Yesterday i was out drinking with a friend, and when we were sufficiently drunk for us to agree on going home, we went by my pad to have a cup of coffee and talk out of our arses.
One of the things we discussed was my tv channel situation (i don't have a tv at the moment), after my buddy went home, i apparently mustered the will to write the following rant:
Now, i believe in open markets as much as the next guy, but somehow this is impossible with regard to tv channels. Apparently - there is no way to let the open market dictate the tv channels that should survice. Unless i can choose the exact tv channels to support (= give money to) there is no way for me (and other consumers) to kill a horrible tv-channel. Once a channel has been accepted by a cable provider there is practically no way to get them off the provider again.
So this is my problem, there are some tv-channels that i will not pay to get, even if tormented in a very unpleasent way, so my only option is to not get any tv-channels at all.
Where the hell is my option to choose the exact channels that i want to pay for???
A little pre-story:
In denmark we have two ways of receiving tv: cable and satellite, and both only provide for "all or nothing" choices. How is an open market to function if there is no way select the exact channels that i want to support?
And that's how far i got, at about 3 in the night.
Though "rant'y" it is a valid argument (if i may say so myself, and i may), actually there is a third way to get tv now-a-days, the publicly available channels are now broadcast digitally, so you just buy a digital receiver and you have tv.
And since no provider provides individual channel selection (shame on you Stofa and TDC) i could easily live with only watching the public channels (i only watch DR2 anyway).
But then we get into the internet connection problem, the only way to get cable internet is to also pay for cable television, and the only way to get cable through the phone network is to also pay for a phone line. Damnt it!
Hey, just found that CyberCity provides ADSL internet without the need for a phone subscription. Well this is it! Goodbye Stofa, hello digital tv, if i can find a linux supported digital tv receiver card i would just be perfect!
So, that's it, my Stofa days are over, if anyone knows of other ADSL providers which doesn't require you to have a phone line, i will be happy to listen, also if you know something about DVB-T and DTT linux supported cards.
Comments (4)
TV channels usually make money from advertising. If you don't watch then they don't sell advertising, so they die, regardless of whether you could watch it.
Well the thing is, in Denmark we have this company called [HTML_REMOVED]TV-meter[HTML_REMOVED] that records the tv-watching by using a representative group of people. This is all well, but so far i can't remember any tv channel that went belly up.
So to be able to [HTML_REMOVED]vote with my feet[HTML_REMOVED] i woule like the ability to send a clear message to the cable provider about what channels i want to see.
I also think there is alot of [HTML_REMOVED]meta advertising[HTML_REMOVED], where the tv channels tries to look like they have a very strong influence on consumers with regard to our habits. So it is not really how well the commercials fares, but more how well the tv-channels can sell them.
A bit like SPAM, i can't imagine there is enough idiots in the world to make it feasible to pay someone to send out SPAM. It is more likely that you just need salespeople good enough to sell the idea of spam to the companies.
Then again, i dislike most kinds of advertisement, on tv i can accept commercials between shows, but i would never pay for a channel which sends commercials in the middle of shows.
Two things. The problem with cable TV is the technology behind. The companies divide the channels into packages, so that they only have to apply a pass-filter onto your signal cable. So only the freq's that you have paid for gets into your house. The satellite companies on the other hand, could if they would, make it possible for you to only pay for the channels you would like to have decoded in your sat-box, it would just mean more work for them.
I am sure that i have at some point seen a Linux supported DVB tv-card. Or at least one where some nice person have been so kind to hack-up a driver for it. I will try and dig it up from my huge pile of links.
I have found the following page:http://www.linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/PCI_devices_DVB-T
Finding a supported card looks like no problem at all.
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