RHFtech Help Desk (and more)

Technology changes, always.
Frisch’s third law

Cable and satellite TV began to replace broadcast television over 30 years ago. Internet video will replace cable and satellite TV, soon and in much less time.

What is a cable company president to do?
If I ran the cable company, I would make a lot more money than I do. I would also be thinking, “How do I shift from the historical value-added content model to the utility-pipe model of the future, without having my revenue and profits sharply decline?”

Cable has two advantages that are not eroded by changes in content distribution. They have very fat pipes and typically only one or two competitors for their customers.

Cable companies make money from subscriber fees for TV, equipment rental fees, Internet service and telephone service. They may be paid carriage fees by some cable channels. They also sell advertising on some cable channels. The latter two revenue streams are under attack as content rapidly moves to the Internet.

Have you ever watched a show like CSI or The Office on the Internet? You can if you have broadband. Cable gets no income from this type of content. Advertising dollars go directly to the content producers and there is no way for the cable company to insert their own advertising. Pay-video on the Internet will happen, just as HBO came to cable in the 1970s. Viewers will shift their video dollars from premium cable channels to premium video websites. Traditional TV viewers will decline as Internet video-on-demand (VOD) increases. Cable networks, like TNT, Fox News, and A&E, are likely to wither and die as viewers move elsewhere. The current economic climate accelerates this trend.

This leaves subscriber fees as the primary revenue, perhaps the sole source in the future. Most cable companies offer three services for which they charge: cable TV, Internet hosting, and telephone service. Historically, the majority of their subscriber revenue is from cable TV. Over the last decade, Internet hosting and telephone services have grown to be perhaps half the monthly bill. Yet landline telephones, whether old-style or VoIP are in decline.

Is TV programming in the toilet?
The value of traditional TV series content is eroding. Programs on cable TV seem to be reruns of reruns and old movies, except for sports and reality shows. In 1956, a free broadcast television series had 39 original episodes. Today most TV series produce about half that number. A premium channel, like HBO, often airs shows with as little as six episodes per year, and the show may only last one or two seasons. Further devaluing the series content are lengthy hiatuses, such as Lost or 24 recently had. The cost for less-and-less new content on cable keeps going up.

Why do we keep paying or has the future arrived?
There is a lot of chatter on blogs and forums about people canceling their cable TV subscriptions, going Internet-only. They watch sites such as CBS.com or Hulu.com. They subscribe to Netflix and use its streaming VOD service. They buy shows from Amazon’s VOD or Apple’s iTunes stores. And they save money.

I have a computer hooked to my HDTV specifically for these things. I use it more and more frequently. I really do not need my cable box or the service. What I do need is unlimited broadband.

Money talks, or is it greed?
Cable companies have figured this out and many are now capping your monthly bandwidth in order to forestall this shift. Time Warner Cable has been the most aggressive. They announced that they would provide unlimited Internet service for $150/month. Their CEO is not crazy but his rollout is ham-handed at best. Congress is considering legislation to outlaw caps. Someday soon, the cable companies may have no other revenue source.

We do not need cable companies for TV or telephone. We can employ our internet connection for telephone, using services such as Skype, Vonage or MagicJack, augmented by a cell phone. Google Voice, a reconfigured and rebranded GrandCentral, points the way toward future communications services. It does not require your cable company.

Figuring out how to transition from cable’s multi-service, premium-pricing model to being a utility provider, like an electric company, is a difficult thing. They will have to change their revenue model. They have little competition or regulation so their solution will be to gouge their customers, us. And they will get away with it.

lastpass was recently recommended to my by Ed Bott as a multiplatform password manager. I like lastpass a lot. It does exactly what I wanted and needed and it is free. They have a product LastPass Premium which adds functionality—BlackBerry app and YubiKey multi-factor authentication—that appeals to me. The price is $12 per year for the service and an additional fee for the YubiKey of between $30-$40, depending upon delivery method. I was all set to buy both when I was confronted with a PayPal page.

In the past when I went to a merchant’s PayPal page there was an option to pay with my credit card and not have to login to PayPal. Not this time. This time I had to login to PayPal to make the transaction. They left me no choice since I had a PayPal account. I tried to use a different email address but that didn’t work because PayPal knew my credit card number. Although I could have used a different card I was not interested.

So I logged in. Now PayPal wanted to debit my checking account and offered no option that I could see to use my credit card.

I refuse to allow PayPal to debit my checking account. They are unregulated and, in my opinion, untrustworthy. I don’t let any business debit my account. I prefer to initiate the transaction to retain control over the account. I prefer to use my credit cards. But this time I could not.

Enough of this aggravation! I cancelled my PayPal account. I wrote lastpass.com an email explaining that PayPal debiting my checking account was unacceptable to me and that I was unlikely to buy their premium product or to recommend it since PayPal had become an impediment.

Robert B. of lastpass responded quite quickly suggesting that I could do what I wanted to do with a link to buy by credit card on the PayPal page. Sorry, Robert, that link was not available to me as long as I had a PayPal account.

Yes, I cancelled my PayPal account after this aggravation. Now I am too frustrated to go forward with the LastPass Premium transaction. This is too hard. I wanted something secure and simple. I wanted it on my terms. I did not get that.

Many people equate price with quality. Their mental equation must be something like, “higher price = better product.” I have been a skeptic about this equation for as long as I can remember.

A recent Consumerist.com post Do Coat Hangers Sound as Good as Monster Cables? highlighted how absurd this calculus is. An audiophile hooked up a blind test comparing Monster cables to straightened coat hangers used as speaker cables.

The audiophile subjects could not tell the difference.

Unbent clothes hangers performed just as well as expensive Monster products. If you scavenge your closet you will lose nothing in the sound reproduction but you will save a bundle of money.

Speaker wire transmits analog signals, so it may be possible that in some configurations upper end products matter in faithfully transmitting the signal.

Most video and audio signals transmitted between electronic components (not speakers) are digital signals. Either the bit, a 1 or 0, is decoded or it is not. This means that there is no benefit to you in paying for premium digital cables. Most retail outlets sell HDMI cables that cost a lot. Don’t fall for this. Digital cables do not have to be expensive.

Today, a 6-ft gold plated HDMI cable costs $8.37 at MonoPrice.com and a similar product at BestBuy.com costs $39.99.