Cringely talks on the future of Television http://bit.ly/cxfa37 First I heard of it, but Veetle http://bit.ly/r3cJP looks interesting.
I disagree with Robert Cringely as much as I agree, but I always read his recent postings because they make me think. And that’s a good thing for me.
What makes this one interesting is that he exposed me to Veetle for the first time. Veetle is an attempt to bridge the openness of the net, the on-demand future of media consumption, with a protection model that doesn’t get in the way. Â I could be interested in that!
Veetle, if you haven’t heard of it, is a Palo Alto-based startup that isn’t nominated for this summer’s Startup Tour. Veetle appears from my vantage point to be a peer-to-peer video distribution system that most closely parallels the current cable TV model except applied to the Internet. Veetle video channels can be viewed in a browser (32-bit plug-in required) and present — just like CNN — a continuous stream of programming that can’t be interrupted, paused, or changed and can’t be very easily recorded, either.
In fact a Veetle channel very well could be CNN, because almost anyone can become a Veetle broadcaster by just grabbing a video feed from their DVD player or cable box and throwing it up on the web in glorious H.264. Veetle is an adolescent cesspool of intellectual property confusion but that’s part of what makes it so much fun.