Signs I need to switch to decaf
FCC Chief Slams TV Makers on Digital TV Conversion. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell slammed consumer electronics makers on Friday for an inadequate commitment to accelerating the transition to higher quality digital television. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]
The digital transition, which was designed to be completed by 2006, has been slowed in part by limited available content, potential piracy of content, and high-priced equipment needed to receive the higher-quality signals. (emphasis mine)
I've spent far too much time lusting after the HDTVs they have at the local Best Buy, and you know what? Pirating content isn't one of my plans, for the same reason that I rarely watch movies on my PC: It looks like crap. I want to see the full blown, super crisp picture that God (and the folks who made the content) intended. I don't want to have my movie hiccup because I'm getting an email, or my system is checking for an update, or my screen-saver is trying to take over. I want to see it in frighteningly crisp, clear video that is going to serve as the glue that keeps my butt in the la-z-boy and my hand in the popcorn. I want to hear it in sphincter thrumming bass that makes the windows rattle, along with my belly. I want to turn down the lights, crank the volume, and look over my shoulder when I hear a gun cock behind me in surround sound.
"But Ryan" you say "You can get than on your computer." Excuse me, did you read the second sentence of my post? I'm on a plane, a bus, whatever, fine, laptop it is. I'm at home, I want to be able to reach into my cooler, grab a cold one*, put my feet up, and enjoy. I don't want to worry about how warm my UPS is, or what cord I have trapped between my toes. I want to sit back, and enjoy the movie, and you know what? I CAN'T, because some team of industry lackeys has decided that I, the consumer, am more likely to pirate their precious content than buy it. Never mind the collection of 200 movies that I have, half of which are on DVD. Let's ignore the mountain of CDs, the cassette tapes, and the LPs. I won't even get into my rental habits because I think you get the idea. As far as these bastards are concerned, I'm a pirate, and their afraid that I'm going to use my DSL connection to try to view some grainy, reduced quality version of their works, without watching the commercials, without paying for the content that they have slaved to create in an attempt to garner my attention. God knows that they are just paying out the ass for those airwaves, Hey wait, aren't a lot of these content creators on cable? How does that work? What kind of broadcast fee structure are they under? Doesn't matter.
Simply put, Gimme. I want my MTV, my VH1, my HBO, my Discovery channel, animal planet HGTV food network jumping monkey gator catching high speed chase from a helicopter in full surround sound on an HDTV that I can watch with funky 3d shutter lenses and I want it all and I want it right now. I am your market folks, I just bought the laptop equivalent of a ferrari and it'll be here soon. I work hard and dammit, I play hard too. Get your product out, drop the freaking early adopter tax and just like Ozzy, I'll put it in every room of my house. Because if you don't folks, if you big companies drop the ball that you've been bobbling since 1994 when I first read that a standard had been agreed to in Video Toaster magazine, folks you will be well and truly fucked, because you're already losing your precious eyeballs. Most of my friends don't watch TV, and when they do it's a special event like the Super-bowl. Mostly they play games, or surf the net. Your one way conversation is more boring than a lecture from a droning college professor, and we ain't being graded for watching this one bubbah.
We're too busy working on our homes, building up our own businesses, and getting our next degrees to be bothered with you old boy. We grew up watching you and we know all of your tricks. This is why Survivor was such a hit: It broke the formula of set up and payoff, it introduced a random element into the very structured programming that you've been throwing at us for years. What's sad is that a show can now consist of nothing but homages to other things you've thrown at us and we'll think it's irreverent and new, instead of the thinly veiled retread that it knows itself to be. Bore us and we flip flip flip away from you, surfing the channels and using the remote one handed like the extension of ourselves that we know it to be.
But you can change all that. Make a better mousetrap. Give us the bigger, bolder prettier spiraling shape and we'll pick it up and call it wonderful and denounce it and play with it and love it and hate it but more importantly, we'll buy the damned thing if you'll just get it out there. The longer you sit there in your board rooms and worry about the things that we, the unwashed masses of scurvy ridden entertainment pirates, are going to do with your precious content, the less likely we are to be here to buy it when it comes out.
You're not the only game in town anymore boss, and really, you never were. And for every day that you sit back and bicker, we're going elsewhere to be distracted from how bored we are by you. Every day that you snipe, we start entertaining ourselves. Photoshop tennis is just the start, wait until home video editing hits critical mass. Then you're going to see an explosion of crazy, half baked, wild and entertaining indeciferable, beautiful madness the likes of which you've never seen, let alone approved from your office in the sky. Jackass was the first flake of snow, the first drop of rain in a torrent that is coming. We've learned at your feet, the tools got cheap, and you no longer control the means of production OR distribution. We've got peer to peer video on demand 24-7 and every time you knock out a channel, another three pop up daddy. This is the hydra all over again, and this time, you ain't got a torch Herc.
This isn't to say that you're dead, oh no, we still need heroes to watch, doing things we can't do, someone to follow for fashion and lingo. We love paying five bucks for ten cents worth of popcorn, and sitting in small seats to gather and watch what you tell us is acceptable. You tell us who to love and like dutiful soldiers, we'll follow your commands until it's time for something new to come along. Then you'll act all suprised until you can either co-opt it and drown us in it, or sic your lawyers and political hacks on it till it's dead. But that'll only last until we figure out another way to go around you. Our desire is like water, it goes wherever it can, either wearing away or going around it's obsticles, roaring when the resistance overcome, and wiping itself out when the momentum takes us too far.
*Sadly, this is either Gatorade or Poland Spring bottled water of late
(I watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas today, just finished Gonzo Marketing, and am starting Hot Text. This may well explain a lot about this post.)
12:58:38 AM 
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