I just sent the following text to Time Warner’s support queue. Keep in mind that their site was sufficiently broken that I had to describe in my feedback field how I would have checked the checkboxes above, had they not been broken…
The javascript on your feedback page is broken, so I can’t hit the checkboxes above.
Am I a customer?: [x] Yes
How often do I use On Demand?: [x] Often
What do you usually watch On Demand? [x] Movies [x] Sports & Events [x] Premium Series (HBO, Showtime) [x] Music [x] TV Show
-BEGIN free-form text feedback field-
So here’s my actual feedback:
It takes me less than a minute to set up an organized search to pirate a series, or show, or movie that I want. It comes down over your (or another) data network, and is decoded, and made – from my perspective – instantly available on my media PC with essentially no effort on my part past typing a single search query.
That said, I’m a man who makes his life in software. I only ever choose the Internet when Time Warner will not let me buy the show I want. I just spent an hour trying to figure out how to get the first episode of season 2 of Walking Dead on my TV, and for the life of me I cannot figure out how to do it. I tried the on-TV menus, I tried the twcondemand.com search functions, I tried searching generally, and I got: Nothing. It seems that I can get the last 2-3 episodes, but I can’t fill the gap between the end of Season 1 (available on Netflix) and the tiny window on Season 2 that you provide.
Then I put the name of the series into my Nerd Cable pipeline, and in the time it’s taken me to type this I’ve been able to download the entire second season of the show I want, in HD, which I’m about to thoroughly enjoy watching.
I’m trying – Guys, I shit you not: I’m really fucking trying – to pay you for the things I want to watch. My consistent experience, though, is that I can spend an hour or more dorking around on your systems and come up with nothing, or I can spend less than 5 minutes on the Internet, and while I do the dishes it comes down and is decoded and is ready to watch at my leisure.
You tell me what you’d do.
-END free-form text feedback field-
Here’s my question to all of you: How hard do you try to pay the “content creators” who hold the spigot on your entertainment pipe?
A Pun Involving Travel 
I pay stupid amounts of money to Time Warner but I can’t watch HBO-Go from my roku box. For some fucking reason.
I, too, try.
LikeLike
Try living in the UK. They won’t even let you attempt to pay them money.
LikeLike
So, I agree that this all needs to change, and the media companies are fighting against the tide. I also agree that piracy is an easier, and better experience. However, that said, the media companies do not owe you their offerings at your convenience, in the form you want it at the moment you want it.
It sucks, but here’s the deal: their content, their rules. Hopefully someone comes along and disrupts all of that.
LikeLike
I’ve been back and forth on how I think about this issue over the years as well, but I think I’m pretty well settled at this point. The other way to look at this situation is that I’m voting with my dollars, here: I will pay the organization that gives me what I want the amount they want to charge. Note that I’m not choosing my vendor on price – I’m willing, even eager, in fact angry that I can’t pay more in order to get a lower-quality product on a more limited range of devices with fewer useful in-media features (rewind, pause, etc) than I can get with the version that’s free on Usenet, because I understand and believe that content creation should be a sustainable business, and in order for that to be the case content creators have to be paid.
The “their content, their rules” formulation is only meaningful if there’s a way for them to control access to their content, though. Absent the more-or-less iron control of tying content to analog formats or physical tokens, the basic reality of the marketplace is such that they’re competing on ease of access and level of control. They don’t think they are, mainly because they’re so busy fighting the tide that they’re not considering the potential benefits of learning to boogie board, but they are.
The media networks, music distribution organizations, and various studio networks need to come to terms with the fact that until they reach feature parity there’s not much point in futzing around with price. In this case, feature parity is access to the media I want when I want it. If they made it possible, I’d pay. If they made it easier than the free alternative (not hard), I’d pay more. Until they make it possible to pay them, I’ve got no compunctions not doing so.
LikeLike
Mike Jurney – we’re really in agreement here. I’m just referencing your original post where you say you’ll just download it. Yes, you want it now. But you’re not entitled to it just because it was released at a particular time for a particular viewing. As you mention, what you’re looking for is available, via NetFlix. That’s an option for you. It will also ultimately be released on DVD/BluRay/Whatever. It will become commercially available. In the meantime, you’re not forced to torrent it.
Again, like Apple did with iTunes and the music industry, I’m waiting for someone (Google? Apple? Amazon?) to come along and disrupt this with passion and prejudice.
LikeLike
Edward Marczak – It actually wasn’t available to me via any legitimate channel; I wanted the first episode of season 2. TWC was making episodes 8 and higher of that season available, and Netflix only had season 1. As I said, if there had been a way I could have paid for it (either a la carte or through a service) I would have happily done so.
iTunes is an interesting counter-example, actually. The first apple music device I ever owned was the iPhone, and I bought exactly one album through ITMS. I was a little skeptical of the DRM system they used, but was willing to give it a shot, and the closed-format+management hassle was so odious that I never made the mistake again. I bought CDs and encoded them until Amazon’s mp3 store opened, at which point I became an avid customer. I went out of my way to pay for digital products, even though they could be had for free, as long as there existed a way for me to do so.
I’m a little quirky in the way I consume media, particularly shows. In this case I’ve been having to avoid conversations with friends because I haven’t caught up on a show that we all want to talk about. I’m not willing to shrug and say “well, I guess I won’t have lunch with you guys until this season finishes and you don’t want to talk about it anymore” when the shows are right there. When I can get episode 8 but not episodes 1-7, unless I spend 60 seconds typing and 10 minutes doing chores and spend no money I don’t feel much obligation to protect them from their own commercial stupidity.
The only feature I care about is availability, and the sooner the Holders realize that availability is a feature – the only feature that matters – and not a pricing category the happier everyone will be. The key point here is that they need to understand that I’m their ideal customer, if only they’ll agree to sell to me. Otherwise, I’ll just continue to be someone else’s customer until they do.
LikeLike
Edward Marczak I think it depends on what services Comcast has promised. If they say they offer the show Mike wants to watch, but he is actually unable to use their service to find that show, that seems like a breach from their side.
I’m of the opinion that if you pay Comcast, you should have the right to
watch whatever they offer, regardless of the source of that material, if it is part of what they have agreed to offer. Yes, that would require changes to copyright law, but the copyright law doesn’t seem to be working as originally envisioned (ie: it is now used to stifle innovation, rather than enhance it).
LikeLike