I’ve speculated to myself for a while that TV is going to get a revamp really soon. From torrents to Hulu to the distributors providing the content on their site: Why do we need the notion of “channels” anymore? I see it similar to what happen to music. The functional unit is no longer the channel but to the show level, similar to the album being less important than the individual songs (although as a music fan I definitely do not consume music this way but I know for the majority this is the case).

Those who passively watch TV will still want to be able to turn on the TV and allow the TV to dictate what they watch. But for those who are interested in allowing the power of data and their previous watching habits influence what they might like, they are ready for the next evolution of TV. Why the cable providers hold on so dearly to the concept that the computer and the TV are so different is somewhat mind boggling.

The cable companies have blocked efforts from companies such as Boxee who are providing an all in one service with a hardware component. They tried to remove Hulu from Boxees service but as a work around Boxee just used Hulu’s open XML feeds to provide access to content. Comcast is trying to head into an interesting direction offering TV everywhere: a single subscription for a user who can access content from their mobile, computer, or TV. If the service is easy and comparably priced I see it as an attractive product as long as I can consume that content wherever I travel as well (which probably won’t be the case).

The future of this landscape looks really interesting but for now I’ll stick to my Xbox, streaming video/music content from my computer with integration to Last.fm and Netflix, waiting for the dust to settle.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 9:37 am and is filed under news, scrawlings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.