Posts tagged tv
Posts tagged tv
I’m starting to think Boxee is the television equivalent of the Chumby. Nice idea, bit what the hell does it actually do?
With Hulu’s release of Hulu Desktop earlier this week, and today’s release of YouTube XL, it’s clear that the video wars are going to be fought in the living room over the next few years.
Studios and networks are skittish about full Web-TV convergence. But if Flash is widely adopted on TV sets, my dream of Hulu on my plasma might come to fruition.
Make this happen!
The whole idea of Hulu is to provide a legal place to watch TV shows after they air, on demand, for free (with limited ads built in) as a revenue-generating alternative to the utter ease of just downloading those shows illegally from links provided by several dozen BitTorrent sites. That idea is a very good one. If people can get the shows they want to see (which are available free on TV anyway) easily enough, most of them will happily stream them and watch an ad or two and pass up pirated downloads. Apple built one hell of a business on the similar idea that people would pay 99 cents a song to download music that they could get for free as pirated downloads, if buying it was made easy enough. But the Powers That Be (basically, the content providers who created Hulu and supply the shows) draw the line at allowing you to watch television shows on (gasp!) a television set. You have to watch on a computer. Otherwise, you are an unworthy lout and they don’t want you as a customer. If you like TV on TV, they don’t want your business and keep your filthy eyes off their ads, thankyouverymuch! Huh?
