Comments on Mediaholic: Opening television to the Internet

Considering the amount of content out there on the...

2008-03-04T14:49:00.000-08:00

Considering the amount of content out there on the internet, it still surprises me that there is no simple solution for watching this content in your living room through your TV.

It has to be simple and transparent.
Not unlike selecting a channel on your satellite or cable box.

Almost a decade ago Bill Gates mentioned the TV in the living room being the center of internet content yet no rules or protocol exist to bring this to our living rooms.

Why not add a webbrowser as a replacement for Tele...

2008-02-11T11:25:00.000-08:00

Why not add a webbrowser as a replacement for Teletext (sp?) and TV-Guide ?
It's not like you'd need a superfast pc to run a browser and the hardware is already available and relatively cheap.

In fact Samsung is already selling tv's with a built-in pc that runs XP from a flashdisk!

Then there's companies like Philips who've already added what looks like an UPnP-capable player to at least one of their more expensive tv's (Philips 42PF9731D/10).

The consoles might move faster, but that is merely theory. Microsoft still hasn't enabled its video-rental-service for all countries for example. So there's still plenty of chance for the traditional industry to catch them.

To be honest ... I still am reminded of Bruce Springsteens' song "57 channels and nothing on".
Because getting the content to the consumer isn't the biggest issue.
Making sure that there's anything worth seeing/hearing is.

I agree completely that game consoles and set-top ...

2008-01-30T04:35:00.000-08:00

I agree completely that game consoles and set-top boxes have a better leverage than TVs, and they will be able to offer 'Internet TV' first.

But the 'open letter' describes a much bigger problem: there is no good format for publishing a collection of content ('TV shows'). RSS lacks structuring that would be needed to offer a good user experience (such as being able to sort episodes of a TV show into seasons, so you can start with the first episode and not with the most recent one) and it also is not helpful for presenting the show in an attractive way - a description text and an icon are not enough. (BTW music albums have a similar problem, a ZIP of MP3 is not a good replacement for the CD jewel case with booklet, there's something missing in digital music distributionright now).

Similarly, there is no standard to group related shows ('TV channel') or for guides.

I agree with the author of the open letter that there is a vacuum that should be filled. Microsoft, Sony and Apple probably won't, because they seem to be interested only in their proprietary online stores. I don't think that the CE industry or media companies will solve it. Just like RSS has been created 'on the internet' and has then been adopted by media companies, such a format would have to be adopted by video bloggers on the net first, and only then be used by the CE industry and big media companies.

I think initially the majority of consumer investm...

2008-01-29T15:38:00.000-08:00

I think initially the majority of consumer investment in "Internet video in the living room" (let's call it "InterTV") will be made across the discrete components required to actuate the experience: broadband service, home network cabling/wifi products, home PC devices, multimedia (uPNP-AV) gateway devices & HDTV devices. The advantage to the consumer approaching InterTV this way is flexibility and immediacy. The disadvantage is the enormous effort required to put this in place in a usable and reliable manner - hence this approach will only be embraced by early adopters and innovators.

Over time, the early majority members of the InterTV market segment - excited by the experiences demonstrated to them by their eraly adopter friends - will begin to invest in InterTV. They will,however, quickly recoil at the complexity and fragility of the "discrete components" approach, and investment will begin to be directed at integrated solutions packaged as a combination of products & services, either through bundles or monolithic packages.

As the multimedia gateway is the "market maker" in both phases, it is here where the industry will turn, as as such I agree that Microsoft and Sony will be the kingmakers in the InterTV market.

If I had to choose, I'd go with Microsoft, unless Sony & Apple merge or forge a long-running strategic alliance ASAP.