James-
1. No problem with the installation as the software to do VOD was pushed down to my STB. I did nothing except occasionally check channel 1 to see when it was activated.
Of course I had to first switch over to digital services. That did take a truck roll(months ago) but only to switch out my box to a digital one, and check the strength of the signal with it's typical tweaking problems.
2. Presently selection is not real good(IMO). I would say there are about 5 categories of movies. With about 15 choices in each. Or about 75 to 100 movie choices. There is a 'new' movies category that I think is popular? The movie we picked to watch was 'My Dog Skip.' Come to think of it, I believe there are quite a few movies that were recent hits. Let me go check.....Here's a sample in the 'new' category:
Bug's Life, Any Given Sunday, Erin Brockovich, Final Destination, Magnolia, Mission to Mars, Reindeer Games, Romeo Must Die, South Park..., Cider House Rules, Flinstones in Viva Rock Vegas, Whole Nine Yards, U-571, etc.
______________
Now if you read ftth's(the person) upstream posts, he is of the opinion that a very limited selection may be deliberate. The MSO doesn't want everyone using this service as it would kill their network. ftth could be correct and that is why he and I are going back and forth on the architecture issue. There may just not be enough bandwidth over an HFC architecture to roll this out to 100% of any MSOs subs. This has me quite interested as a lot of my investment rides on the viability of VOD over HFC.
I do see this as being the 'killer app' we've been hearing about for 20 years. Finally it's real but is it very limited in it's scope due to architecture constraints? I know there are a lot of really good, old, movies I would like to watch that you can't get at Block Buster. If the MSO charged me $1 to watch them, I think we would be using this maybe 2 or 3 times per week.
I used to be of the opinion it was going to be limited by X##!!!??? Hollywood and their aversion to any new technology that may harm the value of their content. But as I see how VOD works, I think they will soon be of the opinion this will rake even more money into their coffers and will fully support(by not using lawyers to kill) a MSO's desire to deploy VOD.
You see it's not worth it to me(or anyone) to steal their precious junk when it's only $2 to $4 to rent it. It's hardly worth putting onto a VCR tape(or soon to be DVD disk) to pass to my friends and neighbors. They can just hit a few buttons and watch it anytime they want so why even bother trading pirated copies. I even think Hollywood should be the one paying MSOs to roll this out.
There must be a TON of good, old movies, sitting in warehouses that could be generating revenues for the MPAA. With VOD, they may finally be able to milk those for all they are worth along with the junk they currently put out. This is probably not a good example but they can even take their old TV shows like, 'Ozzie and Harriet,' charge $.25 to watch them. I think a lot of parents would rather have their kids watching that rather than people getting shot and killed in 'Cops.'
I know my answer was winded, but this is a topic we've debated in great detail over the last year or so. I thought I would take the opportunity to update my humble opinion on the matter. -MikeM(From Florida) |
