We just moved into our new house and I figured I would give TimeWarner HD cable and their DVR a try. Mind you I'm coming from a Direct TV HD and a Tivo (non-HD tivo).

Now, the cable modem from TimeWarner is just fine. 5-6MB down, 700k up. Fine. However, HD on TimeWarner cable here in Brentwood really looks like crap. I have a 1080p LCD from Samsung and you can really see the bitmapping of the screen. Basketball looks horrible. Like really bad unless folks at standing still--which they don't do a lot in the NBA. Is this because they are compressing the signals or is because I'm on a slower block do you think?

The PVR is beyond horrible. The software looks like it was written in 1983 in DOS and the latency is sad. Oh, did I mention the thing hangs all the time?!? Tivo is a Mercedes this PVR is like a broken down Datsun.

As I was about to write this blog post I found my pal Walt over at WSJ HAD THE SAME EXACT EXPERIENCE with Comcast's Cable service.

My thoughts:

1. If anyone at the cable companies is listening: PLEASE USE TIVO'S SOFTWARE. Make it happen. You guys are never gonna make as a good a unit as Tivo.
2. Tivo if you're listening: GIVE THE CABLE COMPANIES A GOOD DEAL so they will use your software.
3. DirecTV: I'm sorry I ever doubted you. You may not have the channels but your HD signal is amazing. I love you.

Fred calls me and Mark to task for being YouTube haters, and says that YouTube is the "single best thing that has happened to the Net in the past several years." I wouldn't argue with that *single* best comment, but in fairness it is right up there with voip, blogging, podcasting, Google Adsense, social software, social news, and broadband.

Who wouldn't want a free Tivo of the best video moments in the history of filmed media?! That's not the point.

Fred's second incorrect statement is that YouTube created the Flash Media player--dead wrong. They didn't make it Fred, but they did make it a hit.

[ Update: Fred say's that when he mentioned the embedded flash player he was talking about the syndicated video feature... fair enough. ]

What Fred misses completely (and he doesn't miss much) is that YouTube's real invention was *syndicated* video. Up until YouTube folks would block other domain names from using their video because of the bandwidth bills. YouTube bravely (or foolishly if their company had/does run out of money due to bandwidth bills) did was *encourage* users to syndicate their videos and used that syndication as a promotion and a link back. That was brilliant--straight up brillaint.

That concept worked, and that syndicated concept is--I believe--their innovation. Does anyone else know of anyone who did syndicated video before YouTube? I don't off the top of my head.

Now, my point all along about the YouTube service is that it is Napster on the web with very little else. Rewarding someone with a huge valuation or a huge exit for being a "pirate bay" is a joke, and that's why the big media companies shut down Napster. They did it on principle, not based on logic. Logic would have told the media companies to buy the company and make it legit slowly. If the music companies they would own iTunes, not Steve Jobs.

Now, the technology behind the site is *easy* to build. Trust me on that one because our team at Netscape built it in a month, and our technology is MUCH better than YouTube's. The reason is that the technology behind YouTube is Macromedia's not YouTube's. YouTube should get very little to no credit for their technology beyond the scalling of the service--which is not that easy (but not that hard either).

In fact, the technology piece is sooooooooo easy that Yahoo, AOL, MySpace, and countless startups have all built their own versions. Why would you pay a $1-2B to YouTube for Technology that costs < $50,000 to make/customize?! That is why companies with scale (aka traffic) like Yahoo, MySpace, Viacomm, and AOL have all created their own services. Only an idiot would pay someone $1b for technology that is a commodity and traffic that is based on their IP!

YouTube does have a great community in a very similar way that Napster and Bittorrent had and have great communities. However, if I had a bar that gave out free (stolen) beer every day I could build a great community as well.... but I digress.

What I will give YouTube a lot of credit for is leveraging mountains and mountains of illegal content to make a huge legal business, and for getting away with this plan for so long. They did show copyright holders of the world the value of their content online, and it's created great companies like Revver which are coming up with models to pay origional content owners.

So, all credit to YouTube for:

a) syndicated video
b) staying in business this long without getting sued
c) showing video holders the value of their content
d) scaling the service

If YouTube can make the shift from back-alley pirate bay to legit content distributor it will be one of the great bait-and-swith, hit-and-run acts of of all time. Napster couldn't thread that needle, and I frankly don't think YouTube will.

If they do I'll buy those dudes a bunch of beers and congradulating them on being the greatest hustlers of all time (and I mean hustler in Jay-Z sense of the word--respek!).

Awwwww... this is nice! Someone made a list of the top 10 CEO blogs and I'm on it.

The funny part is that I'm pretty good friends with six of the other nine people on the list--and have been since *before* we all started blogging. What does that say? I think it says either that a) I know a lot of folks or b) that certain folks are primed for blogging. Certainly Craig and Mark are.

• On the heals of YouTube cleaning up its act, MySpace will delete 200,000 objectionable profiles. Ross comments on making the Space more advertiser friendly--very, very smart move.
  
• The PVR is the network--wow.
• Apple *desktop* marketshare has been cut in half since Jobs became CEO... misleading headline since Apple is doing better than ever in terms of the overall health of the company. In related note, how would you like to be the CEO of Disney and have Steve Jobs show up at the next board meeting?!?! Oh to be a fly on that wall.
  
• John Battelle begs the founders of Facebook to take the money--spoken like a true vet who got hit hard when the bubbles popped. JBAT was at WIRED which had an IPO killed twice, and at the Industry Standard which he says turned down a similar offer (so that means the Standard got a ~1B offer and they didn't take it.... ouch!). I hear ya buddy... I've had three phone calls with entrepreneurs who've been offered 5-30M for their startups in the past month. My advice to all of them: sell now, Internet winter is coming. Here is how the conversation went with one of my friends:
  

Me: "Have you ever sold a company?"

Friend with offer: "No."

Me: "Do you TKTK million in you bank account right now?"

FWO: "No."

Me: "Are your parents going to put TKTK million in your bank account any time soon? Do you have a trust fund?"

FWO: "Uhhh... no."

Me: "Take the money."

FWO: "But what if I sell to early?"

Me: "Then you've done your job. You have three options in life: sell too early, sell exactly at the right moment, or sell too late. You want to be part of the first two groups--not the last group. And, history is the only thing that can tell you if you're in group 1 or 2. Trust me, I spent my life in group 3, now I'm part of group 1, and maybe some day I'll be able to join Mark Cuban in group 2. Heck, folks may look back at the blogging movement and say that we were in group #2. It's a process, and if you're a first time entrepreneur you take the money and hope the distance between group 1 and 2 isn't that big. Risk, reward."

Me (still going): "Trust me, get one under your belt--it changes everything. I get 10 calls a week from VCs asking me to invest in my next company... it's like the movie business: once you've made one movie your chances of doing a second movie go up exponentially."

[ Note: Mark had a solid sale before he had Broadcast.com, so when Microsoft offered him ~$100 for Broadcast.com he could walk away from it. That's the position you want to be in. Having a win under your belt changes *everything.* ]

This is classic... Mark put his powerpoints from the bubble years up on his Box.net account.

I'm gonna have pull some old Silicon Alley Reporter tapes. :-)