[Discuss] Is MythTV dead?

[Brendan Kidwell]

On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 8:19 PM, Richard Pieri <richard.pieri at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sep 12, 2011, at 7:25 PM, Rich Braun wrote:
> >
> > My overall point is that these open-standard UI systems like MythTV *ARE*
> dead
> > unless a more aggressive posture is taken.
>
> Even then, I don't know that it will help.  Blu-ray didn't win the Hi-Def
> war.  Streaming did.  The studios are getting wise to it.  Notice that Starz
> is withdrawing its library from Netflix over money -- as in Starz (and the
> studios it represents) want more of it.  Going a bit further back, Comcast
> is yanking all of the NBC content from the Netflix catalog for similar
> reasons -- so that Comcast can charge Comcast customers more than Netflix
> did for the same content.
>
>  Given our new formerly-NBC overlord now FCC overlord, it's only a matter
> of time before all of the content providers are owned by content
> distributors.  When that happens we can all say goodbye to broadcast TV and
> conventional cable. ..


Netflix and Starz and Comcast/NBC are pricing and complicating their way out
of my life. I want on demand TV and I won't even consider building a MythTV
box if I have to deal with encryption (official cable box + "IR blaster" or
any other scheme). And I don't want to pay a lot.

On the one hand you've got pay TV via cable or satellite, or subscription
services like Netflix where the content owners keep pushing the end user
price skyward... and on the other there are TONS of Creative Commons and
small commercial outfits with no DRM and simple subscription protocols that
usually involve RSS. As someone who knows how to use RSS, the choice is
clear to me! I know I can use a show with an RSS feed on any Blackberry,
laptop, or TV I want to use, at any time, with no prior setup. The big
lumbering distributors of the past just can't compete for my attention based
on convenience; and the content is better on the "little guy" side IMHO.
(But for the time being, because of my wife's omnivorous tastes, my
household will keep our Netflix subscription.)