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Like it?  Download it here.

Who will win this fight? In the arena we have the TV stations, the ISPs, telcos, content providers and hardware manufacturers.

My bet is on the hardware manufacturers. I can take a popular game console today, plug in a broadband line and I’m in business. No broadband infrastructure in your neighborhood? WiMAX will be right there. Content? From the WORLD wide web. What can be aggregated can be streamed.

Set top box manufacturing is where you should be. You can make high performance boxes that includes a really cool remote control with an iPod-ish click wheel, a built in 100GB memory to house your TV guide and video trailers that you can watch on a 2.5″ screen that also takes voice commands to pause streaming, change channels etc (price it high for the rich early adopters).

You can also make the cheapest disposable box (priced low for the mass market). Take that box to anyone with content to sell like a video store and go “Can I call you buddy?”. Sell your decoders directly to consumers. Work with retail chains, hypermarkets, Amway, temples and churches.

I can also see how this will develop in the Asian market. The illegal DVD cartel will finally band together and go broadband. Host all the latest blockbusters on a server in Tuvalo. Flick a switch whenever there’s trouble and stream from Iceland or Mongolia. No worries, the long arms of the law will get tired eventually. Their time is better spent investigating high-profiled sodomy cases.

Consumers will celebrate because they can now order dirt cheap movies as well as dirty movies without having to pay for it at a cashier and suffer the stares of other customers. Never mind that the visual may occasionally include a human head moving across the screen, audio interrupted by hacking cough in the background or abrupt endings because the cinema lights came on. The best thing is, there is no subscription fee.

Knock-off decoders will be widely available. Often sold from the back of a car at busy night markets and wet markets across the country or wherever there is a street lamp. The distribution network can put Starbucks to shame.

For consumers with finer tastes, the high-end boxes can be found at Harvey Nomans. After getting one, just get online and register for an account at Boreders.com (The Curve branch). They are now streaming movies and music from the DVDs and music CDs that once collected dust on the shelves. Huge selection. HD or Blue-Ray quality they are all ready to stream the instant your online payment is received.

But people don’t buy hardware, they buy content. Yes but to produce a show you need huge investments and a team of people to manage a team of people. If you buy content, you compete with the local TV stations. All these eat into profits.

What about videos streamed to a broadband portal? Seriously, I have a 52″ Plasma TV and a 22″ LCD monitor. Which one, do think I’ll have more fun watching a 2-hour movie on?

Can you see the future now? The people who will make all this happen are the hardware folks. So what are you waiting for?

Inspired by: The Roku

Also read: UNCLE HO WANTS YOU! from an old friend and fellow blogger TV Smith

You have a bucket of water and it’s leaking because your bucket has cracks and holes. Your challenge is to keep the water at minimum levels or you start losing money or the price of your company’s stocks start dropping. But you can’t seem to achieve much because you’re losing as much as you put in. What should you do?

1. Increase the pace you fill the bucket. Hire more people. It’s a tedious job, pay them double.
2. Distract attention from this bucket to another bucket. Buy time to find an excuse.
3. Blame something. Build a shelter above the bucket. Blame the sun for evaporating your water.
4. Get philosophical. All buckets have holes. Our bucket is no different from the other buckets and if you look closely, ours actually have less holes. We have a good bucket here that just needs a new coat of paint. Let’s rebrand.
5. None of the above, all of the above or what?

Do you really know what I need?
I often wonder why your marketers don’t read Seth Godin’s books to understand what drives customer loyalty. I am amazed that you still think loyalty marketing is ALL about an expensive software application to manage customer attrition and cross-sell. Or that a discount coupon for a free soda refill will hold my interest. Sadly, your short term offers will only get my short term loyalty.

Listen to what I need.
Why can’t you engage me in a dialog, listen and develop services that are meaningful and most of all, believable. Especially when your ads say, “In our continuing efforts to serve you better…” So I asked, “Are you serious?” to which you responded “Absolutely, this is all based on research with our customers.” Well ok, I’m a customer, did you ask me? Are you going to take the word of 10 people in a focus group and assume they represent me, my group of ladies who lunch, mothers against drunk drivers and so many others I’ve met who share my opinion of you. This makes no sense to me.

Who are you kidding with the ‘Exclusive Offer Just for You”?
A discount of $10 more than the other 6 companies offering $10 off on a $3000 item is not exclusive or meaningful. Neither are 2 free Grand Stand tickets to the Formula One event to thank me for my heavy broadband usage. If you know that I play online MMO games, you would know gamers don’t see sunlight or wish to be more than 3 feet away from the computer for an extended period of time. How about a hardware upgrade, a free high-end surge protector or be among the few who could download games before their commercial release and let me download it 5 times faster on a dedicated FTP server.  Help me save time with the mundane. Time is such a rare commodity these days. Offers that will save me time are even rarer. Well hey, here’s an exclusive offer you might want to think about.

I do care as your customer and it would be nice if the feeling is mutual.
Why don’t companies like yours include in your research customers who have called in to complain? Not all are bad customers with ridiculous demands. Come on, call me, listen to me, hear what I have to say because I care about the car, the computer, the TV, the root canal that I’ve paid you for. If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t waste my time calling you. Oh look, your ads did say you care. Show me please and I’ll be your brand’s biggest fan.

Is this the marketer who thinks he knows exactly what I want because after all he is also a customer? And he spends hours analyzing my behavior from CRM reports?  Excuse me, we may use the same service/product but you are not me and if you really want to know me, why don’t you just ask instead of second guessing from the numbers in your computer?

Yours truly,

A customer who is leaving you.

We will suddenly be able to see that we all have within us the ability to fly, then freeze motion in mid air, pans 360degrees around the opponent and lands a kick on his left cheek. The only thing different from the movie Matrix is that plugging a cable to the base of your neck is obsolete. All information is transferred through bluetooth signals.

Some people will find this very hard to accept. Especially for those who have grown up believing a power so great can only be in a being whose name cannot be used in vain. The revelation that all of us are ONE. A collective. Like the Borgs (but good Borgs that will say please and thank you) is blasphemy are the ones who may choose to end their lives for there must be a better place where people are dressed in white. lounge on a fluffy cloud and strum a harp.

But those who accept will have the power to turn matter into light and vanish into thin air. Thoughts become matter so just think of where you want to go and you’re there. Like a kid with his/her first bike, we roam out into the universe. Finally find the answer to the black hole which is really a space toilet that flushes space garbage like obsolete telecommunications satellites.

What we have become are what we currently know as aliens for lack of a better word. Like there wasn’t a word to describe alien abduction a long time ago so it was called immaculate conception?

We will vanish for awhile and leave the earth to heal itself from all the terrible things we have done to it. Then nature will jump start the engine called life and maybe 2 people will sacrifice their wheels and walk the earth again. They’ll get upset at why they have to do all the work and get paid apples so all the ‘ascended’ beings have to come back and do time as a mortal. Which led some to believe in reincarnation.

The wheel of life will turn again. And we’ve probably gone through this drama a hundred times like repeats on HBO.