Back in this 4GM essay I talked about the perception wars -- that is, that the entertainment pipe would not change significantly until "the place we download" and "the place we watch our TV" intersect. On the tail end of all the portability and Apple stuff, I banged around the "console factor" -- rumors I'd heard that the XBox 360 was a stealth set-top box. This was the Monster in the Dark for Network television as far as I was concerned. The Networks, as arms of larger entertainment corporations, keep looking at downloadable content and DVD as downstream extensions of their identity. That made sense as long as there was no unified identity to supplant them down the pipe.
Well, game over. Gizmodo today leaks that new XBox 360 services will include full IPTV, downloadable content, video on demand, DVR functionality ... smack. When somebody smarter than I am writes the book ten years from now, this'll be the opening chapter hook. Chimp-easy download, no Bittorrent clients, no futzing with Divx files and home networking, that content smacks into my living room and the living rooms of, by the end of this year, somewhere around ten million people (assuming the 360 sells the projected 4 odd million this year.)
I've been skeptical of broadband as the newest solo pipe -- broadband's smacking around 3/4 of internet connectivity now, but internet connectivity's still around 65%, pegging broadband households at around, oh, 45%. DVD penetration's still at 81%, and we're not taking enough advantage of that. Download's still pig-slow for any file of reasonable size -- although for streaming VOD, well, it should be fine.
This was a (somewhat terrifyingly) masterful piece of work. For men 18-24, their XBox is their total entertainment hub. Microsoft created the perception first, and then tuned it in the direction they wanted it to go. It's typical Microsoft, too -- let Apple do all the fancy footwork, then come in and glom onto the concepts that work the best. Within a few years (and by "few years" I mean as soon as 18 months) we'll see Microsoft take advantage of the positive buzz from happy gamers -- the fine wedge of tech love - and offer a broadband entertainment box for non-gamers.
I'm in a bit of a rush this morning, so I'll jump back onto this on Monday. I just wanted to call dibs -- when you see the Joss Whedon channel on your XBox 360 Media Interface, remember this day.
45 comments:
Will blue screen of death be what happens when a show gets cancelled because not enough people are downloading it for the GoogleVideoAdwords to cover the production costs?
so who's going to foot the bill for shows that get piped into xbox? are big shows like galactica dead? have we seen the future - and it looks like youtube?
The only problem with the XB360-as-media-hub plan is, well: it's going to suck. A lot.
Don't get me wrong: it's a brilliant plan. The problem is twofold: One, the box itself, which has limited storage and even more limited options for expanding that storage. So any content you download to it is, by definition, transitory. Maybe that's okay for TV shows (although the walls of full-season DVD releases at your local media megastore suggests otherwise), but no way is that gonna fly for movies.
Two, Microsoft is just as committed as the "previous-generation" media companies to maintaining a deathgrip on how you interact with the media you bought. Yes, you can download a movie to your xbox. Can you stream it to other locations in your house? Take it with you on a portable player? Burn a backup copy in case that hard drive crashes? Take that burned copy over to your friend with the bigger TV and watch it there? No to all of the above, and a pre-emptive "no" to any other clever idea you might come up with in the future.
Meanwhile, the de facto standard for 4th-generation content distribution is flourishing: Piracy, The Better Choice(tm)
In response to the portable player question, it seems pretty obvious that connecting a Zune to download your video content to is in the pipeline. The Zune already has a GamerTag system in place, so it's simply a matter of a firmware upgrade, to probably both the 360 and the Zune, that allows for a one time Zune-360 association so that any video content you download off the Marketplace can be downloaded to that Zune and that Zune only.
Is it still a nightmare for all the rabid anti-DRM folks? Yes. But for the legions of people who don't seem to care all that much about DRM (wrongheaded as that may be) it's TV downloaded from their Xbox to their iPodlike device, and that's just kind of cool.
DRM sucks and should be destroyed, but the casual user could give a shit. I think portability is over-rated anyway, from a consumer side. I'm Captain Media, and I barely move my files around. Certainly nothing I couldn't do on DRM-controlled machines, if I so chose.
DVD as backup for permanent collections isn't going to go away, either. However, I think when analyzing these developments, we have to look at each individual niche use. Netflix has made a lot of money on renting TV box sets. however, downloading is easier, and not eating up a place on my queue. if I want to keep Season 2 of VERONICA MARS, with all the special commentaries etc, I can. But if I just want to catch up with it because it's a cool show ... different user, different storage requirements. My friends heard HEROES was cool and wanted to jump in 6 eps in. They had to watch it on the shitty small computer screen. Tell 'em they can grab it for 2 bucks an episode on their XBox, already hooked up to their TV ... boom baby.
