Sony Signs on to Tru2Way

http://gizmodo.com/393517/sony-signs-on-with-tru2way-kiss-your-cable-box-goodbye

Finally. I was an early adopter of Tivo and was impressed with the possibilities. They had Tivo to Ipod downloads they were just way too slow. This seems to be a jump towards making TVs more like computers.

I'm not sure how the Apple TV fits into this, if at all. There is a huge push right now for delivering on demand content to the television. Apple of course and Netflix and Blockbuster are creating on-demand boxes as well for all of their content. So for $20 a month you can watch any movie anytime in HD. Sign me up. The Wii also has Internet channels that will be browser based allowing individuals to create custom applications for the Wii.

I know my wife will be on board with this. She always complains about the "ugly" cable box and those wires coming out of the wall. :-)

Kind of reminds me of the article "IT Doesn't Matter". IT is creating new markets and new distribution medium for existing content. I think the "go to market" time frame for these digital products has become greatly reduced. This isn't necessarily a good thing though. Companies may be less likely to evaluate the long term viability of the product line before rolling them out. This could lead to less support for these products and products with safety and privacy as an afterthought. In addition, this may have an effect on the willingness of companies to build these products. The competition is creating identical product lines or "me too" products just as fast. This reduces the time of a company's competitive advantage and also put more importance on getting Patents and protecting Patent Infringement.

So, along with the Dot Car era article, I think that Web 2.0 is not only increasing socialization of the Internet community but also increasing the mediums in which we interact.