Monday, January 19, 2009
Mac to HD TV via DVI to HDMI to watch 24 on Hulu
Chris Brogan's tweet popped up on twhirl, on my HD TV, while I was watching 24 via hulu on my MacBook Pro connected via DVI to HDMI!
THIS is the future of internet connected TV's. It's not a siloed selection of the content chosen by TV manufacturers. It's the WHOLE thing! Having Chris' message pop up on my TV made me think of all the manufacturers at CES who were touting integration with internet applications. Things like Yahoo! widgets, Panasonic Viera Cast, and TiVo YouTube integration. It's all selected programming. That's not good enough for me.
Free an open internet access on a display, which just happens to be a TV, is the future.
The reason I connected my laptop to the TV is because my TiVo died and my episodes of 24 were gone. So that prompted me to look at where I could watch this past week's 24. It wasn't on Comcast's On Demand. It was on the Apple iTunes store for $2.99 each. It was on Hulu for free with 'limited commercial interruption.'
So we watched it on Hulu.
The commercials were short and we didn't mind watching them for the benefit of being able to see 24. With all the uproar of putting ads on online video, seeing these ads along with 24 wasn't invasive at all. In fact, watching 24, streamed from Hulu, on TV, made me forget I was watching video on the internet. I was just watching 24 on TV.
The days of crappy YouTube video are fading fast.
High quality streaming video is where it's at. This was an eye opening experience. At times there were buffering issues, but they didn't degrade the enjoyment of watching the video.
