On Mon, 2005-05-16 at 11:56 -0400, Craig Birkmaier wrote: > Correct. We have been over this too many times. The real issue here > is walled gardens versus open access to any person with a broadband > connection. Well, filesharing networks are walled gardens too. > This is so far from being true as to be laughable. Piracy is > background noise compared to the legitimate uses of streaming video > via the Internet. Perhaps Bert should check out the revenues being > generated via the Porn industry, which is typically an indicator of > more generalized usage patterns when a technology matures. > > How much pirated content is downloaded from CNN, ABC News, Fox News, > Apples movie trailers site and the list goes ON and ON and ON. Just You are out of touch with reality. Lets take bittorrent as a single example. One well-known tracker signed up a quarter of a million users in a matter of a week. That *eclipses* anything you just mentioned. Streaming media from CNN et al is the real background noise in this equation. > In many cases they PREFER to use the PC because it is properly set up > for interactivity, searching and browsing. Video is now used for much > more than just "lean back" entertainment these days. What is likely > to change in the future is the ADDITION of interactivity, search and > browsing to the big screen in the family room. This is the best venue > for group activities, such as shopping, planning a vacation, and of > course, multi-player games. Funny how we always repeat arguments here. The 'family' room is a collective experience, whereas a PC is not. People tend to fight over the remote and what to watch - multiply that tenfold when it comes to what websites to look at and the one simple fact people forget - everyone reads textual content at different speeds. You've been watching too many of those MSNTV infomercials showing the token grandparents 'checking their email' from their sofa. Reality is very different, and there is a reason why none of these 'sofa internet' services ever took off - its just a sucky user experience, no matter how much broadband or dumbed-down interfaces you throw at people. Cheers Kon ---------------------------------------------------------------------- You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways: - Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org - By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word unsubscribe in the subject line.