On Wed, 10 Oct 2007, Marshall Eubanks wrote:
Many people leave the TV on all the time, at least while they are home.
On the Internet broadcasting side, we (AmericaFree.TV) have some viewers that do the same - one has racked up a cumulative 109 _days_ of viewing so far this year. (109 days in 280 days duration works out to 9.3 hours per day.) I am sure that other video providers can provide similar reports. So, I don't think that things are that different here in the new regime.
If it's multicast TV I don't see the problem, it doesn't increase your backbone traffic linearly with the number of people doing it. But this is of course a problem in a VOD environment, but on the other hand, people are probably less likely to just leave it on if it's actually programming they can have when they want. You don't need a TiVo when you have network based service that does the TiVo functionality for you. Personally, I'd rather pay per hour I'm watching VOD, than paying nothing for channels filled with commercials where I have no control over when and what I could watch. -- Mikael Abrahamsson email: swmike@swm.pp.se