Streaming media is better?
No, shampoo is better. Sorry, I’ve been scarred by too many Adam Sandler movies.
Streaming media is all the craze. The theory of replacing cable, dvds, radio, and your CD collection with a media server in your house and a subscription to a streaming account actually sounds pretty good to me. It doesn’t work right now, but it sounds good. Here, in my opinion, are the four things that need to happen before we can actually easily make use of this:
1. Integrate: We need to be able to do it straight from our TV… we don’t need another set top box to go with our dvd players and our cable boxes and our video game systems.
2. Make it easy: particularly when it comes to media we already own, it’d be nice if it was easy to “rip” our media to a digital format and organize our collection. Currently, there’s not a really straight-forward solution for video. Audio is probably there, but unless we’re all going to re-buy every movie we’ve acquired (wouldn’t the movie studios love that) (also, some of us have already bought twice… VHS, then DVD, now digital? When does it stop?), this needs to get easy.
3. Improve the Quality: some of this has to do with the end user’s equipment, some of it has to do with bandwidth, and some of it has to do with immature technology. Bottom line, figure out a way that the average person can set up a functional implementation with at least a cable-equivalent quality, or this will never work.
4. Improve (and consolidate) the Selection: Right now, if I want to watch the latest episode of the Office, I have to go to NBC.com or Hulu. If I want movies that are at all recent, I have to have a netflix account. If I want movies that are recent and good, well… I’m out of luck (case in point — of Netflix’s 25 most recent additions to their “Watch Instantly” list, there are three movies I’ve seen, one of which I’d watch again. There is one movie I haven’t seen but would like to. Out of 25. I’m picky, but I’m not that picky! They need to be offering up-to-date content that I care to watch.
I’d be very content to give a company that did these four things the equivalent of my cable bill plus my netflix subscription. Wouldn’t even blink.
I’m used to your posts being in English
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Love you
It gets even trickier when you think of us Canucks up here! Thanks I think in large part to the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission; basically our FCC) we don’t have access to any streaming services! Sure Comedy central has their own little Canadian version of their main site so we can still see funny Colbert videos but that’s just not enough.
All the big sites such as Hulu, NBC, and TV.com (owned by CBS I believe) give us northerners this nice little message saying “We’re sorry but we can only stream our videos within the United States; have fun ice fishing!” or something to that effect anyway!
Now some clever people, with enough time on their hands and the right know-how might be able to get around these roadblocks but using proxy servers and signing up for Netflix with a fake US address just to be able to stream it to you xbox is a little tasking for most people.
Until content providers can work out international deals that gets their media to EVERYONE (Itunes has done alright with their Canadian store) I just don’t see streaming in the mainstream.
Joel, I totally understand… it’s the same effect that I get when I try to watch hockey streaming on TSN, but I’m pretty sure there’s just me and the state of Minnesota trying to get away with that.
You’re exactly right. They’ve got to figure out how to make this thing work for everyone. Once they do, it’ll be relatively easy to monetize.
I think a big problem is that the content owners don’t see this as replacement income: they see it as additional income. That’s where they’re wrong. It’s going to take the place of the money they currently make from cable cos, etc. Until they feel the pressure to start replacing the income, though, they’ll never see this as a core business.