The Other Drummer

Figures. Right after I go off and write a bunch (OK, two) blog posts about how Hulu could be the death knell of the cable companies and possibly even parts of iTunes, their CEO (pictured above) comes out and says they aren’t a competitor to cable companies and that people shouldn’t expect to be able to cancel their cable subscriptions and just use Hulu.

Nice timing, jerky. Couldn’t have done that before I wrote all that nice stuff about you?

I haven’t given up all hope though. If I were him I probably would have said the same thing. No point it calling out the cable companies until they’re in a position where they can’t say no to you, right El Jobso?

I just got this email from KSL. The second paragraph is what intrigues me:

What is a Group Deal? KSL.com will bring exclusive offers to our users that will save them up to 50% or more at local businesses.

Sounds a lot like Groupon to me. A little poking around KSL’s website revealed no additional information. Did you get the same email? Do you think KSL can take on Groupon? Let me know in the comments.

If you aren’t signed up with Groupon yet, click here and get on the ball. If you do, and end up spending something, I get ten bucks. So chop-chop. I gotta family to feed and a tech habit to support.

P.S. This is my 800th post.

[UPDATE] My lovely wife found the link to the KSL Deals site. Looks like Groupon to me.

I love a good discussion.

Some debate has been going on regarding Hulu’s new Plus service. Is it worth the money? Why not just do Netflix? There’s a healthy comment thread over on my original post which I’d recommend reading – good points made on all sides.

This morning Zach pointed me to an article titled “Did Hulu Just Make Its First Tactical Error?” Here is my response to that post and few thoughts to further the discussion.

What was the tactical error?

First, I’m not clear what tactical error the autor (Chad Catacchio) was referring to. So far as I can tell, he never came out and said it – it just seemed to be more of a comparison of Hulu Plus and Netflix. Which is fine, I’m just not sure what his point was other than saying he preferred Netflix.

Second, Chad focused a lot on the app versions of Netflix and Hulu Plus. I don’t think being able to watch the Hulu Plus content on an iPhone (which you can’t do with Netflix, by the way) was the big news or the reason for paying for the service. The big news was that there’s another big competitor to iTunes and the cable companies and it’s a subscription model.

Also, I don’t think Netflix is who should be afraid of the potential of Hulu Plus – I think the cable companies and iTunes (Apple) should be.

The real competition

The cable companies, as I mentioned before, are being ousted in their role of middleman as networks and movie studios are going straight to consumers via the web.

iTunes offers ala carte TV series which you can download and watch on your various devices – assuming you have an Apple device and assuming you’ve bought a $229 Apple TV so you can watch the content you paid for on your TV. This is a very expensive way to go.

Let’s look at a show I’ve been watching, Burn Notice. To purchase the current (fourth) season of Burn Notice in HD from the iTunes Store is $45. The third and second seasons are $35 each and the first season is a bargain-basement $20 (standard definition).

So if I recommend this show to you and you decide you want to check it out, you have to go back and spend $135 (plus the cost of an Apple TV) to catch up on one TV series.*

Media mindsets

Apple was right when they said people want to own their music. That’s because we’re used to buying it on tapes and discs and keeping it. Until recently we never owned TV shows – we watched them when they were on or we missed them and waited for repeats. That’s why a subscription service makes more sense for TV than it does for music or movies.

Apples to apples

And that may be the big point here: do you want to watch TV or movies? From my perspective, I pay my cable bill so I can watch TV. If I want movies, I do Netflix or Redbox; Netflix is about movies, Hulu is about TV.

In the end, you can get a subscription to Hulu Plus and Netflix and still save money if you cut your cable bill and only pay for Internet access. Bottom line is that these two companies signify a potentially huge shift in the way people consume media and that’s a good thing for consumers – even if it does cost $9.99 per month.

P.S. It is pretty ridiculous that they’re leaving the ads in Hulu Plus.

*Of course I pick a series that isn’t available on Hulu Plus. Figures.

Image courtesy of Engadget. Obviously.

FIRST REASON TO HATE AT&T

What you see in the picture above is an AT&T 3G MicroCell. It basically acts as your own personal cell phone tower in your house which routes calls over your home cable/DSL connection. A nice workaround if you, like many AT&T customers, have little or no reception in your house.

Except you have to pay for the MicroCell. $150 bucks before $100 mail-in rebate.

Oh, but to get that rebate, you have to pay for a “MicroCell plan” at $19.99/month.

If you opt-out of adding the $19.99 per month you 1. lose out on the $100 rebate and 2. any minutes you use while on the MicroCell will come out of your monthly pool of voice minutes – despite not actually using AT&T’s network to place the calls.

And any data you use on your phone while connected to the MicroCell still counts against the newly imposed 2 GB cap – even though you’re using your own home network and not AT&T’s towers.

So, if I had this “service”, I’d be paying AT&T to let me use my home Internet connection to get the service I’m already paying them for, but not getting.

AT&T should be handing these things out like candy and begging people to use them: it expands their coverage without having to build new towers, in addition to easing traffic on their already fragile network. Instead, they’re charging their customers $240/year to use the phones they paid for on a service they’re charged for each month, but can’t use.

Courtesy of Johnny Mitchel

SECOND REASON TO HATE AT&T

AT&T tethering is also a scam. They’ve capped their data plans at 2 GB/month. Fine. 2 GB is 2 GB, right? No. If you want to use your computer to access some of your allotment of data you have to fork over an extra $20/mo. Jerks.

This is indicative of a larger problem with wireless carriers as a whole: they can’t admit they’re just dumb pipes. I long for the day when I don’t pay for minutes, texts and data – I just pay for access to the network/Internet. It’s all 1′s and 0′s, right? Do tiered pricing if you want. But don’t charge me $20 for access to data I already paid for (both in the form of tethering and SMS).

At home I pay $42/month for (virtually) unlimited Internet access at speeds of around 12 Mbps. I can watch Hulu, play Xbox Live, chat with friends, send email, make Skype calls, do video chats with my parents, etc. It’s my data and I can do with it what I want.

Why not let me do all of the stuff listed above on my phone for the same price? No. Instead it’s $30/mo for data, $20/mo to use that data from a laptop and $20/mo more for text messaging. All on top of a required voice plan which restricts when and who I can call. Absurd.

/venting

P.S. Virgin Mobile has a killer plan here: $25/mo = 300 voice minutes and unlimited 3G data, email and text… without a contract. Wish I could use it with my unlocked iPhone.

Dear Movie Studios,

When I can’t skip ahead, access the main menu or even hit “stop” during your stupid trailers and ads on a movie I paid to rent, you’ve gone too far.

It took me literally 10 minutes to finally get to the main menu so I could start the movie – and that was with the crippled, 2x fast forward that stopped every five seconds so I had to keep pressing it again and again and again as I hobbled through ad after ad.

What really pushed me over the edge was disabling the Stop button. You won’t let me stop watching something I paid to see, on a DVD player I own, in my own house? Incredible.

Want to know why people pirate movies? Because of crap moves like that.

If you’re so far removed from the real world that you think this is how your customers should to be treated then you deserve to be struggling.

I hate you.