Catching up on some reading last night, I got a chance to re-read a NYTimes piece by Saul Hansell from this past Tuesday rather sensationally entitled "How Comcast Controls Sony's Internet TV Plans." When I scanned it on Tuesday before posting a link to it from VideoNuze, I had one of those "This makes absolutely no sense, I need to read this again closer" reactions. Now, upon re-reading it, I'm having one of those "This really makes no sense" reactions.

The piece - which initially concerns Sony's efforts to bring broadband video to TVs, but then veers off into a somewhat unrelated discussion of the company's negotiations with the cable industry's tru2Way and CableCard technologies - quotes Sony Electronics U.S. president Stan Glasgow as saying: "We've worked with the cable companies for five years to develop a system that would allow us and the rest of the television manufacturers to have alternative content on the TV."

Why would Sony devote five years to such an undertaking? Because, again in Mr. Glasgow's words, "If you have to ask a consumer to switch sources constantly between cable and another source, it is not the normal consumer experience...There has to be a more integrated way to have cable and Internet content on the same user interface."

I'm all for making things easy on the consumer, but let's get this right: Sony devoted five years to negotiating with the cable industry so it could avoid viewers having to push the "Source" or "Input" button on their remote controls to toggle to broadband-delivered content via Sony devices?

Is it just me, or does it appear that Sony completely misjudged both its potential buyers' technical aptitude and also their strong motivation to consume broadband-delivered video on their TVs?

While you consider those questions, let's also go back to basics: why is once-mighty Sony even bothering to integrate its Internet-to-the-TV products with the cable industry in the first place? The whole point of these kinds of Internet-to-the-TV devices is to disrupt the cable (and satellite and telco) industry's hold on consumer viewing time and spending for in-home video programming. Countless companies (Netflix, Hulu, Microsoft/Xbox, Apple/AppleTV, Vudu, Netgear, Sezmi, 2Wire, Blockbuster, LG, Samsung, Neuros, etc.) get this fundamental point and are implicitly or explicitly driving toward this goal each day.

That Sony doesn't seem to understand this suggests that the correct title of Saul's piece really should have been "Comcast Benefits by Exploiting Sony's Misguided Internet TV Plans."

What's profoundly different about the broadband era is that neither Comcast nor any other incumbent controls how consumers get video on their TVs, just as neither the NYTimes nor any other single news provider has ever controlled how we've gotten our news. If would-be "over-the-top" competitors don't get this basic idea - and instead waste precious time and resources on perpetuating the traditional world order - then shame on them.

What do you think? Post a comment now.