There is a major flaw in current reporting around Internet video stemming from the thought that online video (and video on demaind) and the technology used to watch them are inextricably linked. I’ve been using many services lately trying to figure this out and I’m nowhere near an answer.
I have a Tivo HD, Comcast DVR, AppleTV, DVD player and a PC all hooked up to my tv and a Vudu on the way. I use my iPod for music that I buy chiefly off of iTunes. I’ve tried some movies on the thing, but I simply don’t care. It’s not something I’ve been interested in using for video very much.
The Tivo wins for accessibility for me. It’s easy to use and I can get Rhapsody and Unbox downloads on it in addition to my normal tv/movies from cablecard. I hardly ever use the awful Comcast DVR anymore as there is simply no compelling reason for it to exist. The AppleTV is great for my iTunes library, but to be honest with Rhapsody on the Tivo I hardly ever use it. The PC is great for viewing net content like Netflix streaming, ABC TV shows and the occasional BitTorrented something, but the experience is far from compelling and I highly doubt that a non-geek would touch it. The DVD player still sees quite a bit of use from my Netflix shipments, but ideally it will go away at some point. We’ll see what the Vudu brings to the table. I’m very interested in how it performs and if the video quality is up to snuff. The interface looks quite nice and the remote is nothing short of revolutionary.
So I’m a high use person, but I still mostly watch Tivo when I want to watch something. Maybe it’s because I’ve been a Tivo user for as long as there has been Tivo, or maybe it’s because the experience is simply amazing. But none of it has to do with the DRM restrictions that Forrester has been fond of quoting for some time. While I dislike it from a philosophical point of view, it doesn’t really matter to me on the practical level. These things have been worked out to the point where they are more or less invisible to me as a consumer of media. If I were to try to take any of this content with me, then I would certainly be more annoyed.
All of these things are helping to evolve entertainment media, but the content companies should learn to understand that fearing them is no longer useful. The delivery medium and how I use the content are not ways of further monitization, they are annoying consumers. They are not even linked.
