One Super Bowl commercial that Scott and I didn't address in our Crosstalk was this ad touting Vizio's new internet-enhanced HDTVs:
This has become an industry trend: multi-tasking technology. Your Wii will stream Netflix movies. Your Blu-ray will show your digital photos. Your TV will help you Tweet. It's a glorious new age.
The problem is that none of these devices yet do exactly what I need them to do. I have a laptop; I don't need my TV to surf the web for me. Web-surfing is what I like to do while I watch TV. No, what I need are TVs―or boxes attached to TVs―that will allow me to access all the video content available on the internet. And I mean all the content. My TiVo can stream Netflix, and thanks to some third-party apps I can send downloaded video to my TiVo too, but I can't watch Hulu on it yet, nor can I check out videos posted on ABC, Comedy Central, et cetera. I can stream YouTube via TiVo, but the library is curtailed, and the search function sucks.
For example, after watching the Temple Grandin biopic over the weekend, I decided to check out the Mick Jackson-directed docu-series Connections, all of which is available on the YouTube website. But via TiVo, I could only find the first two segments of the first episode. Beyond that, I couldn't tell what was what.
Perhaps the Vizio will do better with YouTube. But I doubt that it's going to allow unfettered access to internet video and audio, and that's what I'm still waiting for. Updating my Facebook status between episodes of Man Vs. Food isn't really for me.
How about you?