Just some quick thoughts that started at the start of the day and dumped to the screen at the end. In the office we have been talking about media centers quite a bit – how to create them, what hardware/software and whatever else. But when we came to comparing the different media centers – Windows Media Center, AppleTV, WDTV, XBMC, Boxee – we came to an interesting conclusion.
People don’t need “secure TV”.
It seems that the software that is the most popular right now are those that don’t handle users – they are those that mimic the way that TV was/is watched before the Media Center arrived. This means that systems like Boxee are probably destined to remain slightly niche products (laptop/computer bound viewers) as it is not likely that there will ever be a situation that people will want to share what they are enjoying with others who are not sitting in the same room. At the most, what is watched may be shared between “locals” – family and friends who you see face to face.
The TV is a common space, so those apps that are not user driven (like AppleTV/WDTV/XBMC), are likely to win out as they simply provide a management/access tool for the media. All these systems need to do is to provide content control and they will be all that is needed.
Enough of a brain dump for now.
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