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NYT: 14 Media & Technology Convergence Trends
securitas writes "The New York Times Business/Media section looks at 14 media and technology industry convergence trends and ideas to watch in 2004 (Google link). Trends range from the stampede to flat-screen TV/display business, Japan's 3G mobile phone experiment, biometrics as a global ID system for security, identification and authentication, the impact of PVRs (personal video recorders), Internet advertising and paid search engine listings, the Google IPO and venture capital technology investment, what the movie studios call piracy but what is really copyright infringement, and many other trends and ideas. It will take you a while to read through all 14 pages, but it's definitely good food for thought. Which 2004 technology and media trends and ideas did the New York Times staff miss? Discuss."
Looks like they missed mentioning Voice Over IP for a start, which hopefully will get bigger over the next year.
You're right about it not being a huge issue Stateside. However, it will be a huge issue outside of the US and Canada (where almost everything is simultaneous). Which brings me to my next point: Why are the US and Canada so in-sync in terms of media release schedules and standards, wether it be HBO or DVD region codes? Because we are so close geographically. In the new world (digital distribution, legal or not)order, the importance of geographical proximity is lessened to the point it is a matter of a few more hops and a bit more latency to get the contecnt you need. So: It will be a big issue because the media (a large portion, anyway) originates in the US. Regardless of piracy running rampant around the world, if the pirated content is of US origin, the US will wake up and take notice. Hopefully, instead of leaving sanctions in place (region codes and seperated release schedules), they will combine all media into one large push (which will increase their economies of scale anyway) and cut their losses at the source, instead of at the tail end, the pirating user and the p2p distribution models.
Two comments:
1. I think projection TV's are going to be an interesting race between OLED and new generation "slimline" rear-projection TV's that use DLP, LCD or LCOS technologies. Plasma displays (in my humble opinion) will become a passing fad due to the fact that plasma TV's tend to lose picture quality after a few years of use.
2. PVR's will become much more common in the next few years, especially with the lowering of hardware costs and the increasing capacity of hard disk drives (TiVo PVR's with 400 GB hard drives could arrive within 24 months). Also, what we may see PVR's do fairly soon is updating programming information using data piggybacked on a broadcast signal instead of having to "call back" using a telephone line or an Ethernet connection.
And don't forget that some pira... err... copyright rule breaking is motivated by people simply not wanting to wait for the release in their DVD zone. Like the music industry is saying now, p2p also happens because people whant stuff that they are not delivering.
Wired recently ran an article about the advances in verification. It's at:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/start.htm l?tw=wn_tophead_7
Too many commercials on television and before movies. (At least here in the US.)
For the past few years TV has been almost completely unwatchable for me. Four minutes of programming to five minutes of advertising is insulting to me.
But I have several friends who watch many hours of TV a day and have the latest plot advancements of several sitcom, drama, and unscripted (nee "reality") shows committed to memory. The last half of 2003 I began hearing comments from even them, my friends the TV junkies, that they are getting tired of so much advertising. It seems the straw that broke the camel's back was the corner adverts that come on when a program comes back on after a commercial break. They keep watching of course because they are addicted, but they are at least complaining out loud now.
Movies are almost as bad. Crowds at my local theater have taken to booing and shouting to the effect of "turn off the #$@!ing tv commercials" when non-movie-trailer ads come on. I also hear much grumbling about the excessive trailers. Six or seven five-minute plot synopses that give away the movies that they are supposed to be promoting while tacking 20 to 30 minutes onto the feature's play time are not popular. They almost ruined LotR: RotK for me by turning a 3:30 butt-number into a 4:00+ marathon endurance test.
I know there are work-arounds to these bugs in the system. But Tivo and other prepackaged DVRs are expensive and home-brew DVRs have all the same problems as desktop linux. Also, DVRs do nothing about the corner-screen adverts nor product placement. Not watching TV is like not smoking cigarettes: it's better for your long-term health but to an addict the separation is a difficult and painful thing.
Sure you can arrive late to movies, but with general admission theater seating you are gambling where you end up sitting, or even if you get a seat in the case of blockbusters. If I'd arrived late to any showing of LotR: RotK since it opened at my theater the odds are I would be stuck in a nasty corner or front row or next to an unwashed freak, or not getting a ticket at all because it sold out.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
They want information. It doesn't have to be real. {Or are you just bitching 'cause you can't be arsed to make something up?} In fact, the more obviously bogus it is, then the better; because if anybody is actually looking at the information then they will see it's bogus.
Remember, kiddies, if a grown-up asks you a question and the answer is none of their damn business, then it isn't really lying.
They want the information to work out what kind of adverts to show you {according to the following: poor man => cheap video games, rich man => expensive video games, poor woman => cheap shoes, rich woman => expensive shoes}, but my Squid Proxy Server will block whatever adverts they try to show the person they think I am. I know I am doing nothing wrong, as I would never have bought the stuff anyway.