Report from CES: Television and Web Are The Same Thing

Video courtesy Pat Younge, BBC

For us early adapters, this is nothing new. 

A few years ago, I bought a Mac Mini and a first generation AppleTV (Apple always punishes the early adapters), and have been running the web through my 54" Sony plasma screens.

But for those who don't want to go through the trouble of doing that (not the mention the sheer aggrivation of dealing with the Crestron system), it would seem that now TV manufacturers are about to unveil TV sets that do this automatically.

This has many implications, but one of the first is probably that it means the death of linear, appointment-related programming.

Once you start to access your 'screen content' online, you will find that you spend less and less time (if any at all), 'watching TV shows'.

This doesn't mean a dimunition of video content - on the contrary, the demand for content is going to spike.  What it does mean is that fewer and fewer people will watch a specific network or channel, as opposed to being attracted to the content.

At home we mostly watch movies streamed off Netflix, but I notice what when my younger nephews are here, they ignore the channels immediately and spend hours cruising through Youtube videos that they arlready know about, showing them to one another to their own great amusement. This is real channel surfing.

Another observation I might make as Internet TV makes its official appearance:

Often at dinner parties, in the course of discussion, someone will invariably take out their iPhone and google information that becomes a part of the conversation. When we have dinner parties here, the screen (which pulls away from the wall), is often canted over to the table and 'joins' the dinner.  Many evenings end in Karaoke like sing alongs with the contents driven by the almost limitless music videos (we are all children of the 60s and 70s) available on Youtube. 

It's still video - but it's not TV.

At least not the way it used to be.