Wow. No sooner did I hit the "Publish" button on the previous post than word came out that Cablevision has inked a deal to offer the VOOM suite of 15 HD networks beginning July 1. Not only that, but the company seriously upped the ante in the growing HD content war by saying it will have the capacity to offer 500 (not a typo) high-def channels by the end of this year over its fiber-optic network, according to Multichannel News.
500 HD channels are all well and good, but we know full well there won't be anything close to that kind of content available by year-end. Not unless Cablevision is counting HD On Demand offerings like Comcast does, which brings up an interesting question: does the average consumer consider on demand content to be equivalent to linear channels? Would consumers equate 150 HD channels from DIRECTV with 150 HD "viewing choices" from cable? Do consumers care?
The way Comcast counts "viewing choices," each HD program available on demand counts as a "choice." So CSI in HD On Demand is one "choice." CSI: New York is another "choice." And so on. If I'm a satellite or telco, wouldn't I argue that if we counted each HD program on the 150 or whatever HD channels, it would add up to way beyond 800? I suppose Comcast's counter-point would be that with on demand, viewers can pull up the content anytime they want, irrespective of the programming schedule -- which would be a fair argument.
Any thoughts from you all would be much appreciated.
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3 comments:
Counting viewing choices is a BS arguement. I could get thousands of movies from NETFLIX or Blockbuster.... does this mean that I have thousands of channels... even if all I use is rabbit ears?
The Cable guys don't have the bandwidth to compete with sat... so they just have to spread the BS deep and hope nobody notices.
Don't be fooled by the 500 HD channel claim. The bulk of those channels are local regional HD content. For example, If they provide a local HD news channel to 50 cities, you're only going to see the one for your city, but hey it's 50 channels of HD right?
MAybe comcast will add one new hdtv channel to show what they can do
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