Suprablog HQ

It seems that, after years of prognostication about video moving to the Internet, such as Mark Cuban’s claiming that HDTV is the new PC, that we might finally be hitting a critical inflection point.

I spoke with my friend the other day, who said he turned in his Comcast DVR in favor of Netflix + Hulu + streamed content. Sure, this is a sample size of one, but as soon as I move into a new place, I’ll give ditching cable a try myself. Since Comcast provides Internet service alongside cable service, that doesn’t necessarily mean that cable is dead, but it does show increasing frustration with cable set top box interfaces.

Cisco owns both Scientific Atlanta and Linksys. I used to work at Cisco, and my impression is that they usually do not produce signficant innovation after they have purchased a company. Products usually either stagnate or receive relatively minor improvements. Cisco basically buys technologies that they can spin into new markets and leverage into existing relationships through their exceptional sales force.

On the other hand, Netgear is doing some interesting things with BitTorrent and video content. Classic issue of hardware manufacturers having an incentive for as much content as possible, content producers perhaps not considered as strongly.

Samsung has partnered with Netflix to make their movie catalogue available on two of their BluRay players.

YouTube seems to be pushing into the living room as well, with a new interface specifically optimized for viewing and navigating YouTube content on Nintendo Wii and Sony PS3.

Of course Hulu is pretty big. However, the movies aren’t that great. The main show I would want to watch is The Office, but the shows lag so far behind it’s frustrating.

I shouldn’t leave out iTunes, but I don’t buy anything on there because of DRM, so I have no idea what’s going on. I did see Boxee being available as a hack for Apple iTV.

So, it seems that video content online is close enough that it’s worth it to try without cable. Cable is just too expensive, the content channels are not nearly “a-la-carte enough”, it’s missing huge vast seas of “long-tail” content, and the interactive guides are poor. Should be a very interesting year in this space when the PC expands its role into that of a super sophisticated, programmable, remote control.