21 Sep 2006 1621H

AT&T Yahoo DSL and MobiTV

So, a week or two ago, there was this news story about how AT&T was going to offer its co-branded Yahoo DSL customers the opportunity to access cable TV content via broadband through the MobiTV online service. And they said there would be all these channels and that new ones would be added as it went on. And it would cost $20 a month.

I’ve tried CNN.com’s Pipeline service which has okay stuff, although it’s not the same as CNN or CNN Headline News, which is what I really wanted, and certainly, given my belief that convergence is overdue and that there’s all this dark fiber out there waiting to be lit up with high bandwidth content, I first welcomed the news from AT&T with some enthusiasm. And then I signed up last night for the service, which requires nothing less than IE6 on WinXP using the Flash 8 platform for delivery.

It, uh. . . okay, first of all, let me just say as a technical feat, really great integration of broadcast media through the broadband channel, streamed without a break on my Airport network here to my IBM T42p, seamless. Great work, guys.

But what about the content, the content, I hear you saying.

Yeah. Um. Well. . . the interface itself for the service is pretty good. They did a some good usability things, like labeling icons on mouseover, so that the label is contextual . . . I’m not sure if the TV control metaphors are really necessary here, up/down for switching channels, and it would really have been useful to have some contextual labelling on the channel icons, like a mouseover effect, which would have been consistent given the design vernacular, to describe what the content of some of these channels are . . .

The content. Yes. Just getting to that.

Well. That’s the part that needs work the most. I don’t think it’s ready for primetime yet. I applaud their inclusion of a LGBT programming channel, which is really great, if it were actually live. There are about four or five music video channels, Bloomberg news, Weather Channel, a few Fox channels, no Food Network, which was promised… but the content itself is not exactly compelling stuff. All this choice and yet nothing to watch, so to speak. And then for $20, really, don’t you really want the same as you could get through Dish or Comcast or whomever?

I really can’t understand the orientation of the media companies that can’t see broadband as another channel to exploit along with theatres, CDs, DVDs, rentals, so on. They’re losing all this revenue already through the P2P route, and yet can’t pull the trigger on the agreements to provide this content via the computer. (No wonder our former colleague Bruce Forest felt the need to blow something up.)

Folks, the sun is already rather high in the sky on the day of convergence. Can’t really say this enough. It’s time to give in already. There’s no need to dip your foot in the pool in this way. It’s time to make the leap.

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