Who will bring the Internet to your TV?
As the hype builds for CES, the New York Times divides the competitors for your living room into three categories. The Incumbents like HBO already have a stake in America’s TV market. Latching on to them are the Extenders, who provide the actual devices to link up with your PC. Finally, the Straight Shooters bridge the gap with software.
Get ready: we’re about to hear a confusing array of new plans to bring the boundless realm of the Internet to the 83-year-old TV. The companies involved are taking one of three markedly different approaches. So before we head into the geeks’ version of Super Bowl week, let’s do a quick and dirty review of the three kinds of contenders.
The Incumbents: cable and satellite firms try to get hip.
They are the favorites in this battle to bring Internet-style choice to the TV. Not because companies like Comcast are great innovators (they’re not), but because their boxes already sit in millions of homes. But they have an Achilles heel: their sacred relationships with programmers. If Comcast were to allow customers to download any movie from the Web, HBO and Showtime would be furious. Expect them to move slowly, which opens the door for…The Extenders: sending video from the PC to the TV.
We can now download all this great video our PCs. But it really belongs on our TVs. What’s the answer? Send it from point A to point B. This is what Apple hopes to accomplish with its upcoming iTV, which Steve Jobs will unveil on Tuesday at Macworld. The biggest problem with this approach: it is indirect, and home networks are tough to set up. Apple might crack the code, but so far these products haven’t really flown.The Straight Shooters: new Internet services for the living room.
These companies (like Akimbo and other startups) attack the problem more directly, giving couch potatoes a new set-top box, remote-control and connection from the Internet to the TV. Microsoft and Sony could also try this approach by retrofitting their gaming consoles, the PlayStation 3 and xBox 360, for Web downloads. The biggest challenge: getting average couch potatoes to bring a whole new piece of electricity-guzzling machinery into their living room.
