Couch Potato 2.0

COUCH POTATO 2.0
[SOURCE: Los Angeles Times, AUTHOR: Editorial]
[Commentary] Recent developments illustrate at least two things about the state of play in Hollywood these days. First, barely a week goes by without someone experimenting with a new way to distribute videos. And second, those experiments don't yet live up to the promise of the Digital Age, which is enabling people to watch whatever they want, whenever and wherever they wish. The approaches of Netflix and Fox show how two pillars of the California economy -- the entertainment industry and the technology industry -- approach this problem from different angles. Curiously, or perhaps predictably, Hollywood's obstacles are mostly technological; Silicon Valley's are mostly contractual. How quickly the public gets to the nirvana of anywhere/anytime entertainment will depend on how long it takes engineers to connect the Internet to TV sets -- and how willing the studios are to replace plastic discs that they find profitable and convenient with digital bits that, so far, are neither.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-foxnet17jan17,1,5775554.story?coll=la-news-comment
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