Last weekend I wanted to watch a movie. Not the latest in
theatres but a little older one. I have an Apple IPad, Google TV (Logitech device)
and Laptop running on Windows and of course a TV. Without thinking too much I went ahead and rented the movie from Amazon Instant Video service. Here starts the trouble.
For some reason Google TV decided not connect to the Wi-Fi
network. I tried fiddling (too many Wi-Fi networks around) with it but it was
too much pain, so I decided not to pursue further. I downloaded the Amazon app on IPad and I
could see my rental waiting. I play the movie and it streams fine on the 10
inch table. I wanted to watch it on a big screen, so I pull out HDMI cable from
Google TV and connect to IPad. And guess what I only hear sound on the TV, no
Video. I tried plugging in and plugging out couple of times but no luck.
However I could see/hear the video on tablet just fine. I did a Google search
and it seems Amazon App on IPad doesn’t allow the video to be played on TV. You
can just watch the video on tablet but not on TV. It was Amazon’s choice to not
support it. Common guys, seriously.
Finally I turn to the good old laptop. But to my dismay, laptop doesn’t have an HDMI port. Well, that sucks. So I was left with gadgets which don’t allow me to watch a darn movie. I dropped everything muddled around with Google TV and got it working. I spent 30 mins to watch a 90 min movie. Better option would have been to pick up the DVD from local store, could have been much faster. (In this technologically advance cloud era I thought DVD players were extinct, so never really bought one)
This means, I have 4 large gadget makers or rather Ecosystems builders (Google, Apple, Amazon and Windows) who doesn’t want to co-operate with each other and make consumers life miserable. So much for technology! If you own everything from Google Ecosystem things might work fine, if you have all Apple it must be great. But 1 device from Google and other from Apple doesn’t go very well. Lesson learnt! (Learnt few more lessons after upgrading to IOS 6 , no YouTube, no Google Maps)
On an aftermath, I realized things are not very different in telecom world. One vendor makes it as difficult as possible for other vendor to inter-op. Proprietary AVPs, out of standard IEs, driving standards in favor of their implementations is very common, leaving telecom operator in a tragedy. It’s all about power and control. Not too different Roman Empire!
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3 comments:
The last paragraph strikes a chord! Great Article!
In this Competitive world, Companies are trying hard to woo customers on various segments, remember if you own a gadget , you are directly or indirectly related to the same vendor's product. Its a money making era, monopoly seems to win here. Got to be little intelligent in choosing things :-)
Nice Article Bro. Lets go to movie next weekend :-)
Some things never change, you wouldn't have bought a betamax video to play in a VHS format video player back in the old days, but nowadays we do expect them all to communicate. Never ceases to surprise me the amount of people buying iphones yet all their computer equipment is PC based, losing masses of advantages by being able to link, sync and expand there operation by using alongside other technologies.
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