Now You Can Watch Your TV on…Your TV

At the 2009 OnScreen Media Summit, Cox Communications Senior Veep of Programming Bob Wilson said that his company is going to focus on "TV Anytime" as opposed to "TV Everywhere" (according to Video Business).  That is to say Cox has more faith in the viability of time-shifting than place-shifting.  The recent news of every online video service under the sun suddenly popping up on devices other than PCs seems to bear him out.

Last week, we got word that Vudu, already available on some LG HDTVs, would also be available on their LG BD390 Blu-ray player.  That same week, Samsung announced that Blockbuster On Demand would stream to some of their TVs, Blu-ray players and integrated home theater systems.  The very next day Samsung announced that they would also throw Amazon Video on Demand into the mix, making it available as a widget on some of their televisions.

But wait, there’s more…

Just a few days later Netflix and Best Buy announced that Netflix streaming would be available on two Insignia Blu-ray players.  Not to mention Sony’s upcoming Netflix-enabled Blu-ray deck.

With the exception of Vudu, all of these services were initially online-only, watch-on-your-PC propositions (although, interestingly, all of them were also from companies that were, originally, hard-copy DVD merchants – and still are).  While these deals don’t in any way suggest an abandonment of their original model, they certainly embrace another, ironically old school, channel for their content.  It’s as if we went the long way round the Internet to arrive back in the living room.

In his speech, Wilson backed up his company’s stance by asserting that 98 percent of all viewing still takes place on television sets.  If these deals bear fruit, that statistic won’t be changing any time soon.