[opendtv] Re: Google TV

Dan Grimes wrote:

> I'm not sure how Google TV tried to become an exclusive portal, but
> I do know that the fact that one cannot stream media from regular
> websites that are normally available to personal computers takes
> away the most important feature of the GoogleTV.

Maybe portal wasn't the right word here. I meant that the user of GoogleTV only 
gets to see what's out there as Google decides. For that user, there are no 
other options. The Internet looks like a Google GUI.

And for some unexplained reason, it looks like most or all of the TV 
manufacturers that wanted to offer the "connected" feature dutifully flocked to 
Google. Mind bending, really.

Also, as far as I'm concerned, in your last sentence above, the last words 
should have been "Internet TV." The promise of Internet TV is incredible choice 
from around the globe. Anything that takes that away is a deal breaker. Even 
when they do so with some excuse about ease of use.

> Personally, I find the blockage of programming to the GoogleTV
> appliance as an afront to an open internet.  I am not sure why a
> device should make the difference between whether I can see the
> programming or not.

Thanks for this opportunity. I meant to address this other part of the equation 
too.

It's one thing for a content owner to pull his content from a distribution 
pipe. But it would be far, far worse IMO if a content owner were to pull some 
OTHER network's content off the distribution pipe, to favor his own content. I 
think we can agree on this, right?

Well, isn't that what these CE vendors are doing, as if by agreement with 
certain sites? I have little quarrel with Fox and the others who boycotted the 
services that attempted this level of control. It was only their own stuff that 
they subtracted. They saw that GoogleTV had the potential for controlling what 
the users could navigate to, at the very least by making it more or less 
difficult as they saw fit, at any time, and they took the action they could.

Isn't this very similar to what Wikipedia and others just did last week? Not 
saying I totally agree with the Wikipedia point of view, but it's not like 
Wikipedia brought the Internet down to make their point. They simply subtracted 
their own content. Inconvenient for users, for sure, but well within their 
rights.

Bert

 
 
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