| Home > Technology > Pay-TV gets its wake-up call - Apple has numbered your days. |
| Pay-TV gets its wake-up call - Apple has numbered your days. | | Date Created: 13 Oct, 2005, 08:52 PM |
 I gave a Keynote presentation the other day to a group of psychologists, organisational and clinical, about efforts to assist ERP (enterprise resource planning) developers to overcome organisational resistance when rolling out new software solutions in large organisations.
Half the group were led to believe that was my purpose, the other half thought I was there to discuss presentation technique, as they often have to present in the corporate sector. The latter group received that information by process alone, while the slide content was delivered by the usual text on slides.
Actually, I kept the text to a minimum, using single words per slide as much as possible, and working without a formal script. It was a small group who expected much interactivity so this was a better plan for me, as was the use of plentiful pictures and graphics.
There was one long quote I wanted the group to hear, but I didn't want to fall into the trap of cutting-and-pasting onto a slide and reading it. So I used graphics and pictures located from Google images to coincide with reading the quote. What was important was to put the sections of the quote on the previous slide's notes area, otherwise I would miscue the next slides' entry.
Again, I used large single words, and in one section of the quote, the term "high maintenance" was used. For this quote, the picture of Paris Hilton you see at top flashed on, which got a great laugh. Clearly the group understand the meaning of the term, which might have been lost had it simply been applied to describing software.
I was apprehensive that the women in the group might not take kindly to it, but they laughed the loudest, especially since it's the cover of Vanity Fair.
I also introduced the group to a couple of new terms, such as Viral Marketing, which they quickly appreciated. But I overlooked mentioning the term, "Disintermediation" to refer to the impacts of some of the new technologies appearing by virtue of blogs, wikis, RSS and podcasts.
Today, at the Steve Jobs keynote, we witnessed another example of disintermediation in action. By showing how to download just-played TV shows from iTunes, local TV station and especially Pay-TV cable channel executives must be feverishly sitting around offices wondering how soon they will feel the impact.
It's not as if they didn't know it was coming, but it seemed to be taking so long, and no one seemed capable of stepping up to the plate to take on the task. Of course, the unexpected success of the iTunes Music Store would have raised red flags, but perhaps after Steve Jobs' dissing of video content for iPods last year they perhaps had some breathing space. His lament was that there was no content to justify the effort.
That came to an abrupt end today. After Disney releases some of its old content to iTunes, what will stop any of the Discovery, National Geographics, Animal Planet, and TV Classics channels from doing likewise?
In a blog entry from earlier in the year, I wrote of how I disconnected from local cable supplier, Foxtel, seeing it as offering me no value for $100 a month.
I was downloading new shows via Bit Torrent, leaving the Powerbook to overnight grab the 350MB files, including those now featured on iTunes. Now I have added "Commander in Chief" which is rating in the US TV top 10 currently, and is not on the radar yet for Aussie TV.
Why should I wait until the local crews decide I am allowed to see it, when the technology exists to grab it to suit my time needs?
Of course, like Kazaa and other peer to peer services, there is no guarantee of what you actually get using Bit Torrent, and on a few occasions I have downloaded corrupt, unwatchable .avi files. In the main, 95% of downloads are fine, although it can sometimes take more than a day to get one file, my monthly allowance is shot, and it can slow down the local home network.
Would I be prepared to spend US1.99 to get Lost in half an hour, even at 320x240?You bet! That resolution on my Powerbook or even TV is fine for watching an hour show - I doubt I would want to do it for a movie, and besides, on DVD one gets the additional features which makes the purchase worthwhile.
This is just the start of what Apple will do with video. Go back and see how music downloads have developed in iTunes, with continual upgrading of features every few months. Apple doesn't stand still, and if the take up of the new video-equipped iPods with new content on iTunes proves successful, I'd expect to see new hardware that Apple itself will call a iPodVideo come our way. Larger screens, remote controls, wi-fi to an Airport Express, Bluetooth and other accoutrements will appear.
And remembering that technology always has a double life, I expect a video iPod will find all manner of applications in the corporate and academic fields, well away from the doof-doof music videos Apple currently has in mind.
Time will tell whether the nascent podcasting community will be stimulated to try out videocasting. It may well be a sign that this community will have reached a critical mass, when you're told, after producing a videocast, that you've a great face for podcasting! |
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