Internet Television
Man, how awesome would this be? You fire up the Mac (you do have a Mac, don’t you?) and load up the newest super cool video content aggregation app like Boxee and you just get all this content from everywhere for FREE (as in beer) and now you can just call up the cable company and tell them to shove their $50 a month up their smelly little ass. You can even use your iPhone to control this new miracle app. Bonus!
That would be so awesome. But it’s not going to happen any time soon.
Why, you ask? Boxee is already doing great, on the verge of breaking huge ground, and seems to have Hulu by the balls (resistance is futile, Hulu). Developers everywhere are building tools to extend this functionality. You can even get an eyeTv to suck the content from the wire to your hard drive to your TV. Rad. Over the air HD is just a couple months away. Sweet!
Thing is, content is still really important and the quality of that content (as in quality of video) is more important than ever. Want proof? Stand outside Best Buy for an hour and count how many HDTVs walk out the door. You’re going to need your fingers and your toes for this one.
My house, dare I say, is a fairly average one, other than the fact that we watch a little less TV than most folks and I’ve got a Mac Mini hooked up to the TV (both of which make me more likely to cut the Cable TV cord). I’ve got a nice HDTV and a kid, so a lot of the time it’s tuned to Nickelodean (in HD, for the record). When the girl makes it to bed, if the TV stays on, it gets tuned to the Discovery channel, Travel, Food Network and some nights the major networks for a dose of House, Simpson’s or that craptastic Gray’s Anatomy Steph likes so much. On the weekends I like watching sports and in the Fall I watch a lot of college football.
So, skimming over that list, there’s pretty much nothing that I can get on the internet for free that doesn’t (unfortunately) look like crap on my TV, and as little TV as I watch, I’m not up for crap. In fact, I hardly watch any SD content and get agrivated when I have to. After all, I didn’t buy a fancy-pants TV to watch Spongebob Pixelpants.
Could the networks (at least the ones who do offer up online content) offer it in HD? Sure, theoretically, but that’s a LOT of pipe and if we’re ever going to get to a point where all the majors are feeding HD to all the households we’re going to need more tubes.
At the end of the day though, I find myself saying ‘if only they would give it to me for free then I wouldn’t have to pay for it.’ Therein lies the problem: money. It’s still much, much more profitable for content owners, aka networks, to support and even promote the traditional advertising model of Cable Television, and by the way, the Cable companies are pretty damn invested in this model as well. If you keep reading down in the comments, I predict Jason will tell me I’m wrong and that the online delivery makes them money too, but I am telling you now that he is is wrong (the benefit of writing on one’s own blog) and that the Cable delivery model makes waaaaaaaay more money. Sure they are making concessions (see Hulu) because they know that some people are going to watch online no matter what, and they can still make some money on those folks, but the Cable delivery model is way too profitable and the kicker is the shift would have to come from the content and delivery folks, not the starving hipsters who want free content.
What it comes down to is this: the content owners and delivery networks hold the keys to the kingdom, and it’s a lucrative deal, and no amount of bandwidth or demand or fancy tech is going to cause them to hand either bit over for free.
So keep dreaming, I know I will. And enjoy seeing four beige pixels where John Stewart’s face should be; he’s still funny, right? But if you want to get the content of your choice, at the click of the remote, delivered in the quality you’ve become so accustomed to (and invested in with your fancy gadgets) then don’t let your checkbook stray too far. The cable company isn’t going anywhere for years to come.
Update: Did some fiddling with Boxee and Rowmote on Saturday and my feelings haven’t really changed. The content is thin. The quality is poor. The delivery is hit and miss. And I still believe that’s exactly how the folks in charge want things to stay.
For what can be considered the entirety of my professional life, I have been managing pixels. There was the barista gig in college, but that was to pay bills and buy beer. Then there was the call center gig, but that was just to get my foot in the door so I could start managing pixels (a profession I fell into by virtue of filling a need). I’ve grown a lot since them and have a new gig where my job required that I manage people a bit and manage processes a bit, but the truth of the matter was I still spent most of my time jockying pixels.
