There’s nothing like an early Christmas present. Mine came in the form of a Samsung Blu-ray DVD player that features Internet connectivity to YouTube, Netflix, Blockbuster and Pandora.
It is a study in the concept of disintermediation and a clear window into the reasons for things like Comcast’s purchase of NBC Universal. Comcast is the proverbial 800 pound gorilla, but around here – a digital Sasquatch.
Comcast provides me with Internet, video and telephone. Verizon provides me with telephone, a certain amount of web connectivity and a growing volume of video. The redundancies are becoming more obvious as each provider’s capabilities get more and more robust. When the water company starts feeding fiber down its pipes – personal robots can’t be far behind.
This is why companies are scrambling to figure out if they can bill for bandwidth, for content, for subscriptions or for advertising. Every model breaks down somewhere along the line with service providers scrambling to eat each other’s lunch and consumers looking for the content they want, when they want it, where they want it – and most importantly, at a price they’re willing to pay.
I offer no grand answers about how the future shapes up, it all just sort of struck me as I’m sitting here typing my blog on my Macbook Pro sharing the same wireless bandwidth that’s taking down a Netflix movie I’m streaming.
It’s a brave new world. I operate a small TV station out of my house and distribute my content on a free worldwide platform – and as luck would have it, on Sasquatch’s on demand platform where I’m a show producer profiting from the cable TV model I’m bypassing with my DVD player that’s not playing discs. It’s weird.
On Monday, I interviewed the chief photographer at one of Seattle’s major network affiliates using an HD video camera – in part about the growing use of DSLRs in video production. The tools are converging there too. More weird stuff.
I took a few pictures with my cell phone and posted them to Facebook and directed my Christmas card recipients to a blog. Some of you will RSS this or maybe Tweet about it.
Under the tree this year: A DSLR, a GPS navigation system that plays video files and a phone that shoots movies.
Share your examples of the creative ways you use your media and communications tools – I’d be interested to hear more about the creative ways you’re accomplishing tasks or circumventing a provider’s business model.
