Streaming Technology

The other day Abby and I where watching TV and she mentioned that she saw a new trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2. Having and Apple TV 2, I decided to stream the trailer from my iPhone.

Not that this is anything new to me, but it did get me thinking about the underlying technology and what it could be harnessed for in the future. Currently, I am using Airvideo on my sever and iPhone to stream the many movies that I have converted over from my collection. One of the coolest things Apple did, was to release a AirPlay API to outside developers. AirVideo takes advantage of this.

The other side of the coin of thought, was the ESPN watch app. After playing with the AirVideo AirPlay feature, I wondered if the ESPN app would give me the same joy. To my disappointment, this was not the case.

It was not that I was surprised, because it was clear to me that they would not offer that. This is where I realized the potential of the technology.

Time Warner has their TV app for the iPad and has the agreement with ESPN to do do the Watch ESPN app. The former only works if it is connected to their Road Runner Internet, and the latter needs you to authorize it through the Time Warner web site.

Here was the hope for the future. The cable companies could provide all television channels as they do now through these devices without the need of cable boxes. This first option probably would not happen easily if at all. Option number two, was to have the individual networks provide their channels through their own apps, like ESPN is currently doing, cutting out the cable company almost entirely.

What we would then see, is AirPlay like technology built into all new TVs like they are building in Netflix and Cinemanow apps for instant streaming.

It is clearly evident that we have the capabilities of having live programming available at all times and no matter where we are. What we need to see, is the cable companys or networks make this happen by getting past all the licensing that prevents it. A great example is the Time Warner iPad app. When it was first released, it had a handful of channels at this release, but only after a week or two, they had to pull some of these do to the licensing issues between them and the networks. Some of these stations were your normal OTA channels like ABC and NBC. Solve either via the cable companies or by the networks and this will happen.

Update 11/8/11: iOS5 and AppleTV2 4.3 have brought new enhancements to video streaming. They now allow you to stream your entire iPad2 display to the AppleTV and any web video from safari on any iOS device. The last big application that I use is the NHL Gamecenter, which can AirPlay to the AppleTV, to watch live NHL games. The AppleTV update also received a NHL Gamecenter application. All in all, great updates that show how TV can and possibly will be accessed in the future.