know | Future

The importance of the video iPod is more far ranging than the product itself and transcends it, just like the effect of the original iPod on the music industry and even culturally in how we listen and relate to music. In the olden days we used to sit down and listen to albums in our living rooms on systems carefully tuned for sound quality. Now we listen to music in any sequence we want and mostly in shufle over some crappy headphones delivering 128kb limited sound. But the iPod has empowered us by untethering our music and allowing for serendipitous access to our deep libraries and not what we just bought last week. The video iPod also legitimizes in one fell swoop the act of paying for video and not getting a physical copy of it.. Delivery of DRM protected video content from all those myriad of startups is now suddenly legitimate.

Let’s face it, watching a video at one quarter of the resolution of an analog NTSC broadcast on a two inch screen will not make a dent in the TV market. I suspect that once the novelty wears off, nobody will be buying the episodes of Lost to watch on the subway. They will be however downloading and watching the myriad of video blogs that are multipying like rabbits on iTunes. yes, most of them are crap, but a few will consolidate, morph and survive to become part of the gestalt. Video is also not like audio content. Podcasts are thriving because people can listen to them whenthey are otherwise occupied in their car, on the subway, at the gym, while jogging. This will be difficult to do with video content until they can figure out how to do virtual reality specs without the headache.

What changes is the models of distribution and how the industry makes money from video content. Video and DVD changed the movie industry in fundamental ways, it even changed what movies get made. Video delivery of tv shows has the same potential disruption potential, what will happen to syndication for example?