Some very exciting news have recently been released, it seems that a whole new form of Internet Television is on its way. For the longest time I labored over trying to find the perfect place to watch television online. Don’t get me wrong, I like my big flat-screen in my living room but some times I don’t want to go sit on my couch, or maybe I am out of the house and have some free-time to kill. How awesome would it be if you could just press a few buttons and have your same exact television service pop up online. I understand, and happen to love, the services like Hulu and I have heard Youtube might try to venture into the online television market seeing as they are already selling movie rentals online now. The companies haven’t really come to a perfect solution yet, unfortunately even the paid version of Hulu still comes with advertisements and all it offers over the free version is a larger variety of shows. Even when it comes to a tried and true streaming service like Netflix they just don’t seem to have the television service set up correctly. There are a few reasons why most of these companies cannot provide the service that would make them outrageous amounts of money, and most of these reasons are roadblocks put in place by the larger Television super-powers that do not want cable leaving the living room any time soon.
In the past there have been quite a few movements towards moving television away from it’s unitary system, but as you can see throughout the many patent and trademark litigation fights that are raging on between even electronic manufacturers like Apple and Samsung, these companies are greedy (or possibly just have the strongest business sense) to the point where the consumers suffer. What I am trying to get across is the problem that people would essentially throw their money towards a new system where we could just stream TV shows over wifi, but they would have to be the latest episodes and not disappear after a couple weeks. The problem here is that the entire streaming service cuts an entire source of income away from the media conglomerates; streaming means no full season DVD sets as gifts for the Holidays. Essentially this is a battle that is fighting over unprecedented terms, the online media market could be a vast source of income for the media producers but they haven’t figured out the fine-print yet and need to start setting ground rules for the future. That is exactly why all new speculation that Sony may be integrating a whole new online TV service into their, semi-failed, “Unlimited Video” service. This is entirely speculation, but coming from some solid sources like the WSJ, apparently these ideas are fairly realistic.
