Will You Access Facebook On Your TV Sets Whilst Your Family Is Around?
(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
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There was a time when people used to call it an ‘idiot box‘ and then came the time during the Gulf War when they were glued to their couch watching CNN news to get live updates from the war zone for the very first time. Now is a slightly different story with all the terrorism hoo-hah all around which makes shootouts looks so common that a dinner is never complete without a bloodshed. The irony lies within the fact that entertainment is so much in our heads, we let go all the bathetic blunders just to watch the mess around us. Nevertheless, this news is about social networking coming to your TV sets with Logic Eastern’s latest innovation.
Some of the most visited websites used by Indians are Gmail, YouTube and Facebook which can now be accessed on cable TV. Noida-based manufacturer of cable infrastructure, Logic Eastern claims to be the first one to do so among other Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) companies and the Direct-to-Home (DTH) operators. But I guess there are many TV advertisements from TATA Sky and Dish TV who allow access to the internet within their cable subscriptions, right?
Logic Eastern servers shall download Gmail, YouTube and Facebook pages on behalf of their users and sends them to their screens. ICICI being the investor has bought 20% stake in the company, helps Logic Eastern monitise these services to their subscribers. Special set top boxes have been already rolled out with special remote controls to surf the internet, while wi-fi keyboards are in the pipeline.
Their so called “enhanced service” instead of naming it just another value added service, aims at targeting those users who don’t have a PC at home. But here’s what a market report on TV sets in 2008 states, “Out of the 99.6 million TV homes, a mere 2.6 million homes have two TV sets”. What we are trying to say here is, most of the TV sets are watched with the family together. Only the homes who have personal TV sets in individual rooms shall benefit from this service. Or would you like to share your personal social networking stuff with your family? Highly doubtful!
I personally wouldn’t want anyone of them to know what networking actually means. Imagine, you get a nature’s call and your mongrel step sister gets hold of that special remote control where she can access your mail box and Facebook profile that you forgot to signout from.. Spare me the horror! Your secrets won’t be enigmatic anymore! So choose these services over other DTH services and get your set top boxes for Rs 500, and your privacy could soon be at stake. What do you think?
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Hi Abhishek
THanks for your concern regarding the privacy issues. Our team at LE takes the privacy matters very seriously and is trying our best to get an indepth understanding of the privacy concerns in various residential an business settings. So for example, one of things we have done is to put a password before you can access your email. Please advise if you have some further ideas to take care of this situation.
Also … we believe that this service would be very helpful to elderly people who have their young ones abroad or working in other cities. Plus there are students and an economic strata who find it difficult to pay for Internet every month.
You see the problem is much bigger … more and more youngsters are moving to PC for even watching TV because it gives them control over what they want to watch and at what time. There is a section of TV industry that is worried that the so called “cord cutting” (disconnecting cable TV and sticking to INternet) would, in future, endanger the TV industry to a point where the entertainment content and TV advertising supply chains would be under significant pressure. Therefore TV would need to quickly become more responsive and “on demand” and more aligned with today’s lifestyle. What LE is doing … is the first step towards it.