Lords of Content & Delivery, have Mercy on me, a viewer

Or

St. Amazon, hear my prayer

I want to watch what I want, when I want, on the device(s) I want.  For a resident of the U.S., this seems like something that goes right along with individual freedoms, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

I can now listen to what I want, when I want, on the device(s) I want - thanks to DRM free music that can be legally purchased through Amazon and other sites (which is why I call them St. Amazon).  I can even pay a slightly higher fee on iTunes for the same opportunity on some music.  The recording industry is not happy about this, even though studies have shown that it actually increases music sales.

But you can’t do that with television.

I can’t purchase just a few cable channels that I want.  I have to purchase “packages” that contain 80% of what I don’t want in order to get what I do want.  What is free over the air does not contain the content from the cable channels that I want.

I can record to a VCR (remember those?), a DVR, or to my home PC (via Microsoft’s Media Center).  But I’m kind of stuck viewing on those devices only - unless I want to go through some rather arcane and time consuming steps to move that content to other devices, or just to other TV’s.  By the way, this recording and viewing later was fought against by the content producers until they were handed a final and stunning defeat.  Much like the recording industry, they aren’t happy about our choices.

I can only watch the great new high definition shows on approved devices (my cable company DVR, and a limited number on my PC) and sometimes those even have time limits before they self-destruct and lots of anti-copying restrictions.  If I want to watch on other devices, I have to purchase copies of them for those devices only, or go through some arcane and time-consuming steps again to try to move them around to other devices, and probably do some illegal circumventing of the Digital Rights Management (DRM) that comes along with the content.

So what do I want?  What is the content of my prayer?

I want to purchase (legally purchase!) a single show (or season of shows), or movies that are digitally delivered to me that I can watch on any device that supports the format.  I also want these shows to be free of DRM so that if a new whiz-bang-must-have-device comes out, I can move the shows over to it with a minimum of problems.  I want to keep the shows as long as I want, to watch whenever I want, as often as I want.

Right now I can lock myself into the Apple DRM world and purchase most of the content I want from Apple and watch it on an iPod and even dock that iPod with my TVs to move the content around.  This is most of the way there.  The only problem is being locked into the iPod ecosystem.

Yes, lots of questions arise, and maybe in the future I’ll add my own two cents in to the issues.  But for now, I just offer my prayer and hope the Lords of Content and Delivery hear and consider it.