AT&T Fell for Media’s Inflated Sense of Self-Importance
AT&T was wrong to acquire DirecTV and TimeWarner. Now what?
Tag: television
The Browser History Fell Through a Memory Hole in my Pocket
If not careful, the brogrammers responsible for the attention deficit economy and big data collection will find their work has gone the way of interactive telev...
The Customer Perspective
There’s too much wrong with the FCC — in all its various political, technical, and regulatory aspects — to get into arguments on the line. How...
Please, Sir, May I Have Some More?
Netflix noticed something strange and unexpected among users of their video streaming service: they would watch all of the available episodes of a series before...
You’re Dead. Stop Kicking Me.
Interactive Television has always failed, and will always fail. A lesson from the early days of telephony is significant. Early on it was thought that telephony...
Hasta la Vista, Baby
We’re cancelling DirecTV service. It’s been about a year since purchasing the HDTV and the associated DirecTV package. Meanwhile, our viewing of ...
DirecTiVo, your return can not be too soon
Our DirecTiVo was dying. Every now and again, frequently at times, it stopped, hung. Maybe it waiting on a bad block on disk. Maybe it was just the heat. But th...
Navel Gazing
For one of her classes last year, D. wrote a paper which analyzes an effect of the self-absorption of the media, in response to one of the unfounded assertions ...
Counterdisintermediation, in an attempt to remain relevant
A famous character once opined, Never underestimate the power of human stupidity. The executives at ABC are determined to prove that axiom by launching a video-...
Can I Get a Real Person Here?
What does it take to get a real person on the phone these days? I don’t want to talk to the computer. I’m not talking to the computer. I did not buy...
Cablevision Offers TiVo
CED Magazine reports that Cablevision has signed a deal to market TiVo equipment to DISH and DirecTV customers. Someone’s been reading my journal. “...
Not the TiVo!
DirecTV is effectively removing the impediment to my changing video providers. “We’ll support our existing TiVo customers,” a spokesman for Di...
No Video on Demand
Because HBO has nothing we want to watch while we wait for The Sopranos, because we’re not that desperate, and because DirecTV makes changing packages sim...
While I’m on the Subject
Dear DirecTV, I just wanted to drop you a line to let you know that you’ve lost a customer. My loyalties are to my TiVo. I can get plain TV anywhere. Just...