IP Democracy: Execs: Place-Shifting Not as Disruptive as You Think

Place-shifting is a phenomenon that promises to add another layer of complexity to the quickly changing digital media world. But, according to a group of top executives who spoke today at an audio event hosted by Emerging Media Dynamics and IP Media Monitor, place-shifting technology is not as disruptive to the media world as it has been portrayed.

“A lot of the discussion has placed it as a disruptive technology,” Jason Krikorian, co-founder of Sling Media said. But, all place-shifting really does is give consumers control at the end of a very well-defined media distribution chain.

“For decades, there has been this well-defined value chain,” Krikorian said, leading from the content producer all the way down to the set-top box. “The Slingbox merely enables the consumer to take over at that point.”

However, traditional media producers shouldn’t fear giving consumers this control — they have much to benefit from place-shifting, Krikorian maintained. “Just because consumers are empowered does not mean the industry loses…the companies that survive are those who embrace the technology.”

Joe Costello, founder of Orb Networks, said that “magical things” start to happen when “the command and control” is uncoupled from the digital architecture, which is the brainstorm Orb stumbled upon when trying to solve what initially was an educational application designed for interactive TV.

“TV is a playlist that is fixed in time and space,” Costello said. But “people want to build their own channels” that breaks through this fixed model.

Place-shifting, however, is still not that easy to use, according to Josh Danovitz, General Manager of Tivo, and it needs to become a whole lot more user friendly before it reaches the next level. “Today the user has to crawl across a bit of broken glass to get their content place-shfited,” he said.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on May 24, 2006 3:23 PM to IP Democracy