Cutting ties

I cancelled my pay-television subscription two years ago. In 2010, I turned it back on for the Fifa World Cup, and earlier this year it was reactivated so I could review DStv's BoxOffice service. I decided to keep it going for a short while after that, but then cancelled again. I've moved on. The pay-television model is broken.

Reruns only happen when you want them to.

Simon Dingle, contributor, ITWeb

“Cable-cutting”, as it is known in the USA, is becoming a global phenomenon. People are increasingly opting out of pay-television and substituting it with online services like iTunes, Netflix, Hulu and vast volumes of free - and legal - online content. In this world, video is served on-demand. Reruns only happen when you want them to. And you only pay for the content you want.

The obvious problem in South Africa is that none of the paid services are available, thanks to the moronic way content is still licensed. You'd think the keen minds of Hollywood would be interested in making money from everyone, but they don't want ours.

As was the case with music, the clowns that control the television industry are dealing very poorly with the disruption that is happening under their noses. They think they're making the transition and keeping up with the times when they're really just floundering. And despite this, they'll still benefit from the new model that is happening to their business, whether they like it or not, thanks to the smart people at Apple, Amazon, Google and elsewhere.

Well, it turns out the void isn't that big. This should come as no surprise - but most of what you find on television is pure garbage, and getting rid of it is more of a relief than anything else.

But there are a lot of great shows on at the moment too. We are living in the golden age of television, after all.

So the few shows that I do enjoy - like the Big Bang Theory - I buy either via US accounts with the likes of iTunes, or on DVD and Blu-ray, when I can.

The problem with this approach is that, according to the content morons, it's as illegal as just downloading your television shows from Usenet.

You see, the reason that South African iTunes accounts, for example, don't have access to television shows, is because that content hasn't been licensed for that nature of distribution in our region. It doesn't matter that the show is available locally from other sources - like DStv - it still has to be specifically licensed for individual distribution channels.

In other words, lying about having an American address to open a US iTunes account and downloading television content is against the copyright of that content - even though you paid for it. So you may as well get it from “a friend”, because it amounts to the same thing for the idiots that license that content.

Bittorrent, which makes you a node in a distribution network, is viewed as the worst way of getting content in terms of legality. Because, in this scenario, you are not just downloading it, but also helping to spread it.

So television shows are a challenge, I'll admit. Movies are easier to source on disc, but face the same challenges in terms of licensing.

Sport is a tricky one too, for South Africans. SuperSport has the market sewn up and only provides mobile and streaming services to its own subscribers. There are live streams of major sporting events available online, but the quality is usually poor and it isn't worth watching.

So it's a good thing I don't care about sport then. And the odd rugby game that I do feel like watching I now have to watch with friends - which isn't a bad problem to have.

Kids' content is the easiest to solve, with shelves of cheap DVDs lining just about any store you walk into.

The more important observation, however, is that the need for conventional content dissipates when one starts diving into the world of legally free content.

The two best systems I have used during this experiment are Plex and Roku. The first is software that will run on just about any operating system, and Roku is a hardware solution.

On these platforms, I have found official streams for Aljazeera English and CNN that fill my need for news. Hours and hours of Sesame Street content for kids is available for free, and some publishers, like Nickelodeon and PBS, make selected episodes of their shows available for free, although some of it is not available in our region.

Vimeo and YouTube have great interfaces for Plex, with access to the growing world of free content. And then there are the rising stars of the Internet broadcasting world such as the TWiT network and Revision 3, which put out fantastic shows that are free for anyone to view anywhere, and can be subscribed to using platforms such as those I have mentioned.

The production quality of shows like This Week in Tech and Tekzilla continue to improve, as advertisers increasingly recognise the new medium and pump money into it.

The content you get from these broadcasters is also far more intellectually stimulating than your average hour on DStv. It's smart content for niche audiences. And you don't have to break inane laws to get it.

Pay-television is broken. The model might still be working in terms of profit, but is about to fall off a precipice. We will very soon have the kind of broadband required to enjoy online video content at affordable prices, and it is only a matter of time before the streaming services we want arrive in South Africa.

We are also likely to see Apple disrupt the television space in coming months, just as it did with music in the last decade. In Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, he tells the story of how Jobs said he was working on a way to fix television and that he had “finally cracked it”.

And then there's the obvious point - people are getting the content they want anyway. They get it on hard drives from friends or they download it from Usenet and Bittorrent. They are not doing this because they are criminals, but because they have no other choice. If you allowed them to legally pay for your content, they would.

While I don't recommend cable-cutting now - unless you don't mind breaking the law - I'm convinced it will be viable en mass in the near future. And check out Plex if you want a taste of things to come.