Yahoo turning TVs into computers

On the eve of the big Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show, Yahoo showed off its new widgets that television makers such as Sony, Toshiba and Samsung are embedding into their new models.  These widgets allow the TV viewer to click to popular sites such as Youtube, MySpace, Twitter, Amazon and others via their remotes.

What will this mean to the future of broadcast media?  Will we need 24 hour cable news?  Sure, its nice to have real-time broadcasting for big stories but all the time? If people can get attractive, real-time information without the blather of talking heads and advertising will we need so much broadcast media?  Or am I just showing my bias as someone who generally loathes television?

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Netflix: No More Used DVDs for Sale

The way of floppy discs?

Selling them to wholesalers?  Increasingly the company is moving away from dvds having made deals to stream with Tivo and Samsung recently as well as LG Electronics and Roku.  See press release here.

It will be interesting to see how this pans out for Netflix.  They have no choice but to move in this direction but what made them successful was quick rentals without late charges through the mail.  They had an idea and a distribution efficiency that put them ahead.  Now what do they have?  An extensive library and a good website as well as branding and a customer list but if as the technology improves, well that be enough?  Aren’t they just a middleman that is easily circumvented?