Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
According to Leichtman Research Group, the country's largest cable TV providers, representing around 95% of the cable market, had 48.6 million subscribers at the end of March, while Netflix had 50.9 million customers on its home turf.
While cable only represents around 50 percent of the U.S. pay-TV market as a whole, it is by far the most popular way of getting pay-TV in the country. For Netflix to surpass cable is a big step in becoming the number one source of home entertainment. Interestingly, Netflix reached that goal mainly by growing its own subscriber base rather than by having people "cut the cord". Major cable providers only lost 4 million subscribers since Q1 2012 – Netflix added 27 million.
Source: https://www.statista.com/chart/9799/netflix-vs-cable-pay-tv-subscribers/
(Score: 5, Insightful) by donkeyhotay on Friday June 16 2017, @03:34PM (17 children)
Not a problem for the cable companies, now that we're losing our net freedom (that is, what is usually called "net neutrality"). Since most high speed internet users get their access via the cable companies, they'll just start inserting ads into the Netflix stream. Now the entire internet is cable tv. Profit!
And yes, we need to stop calling it "net neutrality", even though that is technically correct. People, in their simplicity, do not like the word "neutrality". Call it "net freedom", because that's what it represents. Freedom to access what you want. Freedom from unwanted ads.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 16 2017, @04:13PM (13 children)
That's right. We need an open-source alternative.
Centralized systems like those we have are yet another mechanism for control.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @04:18PM (4 children)
We need SoylenTV NOW.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 16 2017, @08:15PM (3 children)
Well, I could turn on my webcam but I don't figure yall would enjoy watching me alternate between coding, playing vidya, and watching porn.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by LoRdTAW on Friday June 16 2017, @08:33PM (2 children)
You never know....
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:50AM (1 child)
Darn it, ran out of mod points upvoting Buzzard -- this is actually funnier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @05:00AM
Gotcha covered.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 16 2017, @04:35PM (5 children)
Centralized systems are unavoidable in many cases though, and for internet service, I don't really see how else you could possibly do it. The only alternative I can imagine is "mesh networks", but those would only work where there's sufficient density of participants, and the bandwidth would be horrible, plus at some point(s) they have to connect to the internet and whoever manages that is going to have legal liability for all the data going through that interface. Of course you could do something like TOR but now performance is going to be pathetic for everyone on that network, and you certainly aren't going to be watching streaming movies on it, you'll be lucky to just send an email with an attached JPEG at speeds comparable to what we had 30 years ago.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @04:55PM (1 child)
Internet is like Power, Water, Sewage, Trash nowadays. It should be a community funded initiative for the good of the community.
Mind you many places (including my own!) have been privatizing as many of those as fast as they can with the expected decline in infrastructure maintenance and increase in bills, so YMMV.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 16 2017, @05:47PM
That's still centralization, it's just that your ISP is owned and operated by your municipality instead of some private company. I like it, it's a lot better than Comcast IMO, and worked well in Chattanooga from what I've read, but this isn't like what the OP was promoting, which is total decentralization. But again, it is preferable IMO, and is less centralized I suppose since each municipality manages its own internet service instead of having some giant corporation being the de-facto monopoly ISP to millions of people across several states.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 16 2017, @06:03PM (2 children)
The problem with mesh networks is latency, but given how cheap memory has become widespread default caching might be a way to ameliorate that. I don't care if it takes a while for my system to sync while I'm sleeping...
There's also sneaker net or old-fashioned LAN parties. I have a friend that hands me an external harddrive with every movie and worthwhile series of the last year on it when I see him once or twice a year; in exchange I take care of any system issues he has.
As for liability, perhaps a return of Freenet or something like it would serve.
Other engineers have solved the pieces of this puzzle, but nobody has put all the pieces together because it hasn't been worth the hassle. If the hassle factor increases dramatically, that calculus may change.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 16 2017, @06:24PM (1 child)
Nope. I'm on a mesh network right now with ping of 11ms and speed of 3.8Mbps and that's fine for streaming video. Cue asshats screaming, "It slow!!1"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 16 2017, @08:17PM
It slow!!1
I hate to disappoint.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday June 16 2017, @06:05PM (1 child)
Netflix is proprietary software because it needs to implement "digital restrictions management" measures to deter teeing [wikipedia.org] a rented video into a file that remains useful to nonsubscribers or to former subscribers. So in practice, an open-source alternative to Netflix would work only for motion pictures licensed under terms allowing at least verbatim reproduction and distribution. But producing video costs money, and I'm told that crowdfunding is one to two orders of magnitude too weak to fund production of an original feature film with Hollywood-class production values.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:58AM
Netflix in my opinion, has reached a very fair balance between convenience for the user and desires of the content producers. The price is very modest -- $12 month and you can watch 4 different streams simultaneously on different devices and you can even download (at least some) stuff now for offline viewing. That's three lattes or six drip coffees per month, for a wide enough selection that I can always find something interesting.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 16 2017, @05:41PM (1 child)
Call it "net freedom",
That name is already taken by a bill aiming to make it legal to kick gay people off the net.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 16 2017, @08:18PM
Get with the times. Nobody cares about gay people anymore. We're all too busy being transphobes and islamophobes nowadays.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Lagg on Friday June 16 2017, @08:26PM
Suddenlink started injecting HTML into my pages when my meter (something that wasn't there a few years ago) goes up too far. They're massive banners that are roughly 800px tall. The opt out button doesn't actually opt out.
Guess we will now have to start paying a VPN fee in the near future just to get a dumb pipe wrapped in horrid complexity.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