by alec on May 16, 2011
It seems that more and more people are cutting the cable-TV cord these days. Just this morning, Dianne Nice announced on the Globe and Mail blog that she and her husband would be pulling the plug on pricey TV bills at the end of this TV season. Her rationale? The bills are too high, she can watch the TV she wants on the major networks’ websites, and Netflix – ah yes, Netflix! – has a major library of older shows available to her for the paltry sum of $8/mo.
Chez Saunders, I don’t think we’re ready to take that step yet. However, some months ago we invested in a Boxee Box (superb!) and a Netflix subscription, and are continuing our shift away from watching television in real time. Boxee lets us watch all kinds of movies and television available on the internet for free, and Netflix has replaced the video store entirely. We maintain our satellite subscription for two reasons: not all the television we watch is available on line, and (more to the point) that which is available isn’t available (reliably) in high definition.
Janice and I are kind of old school, however. Both of my older sons, who have moved away from home, don’t have any television subscriptions.
Be afraid, cable companies! Be very afraid!
by alec on April 20, 2007
Joost Exec VP David Clark recently gave an interview to CBS TV showing off Joost. He started by describing the quality of the picture, and the universe of channels, and then headed off (at the end) into the hinterland of interactive TV by showing a bunch of features that would allow you to get more information about a television show, and interact with other users. Hmmm, said the skeptical interviewer, how is this different from the webTV efforts of the past. Clark's answer was, essentially, "I don't know why they didn't succeed but ours is really really cool".
There have been huge investments made in the past by various companies. At Microsoft we built a very elegant framework for adding interactive content to television shows, and pioneered a whole bunch of interactive shows with various studios like NBC. We built delivery mechanisms as well that allowed that content to be delivered by satellite, or even as a slow speed forward-error-corrected bit stream in the unseen portions of a broadcast signal. We also acquired WebTV for over $400 million to bring internet content directly to television. These efforts failed because they really didn't understand how users watched TV. By focusing on bringing PC like features to the big screen, they misunderstood that for most television viewers, TV is a passive experience – a "10 foot" versus "2 foot", or "lean back" vs "lean forward" experience. Most TV users wanted a better picture (bigger and clearer), and more shows to watch.
Since the late 90's, many more people watch television on PC's, internet based social networks have entered the mainstream, and streaming video is now mainstream. Interactive TV's time may be here finally, and Joost may be the company that finally succeeds with it. However, the road is littered with the corpses of those who've tried and failed along the way.
