And So It Begins

As the year 2007 came to a close both satellite companies rolled out their new Internet based video on demand services, I wrote in my column wondering how long it was going to take the cable companies providing the bandwidth to consumers to put their foot down on this type of activity.  Well now we know.

Time Warner Cable in Beaumont, Texas will begin testing a new program where they will charge new customers for the amount of bandwidth they use.  Customers will be able to select bandwidth packages which they feel is best for their expected usage, planned packages include 5GB, 10GB, 20GB and 40GB packages.   Users going over the bandwidth limits for the month will be charged an overage charge for each additional GB (gigabyte) the customer uses.  (Customers will receive an email before their bandwidth limit is passed alerting them that they are about to go over their limit)

If this test in Beaumont, Texas is successful one can only wonder how long will it take for other cable systems and operators to adopt such a pricing scheme?

For services like DirecTV’s  “DirecTV On Demand” and Dish Network’s “DishONLINE” this could be trouble as it could limit the amount of on demand content their customers can access via their ISP.  DirecTV just started offering some high definition content to its On Demand customers, one can only imaging how many gigabytes of data just one HD movies takes.

This isn’t just bad news for satellite customers but all other companies who offer their customer online downloads of movies and television shows.  Just this week at Macworld, Apple computer opened a new move rental service in Itunes, in addition they rolled out a new software update for its AppleTV product which besides allowing customers to rent movies also offers full HD movie rentals.

Everyday folks do more and more online, from checking their bank account, paying their bills and now downloading movies. I believe that instead of trying to figure out ways to keep people from using bandwidth, they should instead be trying to work to bring their customers more bandwidth. 

If the cable companies and ISP’s worked with some of these content companies they could possibly deliver their customers faster access to this content without the customer even leaving the cable companies own backbone.

The Internet is still an infant; we should be helping it grow not trying to stunt its growth.  And so it begins!

 
DIRECTV DVR SCHEDULER UPDATE

In yesterdays edition of The Satellite Dish we told you about DirecTV’s new Online DVR Scheduler.  This online scheduler lets you program your DVR from anywhere from any computer with an internet connection and a web browser.  In yesterdays article I mentioned how this feature was only available for the HR-20 DVR, as of just a few moments ago this is no longer the case,  the remote scheduler feature now works will most DirecTV DVR’s (with the exception being the HR21, which will be supported soon.)

We also reported that soon users would be able to program their DVR’s using their cellphones or PDA’s via http://m.directv.com  well that soon was REALLY SOON, this feature is now active!  Now if your away and want to record something go to http://m.directv.com from your cell phone and you can program your DirecTV DVR at home!

Kudos to the DirecTV guys for quickly enabling one of the coolest features to come to a DVR since the pause button!

Have a great weekend!