Web Video vs. Cable
November 2nd, 2006WebProNews published an article today entitled “The Future of Web Video“. YouTube might be the media darling (and I’m the old man who yearns from the halcyon days of the internet, when having a dot com name meant you could afford Network Solutions’ high fees and crappy email template registration thingy.
The article barely glosses over any of the “On Demand” offerings from current cable companies, while suggesting that no one is going to get off the couch to watch web content. Little is mentioned about the invetible merger of the two. My girlfriend and I pay for comcast broadband + television package, but we never watch regular cable anymore. Why bother, when onDemand is so much better? Nicole and I can watch movies, series, and even watch some crappy cable access style cotnent created by Portland’s local freaks. I think you can even watch PDXposed onDemand.
Essentially, onDemand IS web video in high resolution, only you can’t access it via a pc or standard browser interface…yet. The right product at the right time will fill that void. WebTV was about 8 years too early, but had the right idea about blending two mediums: web and television. As PCs became cheaper, WebTV seems to have been mostly abandoned in favor of real internet connections. My logs across my entire network of websites show close to 0% WebTV users accessing my content. Maybe I’m not targeting the WebTV audience all that much, but still, 0% is still something.