An interesting post on boingboing: The Web is the Only Set-Top Box That Matters
Results tagged “AppleTV” from The Two Solitudes Journal
I was asked last month to "name the moment/event in 2006 when you knew that prime time as we know it was going to be a thing of the past".
Here's what I wrote, and it's all about AppleTV, which was announced yesterday (although the product was code-named iTV at the time I wrote this):
For me, the defining event in the impending death of prime time as we know it came this fall when Apple pre-announced the product that is currently code-named iTV.
Why was this so significant? The writing has been on the wall for prime time for quite a while, and many technologies are already on the market that are contributing to this. These include Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) and the broadband streaming offerings from U.S. and Canadian networks that are now-common but were non-existent at the start of 2006.
But what makes the announcement of the so-called iTV product the defining event is that it promises to allow consumers to bridge the computer-TV set divide. Although it is already quite feasible to connect a computer to a TV set for viewing of streamed or downloaded content, it's often not a 'user-friendly' undertaking. Apple has built their name on making the complex simple, and I've no doubt that their foray into the interconnection of the computer-based world with the television set will do just that. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether consumers turn to Apple's product, or a competing product... what matters is that Apple, a very trusted name in the consumer's mind, will show how easily the worlds of computers and television can be combined. Once that happens, the world of Internet-based on-demand content will open up to the masses in the comfort of their living rooms, and prime time -- and TV in general, as we know it -- will never be the same again.
Here's what I wrote, and it's all about AppleTV, which was announced yesterday (although the product was code-named iTV at the time I wrote this):
For me, the defining event in the impending death of prime time as we know it came this fall when Apple pre-announced the product that is currently code-named iTV.
Why was this so significant? The writing has been on the wall for prime time for quite a while, and many technologies are already on the market that are contributing to this. These include Personal Video Recorders (PVRs) and the broadband streaming offerings from U.S. and Canadian networks that are now-common but were non-existent at the start of 2006.
But what makes the announcement of the so-called iTV product the defining event is that it promises to allow consumers to bridge the computer-TV set divide. Although it is already quite feasible to connect a computer to a TV set for viewing of streamed or downloaded content, it's often not a 'user-friendly' undertaking. Apple has built their name on making the complex simple, and I've no doubt that their foray into the interconnection of the computer-based world with the television set will do just that. Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether consumers turn to Apple's product, or a competing product... what matters is that Apple, a very trusted name in the consumer's mind, will show how easily the worlds of computers and television can be combined. Once that happens, the world of Internet-based on-demand content will open up to the masses in the comfort of their living rooms, and prime time -- and TV in general, as we know it -- will never be the same again.
