I Want My Net TV

Scott Hardie | December 27, 2006
After a few years where online video was just for laughs and certain never-ending discussions, it seems like video content is finally beginning to overtake textual content on the web. YouTube was the newsmaker of the year according to Time, news sites are offering an increasing number of stories in video only, and promotional sites in a variety of industries are turning to an all-animation-and-video format once reserved for Hollywood movie sites. How soon until you can't go to a TV network's site and read what's coming up tomorrow night without sitting through commercials pitching the episodes? How soon until you can't read a news story without a simulated, Ananova-like VR anchor reading it aloud to you? You already have the annoying Ms. Dewey to help with your searches.

All of this concerns me because video strikes me as an inefficient system for information delivery compared to text. When I click on a [video] link on cnn.com, I wait for a commercial to buffer, then I wait 15 or 30 seconds for the commercial to play, then I wait for the story to buffer, then I wait what seems like an eternity for the reporter to crawl through the details to get to something interesting, all of it hampered further by sound bites and lame footage from the scene. In that same amount of time, i can read 2-3 text articles, skimming to the paragraphs that I like and instantly re-reading sentences that didn't register the first time. I can also follow links to other stories.

Sure, there are things you can't get in text format, especially sight gags in the best humorous videos online. But the trend toward video content seems to be inevitable as bandwidth continues to improve, almost as if there's more video online just because there can be more video. Are we so used to sitting there passively in front of the TV like couch potatoes that we want to sit in front of our computers the same way? I mostly gave up broadcast television years ago because it was such a time-wasting, inefficient form of news and entertainment; why sit through 15 minutes of Headline News and listen to a bunch of stories I don't care about when I can skim cnn.com in 3 minutes and read only what interests me? There are only a handful of blogs (XQC excepted) that I consider interesting enough to read regularly; I can't imagine sitting through any of them if they switch to the painfully slow video format.

Am I alone in my skepticism over online video? It seems to be catching on. All week long I get links in my inbox to funny or interesting videos online so that I spend an hour every Saturday morning catching up; the senders are right to consider them funny or interesting but I can't help thinking I'd only need to devote a fraction of that time if they were text instead. (Those of you here who recently sent something, I still thank you.) Out of the last ten check-this-out links that someone sent you, how many were to video content or animation? This is one web trend that worries me.

Anna Gregoline | December 27, 2006
All of this concerns me because video strikes me as an inefficient system for information delivery compared to text.

It concerns me as well because it gives an even greater helping hand to people who are illiterate or barely literate. We don't need to dumb it down any more in America these days. Our education system is barely a system!

/Old Cranky Woman Rant

Amy Austin | December 28, 2006
That was my immediate thought, too, Anna.

You are not alone, Scott... it is somewhat of a nuisance (and a disturbing one, as Anna mentioned), and you are definitely right about that Ms. Dewey character -- I had never seen/heard of her before -- she is pretty (and/but) annoying.

Scott Hardie | December 30, 2006
She's funded by Microsoft, which makes me wonder: Their upcoming OS is supposed to be searchable instead of a directory tree, so will we have to put up with Ms. Dewey's abrasiveness every time we need something? "It looks like you're writing a letter. Hurry the hell up."

Jackie Mason | January 7, 2007
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | February 1, 2007
In the news:

Television sets and personal computers will converge within the next five years, making obsolete conventional broadcast television, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates predicted at the World Economic Forum Saturday. "I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had," he said. Gates forecast that scheduled programming, along with integrated commercials, will become a thing of the past as TV is delivered over the Internet.