Analysts: Blah blah Internet TV boxes are blah blah a dead end

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Biggs is the editor of TechCrunch Gadgets. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at john@techcrunch.com. → Learn More

Standalone set-top boxes like the Boxee Box and the Roku Player are good because they add Internet content to heretofore unconnected TVs. That’s a good thing. However, analysts at the Diffusion Group believe that the devices will eventually peter out to be replaced by Blu-Ray devices.

I don’t quite understand their thinking here. Perhaps they think the devices will eventually send over Internet content? Or maybe they think Internet content won’t be popular?

Due to the existence of new standards like UPnP and DLNA that exist in multiple consumer electronics devices, TDG estimates that digital media adaptors, which sought to bring content stored on user PCs and other devices to their TVs, will become virtually nonexistent by 2014.

I don’t agree. Unless manufacturers make DLNA and UPnP easy to use for my grandma, there’s absolutely no way anything other than a set-top box will handle network content for the vast majority of users.

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