On The Internet, Nobody Knows You're A TV

There is something ridiculous going on in the IPTV space: the silly differentiation  between using the internet on a TV and the internet on your PC.  Hulu blocks users who visit their site from "TV" browsers.  I, for one, just hooked my PC to my TV and was done with it.  There are already about a million people hooking up their PCs to TVs and that number is going to keep growing.

Sure, a Roku is $59, but a net-top is about $150.   You can save the difference in monthly fees alone in about a year just from the value being created, and that differentiation is only going to get smaller and smaller.  In the meantime, I hope more and more people will start finding work-arounds.  It's not hard to pretend to be a browser that you're not on the internet.

And, most importantly, I hope Google will take the gloves off.  The company should help users spoof standard PC browsers and get their IPTV and be done with this silliness.

Time for Google to take the gloves off.  Picture creative commons Templeton Photo