[opendtv] Re: Cablevision to offer HBO Now streaming service - MarketWatch

  • From: "Manfredi, Albert E" <albert.e.manfredi@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: "opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2015 00:55:55 +0000

Craig Birkmaier wrote:

> And blocking subscribers from accessing a TVE site when the content
> owner pulls their content in a retrans consent dispute is troubling
> as well.

Troubling perhaps, but that's why I think HBO Go and HBO Now are different. HBO 
Go is TVE, and TVE is still a service that overlays old walled garden 
limitations onto IP. So as an MVPD, I could argue that I'm not bound by net 
neutrality for TVE. It's just a different protocol to reach my walled-in 
content, and that content belongs to my set of bundles and tiers. The middleman 
has all the control.

> This still gets back to playing gatekeeper and trying to force the
> hardware makers to pay the content owner to support their hardware.

The content owner has a valid point. This problem is mostly manufactured by the 
hardware makers, Craig. If they don't use existing standards that the content 
owner already implements, even when they easily could, they are asking for 
trouble. The device manufacturers are essentially demanding that content owners 
spend their own money, to make content available in yet another format, to suit 
the device maker's whims. The device makers should pay, if they take this risky 
path.

It's instead more straightforward to see that when a middleman is a natural 
monopoly, or close to it, and owns a business with a conflicting business model 
(e.g. MVPD with TVE which conflicts with unwalled IP sources of TV content), 
that is problems begging to happen.

Bert

 
 
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