TV's future is here, but needs work

David Pogue in Thursday's New York Times:

A company called Akimbo has a tantalizing idea. What if you had a TiVo-like set-top box, complete with a hard drive that could hold 200 hours of video - but instead of recording live broadcasts, you could tap into an enormous library of shows, stored on the Internet, and watch them whenever you liked? ...

It would be like the video-swapping made possible today by software like BitTorrent, but the service would be legal.

Unfortunately, Akimbo can offer only what the networks and cable channels are willing to contribute. And these days, just hearing the phrase "Internet downloads" generally sends television executives into paranoid fits. ...

Which is why television executives are exactly the wrong group of people to approach if you're thinking of programming Internet video. Grassroots video will rise up alongside Hollywood's fare -- but we're not there yet. Not even close. We're still in the early days.