Filed under: Consumer experience, Google (GOOG)
Recently, TiVO (NASDAQ: TIVO) announced a partnership with Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) that is likely to massively expand both its own viewership and that of Google’s YouTube. Apparently, TiVo has plans to make it possible for YouTube subscribers to view their videos directly on their televisions. Viewers will access their YouTube accounts from their TiVo boxes and will be able to create and display customized playlists.
On the one hand, this seems like a masterstroke. After all, I can’t count the number of times that I’ve found myself with a group of friends clustered around a tiny little computer screen, watching a commercial from the sixties, a film trailer, or a segment of Saturday Night Live. Half the joy of finding these little gems is sharing them with friends and loved ones, and that’s a lot easier to do on a huge screen.
On the other hand, YouTube videos tend to be very small and have low-resolution, which makes them ideal for the internet. They can be quickly and easily uploaded, and the miniscule viewing area of the average computer screen makes their poor resolution a minor problem. However, transferring these tiny videos to a 32-inch television screen will render them practically unviewable. I have a crystal-clear vision of nostalgia-hounds and techno-geeks around the country squinting at televisions while asking themselves if they’re looking at images of an Elliot Spitzer press conference or footage of a giant boob. The answer, of course, is what’s the difference?
(I know, cheap shot!).
Developers are already preparing what is sure to be a veritable Aladin’s cave of extras and I imagine that they will address this problem in one way or another, but it’s hard to get beyond the fact that YouTube, for all its wondrousness, might be limited to one type of venue.
Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. YouTube has already cost him thousands of man-hours worth of work (and counting).
