The Future of Television in the Age on the Internet
September 25, 2007 by admin · Leave a Comment
Peter Martinez asked:
Over the last ten years there has been a major shift in the entertainment experience. New and affordable enabling technologies have allowed almost anyone to become an independent film maker. With the advent of web sites like Youtube.com and MetaCafe.com every student, hobbyist, student film maker, as well as the complete amateur can produce and publish a range of entertainment products at little or no cost.
With that said, what does the future hold for traditional entertainment and what is the future of entertainment?
Do we really need TV channels, cable TV, and on demand pay services? Or are we on the verge of completely free user driven content model? Will we one day have a magic box that plugs into the Internet as well as our traditional entertainment services that is seamless and interacts with us just like our cable box or TIVO?
This has been tried before with limited success. There was WebTV, Tivo, and now iTV by Apple.
The one major issue that always seems to plague these systems is interface design and closed architectures.
With the exception of iTV which has a very slick interface, the most you could expect out of multimedia entertainment system is a clunky, difficult to use, interface. Not something that would be adopted by the baby boomer generation or for that matter anyone.
It is also very unfortunate that developers of the next generation of television and entertainment systems don’t understand the power of an open architecture and leverage the ability of the millions of people around the world to develop modules for their products.
This open source model has worked in many other industries and has created a following that can be quite fanatical. As well as a fanatical loyalty to products consumers can modify and upgrade is the added benefit that the user community can actually create additional modules that add to the functionality of this new set-top box.
I am always surprised to see hardware manufactures and software developers create closed systems when they could leverage the world of customers that would love to add functionality to their products. A good case in point is the Xbox and Xbox360. Why doesn’t Microsoft just let the user community have an API into the box? Microsoft might just be surprised with how their users enhance their product and finds new and unexpected ways to add value to their products.
So what is the future of television?
Looking to the future, I see a set-top box that connects to traditional entertainment products such as cable TV, satellite, and HDTV. I also see this box connecting directly to sites like YouTube.com, MetaCafe.com, Amazon.com, and Google.
It is also very conceivable to see a whole new business model built around driving user created entertainment into the on-demand television experience.
One day soon we may be watching television with a multimedia Google search on the screen as well as choices for a future YouTubeTV and Internet television companies that may not even exist yet.
Forums Digitalrecorder.com Content
Over the last ten years there has been a major shift in the entertainment experience. New and affordable enabling technologies have allowed almost anyone to become an independent film maker. With the advent of web sites like Youtube.com and MetaCafe.com every student, hobbyist, student film maker, as well as the complete amateur can produce and publish a range of entertainment products at little or no cost.
With that said, what does the future hold for traditional entertainment and what is the future of entertainment?
Do we really need TV channels, cable TV, and on demand pay services? Or are we on the verge of completely free user driven content model? Will we one day have a magic box that plugs into the Internet as well as our traditional entertainment services that is seamless and interacts with us just like our cable box or TIVO?
This has been tried before with limited success. There was WebTV, Tivo, and now iTV by Apple.
The one major issue that always seems to plague these systems is interface design and closed architectures.
With the exception of iTV which has a very slick interface, the most you could expect out of multimedia entertainment system is a clunky, difficult to use, interface. Not something that would be adopted by the baby boomer generation or for that matter anyone.
It is also very unfortunate that developers of the next generation of television and entertainment systems don’t understand the power of an open architecture and leverage the ability of the millions of people around the world to develop modules for their products.
This open source model has worked in many other industries and has created a following that can be quite fanatical. As well as a fanatical loyalty to products consumers can modify and upgrade is the added benefit that the user community can actually create additional modules that add to the functionality of this new set-top box.
I am always surprised to see hardware manufactures and software developers create closed systems when they could leverage the world of customers that would love to add functionality to their products. A good case in point is the Xbox and Xbox360. Why doesn’t Microsoft just let the user community have an API into the box? Microsoft might just be surprised with how their users enhance their product and finds new and unexpected ways to add value to their products.
So what is the future of television?
Looking to the future, I see a set-top box that connects to traditional entertainment products such as cable TV, satellite, and HDTV. I also see this box connecting directly to sites like YouTube.com, MetaCafe.com, Amazon.com, and Google.
It is also very conceivable to see a whole new business model built around driving user created entertainment into the on-demand television experience.
One day soon we may be watching television with a multimedia Google search on the screen as well as choices for a future YouTubeTV and Internet television companies that may not even exist yet.
Forums Digitalrecorder.com Content
