Friday, July 02, 2010

Changing Technologies

How many ways do you pay to have information enter your home?

We used to have both a land-line telephone and cellphones. But we've canceled the land-line because it became redundant and unnecessary.

Right now my family has a home computer with a modem (DSL) and a wireless router, which brings the internet into our home. We also have a small satellite dish on our roof, bringing a cable television package to our televisions and DVRs.

But the line between television and internet is getting blurred. In fact, there's a good chance that in coming years your "television program" viewing may arrive via your internet connection and be sent to any number of viewing devices from hand-held devices, phones, and laptops to personal computers and wall mounted "televisions," which already are little more than super-sized computer monitors.

Thanks to Hulu.com, YouTube, wifi networks, DVRs, Slingbox, and and similar technologies, HD television content can be streamed to virtually any device, anywhere in the house. I'd love to think that the days of running a coaxial cable and telephone jack to each room are behind us. That alone will do interesting things to how we build, remodel, and decorate our homes.

Ten or fifteen years ago, everybody had a telephone bill and a cable bill. In a few years we may have neither, replaced by whatever service gets the internet into your home. Assuming I'll still have a separate cell phone bill for a while, I'm not expecting to pay much less, but I'm sure not going to pay extra for redundant services.

1 comment:

Dustin said...

I don't think I've missed out on too much by not paying for subscription TV over the years we've been married. Well, I take that back... I did miss out on the expensive cable bills, which I figure has saved my family between $5,000-7,000!

We've managed to stay entertained with over-the-air TV, which has improved DRAMATICALLY since the conversion to digital (DTV) from analog last year. However, we've spent almost as much time consuming shows and content over the internet via our computer and iPhone as we have from our TV. I'm glad we held out and decided not to get subscription TV, because these days, we could view internet and all the web has to offer directly from our TV. With services like HULU and YouTube, and with technology allowing for computers to hook up to TVs, paying money for what we can get for free or close to free seems ridiculous.

GoogleTV is coming very soon:
http://www.google.com/tv/

...and AppleTV is available now, with several rumors recently that Apple is going to be streaming TV directly to your set via AppleTV and iTunes movies in the clouds, available to watch anytime, on any device:
http://www.macrumors.com/2010/07/02/new-york-times-apple-gearing-up-to-take-apple-tv-to-the-next-level/

It's going to get really interesting, really fast as these two giants, Apple and Google, race head-to-head to bring all the content available on your computer on the web directly to your TV, in high def and on demand.

I think I made a good choice to wait, now the waiting game is almost over. I may have escaped without ever paying a bill to DirecTV, DISH, TWC, Comcast, or any other cable or satellite TV company!