So, I was reading this article in businessweek about how fancy the satelite dish and cable tv providers are getting. Are you kidding me?

The major breakthrough technologies are

1. "smart codes" that make it harder to steal satelite
2. Pairing dish for TV with DSL for internet to put internet on your TV
3. assemble their own shows from snippets of different programs
4. change camera angles for sports events
5. restart shows that have already begun

And then it leaves off with the prediction "The war for viewers is about to escalate."

Let's break those down...in order:

1. because so many people are stealing satelite signals now - PLUS - if it doesn't add value for the customer, why are they investing in it? If I were in charge of strategy I'd be making sure that my content and network were compelling enough to users that they don't run away as IPTV and iTunes shows on demand and the likes take over.
2. because WebTV was such a rip-roaring success
3. I'm sure that will be easy to drive with the remote control and if they propose using a mouse and keyboard - why not use one of the hundreds of existing video editor programs on a real computer with real video content, from somewhere like Google Video?
4. this actually will be nice, you get credit for this. But is it easier to control with the remote or a keyboard/mouse - the PC solution wins again.
5. Ok - that's a great breakthrough people haven't seen the likes of since...Tivo. A few years ago. Except that the whole broadcast paradigm is dying and "starting over" is unnecessary when you select the movie and have a slider to control exactly where you are in the playback.