Hollywood's visionary outcast

As part of the weekly publication of an excerpt, interview or new material here from Darknet, I'll try something new this week. I'll publish the excerpt to Ourmedia rather than here on my blog.

"Hollywood's visionary outcast" (Ourmedia page | direct link to file on Internet Archive) is part of chapter 8, which is all about personal broadcasting (a term that also came up in my interview with the CEO of Sling Media on Engadget today).

Hollywood's visionary outcast is Warren Lieberfarb (above), the former head of Warner Home Video and the father of the DVD. Excerpt:

Lieberfarb is that rarest of birds: a longtime major player in Hollywood who has joined the tradition-smashing, innovation-addicted tech world. As a key consultant to the Microsoft team working on home entertainment technologies, he is putting together program ideas for an Internet that will become an increasing source of secure, full-motion, full-screen video procured from a wide range of new, independent voices.

"All this is going to bypass the broadcast and cable networks," he says. "The whole notion that you sit at a television at a designated time and you tune in to watch what they say you watch--it's over. It's going to take a while, but it's over."

Just as the Internet and the proliferation of low-cost digital tools have reshaped other media, the new technologies will transform our notion of television. A few years from now, when you say "television," it may no longer be synonymous with the box in your living room because you will also be watching it on your handheld mobile device or tablet PC. "What's on TV" may no longer be synonymous with network and cable programming because you'll be able to access video feeds from a wide range of new content providers. When you do watch television in your living room, you'll still wield a remote control, but you'll be watching it on a standalone digital box or one that's hooked up to a media-center device or wirelessly connected to a PC, giving you the power to pull niche content from a gushing fire hose of sources.

"People are going to discover that content doesn't have to be produced by the major media companies," Lieberfarb says. ...