The Changing Face of TV at my House

It wasn't so long ago that if you wanted to watch TV, you looked up a show in the TV Guide and made a plan to be in front of the TV at the appointed time to watch the show. More recently that's all changed and if my house is indicative of a trend, the old way of watching TV is going the way of the large console radios of the 1940s.

• My son got a video iPod for the holidays (as I wrote about in The Shiny New iPod's Adventures in Vista Land). Since then, he has been using his allowance to buy TV shows from the iTunes store and downloading some free video podcasts. iTunes shows cost $1.99 per episode and run over 200 MB. It takes about 4-5 minutes to download a show on my cable connection. He then is content to watch it on a 3.5 inch screen.
• My wife recently discovered that you can watch TV shows online and has gotten into the USA  Network lineup.
• My daughter picked up a full season of How I Met Your Mother on DVD and watches on her PC.
• I like to use TiVo to record shows and watch them at my leisure.

So suddenly the line between the TV and the PC becomes increasingly blurred and the actual broadcast time is rendered meaningless. It makes me wonder how this affects the overall way that networks measure viewing and how accurate these are as we head in 2008. If Nielsen Ratings are meant to measure how many people are sitting in front of their TVs at 8:30 pm watching  a given show, it's missing the folks who are watching at their convenience at some other time.

None of this even takes into consideration, the idea of hooking up your TV, your DVR, your PC and your iTunes library to your house network, an idea that has been around for a while, but one I think few people are actually doing beyond early adopters. When the hardware/software/media/cable companies begin to simplify this process, the fusion of the PC and the TV will be complete, but for now, at least at my house, the landscape is shifting as we speak.

Comments

[Brian]

I currently watch TV on my computer more than on my flat screen. I spent a lot of time on my computer and looking at a quality reception is a must. What software do I use to get the quality I need? Try Super TV 4 PC.
http://www.supertv4pc.com

[christian louboutin]

Don't know the author wrote this article in the first place is what, but I'd agree with your views