MY WAY: TELEVISION IN 2015
TELEVISION IS KILLING ME…
Not literally of course, at least I hope not, but I did watch 26 episodes of HANNIBAL in under 72 hours so television certainly hasn’t been good for my health. TV has sunk me quicker than that ship Jim loves so much. I’m drowning in procedural crime dramas and fantasy middle-age political thrillers. I’m courting relationships from fast-talking, cheap suit-wearing, criminal defense attorneys one minute and unnerving, flesh-eating psychiatrists the next. They are all so worthy and oh so demanding, there aren’t enough hours to please them all, at least not when you’re blowing damn near 26 on one. What is interesting about my latest binge-fest is that I embarked upon it when I should have been catching up on another incredible show, BETTER CALL SAUL. I’ve only missed 3–4 episodes of BETTER CALL SAUL, catching up would have been an easier feat to accomplish than Herculean Hannibal one I managed, but that reality never reared its head during the act. I had the time to spare and Amazon had episodes to share, I didn’t have to spin up a Hulu subscription or delve into the seedy underground of bittorents to catch up. Now that I’ve finished Hannibal I am tasked, yet again, with catching up on BETTER CALL SAUL, but I can’t be bothered to. In the traditional TV space, once you’re out of the loop, you’re better off waiting for Netflix.
Traditional television is the stodgy, ex-military, gym teacher you had throughout high school. It knows how to do things one way and it demands you follow suit, no loop holes, no leeway, and always on its terms. It looks at modern approaches as foolhardy endeavors, flashes in the pan, mistakes one makes on their way to discovering that the old school approach is the only one that really works. Last week Sony launched Playstation Vue, their internet television service for Playstation 4 (and soon enough every device Sony can put it on). Playstation Vue is an incomplete, yet promising, vision of the future of television. It solves 2 major issues I’ve had with cable service: it features a UI that doesn’t incite headaches and a bill that doesn’t require a law degree to decipher. Playstation Vue features 3 subscription tiers that you can drop in and out of on a month to month basis. Vue blurs the line between live TV and recorded programming. You can favorite shows and return to past aired episodes at will. It features expected functionality like pause and rewind and a slightly confusing (by the nature of being perhaps too simple) DVR component that saves shows you favorite for up to 28 days. Favoring shows requires one click and saving them for DVR function is automatic, though it never explicitly tells you it has done so.
The guide, which is the 1 design sore spot for the service, is responsive and better laid out than most guides. Instead of navigating the UI from top to bottom, you scroll left to right. It feels right, but the guide itself is too cluttered and it’s got this weird line running through it all the time, it’s uglier than it needs to be. I much preferred to use the quick guide, an opaque lower third menu system that gives you info on what you’re watching, what you’ve been watching, and what you could be watching. Playstation Vue is fully invested in the Netflixication of TV and surrenders full control of the content to the viewer. I now dictate the terms of my relationship with my content.
UNBUNDLING
Cord cutters are cute. I admire their “screw the system” mentality regardless of how misguided I view it to be. The reality of the situation is unbundling is nothing more than an illusion. People don’t have a problem with the structure of cable, they have a problem with the limitations of it. This post-cable world is going to cost us close to the same if not more money than we’ve been paying for cable. Sony’s cheapest Playstation Vue offering if $49.99 and it doesn’t come with premium cable offerings like HBO, Showtime, Starz, and EPIX. It’s also missing The Mouse, no ABC, ESPN, and Disney programming. HBO Now is set to be an Apple device exclusive and there is no word about Starz or Showtime launching their own cable provider-free subscription service.
So let’s say you have a PS4 and an Apple TV, you’re looking at $65 a month right off the bat for basic cable and HBO. You’re also going to need a mighty powerful broadband connection to sustain all this internet traffic and that isn’t going to be cheap. TelCo’s are bundle happy, often offering significant cost savings for subscribing to multiple services. Certain internet bandwidth tiers are bundle-only forcing you to go all in for the triple play package if you want the highest possible speeds. Verizon and Comcast are the most egregious, the latter even enforcing data caps in certain markets, effectively cutting the proliferation of internet based media services off at the knee caps. A nimble broadband connection will run you at least $59.99 on Time Warner, who delivered the best bang for your buck amongst the ISPs I sampled. Now your monthly total is $125.00. My Verizon FIOS bill is currently $124.99 a month, but all those weird taxes and surcharges bring it up to $150. I would end up saving 30 dollars, but my upfront fee is way more and I’m left with significantly less channels.
The latter isn’t much of an issue considering we’ve all come to the conclusion that most of those additional channels are filler consisting of Law and Order and CSI reruns, but the former is problematic. A Playstation 3 is around $249.99 retail, a PS4, $399.99. The Apple TV just dropped to $69.99, but rumor has it the one you want is right around the corner and it’s sure to cost $99.99+. You’re looking at least $310 upfront just to play in this sandbox. Playstation Vue is said to be coming to other platforms, but who knows when that will happen. Apple is rumored to be spinning up their own internet TV service with 25+ channels for $30–45 a month and they might even have The Mouse.
WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!!
I don’t know, it’s early. I’m excited by all these new internet TV services, it’s about time these software giants got in the game and brought TV into the modern age. I thought Microsoft was going to do it with the Xbox One, but their decision to deliver Google TV in a shoebox ultimately failed them. Sony has the right idea, but they have to get the content. I would ditch my cable subscription today if they had ESPN. Playstation Vue was faster than FIOS, offered superior image quality, and did so at an affordable price. For all the money I spend on FIOS I still don’t have DVR capable boxes and if I did they wouldn’t be as flexible as Vue’s DVR offering. Apple seems set to come in and steal my cable subscription from Verizon. I’ll be able to get everything in one place and the Apple TV is cheap enough that I don’t mind buying 2 or 3 and throwing them in different rooms in the house. Internet TV will be a great shot in the arm for broadcast television, which is better than it has ever been, but has seen steady decline in the 18–35 demographic since the rise of streaming services. By giving users control of their time and content and freeing them of contracts designed to confuse, you open them back up to the idea of bundled television. They will pay the same price for what is clearly less content simply because they can find the content they want easier and view it where they want to. It’s all about control, control of one’s time.
