This post is largely not Second Life related, this is about television and some outdated practices that frustrate people who want to legally buy content. There is a Second Life angle but it’s largely unrelated to my main gripe. There’s a channel here in the UK called Sky Atlantic, it carries shows such as Games Of Thrones and Boardwalk Empire, content from HBO. These are highly regarded shows but as I’m a customer of Virgin Media rather than SKY, I can’t view this channel. I can’t even buy the channel or the shows via On Demand.
The platform I’m on is perfectly capable of receiving the content, but it’s simply not available to me. So I have a few options, one is to buy the Box Sets, I do this for shows I like, I have every box set of The Sopranos for example. However when I’m not sure whether I’ll like a show, that seems a bit silly, but it’s an option.
A better option would be for me to be able to buy the content directly from HBO, this is an option for customers in some parts of the world, but not in the UK. I’ve discovered a new option though, one that makes sense, it’s a service called BlinkBox which is owned by Tesco. This service allows me to buy individual episodes of Game Of Thrones, or the whole of season 1 and 2. This service allows me to pick and mix what shows I may be interested in and even rent movies. This is a far better model than the offering of SKY Atlantic because it means I don’t need to change my whole product to view a show.
The product and the content are two different concepts and having one tied to the other, as SKY do with SKY Atlantic is an archaic and outdated model that should be consigned to the dustbin of history. Why HBO decided it was a good idea to have their content restricted in this fashion is a bit of a mystery really, surely they should want as many people as possible to purchase their content.
I find it frustrating that content I can view in terms of technology is restricted to certain technical models, it really shouldn’t be like this in this day and age when content can be streamed or downloaded so easily, it’s an archaic model and one that is wrongly cited as a reason for piracy. I say wrongly because as I’ve pointed out, I have legal alternatives, but I’ve seen people use this sort of model as a feeble excuse to justify piracy. Content creators making their content more widely available would put a nail firmly in the coffin of that excuse though. However even if those legal alternatives were not available, it still would not excuse piracy, it would be a cause for greater complaint though.
I’ve said before that it’s a shame that more content isn’t legally available for streaming in Second Life, the costs would probably be excessive as public broadcasting deals are far more expensive than household deals. Whereas technically it’s feasible, economically it’s not likely to be feasible for anyone wanting a deal to show films in Second Life via a legal means, although if there was a way to tie a broadcast to an avatar rather than a parcel, there may be some movement on that front. Unfortunately this means we won’t be having any Games Of Thrones parties in Second Life where like minded individuals meet up to view an episode, maybe one day, but as I said, it would likely be too costly to implement.
Television needs to move with the times, the technology is there, it’s a shame the content is still so restricted.