You probably hate cable just as much as I hate cable, right? There’s like five shows on this planet that I want to watch, but I have to wait around for them to air or record them to my DVR, and I can’t take them with me unless I want to be naughty and download them illegally. Getting video wherever, whenever you want it should be a staple of the 21st century but cable companies aren’t making that easy because they refuse to embrace new technologies like Apple’s AirPlay service.
In a telling interview, Time Warner Cable’s CEO, Glenn Britt, admitted he doesn’t know what the heck AirPlay is, and thinks it’s too hard to get video from your computer to play on your TV.
“I’m not sure I know what AirPlay is,” he said, though he noted that he was an enthusiastic Apple customer. “Today we want to be on every screen. Today it’s a little bit clunky to get programming from the Internet onto the TV — not so hard to get it on your iPad. What’s hard is the plumbing, what wires do you connect, what device do you use. So the current Apple TV, the little thing, the hockey puck, really doesn’t do anything to help enable you to get Internet material on your TV.”
Someone really needs to show Time Warner Apple’s magical black Apple TV box that can stream video from a computer to a television without any wires. Perhaps Glenn is just playing dead though. AirPlay makes it easy to push pirated video from the web onto a television which might lead some people to drop their cable subscriptions, which would be bad business for Time Warner and Glenn Britt’s employment status.
AirPlay gives consumers a direct link to content providers by circumventing the need of cable providers so they don’t have to deal with all those wires and “plumbing.” While it is already widely used on iOS devices, later this summer Apple will be putting AirPlay in OS X Mountain Lion which will make the technology even more popular with consumers who want more flexibility with their video content.
Source: NYT
