GigaOM Pro

Many are on vacation this week, and thus are staying at home and watching a lot of TV.   I certainly am.

Like most, I have many sources for video streaming on my “entertainment system,” including Netflix, iTunes, Hulu, Amazon, Fios on-demand, not to mention about a dozen lesser-known services.    To make matters worse, these services support a number of devices including Wii, Apple TV, Roku, my DVD player, my iPad and iPhone, and oh yeah, the TV itself which is Wi-Fi enabled.

So, if I want to watch “Taken 2,” I can watch it on a dozen or more services, on a dozen or more devices.   It’s the same damn movie.

Of course, these services are not integrated.  Thus, if I choose to use several of them they only know my usage on their service, not the combination of all of my entertainment consumption activities.

Perhaps this is more of a complaint without a solution at this point.   However, I think that eventually we need to figure out how we can leverage a single interface or service for access to streaming video content, as well as a single location for the storage of our video entertainment, and a single understanding of who we are and what we like so we can receive the proper recommendations.    Call me crazy.

For this to happen, clouds need to combine.   Standards need to be created.   Else, the world of streaming video entertainment will get even more complex.    Not sure how that’s possible.