ABC, are they serious with the digital media

All of us are just too familiar with Hollywood being in denial of the digital age. There are still many out there who think denial of the digitial media is the best way to deal with IP (Intelectual Property) issues. It's not. Listen to your customers. They are changing and they want to consume content in many different ways, be it the good old TV and DVD or through new channels (or devices) like on your laptop, on my iPod, on my PDA like device and many more. I truly believe the first studio or distributor which really figures out how to distribute content through all these different devices and channels but at the same time can take care of the IP will dominant the consumer media business for the next decade. Yes, there are issues to deal with and yes it is a struggle to make this economically work. But boy will this business suddenly be the media power-house in the digital economy.

So I ran into ABC's new site - http://dynamic.abc.go.com/streaming. It allows you do view four of their shows online. The quality is great. It would be great if it worked really in full-screen, but even in its current size its quite impressive. Obviously you need a pretty decent high speed internet access but today that should be no problem. You have problems watching it outside the US - well use a public proxy server like http://www.proxy4free.com and you can bypass that check. Try it out, it's quite a treat.

I am cautiously optimistic to see that some of the media houses are willing to experiment with the digital age and see how they can make it work. I do believe they will go through tremendous changes in the next decade. Renting and watching a movie over the internet should become a reality. Also being able to watch TV over the internet should be the norm - you can see already some experiments with this too. Those on the fore-front of this, as a consumer I can just cheer them on!