhone almost overnight. Jobs may not have technically been lying about their intention to keep third-party apps off of the iPhone.

But it is clunky. It's a threat, but it's clunky.

Roku - weird platform, but improving. BrightScript has its issues, but it does support HLS and VAST for ads.

Boxee - buggy.

SamsungTV - horrible platform, horrible (borderline abusive) approval process. Already fragmented between 2010 and 2011 models, poor and/or outright wrong documentation.

GoogleTV - possibly one of the best of the bunch, since Android is a worthwhile base, but still has a few screws loose.

Others - often too small/difficult to invest heavily in making something truly good.

I'm no huge Apple fan, but this market screams for them to come in and decimate the seemingly childish current players.

What about Apple TV? I agree, the TV based systems are "clunky", but Apple TV works perfectly, and Roku only seems to have hickups with slower internet connections.

I have an answer for Time Warner's CEO -- "there was no simple way to get Internet-based video onto the television screen" -- Apple TV is easy. There is nothing about modern cable that is that easy. Last time I moved I did not reconnect my cable. I never plan on intentionally becoming a cable customer again in my life.

Google TV - too expensive

Apple TV - not as much content as competitors

> painfully easy.

It isn't taking off though. I showed my brother that he has internet built into the new TV he bought. he was interested for the novelty factor for 5 minutes and then gave it up and went back to his ipad

Sales figures of apple tv's and google devices etc. also suggest that for some reason the TV -> Internet bridge devices are just not working with consumers

The more I see and think about this the more I think it will be built into televisions, and that television companies suck at making software so it will be somebody new who will own the entire market (Apple).

I thought this was an Onion headline at first. Though if it were, it would probably read: "Company CEO Unaware of Technology Sure to Make His Company Obsolete".

Alas, it seems like Time Warner won't be obsolete very soon. We can only hope.

While it's easy to make fun of the guy for this, it's also a good indicator of how much work remains for products like AirPlay and Roku. The average consumer just isn't aware of the technology, and it's still relatively difficult to research and setup (compared to just calling your cable company). There's still big opportunity in this space.

Once Apple comes out with the iTV, that'll all change. No more futzing around with cables, no more switching between 5 different remotes, no more shity UIs. And, most importantly, everyone will know about the iTV the day it launches.

Granted I'm on HN so I'm probably not an "average consumer" in this regard. However new computers have HDMI outs and new TVs have HDMI ins. What exactly is the technical problem with getting internet content on a TV? It is absolutely no different than plugging in an Xbox or other console, and actually simpler than setting up a TiVo or a cable box!

NOTE: I don't actually know how common HDMI outs are on store bought PCs (since I build my own) but surely it is becoming standard?

XBoxes primary display is the television, that is not the case for PCs. PCs require an additional software layer that consumers don't know about and don't "just work" the way a set-top box does.

Hooking a PC with HDMI-out to a TV isn't that hard, but now what do you do? How do you control it remotely, are you going to get up and walk over to the PC hooked up to the TV every time you want to change the "channel"? And what exactly are the "channels"? A web browser open to YouTube?

Before anyone answers these rhetorical questions -- I know full well that things like USB-irda devices, XBMC with plugins to automatically torrent your favorite shows or more-likely-used-legally options like Windows Media Center exist, but there is actually quite a lot of software complexity that you are handwaving over here and you'd be surprised how close to technobabble gibberish this currently existing stuff sounds to an "average consumer".

Internet as the primary means to deliver tv content is absolutely inevitable and if I were a shareholder of a cable company and the CEO of that company was completely oblivious to the move to this future, I would be concerned. OTOH we are still at least a few years off from this being a really viable option for the masses. The current solutions all have pretty serious gaps. This is a big part of the reason the idea of a true Apple iTV is continually churned on the rumor mill. For whatever you think about Apple (I'm not a huge fan), one would expect them to deliver a true end-to-end solution, which hasn't really been done yet.

Apparently I wasn't fully appreciating what "internet content" is. I was assuming this referred to content that is already accessible through a browser - so yes my daughter wants to show us all something funny she saw on YouTube - we put it up on our TV rather than hunch around a monitor. I was also assuming the discussion was about only accessing that content, not completely replacing the current cable TV model. I agree it is inevitable but we aren't actually there yet. I'm not a big consumer of TV content but I had thought services like netflix and hulu were already taking huge steps in this arena. One (two) of the only shows I do take any interest has been available online for a long time already - Comedy Central's Daily Show and Colbert Report.

I think this situation is going to resolve itself when the generation shifts - I don't think the next generation will ever subscribe to cable the way their parents have, and the perceived tech barrier will be less with the next generation.

A CEO is not an average consumer. It's his job to understand how and why people watch video. If he thinks his job is just to understand video on cable, he'll never be able to maneuver his company in this era.

The irony is that cable TV is still doing pretty well. If the industry ever completely implodes, people will blame the men and women in charge at the time. But it's often the decisions made when things are going well that ultimately seal a companies fate.

Getting a head of TV over IP is the smart bet. The best time to do it is when profits are healthy and R&D spending is easy.

The problem is that many of these guys are old and rich. They don't see why someone would want to watch video differently, which is exactly why they shouldn't be in charge.

Being really wealthy is an excellent way to not understand a market.

>"A CEO is not an average consumer. It's his job to understand how and why people watch video"

At a publicly traded company, that is rarely the CEO's job.

