It's ridiculous how much we currently pay for cable. We get movie channels we barely watch just to pick up 12-week runs of a couple of original series we love and most of our "basic cable" viewing is limited to 4 or 5 channels, but we're FORCED to pay for a bunch of channels we don't want to get those few.
I'm basically paying $900+ a year for basic HD cable, Showtime, HBO, Starz, and Encore, plus a DVR-equipped cable box. What if I paid $180 a year ($15 a month) for a VOD over set-top box service, plus $1 a show for some fave series.
Buck a show for "True Blood", "Entourage", "Nurse Jackie", and "The United States of Tara" would be $48 a year (each show has a 12-episode season). We could even set weekly budgets. At $6 a week for pay-per-view series, plus $15 a month for VOD, we'd save close to $35 a month and support the shows we liked directly, encouraging their continued production with a very tangible revenue stream.
As consumers get a chance to really vote with their dollars and pay just for what they watch, the economics of television are going to change, hopefully in the consumer's favor. More signal, less noise, lower cost.
As we approach the holiday season, I'm going to be seriously contemplating whether a $100-200 set-top box is going to replace my cable box. If the cable providers don't start changing the way they do business, they'll lose my business.
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The difference is that I can buy one of these dedicated set-top boxes (or just upgrade to a wi-fi and internet enabled Blu-Ray player for $50-100 more) and I have both the Netflix by mail service, plus I have all their streaming content, and a growing selection of PPV and subscription VOD services. The more I look at it, I'll probably go the Blu-ray player route. That way I get the upgrade to Blu-ray plus the services.
Looks like Hulu Plus and Netflix together would be $19 a month, plus $25 a month for pay-per-view TV shows. Still a nice savings.
You could guess what happened, couldn't you... below this post on the RSS feed in Google Reader, I got a Foxtel (cable TV) advert, offering me a 12 month deal that could cost me $1100.