I don’t watch much television – so little of it is compelling to me and, even if it was, I don’t have much time to spend watching it anyway. It’s not a matter of my lacking access to good video content. At home I have a high definition ready LCD tv, a freeview tuner with a massive hard drive, a hotbird satellite tuner and dish, a virgin cable tuner, and a USB freeview dongle that turns my mac into a recorder and can easily export home ripped video content to my video ipod. I also have a cameraphone that can record video, a mini-dv camera and several digital stills cameras that can shoot video.
Whilst I realise that the internet, and in particular peer to peer file sharing, is almost undoubtedly the future distribution network for video content, I just don’t get why so many knowledgeable people and organisations are jumping on the online video bandwagon.
Jeff Jarvis, who has been dabbling in video recently himself, seems mightily impressed with 18 Doughty Street and by Jeff Rayports presentation at the Online Publishers Association, where Rayport suggested that “Video is the new lingua franca of online content”.
Is all online content going to be video soon? I certainly hope not. Sure, a video can complement other types of content, but for the transmission of most messages and ideas, I still prefer text and still images and I’d rather my favourite journalists and bloggers spend their time creating that content rather than trying to figure out how to move into video.