The New York Times tells us about a whole new approach to getting our favorite cable programs onto our computers. It’s not the same as watching cable shows on the Web.
Reporter Saul Hansell paints the picture: “What happens when you want to watch the Food Channel in the kitchen, and (horrors) you only have a laptop there?”
He goes on to explain that new technology will let cable companies feed programs onto your home network in the standard formats used by the Internet. That way you could simply run video software, such as Windows Media Player or a special program given to you by your cable company, to watch any show on your cable system on your PC, game console or smartphone.
“Your computer will be your alternate screen in your house, or it could be your primary screen if you want that,” said Peter Percosan, a partner in the San Francisco consulting firm Digital-strategy who works closely with the cable business of Texas Instruments. Apparently four major cable companies in the United States are already working on this, as well as one in the UK.
Feeding your cable system onto your home network would let you watch everything, whether it’s available online or not. This would include live news and sports, and it could be seen from any device. Plus, the video quality delivered by a cable system is likely to be higher than Web-based video for a good long time.
Some cable systems, however, are talking about a much more ambitious approach. They are planning to send signals all the way from their central offices to your home by Internet Protocol. This will take changes in the cable company’s back offices, but should be more flexible in the long term, and would allow you to watch your shows in cable quality, but with internet speed.
Tags: Internet Speed