Dear BBC: We don’t want your set top box. We want your content where we want it, not where you want it.

Of course everyone wants to take Television to the IP realm, but it seems like we’re about to get a rash of set-top boxes, and frankly, that really irks me.

I guess it makes sense that television networks want to control their content from end to end, but it makes very little sense to have a bazillion ugly boxes plastered across a TV stand. First it’s the Apple TV, then Boxee has teamed up to give us a set top box, and now rumours are swirling about the BBC receiving approval for its own set top box to deliver media content.

Chalk one up to “just don’t get it”

Techcrunch posted an article today about some missteps made by startups this year, and how they can be avoided in the future. It seems like the Joomla misstep can be directly applied to these set top boxes. Mike Butcher writes,

“Joost was born in a time when everything thought TV would end up porting wholesale to the Internet. The trouble was, Joost was another download in a sea of downloads. It seems amazing, but the browser – and even HD video playing inside a browser – won the day once more. No-one needed this P2P video platform and few were bothered about the rather dull content”.

On that note: Dear Television studios, we don’t need a set-top box for your crappy television station. We don’t want to pay for them, and we’re certainly not going to be lining up to buy five or six of these crappy devices just so we can watch your crappy content.

Signed, Josh

PS.

So here’s the deal. Either you get together and license your music to one box, create a set top box together, or put your content on the web so that we can get the shows any way we want. Outside of that, we won’t be happy, and you’ll just be wasting R&D funds on some hardware that’s going to flop.

I’ll willingly pay Apple, or another third party for your content, but I won’t pay each of you individually. It’s too much of a hassle, and frankly, I don’t watch that much television to begin with. If you want my dollar, or anyone else’s money, you’re going to have to make this as easy as possible. A bunch of set top boxes isn’t going to work. We don’t need another format war, and we certainly don’t want to have to choose between NBC, CBS, Fox, Showtime, BBC, or any other competitor.  We just want everything in one place, heck, we’re even willing to take ads to get it.

Thanks for listening.