Cable Choice

Apple Video iPod: A New Avenue for Consumer Content

Buzz has hit an all-time high for the much hyped Apple Video iPod that may be released next week.  Several blogs like Gizmodo and Engadget have photoshopped their best guess what it may look like.  Om Malik is more definitive: "Apple Will Do a Video iPod.”  Apple’s big announcement is expected to make the announcement at a special event September 8^th in San Francisco.

I suspect that the introduction of the Video iPod will spark a new era of content development that I’ve been talking about on this blog and that vloggers like Rocketboom, Eric Rice, Steve Garfield, Michael Verdi and Ryanne Hodson have been trailblazing.  Imagine the explosion of producers if there is ubiquitous, true broadband to the home.  Upload and download bottlenecks will be a thing of the past.  This exciting possibility is why Consumers for Cable Choice is fighting for real choices for consumers – choices for viewing content – and control over creating content.

Young Vloggers

Luxomedia blog has a neat piece about a training session with young people and media literacy.  The result of the session was the YME Vlog with great work done by these young people.  With the right tools (including true broadband), the media can be whoever creates it.

You'll Never Go to Work the Same

Video iPod from Apple speculation is growing rampant.  And the combination of great bandwidth from fiber, cool vlogging apps exemplified by Steve Garfield, Michael Verdi, FreeVlog and Travelvlog  (just to name a few) will only increase the hype the new iPod.  With cable ramping up speeds where they are facing competition and the immense possibilities that fiber offers, video-podcasts may be the “it” thing in the next few years (probably sooner).  I can imagine a video iPod user doing a quick sync in the morning and loading the morning news program or last night’s Daily Show to watch on their commute to work.

10 Gig Network?!?

Om Malik points to a recent successful test of the Lambda Network, a cross country 10 gigabits-per-second (Gbps) connection between computers at University of California San Diego and NASA in Maryland.  Obviously this won’t be connected to your house tomorrow or the day after that.  However, this type of application is precisely how today’s Internet got started sending text emails.  It was among research centers and the military.   Look at all the rich content we have now with a few Mbps.  Just imagine what a Gbps might hold for the future.

Texas Leads the Nation Into a New Competitive Cable Era

Texas has fired the first shot in the next great technological revolution by passing cable reform legislation. Consumers will see the television transformed from a passive 'boob tube' into a vibrant and valuable part of their daily lives.

In the years to come, Texans will be able to look back with pride on the fact that their state officials took the first step in making this technology ubiquitously available.

C4CC urges Gov. Rick Perry to quickly sign the legislation so consumers and small businesses can begin to see these benefits.

Internet TV Coming to Life

Lifehacker points us to a new open-source Internet TV project called DTV from a group called the Participatory Culture Foundation (PCF).  What PCF is doing is creating a platform for individuals to create their own Internet TV channel.  The creators not only envision users to create and upload original content but as the site states: 

Boing Boing and Slashdot bring together news and links from around the web, we expect that some of the most interesting and popular internet TV channels will link to video from all over the place. Broadcast Machine makes it easy to create your own channel by pulling together videos you find around the internet-- funny videos, news clips, movie trailers, or anything else. Internet TV needs some good editors, why not you?

DTV is the type of creative application that will offer consumers explosive new content choices and the ability to produce content.  Internet TV is still in its infancy (DTV's MAC beta out now, Windows version coming soon) but it shows the promise that the individual consumer will have control over their TV.

MythTV + Podcasting = The Future of Television?

Podcasting News has a great piece on what the future of television may look like. They accurately note that this arena is not yet defined and wide open to exploration.

The world of vlogging, or video podcasting, is still in its infancy, but it doesn't take much imagination to see where it's going.

Dozens of video podcasts are published regularly. Many, like Rocketboom, Tiki Bar TV and the One America Videoblog are building dedicated audiences by providing content not found on television.

What's missing, of course, is the television. Watching videos on your computer is cool, but it's no replacement for the TV experience.

MythTV, an open-source personal video recorder, plus podcasting, may offer a cutting-edge taste of the future of television.

These types of creative applications are the tip of the iceberg with the new era of real broadband and competition.

Cable Hijinks

MediaChannel.org has a great piece on consolidation in the cable market discussing among other things how Comcast and Time Warner are swapping cable systems so they won’t have to compete in cities where the have competing properties.  Further down in the post, read how Comcast appears to have blocked Internet access to certain political speech and refused ads from phone companies that want to run television ads.

In a related case, Cox Cable in Orange County, California is weakening is broadband offering to customers and making it less stable.  Where competition exists, cable companies provide more. When there is no competition the provide less.

These cases just scream out, “We need competition now!”

What Would You Do With 100mb's of Bandwidth?

Can you imagine what you could do if you had 100mb of bandwidth to your home?  With competitive video providers building fiber optic networks that connect to your house (or at least your neighborhood), 100 megs may not be too far into the future.  Combine the bandwidth of fiber with Internet protocol television (IPTV) and not only would your viewing choices  be endless but you could be producing TV content anyone with access to the Internet could watch.

There are people on the cutting edge of this new paradigm in cable doing video blogs, or vlogs.  Eric Rice, for example, has an excellent site on vlogs and even walks you through his studio set-up.  Steve Garfield and Michael Verdi are two of the leading vloggers with tutorials and discussions of vlogging. These folks are truly pushing the frontier of the new video world.

If you had (seemingly) endless bandwidth, what would you dream of doing with it?