Yup; the Internet is screwed up.

Wed Jun 22 21:07:21 UTC 2011

On Jun 22, 2011, at 12:30 PM, Jeroen van Aart wrote:

> Joe Greco wrote:
>> that things are changing.  The number of TV's in a household are going
>> up.  Some can now stream directly to the TV.  I have numerous devices
> 
> How can it go up even more? I thought every bedroom and living room has one by now, in the average family house. In my experience families have fared pretty well getting these TV signals through more traditional means.
> 
>> that stream Internet radio audio, something that would have seemed
>> completely frivolous 15 years ago, but today my AV receiver comes with
> 
> There has been in place for many decades multiple perfectly viable alternatives of getting TV or radio signals into your house. Using your good old antenna, satellite, cable... Considering these alternatives I'd say the idea of the internet replacing old existing infrastructures shouldn't be the top priority.
> 
> Now if you mean added functionality or special ways of doing things that delivering content over the internet can provide I can see a point.
> 
> Be that as it may, I don't think current methods and techniques in use will scale well to fully replace antennas, satellite and cable to provide tv and radio signals.
> 
> (remembering for example the recent discussion about multicast)
> 
They won't, but, that's not what consumers think about when they decide where to get their content.

Consumers look at convenience, cost, and availability. In some cases, quality also enters the picture.

If you don't believe that consumer content acquisition is shifting away from traditional methods towards internet-oriented mechanisms rapidly, you haven't been paying attention to the bandwidth growth at Netflix as just one example. Hulu, Youtube, and even the various networks own web-based episode streaming services are all additional examples that cannot be ignored.

We're going to have to either find a way to convince consumers to change direction, or, we're going to have to develop new methods and techniques that will scale to fully replace antennas, satellite, and cable because that's what consumers are starting to do.

Owen