Startups Bring Digital Living Room into Focus

By Tom Dunlap

We're still a few years away from the true digital living room, but some recent announcements show how far we've come from the clunky efforts at PC-TV integration of the late 90s.  Startups like ZillionTV, Roku, and Hulu are experimenting with different content and delivery options, suggesting the dream is getting closer to reality.

It's also nice to see at least one area of the technology landscape thriving.

So far, I still think it's a pain to download a movie to your PC, and then watch it, either on your PC or TV. And, call me old fashioned, but I still enjoy getting that red Netflix envelope in the mail. Heck, I've even been known to visit a brick-and-mortar video rental store, if for no other reason than to see what new body piercings the staff is sporting, and to spin this wheel they have to see if I get free popcorn. Ultimately, I think the digital living room future will be a mix of something like the Comcast OnDemand model, and trusty old DVDS delivered by snail mail.

Troy Wolverton of the San Jose Mercury News filed an excellent report on all the new digital living room developments. Some of the highlights Troy wrote about include:

Silicon Valley startup Roku announced it is teaming up with e-commerce giant Amazon.com to allow owners of its digital video player to rent or buy movies and TV shows from Amazon. The 40,000 on-demand videos from Amazon are in addition to the 12,000 videos from Netflix that Roku video player owners could already choose from.

Valley startup ZillionTV unveiled a service and device that it will introduce later this year. The company, which is backed by five of the six biggest Hollywood studios, plans to offer a free set-top box, to be distributed by Internet service providers, through which consumers will be able to watch about 15,000 videos on-demand.

Time Warner revealed a plan dubbed "TV Anywhere" that would allow cable and satellite TV subscribers to watch on computers or other Internet-connected devices all of the programming they get on their televisions.

Check out Troy's full story here. It's a space worth, uh, watching.