Tag Archives: time warner cable

Time Warner Warned, Sane People Win

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In a previous post, I talked about how Time Warner was experimenting with tiered pricing plans, and the impact this could have on anime fans if it was approved for all Time Warner services across the United States.

Thankfully however, the plan has had such a negative reaction with consumers in test markets that it’s back to the drawing board for the folks at Time Warner. Full-out rejection. The movement to stop the tiered price plan scheme was headed by the website Stop the Cap, which even got New York’s Senator Chuck “The Deadliest Barbarian” Schumer to give Time Warner a stern talking to.

So for anime fans, the fear of having our ability to watch anime the way we want to has subsided, at least for now. This will not be the last time Time Warner tries something, but I can only hope the next time will be more sensible.  If not, this’ll probably happen again.

Time Warner Cable Hates Your Anime

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Recently it’s been revealed that Time Warner Cable plans to start implementing bandwidth caps, and is trying this strategy in select areas of the United States. If you go over these (very low) caps, you have to pay $1 per GB. You might be thinking that oh, all you have to do is just not use bittorrent so much, but even if we factor bittorrent AND all downloaded anime out of the equation, this is still a problem for fans because of the increase in websites dedicated to streaming anime online legally and how this bandwidth capping will affect even people who want to support the shows they love.

Think of the very likely scenario that you’re watching a show, and it doesn’t load properly, so you have to refresh the page a few times. If you’re under Time Warner’s plan, you’ve just eaten up a good portion of the bandwidth you’ve been allotted that month. Of course, anime is still a niche market, but this also affects regular non-anime viewers who simply prefer to watch their shows online and not on the tv.

What we have here is an attempt by Time Warner to pull people from their computers and put them back in front of their TVs so they can buy on-demand from Time Warner directly and make you go back to viewing long commercials (provided you don’t own a Tivo). And while I understand that Time Warner does not want to lose profit, I can’t help but see this as nothing but a defensive turtling with fingers plugged into ears, ignoring the progress that is happening to visual entertainment.