Piracy is flourishing, but there's a big difference between the 3% savvy enough to pirate and the mainstream audience.
The shows will come from the same place -- production companies. They'll just have to adjust financing somewhat. I cannot emphasize how broken and congenitally unprofitable netwrok television is AS IS. Also, this will not REPLACE the system. Wholesale infrastructure replacement is the old way. Instead, it will beome a component of video entertainment distribution. The only reason it's the start of the death of network television is because of the networks' inherently unnatural character.
You're right that the casual user doesn't give a shit about DRM qua DRM.
Does the casual user care that they're now going to have to buy a Zune on top of their iPod because that's the only portable device that will play with the 360? (Substitute PSP and PS/3 as appropriate.) I kinda suspect that they do.
It's not about technology, it's about user experience, and the DRM user experience is crap the moment you have to deal with more than one vendor. It would be one thing if Microsoft were the only game in town, but they're not: right now, pirated p2p media distribution offers a qualitatively better experience, for less money.
The studios should have dealt with Kazaa when they had the chance three years ago.
You said "smack" a lot.
Is there something you wanna tell us, John?
(Oh, long time reader, first time writer, huge freaking fan of the Global Frequency pilot, fan of your Blue Beetle.)
Yeeeeeeessssssss!
DVD Premiere series...
D2I series (Thank you for the terminology, Warren)...
No need to wait for broadcast or cable. Click and watch and interact.
How's Tivo going to fit into this? Their market data has got to be worth billions and could move this forward for a lot of production companies looking for an audience and a means to tell product placement how many eyeballs they could get.
I'm not sure I can buy into the idea that the XBox is the killer app. It's hardware and frankly, it's not hardware, no matter the functionality attached to it, I see tens of millions buying into. Maybe I'm wrong. I've never been a console gamer so my view is, with respects to Kevin Smith, askew. Or it askance?
Be that as it may, convenience has been, is and will continue to be the number one driving force in media delivery. If the XBox is that conduit then maybe what you say will happen. For now, I just don't see it.
Console gaming generates an amount of money in this country that, frankly, makes Hollywood throw up in its mouth a little every time the number is spoken aloud. It's not so much the 360 hardware, but the proper software utilization of the existing software, added to the market share glommed off the gamers.
It's like Tivo. Tivo was fucked when other companies realized they coudl just stick hard drives in their cable boxes. But they became the de facto interface. 360 has both the hardware AND the interface.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying 360 is the replacement. There ar eno replacements -- this will be evolutionary rather than transformative.
My question is how much is it going to COST?
Seriously, I already have a 360, and with the Wii and PS3 coming out, I'm saving money for them rather than new upgrades to my 360 console.
I'll probably get a new version eventually, but I just BOUGHT this one. 360 has been out for just a year, wish some of these companies would consider upgrading the hardware in bits rather than an entirely new console again and again.
I mean, I would assume they'd use Live to stream this sort of thing, and for some media you already have to have 'points' which usually involves shelling out money to microsoft anyways via monthly subscriptions.
*shrug* Sounds cool, I guess they're going for the all out entertainment system...and 360 does have a really strong user interface with Live. (I haven't seen Wii's yet or experminted with it, and only know a little of the PS2's playonline system...which doesn't compare)
Still, Doctor memory pointed out space on these consels being a key issue. I'm not sure how many episodes of House it would be able to save for me, nor how compariable it would be to the system I have set up now?
doc: the 360 has USB ports--therefore the "limited" options for expanding memory isn't so limited. Plug a USB hard drive in. Plug a USB hub in, then plug a bunch of USB hard drives in.
What's the problem?
keith, you're obviously someone who doesn't remember looking at a 20-megabyte hard drive and saying "But what would I do with all that space?"
We will never have a hard drive big enough to download everything. When it looks like we're in danger of having a big enough hard drive, we'll upshift the storage format. Give a man a 100-gig hard drive and he'll fill it with MP3s in a days; give a man a one-terabyte hard drive and he'll google for "flac encoder".
I'm going to agree with Doctor Memory and disagree with our host and others who said most people don't notice.
They do.
Not right away, but eventually DRM bites them in the butt. When they've purchased downloads from Walmart (as one example) and then that computer dies so they 'just' load them on the new one... or when the finicky requirements of the DRM don't quite work well after they update their Media Player package to a new version, or when they're trying for the fourth or fifth time to use their new mp3 player and suddenly get the "you have made the maximum number of authorized transfers" message.
Oh, yes, then they notice.
