Life on the Small Screen

There is an interesting shift going on in tech-dom. It’s the attack of the small video screens. They project photos, movies, TV, training, news, weather, communication and more. I haven’t given it much thought, but then I noticed something one day. All the little screens populating my studio.

Taking a gander, I noticed the iPod with video, the PSP, the Gameboy Advanced, the Nano, and the Photo iPod. Even my new cell phone that I got recently does what Verizon calls V-Cast (though it’s not available in my area) where you can watch news and some other shorts. On top of that I realized the small screens on the digital camera’s and DV cam. I started thinking to myself, “what the check is going on?”

Maybe what’s going on is the mobile revolution. People are on the go. We don’t want to be tethered to our widescreen TV’s (though we may love them so). We enjoy on-demand content. We get information and entertainment when and wherever we want. Better still the video content that we like does not have to disappear with that one viewing of the episode. My iPod with video stores on the device itself, 150 hours of video. But the reality is that I can obviously save much more on the laptop or desktop. That means, sync-up and go which matches most of our lifestyle.

What makes this change seamless is that hardware manufacturers and content providers are teaming up like never before. They are making huge changes and takes steps which to them have always seen as risky (or at least not profitable).

For the sake of the argument, take a look at the iTunes Music Store (ITMS to us geeks). Now you can still call it the ITMS, but for some it means the iTunes Movie Store. Why? Well in their first few weeks of operation Apple sold 3 million videos. That’s just staggering. They didn’t even have that much content. 4 TV shows, which where split evenly between children and adults. On the other side that did have several thousand music videos. The publics reaction shocked content providers who quickly signed deals. It didn’t take NBC-Universal years to figure it out, it took them weeks.

While we’re talking about it, I want to address this bonus for not only TV Networks, but Musical Artist as well because this change is extremely important. Musicians for years have been getting killed on making music videos. This was simply considered a form a marketing and promotion, which musicians basically had to pay for out of their own pockets(in the form of an advance). Now they can finally earn some of that money back. There is some great music video as art out there. “Hurt” by Johnny Cash is only one example of a video that I would classify as a work of art. For Networks it’s a great opportunity to make some of that money back on some of the massive salaries that some actors/actresses get paid. There is a third benefactor in all of this and that’s us. With paid content comes no commercials. You get your content in an unbroken stream. It’s time efficient. It’s total win/win, all the way around.

Take notice. Look around your own stuff and let us know if you see what we are seeing. I made some observations of people that I work with (and no they are not all geeks). They “ALL” have small screens and really seem to enjoy it. One interesting behavior some of them have is going to events and taking pictures with their cell phones and emailing them around to friends. These images don’t just go to their friends computer, but to the persons cell phone. Wow. Instead of “can you hear me now” it’s “hey, can you see what I’m seeing right now?” In some instances it’s even recorded video.

So where does this leave us in our digital life? I think in a pretty good position. Just please don’t try to drive and watch your morning news on your cell phone. That could be a bummer. I’m not sure I can enjoy video on the cell phone. I certainly wouldn’t want to see the screen get smaller than that of the iPod with video (2.5 inches). As I mentioned before, look around and take notice of the small screen.


// Jaye Morris