From Reid's article (some great insights), I'm copying about half his article, bolds emphasis are mine.
Why do we enjoy free-with-ads sites like Hulu and Crackle? THEY HAVE FEWER ADS! And we can watch what we want whenever we want to.
What do we like about Netflix? For a fraction of the cost of cable, it gives you DVDs by mail plus the ability watch a lot of movies instantly, either on your computer or with their many compatible set-top boxes.
What do people like about Redbox. One buck! Pick it up and return it to the supermarket!
What do we like about cable?
Ummm, cable is a monopoly. You only get one store. You may only want a pair of socks and a shirt, but you are forced to buy a Yankee cap (even if you are a Mets or a Sox fan), cufflinks, perfume, towels, ladies underwear, two ties, a bedspread, low-slung hip-hop shorts, and a lamp. The kicker is that the price goes up all the time and the Calvin Klein shirt you actually came to buy costs extra. And of course LOTS AND LOTS OF ADS!
It’s not that we don’t like cable any more—we’ve always hated it! Cable is like the bully who beat you up in the hallway in high school. It’s college time now, baby!
But Comcast isn’t just experimenting with a flavor of “TV Everywhere.” They are also to merge their existing cable channels with NBC. They want to lock up all those amazing NBC Universal shows unless you subscribe.
There’s one tiny hitch though. Every single TV show and movie from NBC and Universal is available for free to anybody who has ten seconds to look for them. So what exactly is Comcast locking up? This isn’t 1995, you know. Either you just shrug your shoulders about file-sharing or you start offering some alternatives that have benefits that people are willing to pay for like Hulu, Netflix, Redbox, and iTunes. Or maybe you work a little and come up with something new? Bill Maher said recently that the Republicans looked into the future and saw… radio. These entertainment giants are looking into the future and they see… cable.
I completely agree here, which is why cable protesting us creating competition in Illinois pisses me off. From that article:
"About five dozen public and private entities, including the state, Chicago and Cook County, are vying for a slice of $7.2 billion in federal stimulus grants to promote broadband Internet service. With enough bandwidth, a government-subsidized Internet link also could provide telephone and television service, creating another threat for AT&T and Comcast, as well as smaller carriers.
"They see the plug being pulled on their customer base," says Craig Clausen, executive vice-president of New Paradigm Resources Group Inc., a telecommunications research and consulting firm in Chicago.
'These areas already have ample broadband services. There's no need to have government stimulus money coming in.'
In fighting the proposals, the carriers argue that stimulus projects shouldn't duplicate services they already provide.
"These areas already have ample broadband services," says Craig Martin, general counsel of Colorado-based Wide Open West LLC, which provides broadband service on the Far South Side under the name WOW Internet, Cable & Phone. "There's no need to have government stimulus money coming in. It doesn't serve the policy objective of Congress."
Honestly, cable services are duplicated so we shouldn't have competition? wow. Right now we're still stuck at about 50mb/s downstream as an "up to" option. Meaning the reality of 50mb is that it's 6MB/s in reality. Again something that sounds great, but it's really actually very shitty. Cableco's favorite excuse on that "oh, what can people possibly do with such a connection speed?" It's like "why should we raise the speed limits on a highway?" and just as fake of a statement.