Time Warner Cable Cuts iPad Live TV Access 50%

Junior Samples writes "According to the article: 'Time Warner Cable March 16 slashed the number of channels available for live streaming on the Apple iPad — less than 24 hours after launching the TV Everywhere app. The No. 2 cable operator reduced to 15 channels from the original 32 offered up as the first-ever live TV broadcasts available for streaming on a portable media device. The concept allows participating media providers to grant unlimited on-demand access across multiple devices to monthly subscribers at no additional charge.'"

Bait and Switch

[Anonymous Coward]

It is called "Bait and Switch".

Re:And Android...no?

[Anubis IV]

They released an iPad-specific app. Last I checked, the iPad is outselling all other competitors combined about 4:1.

Another point of consideration with something like this is the rights protection/DRM that Apple has in iOS, which is consistent across the devices. Refer to the problems Netflix has been having in bringing their service to Android because of the inconsistent DRM protection offered across the Android lineup of devices.

Also, you're conflating iPhones and iOS. Android smartphones are indeed outselling iPhones on a quarterly basis, and have been for the last few quarters. That said, all Android devices are, last I checked, still behind all iOS devices when it comes to sales on a quarterly basis. I saw some numbers from late last year that put iOS ahead by about 30-40M units in terms of installed base, with both the Android and iOS lines on the graph growing at the same rate, essentially meaning that they're keeping pace with each other, but that Apple got the head start. That's not to say that they'll always be ahead, of course, but they are for now.

As for OS version fragmentation, you're right. It's not nearly the issue that some folks make it out to be. That said, there is an issue for customers who want to update to later versions and can't since their carrier won't permit reasonable updates after just a few months, but that's more of an issue with bad business practices that affect consumers negatively, rather than a problem for app developers.

Re:Quickly kill it before it grows too strong!

[FliesLikeABrick]

http://www.twcableuntangled.com/2011/03/heavy-demand-crashed-our-ipad-app-last-night-it%E2%80%99s-not-a-good-party-unless-you-run-out-of-beer/

It was actually because they had capacity issues and have temporarily reduced the number of channels available so as to not knock the whole service offline again.

(full disclosure: I used to work for TWC)

It's a server issue

[frdmfghtr]

According to 9to5Mac, it's a server issue not pissed-off providers (although there may be some of those too)

http://www.9to5mac.com/56532/time-warner-ipad-app-crashed-servers-halve-offering/ [9to5mac.com]

‘It’s not a good party unless you run out of beer,’ says TWC in regards to the loss of channels in the iPad app today. They deny outages are being caused by programmers who could have pulled their content even though some are reportedly upset.

It appears that it actually isn’t the streaming load that is buckling the servers, but the authentication servers according to ablog post by Time Warner Cable’s Jeff Simmermon:

Our engineering team is working as hard as they can to put a fix in place and get everything up and running as soon as they can. For the time being, the app is running with only 15 channels. We have found that by temporarily reducing the number of available channels, we can ease strain on the authentication process. This will enable us to offer at least some sort of an experience to our customers while we get a fix in place. We’ll add the other 17 channels back in as soon as we can fix the underlying issue, and we’ll be adding more channels in future iterations of the app as well.

Re:Bait and Switch

[cgenman]

According to this article [9to5mac.com], their authentication servers got overloaded, and they cut down the number of channels to reduce the authentication load while they bought more.

While I normally rally against evil corporations hiding the truth, somehow "we couldn't convince the higher-ups to buy enough servers until everything went to pot" seems like normal operating launch-day problems.