Tivo Ups the Ante

It seems that our buddies down the 237 freeway (Tivo) are on a roll with teaching their old box some new tricks (thankfully). I think they're starting to realize that their little box not only allows you to get a handle on TV content, but can actually help you discover and move away from commercial TV content. Whoa! There's a scary thought (for the TV distribution companies)...people using Tivo to AVOID their crappy shows (can you say UPN and WB?).

[via Zatz Not Funny]

Participatory Culture

It's not so much the technology as what it enables. The Participatory Culture Foundation puts it all into perspective. Our world is chock full of large media conglomorates that try to shove crap summer films down our throats in order to make their stocks go up 1/16 of a point. It messed a lot of us up and continues to (just watch Nickelodeon for half an hour and note how many ads there are for nutritious food. Now note how many there are for fruit flavored snacks of some sort).

The Internet Video revolution isn't so much about delivering TV shows to your PC, but rather about letting YOU deliver TV shows (or music, or books, or pr0n, or what have you) to OTHER's PCs. It's not really about conglomerates any more. It's about homebrew entertainment and informative shows that have a following of just a few people to hundreds of thousands (possibly more). It's really about a chance to participate in creating content for others to consume. Anyway, enough of me waxing poetic about the philosophical side of things...

See for Yourself (note there's only a MAC beta right now, but a Windows beta is on the way...if you just can't wait check out the Open Media Network).

Cable wants IPTV too.

While IPTV has been seen mostly as an invasion of the Telcos into your living room (and a friendly knock on the door to cable and sattelite TV companies), Time Warner, provider of Cable TV services thinks they may like to have IPTV too. They've launched an IPTV Trial in San Diego using PCs with RealPlayer as the delivery mechanism (if all goes well, they plan to switch to set top boxes).

I'm not sure why Time Warner is thinking of moving away from their established cable TV services, but I think it may be so they can actually go beyond the living room with their content. As broadband speeds improve (not just wired, but WiMax, EVDO, as well), TV may be coming to you just about anywhere you go (for better or worse). SBC's initially challenge is to bring TV to your living room over their pipes, but they have to figure that "hey, cable and sattelite operators already do that, why would someone choose our TV service over the established players?" The answer of course is the flexibility afforded to the consumer that comes with delievery over IP. It'd make it even easier to bring TV content along in different formats as you roam the globe. It also provides a way to break away from the established media giants completely and latch on to shows produced by your local professional underwater basketweaving team. The cable and sattelite companies, seeing and probably fearing this shift away from their coveted "exclusive, pre-filtered" content have begun searching in the dark for the golden hammer that will slay the telco monster invading their territory. See? Who said competition is bad?

Anyway, this is all heresay and conjecture on my behalf...if you have a theory, please share!

may have a little something to say about that. The way they see it is people want to watch TV on their PCBlogola » Time Warner Launches IPTV Trial in San Diego

Bloomberg Live TV online

An email discussion group at work pointed me to a free, live stream for Bloomberg TV. Not only is it live, but it works on MSN TV 2 (they even have a 56Kbps stream for those stuck in dialup land). This growing trend of releasing content online leads me to wonder if the coming IPTV revolution won't be much of a revolution after all.

IPTV is a new means of content delivery and adds some neat features, but maybe that's not where the TV revolution is heading. It's starting to look like IPTV is just another delivery medium with the same old content. Sure, it'll have snazzier menus, the ability to preview different channels at the same time, and other incremental evolutions in the TV watching experience, but is it really going to revolutionize TV? Maybe, but I have a different theory.

The medium itself is truly going to become irrelevant. Cable, Sattelite, DSL (IPTV)...it's all going to be irrelevant sooner or later. The content is simply going to go online. Content creators and publishers will be able to bypass the gatekeepers that are the cable, sattelite, IPTV networks and reach their niche markets directly. The Long Tail theory that is about to downsize the music business and pretty much shut down brick and mortar music stores is about to breakdown the walls between those that create content and those that consume it.

Another interesting phenomennon will occur if TV really starts making inroads to the Internet: we'll remove a restrictive dimension of TV content consumption: location. The other restrictive dimension is, of course, time (which Tivo and other PVRs have done away with already. We'll no longer watch TV just at home, the traditional TV watching venue. This phenomenon has been around for ages with portable analog TVs, but adoption has been very marginal due to lack of compelling programming (no cable/sattelite feeds), and cheesy technology that is diffcult to use (ever try to get and keep a signal with one of those things?). What about Portable Media Center devices that came out a couple of years ago? Weren't those supposed to remove the location restriction for TV? Yes, but that didn't work out for similar reasons...the barrier to get from content locked on my PC to roaming free with me on my Portable Media Center was too high in time and cost.

What if we removed those barriers? TV is just there, online. Anyone with a PC and broadband connection can watch whatever, whenever. Those with dialup, well...maybe they can download shows overnight, but I'd have to say that's not going to be an attractive solution for them. Better yet, what if cell phones and other handheld devices could watch these shows? Don't laugh, it's happening in Europe and Asia right now. There are even competing technologies in the space mobile TV space. It's starting to happen here as well, but slowly (as usual). I've tried the Sprint tv broadcasts with some limited success, but overall, it's sucked (the content was just canned 30 second news clips...I want to watch an episode of the Simpsons on my cell phone gosh darnit!).

Combined with wifi, EVDO, and other enabling technologies, we may be on the cusp of something bigger than even the almighty iPod...a truly location-free TV (sorry Sony).

Anyway, to reel it back in, check out all the free Bloomberg goodness streaming live now.