Breaking the Set-Top Box Hegemony

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Techdirt and Telepocalypse have both written, post Disney, great "who cares about IPTV?" posts.  And yesterday, venerable industry firm Parks Associates published their take on the meaning of Disney permitting downloads.  Head over to memeorandum.  There’s a lot of comment online too.

With the exception of sports, I timeshift virtually everything I watch on TV.  While it was on television, a weekly ritual at my house was to download the latest episode of Enterprise, because there were no HD PVRs available.  Most teens would rather grab the latest episode of their favorite programming off the net, rather than wrestle with siblings over the remote control.

What Disney has done isn’t earth-shattering, despite all of the breathless excitement.  Disney’s move is, in fact, the only logical response to bittorrent, and the other P2P file sharing networks which are now sharing video.  Moreover, it’s good business because it gives them distribution leverage versus the traditional networks. 

And IPTV?  It’s already here, and it’s the internet.  So who really cares what the telco networks are doing?

Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.

Tagged as: Disney, IPTV