Have you tried the Time Warner Cable iPad App? I have been playing around with it and planning a review. It is really pretty sweet – you can watch live streaming shows from a number of channels. It is restricted to your house, which I thought was a fair enough compromise – I could picture having my iPad sitting outside having a drink with my wife at night enjoying a show … well, once the snow melts anyway!
Today I got an email describing how several channels were being pulled from the App – this isn’t surprising, since we already knew they were being asked to do so. For me it is about rampant greed – the channel owners want to renegotiate and get more money. And in the end that will all filter to us in the form of higher prices – for watching the same shows we already watch! These folks just don’t get it – Time Warner (greedy enough as it is) was doing a great thing, and providing a system that would ensure people were hooked to their home setup while watching.
Here is the rest of what the email said:
We will be providing replacement channels as quickly as we can, perhaps as early as tomorrow. You won’t need to change anything or update your App in any way to receive these or the additional channels.
In the meantime, we will pursue all of our legal rights against the programmers who don’t share our vision. Your enthusiasm, and the enthusiasm of the programming partners who have embraced the App – rather than those who are solely focused on finding additional ways to reach into wallets of their own viewers – has convinced us more than ever that we are on the right path. We will continue to fight to ensure that you have access to the content you pay for, no matter which screen in your home you choose to view it on.
For up-to-the-minute information on what’s happening, please visit:
www.IWantMyTWCableTVApp.com.Why are these channels going away from the TWCable TV App for iPad?
Unfortunately, the owners of those channels don’t yet share our vision for making it easy for consumers to view the content they’ve already paid for on different screens within the home. We would rather use our technical resources to distribute the channels of programmers who agree that their content should be seen on any screen inside your home, while we pursue legal solutions that would let us continue deploying this Application.Will other channels be put up in their place?
We’re working to add new channels to the lineup as quickly as possible.Will more channels be dropped?
At this time, we don’t expect any additional TV network owners to demand that we remove their channels from the iPad App.Why didn’t Time Warner Cable anticipate this before launching the iPad App?
We firmly believe that this App is no different than delivering our signals to another TV in the home, and are surprised and disappointed that some TV networks see it differently.
As noted, you can keep track of the nonsense at www.IWantMyTWCableTVApp.com.