Why Is The Cable Company Selling TV?

[ad_1]

This article is part of the On Tech newsletter. Here is a collection past columns.

Walmart is starting to sell television sets. Comcast’s software prowess, a cable TV provider and owner of the Universal movie studio and TV networks including NBC.

These Comcast TVs may never be bestsellers. But they’re interesting because of what they represent: the corporate land grab that will be the starting point for everything that flows through Americans’ homes.

Comcast, Amazon, Roku, and many other companies dream of being able to watch “Monday Night Football,” gawk at Netflix’s latest costume drama and sit down to a YouTube science video via one of their televisions or devices.

Selling equipment is not an end, but a means to an end. Their goal is to make money by selling ads or getting people to watch “Halloween” on a streaming service that pays for the promotion. Comcast wants to use TV sets to launch its Peacock streaming service.

One of the highest stakes battles in corporate America right now. There is power and money to be made for companies that can convince us to use their hardware as a starting point for our virtual leisure time.

There’s nothing necessarily weird or wrong with that. The struggle to become Americans’ favorite for all entertainment has been raging in the media and technology for decades.

Beginning in the 1990s, Bill Gates wanted people to use Microsoft technology For watching TV shows and powering their personal computers. Beginning in the 20th century, video boxes from Comcast or other cable providers were the gateway to TV and other home entertainment. Comcast in the 21st century has a similar idea. Old television in a new guise.

I don’t blame you if you just want to watch “Squid Game” on Netflix and not think too much about the men in suits trying to win the behind-the-scenes battle for your TV screen. But it may be worth considering what we gain and lose from this flow.

Amazon Fire TV encourages people to buy movies online from Amazon and has promotions that stand out from other streaming apps that pay Amazon to catch your eye. Sometimes, Roku streaming devices do not include certain entertainment apps, including: YouTube TV and HBO Max. Due to financial disputes between companies.

Entertainment programmers like Netflix and Disney are looking to scale themselves up to have more power than distributors like Amazon, Roku and Comcast.

This new world of streaming is amazing (there’s so much to watch!), but it’s more frustrating than it should be because there’s so much money at stake and companies want to take control. This highlights one quirk of the internet age: it has both spayed old-world gatekeepers like traditional cable TV providers, big-box stores, and newspapers, and created powerful new ones.

Amazon has given us product options that we never had in physical stores, but the company also has a tremendous influence on which products get noticed. Almost anyone can create a smartphone app, but Apple, Google, and other app store owners have largely which ones we can download and under what conditions we can check. Anyone can post dance videos or ideas online, but Facebook or TikTok computer systems determine how many people see them.

This is what drives me crazy about new digital worlds. We have so many options at our fingertips, but there are power brokers who have enormous influence to guide what we actually see, do or buy.

Tip of the Week

Oooh, you’re in for a treat. Brian X ChenA consumer technology columnist for The New York Times brings us a few technical tricks to save valuable time and brainpower:

1) “Siri, add a meeting to my calendar.” Virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa are the basis of many jokes, as they often misunderstand what we say. But after using Siri on iPhones for ten years, I’ve found it’s the best way to add new events to my digital calendar. Saying “Hey Siri, add a doctor’s appointment on Thursday at 3 PM” takes just seconds.

2nd) Password managers: Using complex, unique passwords for our online accounts is an absolute must, and I don’t know how I would live without a password manager that automatically generates them for me and stores them in a secure vault protected by a master password. My favourite 1Password. I also use the app to save credit card numbers to speed up online shopping.

3) Shopping alerts: I hate buying expensive items at full price, but who has time to repeatedly check a retailer’s website for the best prices? I trust price tracking tools such as camel camel camel To send me email alerts when prices drop for products I watch on Amazon. For used items, I use the Craigslist app to set up email alerts to notify me immediately when an item I’m looking for is listed by a seller. (I’m currently looking for an outdoor dining table.)

4) Scheduled emails: Email is probably the hardest technology in my life. I am being bombarded with messages. With scheduled emails, typing messages when it’s convenient for me, and having them delivered at a time I choose, I take back some control. Gmail’s email scheduling tool has been a blessing.

  • Another union driver in an Amazon warehouse: Hourly workers in Staten Island – some complained of ill-treatment by Amazon – said they plan to form a union, my colleagues Karen Weise and Coral Murphy Marcos report. Labor unions have tried and failed to organize hourly workers at Amazon before, and the company is itching to keep them out.

  • Companies want you to buy a new smartphone as often as possible. The marketing step is that you can buy a new phone for the price of just one cup of coffee per day. Brian X. Chen looks at actual cost of a new phone.

  • There are TikTok trends forced the Americans to buy cooking pans, dusters and vacuum cleaners. But that pales in comparison to the online home shopping phenomenon in China. This week, an online star Sold $1.9 billion worth of goods in one day According to Bloomberg News, from its live stream on the Chinese e-commerce site Taobao.

In his regular TikTok videos, Jonathan Graziano is playing games with his girlfriend. 13-year-old boxer named Noodle: A “boneless” day for noodles (get out of bed) or a “boneless” day (forget it)? “Think of the noodle as a four-legged mood ring”says my colleague Jesus Jiménez.

We want to hear from you. Tell us what you think of this newsletter and what else you would like us to discover. You can contact us at. ontech@nytimes.com.

If you have not yet received this newsletter in your inbox, please register here. You can also read History in technology columns.

[ad_2]

Source link

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *