eMarketer projects that nearly 80% of US Internet users will watch online video at least once a month in 2008. A great indicator that online video has hit a mainstream audience is that 52.5% of all Americans or 154 million people will watch online video in 2008.
With online video hitting more of a mainstream audience, will 2008 be the year that I can give up cable television for good? I did a brief stint without it in 2007.
Last night, I was flying from Michigan back to Washington DC and didn’t get home till around 11:30pm. I completely missed the Oscars. I was kind of bummed It’s a show that I usually like to watch every year.
It’s like now… if people ever wanted to try an iPod, they could just get an iPod shuffle. It’s $49. What do they have to lose?
I guess… if I wanted to learn from this, I’d ask myself that if I’m trying to sell product X how can I make it so simple that people would be like “what do I have to lose?” It’s so easy and has such a low barrier to entry.
On Friday, I was walking out the door on my way to work and I realized that I hadn’t seen this week’s episode of LOST yet. I stopped what I was doing ran over to my computer, bought LOST on Apple iTunes, and waited 15 minutes as it downloaded. I then put it on my iPhone and went about my merry way.
Seems like things just aren’t where they need to be.
I’d get a season pass to LOST on iTunes but I only use laptops and I’m always running out of space on my hard drives.
I want some type of easy media server type of solution that will hold all of my media but when I sync my laptop and my iPhone I can pull media off of the server and put it on my iPhone.
It’d also be nice if there was a way to buy TV shows on the fly from the iPhone so that while I was walking to the subway it could have been downloading. It’d also be nice if my phone could pull TV shows off of my media server. I know with current cellular technology this isn’t possible but it’d be nice.
As i’ve said before, we’re amidst a revolution. Change is here. The way we live our lives will never be the same.
Seems like I spend a lot of my 9-5 helping people to understand the revolution and that change.
A few times I’ve joked… that everyone needs to take a road trip to a local middle school and you’ll learn all you need to know about the future of the Web and media. After more thought… I think that’d probably actually be a killer idea.
I don’t have children but should probably start hanging out with more of them. For those of you who do have children, what kind of Web, technology, or media trends have you been noticing from them?
I’ve always had a fascination with the history and the mystique of the British Monarchy… maybe because here in the United States we don’t have a king or queen. It’s just fascinating to read about and watch documentaries of. But alas… it’s always been so far away (across the Atlantic Ocean)… until now.
This rocks. They can upload videos from today and from years past. You can get a peak behind the family and inside the history… my inner nerd is smiling.
And the thing is… I must not be alone because the channel itself has almost had a quarter million views (250,000+).
The Queen is going to even upload her Christmas message to YouTube so that its available there the same time its being played live on TV.
I’d post some of the videos but they disabled embedding… bummer.
So we go to one of the video rental stores in Lansing, MI but of course they don’t have it because I’m sure every family who wants to see National Treasure 2 who hasn’t seen the first one is probably having the same thought this weekend.
I guess I just ask myself. Why do we still have video rental stores?
No… Netflix isn’t the answer. The desire to have this video wasn’t planned out it was on an impluse so I don’t wanna wait the 2 days it takes to get dvd in the mail from them.
Why are we still dealing with the pains of physical media like dvds anyhow?
I’m sure I could download it illegally from bittorrent (and probably the 2nd one too) but I’m not going to do that… it’s illegal and you’d still be watching the movie from a computer.
It’s just frustrating. There is media out there that we want to consume on a television. We’re willing to pay money to consume it but we can’t get ahold of the media in a satisfactory way for this to happen.
Someone is losing money here. How can we fix this? There needs to be a solution to this problem.
Here’s hoping that Steve Jobs will announce a better Apple TV at the Macworld Expo.
So one of my favorite shows on TV is Food Network’s Iron Chef America… I was excited for this week’s episode because it was the first for the new Iron Chef Michael Symon. Unfortunately, I missed it.
So now what can I do? Iron Chef America is not on iTunes. It’s not on Hulu. They don’t make it available from the Food Network Web site. I could sit around and hope I magically get it when it’s being re-run but that’s not an option. So what can I do? I could get a boot-leg copy off of Bittorrent… but that just doesn’t seem right to me (call me crazy).
I’m saying that I’m willing to pay money via iTunes for it or I’m willing watch some ads and have it streamed online. Why hasn’t every cable network (including Food Network) seen this reality and started implementing these options? I can’t be the only one who wants this.
