So I’ve been thinking a lot about the future of TV.
TV is dieing. It’s true, look at what’s happening on the web, networks are progressively adding their shows to the web for people to view via their sites. The only issue with these shows is that they are very poor digital quality, and that they have advertisements in many of them.
“Isn’t that how they make thier money?”
Yes… but it could be done in a better way. Take a look at “Vuze” (Use to be Zudeo, before that it was Azureus). The application is a beefed up torrent client, however, what they’ve added is the ability to buy contnet from providers such as the BBC, Showtime, A&E, etc. Granted thier offerings are a little sparse at the moment, but they do offer downloads in HD, and since they are torrents the downloads happen quite fast. The issue here is that for most people getting these movies & shows to display on their TV from computer can be too much for them to handle. Unless you are running a Media Center/HTPC connected to your TV, it often means burning the content to DVD (which depending on the license for the downloaded content may not be allowed) or setting up some sort of streaming appliance (Xbox 360, Linksys Media Streamer, etc).
What I think will happen soon is that providers will get together and make more interactive media boxes that allow users to buy their content “per-episode” for $1-$2, and will download that content to the “box” for view at thier liesure.
You see, soon the producers and providers will clue into that fact that people are willing to pay that fee in order to watch a show with no commercials, when they want & where they want. Advertisers will have to find otehr ways to get their content in front of viewers, maybe by offering downloadable ads that when watched & feedback is given provides the user with credits that can then be used to purchase content.
eg: Lucy watches CSI, Lost, Survivor & Dancing with the stars. So each week she would pay about $4-$8 to watch those shows ($16-$32/month). As an option she can download a personalized “ad pack” that the system builds based on her profile & what she has said she liked in the past. She watches the ads (maybe 5 ads, taking up about 1minute-3minutes each) and then using the menu on her screen responds to a couple quick questions. She also has the ability to purchase or find out more about the products advertised. In return for her time, she receives a $2-$5+ credit (depending on ad length and # of questions) that she can use to offset her costs for downloading the shows. If she watches even 2-3 ad packs per month, she could save almost half of her viewing costs. The producer is happy becuase he is making money, and the advertiser is happy becuase they are getting thier product infront of the people they actually want to target, and allowing them to easiely purchase the product or find out more info.
Potentially, a show that is watched by just a million people per episode would make $1-$2million for each episode they released. No more looking for sponsors, or advertisers. They just produce a quality show, no more thoughts of which networks will pick it up. You leave it up to the user to decide what to watch, and the service providers who take a cut of each transaction (no more than 5-10%) for providing the bandwidth & boxes.
There are other benefits as well. ratings and parental controls could provide a more secure and safe environment for kids watching TV. Parents could setup which shows/ads the kids can download/watch. This is a bit better than the current v-chip system. As well, if the boxes ranperr to peer (P2P) based software such as vuze, than the stress on servers would be little to non-existent, as the more users that had the content, the more sources for each other to grab it from. Downloads would happen in many cases lightning fast, maybe as little as 5-10 minutes for a 60 minute episode. With Ad packs the user only watches as many ads as they wish, and probably a lot less than they watch now. Advertisers are probably happier though because they are getting their ads in front of the people that are more likely to respond well to them (No more tampon ads for guys.. no more male deodorant girls, etc..).
….
At least that’s my vision…
It was a sweet deal though, the card was 512mb, I could have gotten 2 1gb cards from Tiger Direct if I wanted to wait 2 weeks, but I’m impatient. The camera is 4 mega pixels, 4x optical, etc.
Is pretty damned sweet though! Intel Dual Core 2.8ghz, 2gb DDR2 ram, 320gb SATA, ATI X1600/512 video, TV Tuner, media Center, Lightscribe DVD-/+ RW/DL, etc, etc. I felt guilty for getting it a Future Shop at first, especially since the first one I picked up ended up being defective. It turned out there was an error in the HP line and they had placed the wrong processor in the machine (a 4600+ instead of 4400+, which strangle enough was a big deal according to HP). Future Shop was great about it though, giving me a super sweet deal on the ATI card (almost 50% off a $240 card), as the video on the Intel (which was the only similarly price/performance PC they had there) kind of sucked, plus the fully tested the damned thing before they gave it to me.