[ image courtesy of maury m. / Flickr ]The BBC reports that UK television viewing on televisions has decreased due to folks watching television on their computers and mobile devices. This flies in the face of what is, by all accounts, a global stampede on the large, widescreen LCD televisions.
Once again we are witness to the importance people place upon getting the content they desire at their command.
When the mp3 audio format rose to popularity, audiophiles decried it as a regression in the heirarchy of high-fidelity. They were correct. However, the consumers of mp3s saw the sacrifice in quality a fair trade for portability and by extension, convenience. This occurred in an environment where not one but two separate formats were developed to supercede the ubiquitous CDs’ audio quality.
The same situation exists right now in the video realm. As companies are jockeying to put their high-fidelity successors to DVD [Blu-Ray and HD DVD] in consumers’ hands, the younger generation is more and more satisfied to view things on a two-inch screen of a mobile phone or iPod.
The market has revealed that there is room for both. The chasm between the viewing experiences widens. On one hand, there is better-than-cinema promises of widescreen HDTV, Blu-Ray, & HD DVD, and on the other, 2″ and smaller mobile phones and iPods & the low-fidelity of video sharing sites like YouTube.
Know your audience.