Wondering about the future of media is always an exciting daydream!
But I expect future forms, whatever shape they take, will always have to meet certain audience expectations from now on.
Advance Word: viewers will always want to know what entertainment is "coming." Whether in the form of commercials, trailers, news items, web updates, RSS feeds, or even newpapers and magazines, they'll always want something they can quickly scan to know what future offerings to pick and choose.
Watching: as individuals, viewers want to watch what they like, when they like, in a way that's most convenient to them, and with the best possible viewing experience [in 3-D?].
But they'll want to watch what everyone else is watching too.
Be it movie theaters, popular shows, sports events, talk shows, news flashes or awards shows, they'll want to be able to have and share the communal viewing experience, so they can keep current and discuss what's popular with each other. Viewers will always need the media, but they'll need each other too.
Making it their own: the VHS videotape explosion made obvious for the first time the fact that media fans love to collect and own. The future will be intensely more so. Fans will want to save and own copies of DVDs, webisodes, downloads, etc., but will also want to mix, adapt, edit and post to share their own versions [to the extent that copyright law allows]. This will be expected of all future media as well, despite what the media corporations will want to allow.
Favorite Technologies of the Past: I guess for me, being over 50 years old, that my favorite older format would be record albums. They were a large format of audio, with particular handling requirements and gave a unique listening experience. [Albums were played straight through in the sequence the artist determined. They had to be turned over by hand to hear the other side, so the album and the listener had to "work together" to complete the listening experience].
The size of the format and it's packaging allowed for large graphics and quantity of liner notes, providing additional levels of appreciation not really equalled by any format since.
Monday, March 29, 2010
The Future of Media #80: Movies
For me, the future of watching movies on-line will depend on whether I can do so dependably, at the time of my choosing, with good sound and focus, and without glitches and delays. Other factors involved are the viewing size [a large enough computer monitor], the availability of the home computer, and the possibility of on-line connection problems.
With DVDs I've come to love the extras, interviews, narration tracks, and chapter stops, [so I can pick up where I left off if I'm watching a movie over several nights].
Movie Trailers: I've loved watching movie trailers on-line for years. I can watch exactly the ones I want to see and avoid those with story lines I'd hate [trailers I'd be forced to watch in the theatre]. Trailers are available to me more quickly and conveniently on-line than almost any other method.
And if I suffer playback problems I haven't invested a lot of time, compaired to trying to watch a TV show or movie on-line and having it fail in the middle.
Movie trailers are even useful to me in my work duties, the reseaching of forthcoming Children's books, since almost every movie released means the publication of tie-in books.
I love watching movies and TV shows. But I also like recording and collecting my favorites, which I can't do from the computer at the moment. Or, I just haven't learned how yet.
With DVDs I've come to love the extras, interviews, narration tracks, and chapter stops, [so I can pick up where I left off if I'm watching a movie over several nights].
Movie Trailers: I've loved watching movie trailers on-line for years. I can watch exactly the ones I want to see and avoid those with story lines I'd hate [trailers I'd be forced to watch in the theatre]. Trailers are available to me more quickly and conveniently on-line than almost any other method.
And if I suffer playback problems I haven't invested a lot of time, compaired to trying to watch a TV show or movie on-line and having it fail in the middle.
Movie trailers are even useful to me in my work duties, the reseaching of forthcoming Children's books, since almost every movie released means the publication of tie-in books.
I love watching movies and TV shows. But I also like recording and collecting my favorites, which I can't do from the computer at the moment. Or, I just haven't learned how yet.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
The Future of Media #79: TV #80: Movies
THE FUTURE OF MEDIA #79: Television
[Adobe Flash Player says I must get version #10 before I can watch anything here, but I'm not authorized to download anything to my computer myself].
Cast TV - the video clips seemed fuzzy and halting, like stop-motion animation. I started various clips to see if they were worth watching, and when I switched them to Full Screen they wouldn't expand, they'd just start over at the beginning with the commercials. Not worth watching.
TV.com was great! The CBS shows there were clear and quick.
ABC.com turned out pretty good, but I had trouble scrolling around to see everything off screen.
"Joost" had "squat," but I liked UStream since it had video game footage.
The Internet Movie Database: also demanded Flash Player 10 and wouldn't play anything for me.
So some sites were great, others were promising, disappointing and troublesome. But I don't plan on spending a lot of time trying to find the ones that are dependable.
Watching TV on my Cell Phone: not much interest in doing this currently. My phone screen is too small to enjoy, the sound's not good enough, and it's not a feature I want to pay for or use battery power to watch.
And the amount of free time per day that I allot for TV viewing is spent watching at home, and not "on the go." I can see how this might be an option I'd want to keep in mind for "emergencies" though. But I have a great many other options for TV and movie watching already.
Streaming Programs and Posted Videos: I haven't gone looking for streaming programs, but I can think of some types I might be interested in; tropical beaches, or DisneyWorld... hard to say. For me this is the equivalent of staring out the window, and I have so many other things I'd rather be doing.
I'd love to be able to trust computers for watching TV online, but they're still fairly undependable for that for me. And as for the "future of television," watching videos on computers still seems about as haphazard as it was 20 year ago. It still involves skips, jumps, slow downloads, focus issues, computer lock... Added now are slews of pop-up boxes and half-screen sliding windows, connection and buffering problems, and delays that take the control of my TV watching and put it at the finicky moods of the computer.
I'd love to watch movies and TV shows on these sites [on my home computer, of course], but at work had the following difficulties:
Hulu - the index of programs looks very interesting to me, but my computer can't play anything on this site, so I couldn't try this part of the iHCPL exercise.[Adobe Flash Player says I must get version #10 before I can watch anything here, but I'm not authorized to download anything to my computer myself].
Cast TV - the video clips seemed fuzzy and halting, like stop-motion animation. I started various clips to see if they were worth watching, and when I switched them to Full Screen they wouldn't expand, they'd just start over at the beginning with the commercials. Not worth watching.
TV.com was great! The CBS shows there were clear and quick.
ABC.com turned out pretty good, but I had trouble scrolling around to see everything off screen.
"Joost" had "squat," but I liked UStream since it had video game footage.
The Internet Movie Database: also demanded Flash Player 10 and wouldn't play anything for me.
So some sites were great, others were promising, disappointing and troublesome. But I don't plan on spending a lot of time trying to find the ones that are dependable.
Watching TV on my Cell Phone: not much interest in doing this currently. My phone screen is too small to enjoy, the sound's not good enough, and it's not a feature I want to pay for or use battery power to watch.
And the amount of free time per day that I allot for TV viewing is spent watching at home, and not "on the go." I can see how this might be an option I'd want to keep in mind for "emergencies" though. But I have a great many other options for TV and movie watching already.
Streaming Programs and Posted Videos: I haven't gone looking for streaming programs, but I can think of some types I might be interested in; tropical beaches, or DisneyWorld... hard to say. For me this is the equivalent of staring out the window, and I have so many other things I'd rather be doing.
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