Posted on 11/28/2014 9:18:30 AM PST by Enlightened1
When TV first arrived, everyone said that was the end of the movie and exhibitor (theater) business.
They could not have been more wrong.
And everyone who says broadcast TV is going away is wrong.
Broadcast TV’s ace in the hole is that they pay us, the American people, the owners of the band, exactly nothing for the airwaves. Contrast that with what Verizon and AT&T have to pay to United States taxpayers for scarce wave space.
In exchange for selling ad time, their broadcast must remain free to anyone with an antenna. And they can’t say “we’re not going to broadcast at all — we’re just going to stream Big Bang Theory to paying customers.” If they try that, they lose their place on the bandwidth. The FCC will auction it off to the highest bidder. For billions of dollars. The networks’ most valuable irreplaceable asset is the band they sit on. There isn’t any more available.
Nope, the nets have a sweet deal — free rent on the American-owned band, and they keep all the ad revenue. They will never give it up. Even if their audience has been cut in half in the last ten years, so what? CBS has never been more profitable.
Broadcast TV is here to stay.
Well, you’re entitled to your opinion.
Not really a matter of opinion really. People of all political persuasions - liberal, conservative, independent - are ditching cable for netflix. In fact most choices by people are not driven by politics and idealogy.
Also note anyone jonesing for TCM will be happy to find out there's an abundance of free and low cost classic movie provider channels available on Roku as well.
Yep, keeping cable for a few local channels is not worth it...try out an antenna. May be as many as 50 free “OTA”(over-the-air) local/digital channels your local TV market (including the “Big 3” & Fox, “MEtv”/oldies, etc.. TVFool.com will give you channels & signal strength. (Just use your Zip Code if you are wary of giving your whole address on TVFool).
http://www.tvfool.com
and
http://disablemycable.com
Again, a sincere thank you is very much in order.
Netflix dropped 24. Deal breaker. No other reason to watch the boob tube.
Barstow?
I like Barstow....and Mojave
Have they become hobo havens?
Say it ain’t so...
Where this ends up:
The Norwegian public broadcasting company put on a seven hour TV show consisting of a camera on the front of the train run between Bergen and Oslo. Also they did a 130 hour show of the coastal ferry's run up the west coast of Norway.
(somehow - both shows were very popular.)
Thank you. Very helpful.
Me too - My cableTV company just started requiring data decoder machines attached to every TV, and the added cost of renting the machinery from them just put me over the top. I only watch maybe five of the channels anyway, and often there just isn't anything on any of them that I care to watch... More often than not, the TV is muted or off, while I play something I DO want to watch on the laptop.
So my kid found me an old Vista era pancake style computer for 25 bucks... a decent little dual core with BlueRay DVD and HDMI inbuilt... I refurbished and reloaded it, and it now sits where the (non-blueray) DVD player used to sit... runs HDMI to the flat-screen, hard wired net gives me access to my local machines and internet. I run it by VNC from my laptop or from a wireless KB w/ inbuilt glide-pad... It has quickly become the multi-media hub for the house, containing my music and movie libraries, adding internet streamed music and movies too... It is SO awesome that I am kicking myself that I didn't do this years ago.
I am less than 75 bucks total into that setup, and that is paid for just by the savings from the rental of that TV's digital decoder for 10 months (not to mention the savings of the cableTV service itself yet).
It won't be very long at all and I will have a similar setup on every TV in the house, then it's seeya later CableTV. I am so very HAPPY to part ways.
BTW, where does Net Neutrality fit into this picture?
Get a digital Antenna. That way you can at least get the locals. There are easy to install, and you do not have to pay for the local channels. Plus the picture looks good.
Look into getting a digital Antenna too. That way you can watch your locals for free. They are easy to install and the picture looks a lot better too.
Oh I know, but I feel like I’m stealing from them.
So I actually pay $8 a month for Netflix and I have a prime account for Amazon too.
Think about it this way....
Just think back how mankind, technology wise, progressed up until 1880..... It was for the most part pretty slow.
Although when Thomas Edison created the light bulb in 1880 that was a huge game changer. Then think of how we have progressed technology with in the last 134 years. What we have achieved in the last 134 years compare to all the time before that is quite remarkable technology speaking.
Well it’s about to happen again, but we will not have to wait that long (134 year). Technology is about how many transistors can you pack in microchip. Right now the iPhone 6 has 2 Billion Transistors in it. Think of each Transistor as a single job. So that means it can do up to 2 Billion jobs at 1 time.
When we make the Quantum jump in Microchips in 9 years, then everything will change very quickly. The number of Transistors is 2 to the 300th power or 1 Quadrillion (1000 Trillions) Transistors in the first generation chip.
To give you a scope of that. 1 Quantum chip could map our entire universe down to sub atomic particle. Just think every planet, every star, etc.... What would take today’s computers a 1000 years to figure out. With a quantum computer could figure it out in 1 day.
Now to put it in a better perspective....time. What we have accomplished over the last 50 years, technology wise, we will do that again in the first 5 years of the first generation Quantum chip. 5 years from the point what we accomplished over the last 50 years will be achieved in 3 months. I know that is hard to fathom right now, but Automation, Drones (not just for spying) and Robots will be the main driving force.
That’s not me saying that. This is Ray Kurzweil, Director of Engineering at Google who correctly predicted technology from 1999 to 2009, says we will reach what I’m talking about in 2029 or 15 years from now. It is called “The Singularity”, “Transcendence” or “Trans humanism”. Which is the merging of mankind and machine.
You’re welcome :)
They have bigger fish in the sea to worry about. You have power. Never let these losers make you think you do not.
Not saying the technology will not be available, but technology and the ability either implement it properly or to make it affordable by the general public have always been on different timelines. I’m well aware of the history of technology and that’s why making predictions like that are usually, almost always, divergent from reality.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.