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Ins and Outs: Is buyshifting the future of television? (part 1)
This week we're also happy to announce another new column. Written by Jeremy Toeman, Ins and Outs picks up where The Clicker left off with insights and opinions on entertainment technology: The advent of the VCR in the 70s first introduced the concept of timeshifting, which allowed the viewer to record programming, and thus shift their television viewing schedule away from broadcast dictates. But that was never the VCR's primary function, as manually programming recordings proved far too vexing for most home theater geeks. In the late 90s, another huge development in timeshifting came along: TiVo and other DVRs didn't just allow viewers watch their favorite shows on their schedule, they made it easy, and automatic. This, of course, forever changed the way millions watch television. In 2004 Sling Media (a company I used to work for) introduced the Slingbox, which lets people watch their television anywhere they please; this is now known as placeshifting.Over the past few years, another trend has emerged, where viewers are buying TV shows on-demand and á la carte from digital resellers like iTunes, or on plain old DVDs. And these consumers are buying a lot of them. At the time of writing, seven of the top 25 DVDs on Amazon are TV shows, and one in five DVDs rented on Netflix is a TV show. Furthermore, many cable and satellite companies have teamed up with the networks to provide on-demand episodes available as early as the day following the original live broadcast -- that is, if their customers aren't among those who've bought over 50 million TV shows through iTunes. And with recent moves by major players such as CBS and NBC, as well as technology startups like Brightcove and Joost, it's clear that buying television episodes á la carte is no mere novelty -- nor is it going away. So perhaps it's time we gave this phenomena a name: buyshifting. We'll use that to refer to broadcast TV programming that you don't just watch -- you buy or rent. But where does buyshifting stand today? And is it really the future of television?
