The reasons I feel the cable companies are important to the use of Drives in TV application is that they can drive volume and acceptance rates much faster than any other company I could think of.
1) Cable companies drive what happens with set top boxes. Most everyone I know gets their set top box from their cable company. If the cable companies decided everyone needed a new set top box with a Drive inside, the acceptance rate would be very fast and very huge.
2) If cable operators offered services that took advantage of Drives, the acceptance and volume would again be very fast and huge. Tivo and TVReplay may have wonderful products but they don't have the muscle that the cable operators have. To be honest I am not terribly familiar with either of these companies. I would be somewhat surprised to hear that neither of these two are counting on the cable operators to help drive their sales. I would readily pay more money per month to my cable company to get some of the wonderful applications we have been discussing (TV "pausing", more elaborate pay per view, etc.), but if I have to buy separate hardware from a different company like Tivo, I would probably be slower to adopt the technology.
As for the major network companies, I guess I see them as less and less relevant to the technology of TV and TV delivery. They are much more content companies to me now. But since you mention them, I assume they are not going to be too excited about technology that will make it easier to skip the commercials.
As for Quantum stock, I think all of this TV talk is exciting, but I am not counting on it in the short term. Even without the TV applications, Quantum is very solid and I have already made my "bet". I also intend to continue to pick up shares at these depressed prices as my wallet will allow. |
