I have been having a debate with several guys for the past couple of years about giving up cable/satellite and just leveraging the Internet for all of my families TV needs. So far no one I know who watches TV on a regular basis has done this yet. The key word is yet, since there will be a time soon when I’ll see people doing this.
For me the key thing is the experience. I do not want to have to buy a PC to hook up to the TV and use a keyboard/mouse/remote control just to watch TV. It has to be a seamless experience like it is now. Thankfully, more and more hardware devices are being released that go a long way to achieve this goal (including TV’s with built-in Internet connection). Some systems work better than others and to complicate matters, each works with different Internet sites for the movies/TV programs.
Let’s face it, cable TV is expensive so why not leverage the high speed Internet connection we are already paying for. It is inevitable that this will happen so it is just a matter of time.
- Netflix – streams movies and TV series on demand.
- Hulu – stream on demand a lot of TV series and random shows
- You Tube – lots of random choices for video (not that most are worth watching though)
- ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, etc. – All have streaming content of their TV shows.
- Many many other sites for video streaming are available
Here is a good clog entry that goes over the current major hardware to help make this closer to reality. Internet TV: Roku still trumps Apple, Google, and Boxee http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=6866&tag=content;leftCol
I’m not ready to toss my AT&T U-Verse yet. Even with the newest hardware and all of the content on the Internet, the user experience is still not what normal cable TV is. It is getting closer every year so some day….
