Comments on: iPod with video versus cable TV

By: l.m.orchard

l.m.orchard — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 16:24:50 +0000

@Giacomo: Eh, I don't have high expectations for anything other than crap (at worst) and tuned echo chambers (at best) from television anyway. I might as well get some decent entertainment from it in the meantime.

Al Gore just gave a great speech on this, IMHO.

By: Giacomo

Giacomo — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 15:25:41 +0000

This, of course, is another step towards lots of little nice "echo chambers", highly-customised cultural mini-bubbles where debate is absent and everybody is happy and agreeing on everything. The cultural version of metropolitan suburbs. You can't possibly be exposed to anything you don't like (unless it's "promoted" by someone you trust).

You already see the effects of this trend on political discourse, where the various factions polarise, building their radical, well-guarded communities, agreeing on nothing and unable to understand the other's point of view. "Conservative" values thrive in this.

"Mainstream" cultural opportunities are less and less, like they were 30 or 40 years ago; then the cause was economical, now it's cultural: people don't want to know more that they already do. Is this just a case of long-run information overload?

BTW, anything with DRM on it is not going to have my money :)

By: Michael Croft

Michael Croft — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 13:14:35 +0000

There are things I’d download, especially foreign material. If they put Dr. Who up there I’ll get it.

By: Pete Prodoehl

Pete Prodoehl — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 03:45:25 +0000

Hey, I’m doing what I can to contribute to that 90% you mention… ;)

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 03:41:05 +0000

Why should someone use this and pay for crappy TV shows twice when they can download better quality versions from somewhere else?

By: Cox Crow » Six Hours out of 13 Channels

Cox Crow » Six Hours out of 13 Channels — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 02:58:54 +0000

[...] l. m. orchard observes something about the video iPodand Apple video store: we only care about six hours of the 13 channels of shit on the TV. [...]

By: Bob Lee

Bob Lee — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 22:14:10 +0000

NO COMMERCIALS!

By: Adam Lindsay

Adam Lindsay — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 21:33:19 +0000

Looks like someone at Apple is paying attention: the entire first season of Desperate Housewives is $34.99 on the iTMS…

By: scott

scott — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 21:30:19 +0000

I am interested in seeing if video producers will create content that takes advantage of the mobility aspect of the medium. I think it would be interesting to see things like narrated museum tours getting applied to neighborhoods.

Someone could create an easy to use open source CMS tool for the neighborhood's residents and businesses so that they could assemble and map neighborhood media content (video, images, audio stories). If you planned to vist that neighborhood you could supply the CMS server with your interests, click on subscribe, and your personalized video podcast for that neighborhood gets downloaded and sync'd to your video iPod.

Then perhaps someone else could come along and implement a game on top of the neighborhood content.

By: l.m.orchard

l.m.orchard — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 20:34:02 +0000

For fear of outting myself as a luddite, our TV is notably non-HD-ready. And I don’t mind watching VCD-quality video.

By: Paul

Paul — Wed, 12 Oct 2005 20:30:06 +0000

"Forgetting for the moment about the tiny screen and low resolutions even on the desktop"

The new iPod, from what I understand has video out built in. Analog TV's don't user super high resolution like HDTV's or PC monitors do.