Online Media Cultist

Take a quick step back for a second and consider: many people have nice television sets these days. Even if they’re not high end monstrous widescreens, many homes have pretty nice TVs that rock a pretty nice picture.

Now, broadband adoption is also now pretty widespread. So we have nice cable television pictures and video being sent to the TV screen and nice pictures and video being sent to home computers and laptops.

You see where this is going. The race and scramble is fully on to be at the forefront of getting Internet-based video up and looking good on the television set.

The latest announcement from Time Warner Cable “to offer subscribers an easier way to bring Internet video to their television screens as part of an overall home networking system” can be roughly translated as: this is our turf, and we’re planning on holding onto as much of it as we can.

For the time of the cable television monopoly is finally coming to an end. As the technology improves in producing high resolution versions of Internet video on the television screen, a huge marketplace opens up in serving consumers what they want: enormous choice at home to watch video on their nice television screens.

Time Warner’s announcement is also interesting if you look at it like they were once a fearsome army now getting flanked by many a barbarian at the gate (can you get flanked if you’re behind a gate? In any event!). Apple TV is an early and somewhat clunky attempt to pull videos to the home via the iTunes store, but the really significant development this month came with the release of the new Netflix Player, made by Roku. It’s cheap ($100 + Netflix subscription), easy to set up, and offers on demand access to thousands of movies and TV shows.

Further, the Internet is also accessible via game consoles. I downloaded an HD version of Dan in Real Life recently on my Xbox 360 and was delighted with how crisp it looked on my decent but not extravagant TV.

So the race is on to give people what they want, which is a good thing for everyone. More choice on demand, better access, cheaper access, better quality, and a galaxy of film, television, and Internet video to choose from.

Once this level of choice and access becomes widespread, the tipping point will be that people won’t want to pay for bloated cable television packages anymore because they won’t have to.

Yeah, you can bet that Time Warner is working on a new plan.

It’s Friday, which means it’s time for some video entertainment. I couldn’t find anything funny this week, so we’ll go with a Grand Theft Auto IV side-by-side review on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3.

A number of people asked me why I bought an Xbox recently in response to wanting to play GTA IV as quickly as possible. It’s true – and this side-by-side review confirms – that performance is slightly better on the PS3, but I went with the Xbox because of the superior online features (Xbox Live), multiplayer capabilities, and particularly to access video game, movie, and television downloads.

In any event, if you’re like me you’re looking forward to a serious GTA IV teardown this weekend, so this might help to get you ready for it. Enjoy.