HellaFrank

The idea of the convergence of the Internet and TV is not a new one. In fact, it’s old – really old. Even though we have had high-speed Internet for years, nice, big, shiny flat screens mounted on our walls, and a massive amount of online video sites with high-resolution content, very little has been done to get that video onto your home TV. That’s disappointing.

Yes, there are expensive set top boxes and add-ons to televisions that can get some of that content onto your TV, but that’s not the solution. Why has this convergence not happened? I don’t know, but in a week filled with inaugural hope and progress, let’s forget about the past and look into the future – because something happened in the beginning of 2009 that hopefully signified change …

At this year’s CES, LG unveiled televisions that allowed an Internet connection to be plugged directly into the TV. This was coupled with a partnership announcement with Netflix that lets people to watch streaming movies via that connection. A great first step, and proof-of-concept, with a widely adopted service like Netflix.

What’s next? Yahoo also announced their “Widget Channel” with Intel, which makes it easier for people to get Internet content through their TV. They are going to be announcing consumer electronics partners soon. Maybe this will be the service that takes off, maybe it won’t, but it’s getting us closer to an iPhone-like approach to television.

Imagine your TV is like an iPhone and you can download applications, using your remote, from YouTube, Hulu, broadcast networks and even publishers like The New York Times. A simple click on each one brings up their online video content in an easy-to-use user-interface, and it can all be watched on demand. Sounds simple doesn’t it? This seems like the most logical and lucrative approach to Internet and TV convergence. The content is already there, it’s just a matter of building a simple application to search and access it.

The difficulty would most likely come in getting TV manufacturers to build affordable Internet-ready TVs and enabling a platform that can host these applications. But if big media companies make a push in this direction, you would think the manufacturers would be quick to follow.

Internet and TV convergence seems like a lofty goal, but is it? The pieces of the puzzle are there and we’re not talking about anything too complex from a technology perspective. The number of people who watch television shows on their computers has tripled over the past few years according to Genevieve Bell at Intel (see this WSJ story), but I’d have to imagine that these viewers would abandon their small laptop screen in a hurry if they could watch the same content on a TV. I know I would.

Over the past couple of months, I have developed a liking… no… an addiction to a musician (I think that’s what he is) who calls himself Girl Talk. It’s really hard to describe what he does, but Corey Lewis from the Stranger Dance blog sums it up nicely:

I don’t really know what exactly Girl Talk does. Mashup artist? No. DJ? Not really. I do know, however, that it’s great stuff. What he does isn’t really all that special, it’s more how he does it – serious, heavy-duty mixing using a dizzying amount and variety of songs, and doing it really, really well.

There you go. His MySpace page has some music if you want to really hear what he does – I recommend “Still Here” as a starter.

Anyways, back to the original reason for this post. Girl Talk’s album is a complex mix of more than 250 recognizable songs from the past and present, none of which are original work by Mr. Girl Talk himself. With the way the RIAA has been treating unlawful use of their music, you would think they’d be all over this guy, but so far they aren’t, and they shouldn’t be.

Since I started listening to Girl Talk, who offers a “pay what you want” pricing of his album, I have rediscovered songs I have forgotten about, picked out specific beats or guitar riffs I liked, and ultimately figured out what the songs were and bought them. I can safely say that I’ve bought somewhere around five to seven songs because of Girl Talk.

Girl Talk is a marketing machine, doing something that music labels haven’t figured out. His album is an hour-long advertisement for hundreds of songs delivered in ten to twenty second long bits that are mixed together to bring out the best in each one.

This man is a goldmine for the record industry, and hopefully they’ll let him stick around long enough to keep it up. I know I need a new album from him, I think I’ve listened to it every day on my walk to and from work for the past two months.

And I highly recommend going to his concert if you ever have a chance. Probably one of the best I’ve ever been to.