Thursday, December 08, 2005

iPod Therefore I Am

I guess I've always been behind the times. I find myself more and more interested in wide-screen TVs, while the trend is now to watch programming on teeny tiny screens. or is it a trend? I confess, I'm dubious; but, who knows, sillier things have become popular. Although I find the idea of TV programming on cell phones to be a really really really bad idea, on so many levels. If the sociopathic clowns who talk on them while driving start watching TV on them while driving, I'm never leaving the house again.

That said, I do like the idea of downloadable programming, but only in the context of being able to watch it on a computer monitor or a networked TV set up. But my suspicion is the quality (because of the compression needed) will not be all that hot when viewed on a very large display, like a widescreen TV.

Still, there appears to be an orgy of deals and agreements taking place:
Whether via the iPod, PSP, or your mobile phone, there's more and more video hitting mobile handheld device these days and with the content coming both from industry giants and individuals around the world throug podcasting, "shows-to-go" are just getting started

Industry analysts have credited experimentation by large content holders resulting in legal mobile video, and the popularity of portable media players for the increased supply of mobile format video. Still, they indicated the killer mobile video app has yet to materialize, despite the different efforts and investment that is increasing.

"There are going to be a lot of different models," Jupiter Research Vice President Michael Gartenberg told MacNewsWorld, referring to subscriptions, rentals and downloads of video. "They're in search of something that will work as well as 99-cent downloads did for music."

Real Demand

In addition to announcements for mobile video from the likes of ABC, NBC, TiVo (Nasdaq: TIVO) and others, consumer research shows signs of strong interest in mobile video content, according to Gartenberg.

He said inhibitors such as lack of legal content and the complexity of moving media from one format or device to another were being addressed. Perhaps more importantly, existing video content heavyweights were producing their video to make it more mobile friendly from the get-go, the analyst added.

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