Throwing in technological towels

Couperin47

Member
SoSH Member
2 unrelated pieces of news that some here may want to comment upon.

At an investors meeting on the 29th AT&T stated that they will launch no further satellites and as their existing ones die Direct TV will be exiting the delivery of TV via that medium. It will take years, but they will be gone.

In other news Microsoft admitted that nobody likes or cares about Edge, especially developers and as a result they will soon introduce a replacement browser for Windows 10 based upon...the Chromium engine. Anyone want to take any bets that given 3 years, it will still be hilariously inferior to Vivaldi or Opera ?
 

Blacken

Robespierre in a Cape
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Jul 24, 2007
12,152
Admitting that nobody cares about Edge is a stretch. I mean, they don't, but Microsoft is just continuing to work on getting out of things that aren't moneymakers. EdgeHTML/Chakra don't make them money. They can free-ride off of Blink/V8 and get whatever they need.

Also Microsoft could fart in a can and more people would care about it than Vivaldi or Opera.
 

jercra

No longer respects DeChambeau
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Jul 31, 2006
3,147
Arvada, Co
2 unrelated pieces of news that some here may want to comment upon.

At an investors meeting on the 29th AT&T stated that they will launch no further satellites and as their existing ones die Direct TV will be exiting the delivery of TV via that medium. It will take years, but they will be gone.
This is sad news. OTT delivery is terrible for consumers as a primary delivery mechanism (this is coming from someone who's livelihood comes from helping people migrate to and leverage OTT for video). It's a return to the days before the VCR. Returning full control to the content producers over content consumers is going to make live/near-live content unwatchable.
 

jercra

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Jul 31, 2006
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They're just going to a pure OTT play. This actually makes them less of a competitor with Comcast/Charter and more of a competitor with Hulu and Dish. The delivery mechanism will be HTTP with all DVR functionality cloud based (and super restricted). It will be interesting to see how this impacts their exclusive NFL deal. I'm not sure why the NFL would outsource a pure OTT solution when they could just sell it directly. At the very least, it would allow them to open the bidding up to other OTT players like Prime (TNF already), ESPN, Hulu, etc.
 

sox311

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Jan 30, 2004
1,753
That's what she said.
It's crazy that they will transition their entire business, but that's what will happen. They will just have to transition everyone to 5G delivery rather than the satellites. Each of the new boxes, Genie Mini 2, have a SIM card built in, so it is coming and compatible. I worked for AT&T for ten years, just left in May, and this was clearly the direction and announced over two years ago.

I for one am annoyed when someone scoffs that others haven't cut the cord. I find value in DirecTV's service. Just like they value Netflix, or Hulu, which I do as well. The DVR is much more simple than searching for something on a streaming service. I don't want to use my Apple TV to watch the Celtics every night. I want them to be somewhere around channel 750. Make it easy and I'll spend the extra money.

Now, get off my grass kids. And keep my damn satellite's circling the earth please.
 

jercra

No longer respects DeChambeau
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Jul 31, 2006
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I'm not sure why people keep saying they'll need to provide 5G to everyone. I'm sure they'll bundle it where it's available but they don't need to provide the internet connection any more than Netflix does now.