People who know me here know that I'm very interested in how the world of TV and media s we know it change around us.
As part of my exploration of this change, I got a new Media Center PC to my living room. Although there is still a lot of work to do on it, the experience of using it is the closest I've seen to how the future of TV consumption should look like.
I can talk a lot about the DVR capabilities or the great user interface, but the two things that really surprised me were actually different things:
The first is actually a small add name MyNetFlix in written by a private programmer. In essence it gives you a great way to explore NetFlix and watch all the streaming movies there straight from the Media Center UI.
I got to say that the experience of MyNetFlix is even better than the NetFlix site itself.
My only question now, is why I don't see the same thing from Amazon and Apple for their rental movie service.
The second feature is an option called InternetTV.
Basically it allows you to get immediate access to great web video from the Media Center interface (and use the remote control to control it).
For example, while writing this I'm watching a great Riahna concert directly on my 50 inch TV. No, it's still not HD quality, but it's not far from it.
The monetization model is also very clear. Before the show I actually watched some ads that were loaded dynamically.
Now I have to ask again - how come I can't get access to all the studios TV series in the same way?
One thing that the new media center does is to completely eliminate the line between TV broadcasting and web streaming. You get both from the same menus on the same machine. In the end, you really don't care where it comes from, and this is the future of TV.
