The Future of TV is Coming

Tonight I sat in my living room and watched a stream of The Daily Show on the big screen TV in my living room.  It would be unremarkable except that the video being displayed on my TV was actually coming from a website called Hulu.  I found a way to easily hook up my laptop into my LCD TV, and basically used the TV as a monitor for the computer.  All I needed was a cable like this one, and to press a button to switch my laptop to an external monitor.  That was pretty much it.  I even sat and watched a few of the YouTube videos I’ve produced for clients.

Hulu is a joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corp, the companies respectively behind the NBC and FOX networks.  Video from the site is only available at this time for viewing in the U.S., but it provides a goldmine of content for those who can access it.  The site offers a variety of full-length movies and episodes from dozens and dozens of TV series.  Many of the shows are available in HD, although I wasn’t watching them in that definition because high def isn’t transferred through the kind of cable I was using.  Some newer laptops come equipped with an HDMI output, which solves the problem.

The reason I’m talking about all of this is not to point out how incredibly cool it was to have that much viewing content at my fingertips, or how proud I am of figuring out how to watch it …. although I must admit it was pretty awesome.

I’m blogging about this to point out that the future of TV is coming very, very soon, and I don’t think it’s coming over a cable or satellite.  It’s coming through the Internet.  It boggles the mind how much video content is available on the web these days.  All of the TV networks provide shows on their websites that have already been broadcast traditionally.  Hulu, meanwhile, has movies, newer TV shows, and a lot of cool classic shows like Adam 12 and the black and white Bewitched episodes from the first couple of seasons.  Don’t even get me started on YouTube.  There’s a lot more available there than just video of surfing kittens.  And, NBC announced today that it will stream entire NFL games live on the net during the upcoming season!

I’ve always said that Internet video wouldn’t truly take off until people could easily watch on their living room TVs.  Most people just don’t like to watch video longer than a few minutes while sitting at their computers.  My laptop setup was pretty simple, but even simpler ways to watch are coming.  There are rumors that the Netflix Player by Roku may soon show Hulu content, and Microsoft’s XBox now offers streaming video content and movie rentals.  The content is out there.  As soon as it becomes as easy to view that content as it is to plug a box into the back of your TV, people may decide that they don’t want to pay for television service as well when there’s plenty to watch on the net.

Watch out cable and satellite companies … the future of TV is coming, and it’s not coming through your boxes.

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