It's a shame that people don't think that content creators have the right to control how their content is distributed. Yes, the content is over air but the content providers have agreed to have it distributed this way. If the service didn't charge, then I think think they would have been on better standing.
Kind of misstatement there. Content Creators had and have total control of how their product was destributed. Creators created content. They sold it to sell it to one of two major market paradigms: (a) major networks that broadcast it to the public over the air (OTA) using advertisers as the revenue source to fund operations, or (b) cable/satellite/fiber-optic distributors that charge the consumer directly for context.
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Kind of an aside story, ignore it if you aren't interested.
About a month ago we went through the annual dance with our cable provider of about 20-years since we moved here from my last overseas assignment. Our bill was going to go from $103 per month (mid-tier cable, phone, and 25/6Mps Internet**) to about $175 per month for the same plane. The Dance occurred and we took the cable box into the store we could get new discounts for a year and out bill would go to $127 per month. They of course viewed it as a $50 "savings" instead of a 22% rate increase. We had only one cable box in the Family Room and no DVR.
Nope wasn't going to happen. So we dropped phone, lowed the cable package to "Economy" (which had pretty much all the channels we watched anyway), and kept high speed internet at the same rate. Our rate is now $83 per month so now they are actually generating about 20% LESS revenue per month and the only thing we lost was (a) phone service which was no big deal as my wife and I both have cell phones, (b) a whole bunch of channels we never watched, and (c) "On Demand" prime-time network viewing (basically you can select pretty much any show to watch on your schedule instead of the "broadcast" schedule.f
Now I just place my laptop next to the TV, connect and HDMI cable and watch shows in HD streamed from the network website so I can still watch shows on my schedule and not be tied to specific dates/times.
I've already spec'd out the components and will be doing a HTPC (Home Theater Personal Computer). It will have dual tuners (allows you to watch one channel and record another) and a 2 or 3 TB hard-drive to function as a PVR (Personal Video Recorder) or as it's commonly called a DVR. Once that's fully up and running cable can go away without much impact on viewing options all together. The biggest headache will be noting all the places we've used the cable companies email as the primary email contact for personal use and other businesses (doctors, dentists, pest control, cell phone company, etc, etc, etc) and switch them over to Gmail (or Yahoo or Hotmail).
Case = Silverstone ML04
CPU Intel Core i3-4130
Hard Drive = Western Digital Green 2TB or 3TB
Optical Drive = DVD or Blu-Ray
Memory = Crucial Ballistix Sport 4GB DDR3
Motherboard = Gigabyte GA-B85M-D3H (Micro ATX)
OS = Windows (not sure yet whether 7 or 8)
Power Supply = Corsair CX430M
Solid State Drive = Samsung 840 Evo 120GB
Tuner = Hauppauge 1213 Dual TV Tuner
Wireless mouse/keyboard
Optional:
Graphics = Zotac GeForce GTX 650 1GB
Wireless = TP-Link TL-WDN3800 Dual-Band
Bump the memory to 8GB
The plan is by this time next year when the current "discounts" expire, we won't be using the cable company for anything except high speed internet (unless Verizon FIOS, which is in the area offers a more competitive rate for internet.)
**Speed tests actually show a consistent 30/6.5Mps connection.
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