And then - and this is really where the Piracy is winning - it turns out to be easier to disobey the law than to obey it. To load one of the P2P systems, enter a quick search, and when it's downloaded burn it or copy it with no problems or warnings or anything else vs (for example) the joys of discovering the ipod doesn't really like the XP box and demonstrates an amazing mastery of passive aggressiveness when getting songs from outside to computer to ipod.
"Burn a backup copy in case that hard drive crashes?'
Redownload it. As of now, there are no limits to how many times a purchased TV show may be downloaded at no additional cost.
"Take that burned copy over to your friend with the bigger TV and watch it there?"
The HDD itself is removable and portable. As of now there are no limits to how many other 360s a TV show may be downloaded to. I've downloaded several shows that still reside on my friend's boxes that may be viewed without me signing in. That's a loophole that may be fixed in the future, but a circle of friends (with some trust) can create a Live account and share that one account for any shows they may want.
It's kind of funny that since the 360 is so locked down (like any console) that MS is less stringent on what can be done with the content than most other digital ditributors.
"Another big problem is hard drive space. After system files & such, the 20 GB drive has about 13 GB left."
It's pretty obvious that they'll release a bigger, removable HDD. i just hope it's more in line with actual HDD prices rather than the $100 13GB one they have now.
This is a non-issue.
One reason is that the XBox is not the on fire success story it is made out to be. It gets outsold by Sony's PS2.
Another reason is that every single MS attempt to develop content for download is hobbled by brutal DRM systems that absolutely no one wants. Remember Play-For-Sure? Of course you don't. MS in fact abandoned it partners and made the Zune non-compliant with Play-For-Sure.
And as for the Zune?
Nobody apparently owns one. It won't become the hub or ancillary device for anything. It's so far down the consumer food chain that Sandisk outsells it...
As far as memory goes, I don't think that people would fill up a terabyte hard drive with shows and just leave it because they couldnt bear parting with any of the shows. Tivos have storage limits, but I don't hear anything from my friends that says they hate having to delete stuff. I get alot of podcasts and video podcasts, but I don't save every single one of them. If I need room there is a delete button in the upper right corner of my keyboard.
And I think market forces will eventually kill any DRM that stops the burning of a DVD. If you have one distribution point that has DRM that stops you and another that doesn't, which one would you pick? You might have to do without certain shows, but if DVD burning is that important to you, you will make the choices that fit your needs.
there are a couple decent avi/dvd programs online. google 'em up, or check Lifehacker
I'm way back up at the top of the post with impworks and dan.
The issue coming hard at us is just who is going to PAY for great stuff to watch.
One of the reasons why there's barely any decent content on network tv any more is that their advertising revenue is falling, which means they have less money to pump into stuff for us to watch, which means less of us watch, which means advertising revenue is falling.
Dan, you HAVE seen the future, and it IS youtube. It's a scary new world.
the one comment re "piracy, the better choice" I've never understood when it came up (and it comes up a lot) is the "watch it on the crappy small computer monitor instead of the nice big TV"
uh ..
what?
I threw away any sort of TV a few months ago, because it's so much nicer to watch stuff on an LCD Computer monitor. I just don't get this ..
The resolution and image quality on TVs, even on the new big ones, still sucks.
So a computer monitor is not as big, but, what with higher frequency and resolution, you can sit much closer to it, which gives you the same image-size in your eye.
And if I really wanted a bigger picture I'd buy a projector and hook it up to my computer.
the TV, IMO, is a dead-end.
Dumbing computers down so they resemble TVs is the wrong route, IMO.
If people can't be arsed to learn to use a computer, let them suffer.
"I remember when you had to run programs off the 5 inch floppy disk because the concept of a hard drive was a fantasy."
Ah, you were one of those rich bastards who had a computer with a floppy drive. What, a Radio Shack fifteen-minute computer-grade cassette wasn't good enough for you?
I'm still unconvinced that we'll ever have enough space. The convenient home petabyte drive will be followed by the convenient home lossless video download, because by the time we've got a petabyte sitting on our desks, we'll have realized that we've spent tens of thousands of dollars on a 90" LCD and for what? So we can see pixelation and artifacts? Screw that noise.
...speaking of which...
"If people can't be arsed to learn to use a computer, let them suffer."
Fellow anon, how many minutes of your life did you spend flipping toggle switches to enter your computer's bootstrap loader when you turned it on to submit that comment?
If the answer is "zero", then you should admit there is a slight possibility that your attitude is misguided, and is in fact in complete opposition to the way the computer industry has run since, uh, well, forever.
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