FEATURE: The Future of Television?
As you may have noticed, we are huge TV show fans here at sandstorming. We love our TV. TV shows have something that movies don’t… the ability to develop a storyline and characters, to a level not even imagined by movies. There is another big difference though, movies rely on ticket prices to support them and pay the bill, tv shows rely on networks paying for shows, and networks rely on advertisers.
Bitorrent is the latest peer to peer technology which allows users to share files over the internet. Unlike its predecessors, its fast and it’s efficient. Video is being transferred at higher then TV quality, in under the time it takes the episode to play. Why would you not want to download TV episodes, look at the features that it offers over normal TV:
- Higher Quality
- Ad Free
- Available as soon as the episode is first released, no matter where you are in the world
- You can play pause and rewatch as you please
Here in Australia, we often wait several months for episodes to be released, if ever, and then offer suffer horrible programming with the shows often being put on late at night. Many shows are never released, simply because the costs to buy the show aren’t worth what the network expects to receive back. Australians now rate second in the world for downloading TV shows… and do you blame us? There IS no alternative. Buy the DVD? Would you spend $100 to buy a DVD of a TV show that you have to import from another country? It’s like buying 3 or 4 albums all from a band you’ve never heard. There IS NO LEGAL ALTERNATIVE
Let’s look at LOST, without a doubt one of the top-rating shows at the moment. Its strength though, is that it isn’t individual episodes with a storyline each. Its like a 25 hour movie split into 25 weekly pieces, if you miss one… you’re completely out of touch with what is going on. Do the directors of these shows think that they are creating shows so shit that if someone misses an episode they’ll stop watching it completely and then buy it when the DVD comes out? Why waste the money?!
87% of people claim they would download episodes legally off the internet. The reason it isn’t being done is this scares the hell out of the networks. Where is there place in the future if people can get all their needs on the web? The law in Australia is a mess as it is. It isn’t even legal to record tv shows off the TV for personal use in Australia, yet I’ll bet you even the Prime Minister probably does it. I’m yet to see someone get charged for taping MacGyver whilst going out for dinner with his mother-in-law though.
In the future I’d like to see a worldwide company like Coca Cola sponsor and episode. They could put 3 or 4 ads throughout… they’d be assured the users would watch them if they were short and sweet… and at the same time they could whack a logo in the bottom corner of the footage. This would ensure a third party was not cutting the ads out and re-releasing. Everyone wins in this scenario except the TV networks. You cannot please everyone.
No one is winning at the moment. Users are breaking the law. Advertisers are failing. Networks are broadcasting at ridiculous times. Production companies are having there shows leaked before they have even finished being edited…
The 20th century is over, its just no one but the users have realised.
