All posts by Alan Grimes
Below are all of Alan Grimes's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Michael Walker: Apparently Humax has said it will be the first manufacturer to make so called set-top boxes for the new Freeview Play connected TV service.
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Okay I'll bite. None of that disproves the prediction that Moores Law will end soon (ish). You never know, progress may even speed up!
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Briantist: But .. I believe the technology used for the last forty years to achieve those results is reaching its theoretical limit. There are new ideas to pursue, but will the pace of change be faster or slower than before?
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Michael Walker: Who do you mean? You can't mean Rupert Murdoch, coz he's a Yank!
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MikeB: I've read Martin Baines's post several times, and I can't see any mention of mandatory subscriptions, or any implication that Sky should give up its boxes. And isn't an app a type of conditional access system?
MikeP did not write that "most TV's (and PVR's) are not able to be reconfigered ..... ", he wrote that "not everyone has a TV that can be re-configured ..... ", which is a significantly different statement, in my opinion. And, as far as I know, a return path is not necessary for a conditional access system to work, the web certainly isn't necessary.
As for the future, that's anybody's guess, but Ofcom says that 75% of properties now have access to superfast broadband, and it's government policy to raise that figure to 90% by the year 2017. And as Briantist is so keen to point out, the speed of microchips is ever increasing. So five years for internet delivery of television looks like a good guess to me.
As for cost, advertisers will tell you that commercial television is actually genuinely free. The argument goes like this: advertising increases sales, increased sales leads to cost efficiencies, and it's the cost efficiencies that pay for the advertising, and not, as some would say, a premium on the goods or services being advertised. A change in B.B.C.'s "business model" might lead to cost efficiencies. I'm not saying it will, but it might. The funding of B.B.C. is complicated and has knock on effects on the television industry, and the wider economy.
I also noted that in Briantist's quiz last Xmas that I.T.V. costs half as much as B.B.C., and even though they are not the same it's hard to see why B.B.C. should cost as much as double! Greg Dyke saved us all a lot of money just by unencrypting the satellite signals.
You say that "Sky spends a quarter of its revenue on maintaining its subscription system ..... ", that seems very high, do you have evidence of that?
You accuse Martin Baines of abandoning voluntary subscriptions and then talk of fewer subscriptions, but if subscriptions are mandatory then there will be the same, or similar, number of subscriptions as licence fee payers now. But if subscriptions are voluntary, then the point of the exercise is obvious: choice. Some of us would like to make our own television choices, rather than have them shoved down our throats by politicians, or politicians' appointees.
You wrote: "I know relatively little about subscription security systems ..... ", and yet you chose to write a long post attacking Martin Baines's idea!
You wrote: "Frankly, the whole is nonsense, but I'd like some hard data to show it.". So you've pre-judged the idea then! You must be very open minded, and not at all ideologically driven then!
By the way, I hate The Daily Mail, I'm not right wing, I don't vote Tory, I dislike Rupert Murdoch, The Times, The Sun, and The Torygraph, and I don't accept that B.B.C. is left wing or right wing biased. So there's no need for you to subject me to one of your usual personal attacks just because I have a different opinion to you.
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Page 2
Thursday 26 February 2015 3:38PM
Or is that three points? Obviously I'm not an expert in counting. Even though I claim to be!