Note: This is long and not related to the primary subjects of this blog. Just something I felt I had to write about.
For five years now, most of my TV watching has been done on the computer. Shortly after I got my iMac, I got what I consider to be one of the best peripherals ever created — Elgato’s EyeTV 250 Plus tuner. It automatically finds TV stations, and a downloaded schedule allows timed or one-touch recording. I can pause live TV. The device also serves a more important purpose — translating analog videotape into digital recordings. My project of digitizing a quarter-century of literally hundreds of hours of family video is “ongoing” for a long time.
The biggest issues I encountered were a recording bug that tech support was unable to duplicate (fortunately, it’s solved with a restart) and an update to the software in 2011 that eliminated the option to select video files for burning to DVD (fortunately, I was able to downgrade to the previous version, and haven’t touched it since).
Last month, there was a change in course: Elgato discontinued all North American sales of its EyeTV tuners and all support for them too. The abruptness was shocking, although apparently it had been on life support, and I would look at two causes: Sling TV and Comcast.
You may have read an article or two over the past year about how “cord cutting” is all the rage, but for a good chunk of the TV-watching population, a caveat invalidated the whole premise: …unless you want live sports. Last month was there a breakthrough in this area: Dish Network’s Sling TV offers the ESPN Family of Networks for $25 (the base package plus $5 sports pack). And if you can watch TV through the Internet…what’s the point in a tuner?
Sling TV was launched Feb. 9 — and Elgato’s press release came out the same day. If Internet streaming killed the coaxial star (and that is only my speculation), Elgato has made a mistake. There’s still a need for its products.
Sling suffers the same weakness as all streaming services: It relies on the Internet. If you don’t have a fast enough connection, or have a flaky connection*, the service can be more maddening than if you didn’t have it at all. Rural areas, of course, are especially prone to this. I experienced this first-hand with an Apple TV trying to watch the ISU-Texas men’s basketball game a few weeks ago: After five minutes, or even less, the stream froze and followed after that in fits and spurts.
That experience is tied to another issue: To get a full slate of college sports, and especially ISU/Big 12 games, you also need FS1, Fox Sports regional, and (sigh) the Big Ten Network. And you can’t watch any of those online unless you also subscribe to cable. The same is true for the Pac-12 Network and watching the NCAA Tournament.
On-demand services are very temporary, very ephemeral. Someday the recording you want might not be accessible anymore. To Hollywood and the cable companies, this is not a bug, but a feature they couldn’t have dreamed of 30 years ago, when the Supreme Court declared the VCR constitutional. When you’re watching on demand, you can’t skip the embedded ads, a fact they really like. (Oh, and you’ll have not one but multiple payments to the various sources, every month, forever. They like that too.)
*Apple has not included Ethernet ports on its computers for years, which becomes a really BIG problem when Wi-Fi flakiness is a repeatedly encountered issue (both on computers and mobile devices). Forget making a car; make sure the Internet connection works.
Now, the other part of my speculation. Stories from Minneapolis and Seattle and websites as far back as 2010 bemoaned Comcast’s encryption of all cable channels, because that crippled EyeTV receivers. Elgato itself published a tech support article stating that EyeTV would no longer work with any provider that did such encryption.
Mediacom’s incorporation of digital adapters did not affect my EyeTV’s ability to find stations, although a small handful in expanded basic cable are unavailable. However, the nature of the industry leaves the worry in the corner of my mind that the status quo is on borrowed time. (If I later get an EyeTV HD, which was also discontinued, well, Mediacom will be glad to offer me the full HD experience…for another $10.50 a month.)
I say all of this despite the articles saying Netflix and similar services are creating a measurable decline in TV watching. Plenty of Americans don’t have and can’t get a connection with reliable streaming, and even then, that’s not the only place the tubes can get clogged. (Streams also tend to be behind live events by five to 30 seconds 30 seconds to two minutes, which hurts the ability to liveblog/tweet about it.)
If at some point my EyeTV tuner becomes inoperable, by forced technological obsolescence or some other reason, something will be lost. At least I could continue transferring family tapes. If you are in the same boat, I suggest finding one before they’re gone forever.