In a post just before my vacation, I mentioned a video Robert Scoble shot of a few of us chatting about the age-old Mac vs PC debate. Well, it’s online in its entirety (hour 1 and hour 2) and I think the part I’ve enjoyed the most is reading the comments written across the blogs who covered it (Scobleizer, Harry McCracken, Fred Davis, and especially Josh Catone – Josh, I’d be happy to debate the IPTV/DVR/TV2.0 topic any time!). The good, the bad, and the ugly. Thanks to Robert and the gang for the very interesting evening, and thanks to everyone who has taken the time to watch the action.
While I’d have really liked to be around last week to participate in the conversation live, I was just way too happy offline on the beach in Mexico. I kept a journal while there (on paper even) and typed it up on the flight home. I read a lot of travelogues (especially Bill Bryson, my personal favorite travel writer), and this is my little attempt to entertain with my travel story. You can start reading here, or just jump to the pictures if you’d prefer. I’ve got some video coming too, which needs a bit of editing and Muvee treatment, then I’ll put it up on YouTube later this week.
Well, I don’t know if I’m quite qualified to debate IPTV/DVR/TV2 with you. But I do ever so love the idea of completely on demand TV that is never at the mercy of a schedule (excepting “release” dates for new shows and live broadcasts). That way, say one night I think, “Man, I really wish I had that episode of the Simpsons when Bart took over Kamp Krusty!” or “There was something Dan Patrick said on Sportscenter 2 months ago that I wish I could remember…” I don’t have to wait for it to be on so my Tivo can record it for me (or in some cases–shows never repeat)–I can just surf over to the Simpson’s or Sportscenter archives, and watch whatever I want, whenever I want. 🙂 There probably need to be some pretty major advances in infrastructure (the storage and bandwidth for something like this would be immense, I imagine) for this to happen. But I think it will, eventually, slowly…
Also, your vacation sounds like it was pretty sweet.
Josh,
I don’t disagree with a vision that has a tremendous repository of ‘old’ content available for on-demand viewing. Clearly it makes sense.
The part I question is on the initial distribution of video – if 40 million people are going to watch an episode of a show ‘live’ (aka real-time), or have their DVRs record it, it makes much more sense for the distribution method to use a broadcast model.
Hence my belief in a hybrid future…
And you seem plenty qualified for the debate. 🙂
-jt