There, the CEO's job is usually to keep Wall Street happy (or less unhappy).

Yes, I am amazed no-one else has said this. Most of my iPhone-owning friends have no idea what AirPlay is, or what an AppleTV is. They're still very much niche products.

What's immensely frustrating about this, is that they actively block internet content on the TV via Google TV, and yet they claim it's difficult to deliver content to the TV. I call this hypocritical.

"I hate set-top boxes"

I hated his company's crappy set-top box, the lack of TWC support for 3rd party boxes, and the efforts TWC made to kill the cablecard.

I connect an HDMI cable from my laptop to my HDTV. Would the average consumer consider that "clunky"?

It depends on what you are using as a UI, but probably. If it boots into a full screen, remote-controllable app that never crashes, then it might be ok.

I toyed around with Boxee for Mac on a dedicated old laptop and it was really close -- crashed too much, but if it didn't, it would be fine for a lot of consumers -- though not nearly as good as AppleTV. The advantage over AppleTV is the enormous amount of content.

There are loads of internet enabled TV's on the market at the moment that in the UK at least will give you access to youtube, lovefilm (similar to netflix), BBC iPlayer and the streaming services that most channels provide. Similarly the PS3 and XBOX can do similar things. The UI's probably need some work but IP-TV is becoming a reality.

Yes.

First, despite the simplification of the cables, physically connecting it can still be a challenge, for example if there's no convenient place to put a laptop within 6' of the TV. And power for the laptop there too.

Second, once its connected, it's no certainty that the external display will be correctly detected or set to the correct resolution. Is the picture streched? When you hit full-screen, does it only show on the laptop? Is sound going over HDMI too? Tinkering with settings and troubleshooting a multi-monitor setup can be intimidating for the "average consumer".

Even if you get everything setup, many laptops do no come with remote controls, and long HDMI cables are uncommon.

I've owned or own a Roku, a TV which had USB and could play anything FFMPEG could read, a PS3 with netflix and recently an AppleTV+iPad.

I'd consider myself reasonably technically inclined and have had an HDMI cable which comfortably reached my couch for quite awhile but I still use that as a last resort for content I can't play some other way.

I do this too, but (as lazy as this might sound) I'm definitely much less inclined to watch TV knowing that I'll have to go through that process vs. grabbing the remote and pressing 'power' and flipping through the channels (which is perhaps a good thing as far as my health goes). It's annoying having to stand up to switch between things too.

I also have a Google TV with the Plex app, which is great except my laptops aren't quite fast enough to stream 1080p over wifi (and even 720p can sometimes have buffering problems too). Plex is pretty simple as far as these kinds of things go, but even with Plex I can absolutely imagine the average consumer having trouble, or just being too intimidated to even try to set it up ("I have to run a "server" on my computer? What the hell is that?")

Anyway, my basic point is that there's really nothing as smooth and simple, even for people like us who have no trouble setting up a media server, as it was in the "old days" where you can pick up the remote and be watching what you want to watch within 10 seconds.

Hopefully this means that all cable companies will die soon... Ok maybe that is a bit too hopeful. But I've been looking for ways to drop my TV bill recently (directv) I pay $90 a month to watch maybe 3 channels once or twice a week. I can't think of any other consumer service I pay that much for. Unfortunately new episodes of Dexter and BreakingBad aren't easily available online yet. The Cable/Satellite TV industry is just so broken.

"AirPlay also makes it easy to push pirated video available on the Web onto the television, which could lead some people to drop their cable subscriptions."

Really? AirPlay only works with Apple-approved apps. E.g., it doesn't work with HBO Go. Pirated videos, there's no app for that.

> Pirated videos, there's no app for that.

Torrent -> HandBrake -> iTunes -> Apple TV

That process is beyond the understanding of most people. They just want to buy and click play.

Irrelevant. The point is that getting pirated video onto the Apple TV is at most one extra step. A lot of torrents are already mp4, in which case there is no extra step.

The subject was AirPlay, which is a specific technology that allows users to play video on their iPhone/iPad on their TV through AppleTV. Can you rip off a video into iTunes and make AppleTV play it over wi-fi, but it's not AirPlay.

AirPlay works with any video from the iPod/Music/Videos apps. One can import any video (including tormented TV shows) into iTunes and thus into these apps. It most certainly is AirPlay, although Apple would prefer people to just buy from their store.

Sorry, you're just wrong. The feature in iTunes that lets you stream your videos to an Apple TV is called AirPlay and uses the same protocol as iOS devices.

AirPlay actually has its origins in AirTunes, which was originally only accessible through iTunes. These days there are even third party senders and receivers for AirPlay, so in principal you can use AirPlay without actually using any first-party Apple software or hardware.

Well, darn, I guess I am. Sometimes I think I know something I don't. Thanks for the clarification, all of the commenters. Sorry for the noise.

As i386 said, I don't think Torrent -> HandBrake -> iTunes -> Apple TV is a path many Apple users will take. But I guess it's AirPlay. :)

"Glenn A. Britt, the company’s chief executive, said in a group interview on Friday that the challenge for digital video was that there was no simple way to get Internet-based video onto the television screen."

The CEO has never heard of HDMI or VGA cables??

There is a fine line between visionary and dunce. If he only had this insight about 5 years ago...

Head of Time Warner unfamiliar with arse location process involving the use of both hands.

Meh this is not news. Unless you actively look for this you would not know it was there. Who cares.

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