TV and Computer On Road To Marriage
If there is one big TV/media trend in the new year, it is this: The computer and TV will merge.
The consumer electronics, media and entertainment industries have deemed it so, and they are doing everything they can to drag consumers kicking and screaming into this new media world by marketing a myriad of gadgets, software and programming options to make the merger possible.
Some small examples:
Most of the serialized network dramas (”Heroes,” “Lost,” “Jericho,” “24,” “Prison Break,” etc.) are available now for your streaming pleasure at network Web sites. Networks are encouraging viewers to do just that, even teasing Internet-only shows with added scenes and back story information.
Average consumers - especially older ones - are still a little gun-shy over this pending merger. Many simply don’t want to watch TV over their computer.
Media conglomerates, however, envision one big consumer/viewer broadband circus. It’s how they see the synergistic future when it comes to marketing, selling ads and branding new shows.
For most of us, the two media are usually separate in our homes. The TV might be in a family room, and the computer in an office, study or bedroom. They don’t “architecturally” converge in most homes.
But this could be the year they come together, thanks to a continuing parade of consumer electronic enhancements.
The Washington Post reports that so many new gizmos are coming it may be hard not to make your TV screen your computer screen.
The devices enable you to send content from your PC to your TV, and vice versa. Just as important, these devices enable you to send content from any PC (work, home, laptop, etc.) to any TV set or video playback device you want, anywhere. And vice versa.
Confused? If not yet, you probably will be. The consumer electronics industry is great at inventing stuff but not so great at explaining what all the stuff can do. Bewilderment is a given.
Suffice to say, there’s big excitement about devices that switch video from one box to another, and do so wirelessly.
Say there’s a neat video on YouTube that you want to watch on your living-room TV set. Done. Say your living-room TiVo captured a show that you want to watch later on the TiVo-less TV set in the basement. Done, too. Or say - sneaky fella - you want to watch the big game on your computer while you’re at the office. Can do, too.
Some of this capability is already around, thanks to companies such as SlingMedia and Microsoft. SlingMedia, for example, makes the $180 SlingBox Tuner, which looks like an oversize bar of chocolate and which can “sling” cable TV programming from a TV set to a PC or mobile device.
Demand for all these products could take off with the entry early next year of TiVo and, especially, Apple Computer into the anytime-anywhere market.
TiVo said in November that it will broaden its recording service so users of its set-top boxes can download videos from the Internet and watch them from their TV sets.
Apple, meanwhile, announced in September that it will market a compact set-top box, called iTV, that will allow consumers to send digital content, such as movies purchased online, to a TV set. The device will reportedly cost less than $250.
It’s unclear whether Apple has built a better mousetrap, but that might be less important than the fact that Apple has built it in the first place. With Apple’s brand-name cred and decades of marketing genius, the iTV might become the iPod of video-slinging boxes. Which is to say, ubiquitous.
Internet? TV? It might be hard to tell the difference much longer.
Tags:computer, internet, tv
Tags: TV
