The present and future of post production business and technology

A story that came through my newsreader last week You Don’t Understand our Audience and summarized by Ars Technica resonated with some of my thinking around a book I’m working on.

The way the United States system was set up was an attempt by the Founding Fathers to avoid the perceived problems of the English and French political systems of the day. Congress balances the Executive Branch while the Executive Branch balances Congress. The Judiciary is there to ensure that Laws are Constitutional and that the actions of the President are Constitutional. The press - the so-called “Fourth Estate” - reports on, exposes flaws and generally keeps the rest honest.

At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. Avoiding the political commentary on the first three “Estates” (Executive, Congress and Judiciary) it’s clear that the press and media have failed us completely. The linked article begins to explain why but one thing that’s not noted there is that “the press” has changed significantly since the days of the Founding Fathers. Then, there were hundreds of small, independent (and local) newspapers - not a very limited number of very powerful “media corporations”. The White House Press Corps are intimidated and will never call out the press secretary when they are clearly, obviously and provably lying; or where other lies can be easily proven by playing back a tape. But they don’t and they let the people down when they don’t. They know their job requires access to the press room and they too scared to do their job.

But they fail America because of their timidity. With so few media outlets obvious lies do not get exposed by timid “journalists”. We need a return to hundreds of independent voices uncovering lies and doing real journalism.

I hate to say it but it seems the blog-o-sphere is our last chance to save democracy and “keep the bastards honest” to quote Don Chip - a now-dead politician in Australia who led the third party trying to break the duopoly of political power that exists there (and in the US).

So, Netflix and LG announce yet another set top box. Well, actually they announced that LG would include the Netflix service on “selected devices”. Best guesses are that the service will be added to a dual mode (HD DVD and Blu-ray) player, or even the Television itself.

Here’s the problem with this: it’s Netflix on LG devices and only Netflix. No slight on Netflix, the service is good and the company needs to provide for a non-disc future. However, the industry should be gathering together for a single standard for delivering from the Interent to the lounge room, not proprietary deals with single suppliers. If we want movies from Apple then it’s another set top box (Apple TV). Vudu have their own movie service and their own proprietary box. Tivo is a little more open - it has an API for programmers - but it’s still another box on top of the cable or satellite box you’ll probably still have.

We need a single standard or interoperable standards for delivery of “Internet TV” to Televisions. It has to be simple. TV would not have caught on if we’d needed separate Television sets for CBS, NBC and ABC - but that’s exactly where these companies think we’re heading.

It won’t work. Any device(s) that link the Internet sources with a TV are good, but it needs an open standard - perhaps that’s what google are working on, but even then it won’t help integrate with cable or satellite boxes unless those providers have a significant change of heart.

Apple TV, for all the people who claim it to be a “failure” is the leading device to connect computers and televisions. While its sales are disappointing by Apple’s mega-hit standard, it’s estimated to have about 800,000 units sold in 10 months (took Tivo 4 years to get that far) and it’s way ahead of the competitors, other than Xbox or PS3 which both act at media extenders.

My mantra for 2008 - proprietary bad, open standards (even from one company) good.