The interesting question is how subscribers to HBO will feel about this. Are they so used to making copies that they’ll leave HBO in droves? Will they generally abandon cable for online sources of content? Probably not. . . . Hang on to your old open devices. And don’t look to cable and satellite providers to provide you with lots of choices. Bit by bit, the analog hole is going to close.
I like the pun. And I’ll be collecting more $75 televisions and $30 VCRs. I still have my old manual typewriter; I’m sure that’s going to start coming in handy soon. But my own reaction to the closing of the “analog hole” is: I watch too much television as it is, and the vast bulk of what’s on TV is terrible. Bruce “57 Channels and Nothing On” Springsteen may have been right, in ways that he couldn’t have predicted. Hello, digital television, goodbye TV. Is cable TV going to do what the music industry has tried to do, and kill the (consumer) goose that laid the golden egg?