• The Washington Post, Friday, January 16, 2009 11:30 AM

The Washington Post's Rob Pegoraro says that this year's Macworld and Consumer Electronics Shows were yet more evidence that TV has a long way to go before consumers are tuning into shows over the Web. The Web currently abounds with sources of video: iTunes Store purchases and rentals, Amazon's on-demand video service, network TV Web sites, third-party video providers like Hulu and YouTube, etc. "Depending on your tastes, these options could let you drop cable or satellite service entirely," Pegoraro says. "But the only way to bring all this content to your TV is to plug a laptop or desktop into your TV."

Manufacturers have been trying to build solutions to this problem for years, but evidence from the two recent technology galas indicates that they are still years away from reaching their goal. At Macworld, Apple failed to announce an update to Apple TV, which still only really works well for Apple's iTunes Store and Google's YouTube, Pegoraro says. At CES, LG, Samsung, Sony and Vizio all announced that they would ship sets with Yahoo software that plays video from a handful of sites, while allowing developers at other sites to write their own "widgets" that would be viewable on these TVs.

However, unlike a Web browser, these Web-connected TVs can't play video from any site, even though most sites us Adobe Flash software to show clips. "I understand manufacturers not wanting to build in a full-fledged Web browser, but will users resent having Web video spoon-fed to them in such limited portions?" Pegoraro asks. Moreover, at a cost of reduced compatibility, almost all Web video downloads and many streaming services employ digital rights management software to stop users from copying movies and TV shows from these sites.

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