A New Bottle for the TV Watching Genie…

Apparently, Philips is getting into the business of building time machines…beautiful boxes that can transport us back to the days of television before the remote control.

CNET’s Candice Lombardi recently highlighted Philip’s new television that would force viewers to watch the commercials that go with the programming, or opt out of the commercials by paying a fee.

Ingenius…if it were the 1950s and they were competing with Zenith’s revolutionary “Lazy Bones” technology that would put the dial in the viewer’s hand.

While we already see plenty of such models working in the online space, I have a hard time believing that consumers will be pleased with this new technology. After experiencing an age of newfound freedoms, the industries are realizing that the revenues to create content have to come from somewhere. The only problem is, it’s pretty difficult to implement a system that would limit the consumer experience after they’ve had the whole enchilada for too long already.

If history tells us anything, cracks will be developed, people will find a way around the system and mediocre advertising will still go unnoticed. Or of course, people will just go buy any other TV on the market that doesn’t come with archaic technology or determines what you can and can’t do.

You can build a new bottle for the TV watching genie, but at the end of the day, the TV watching genie will decide whether or not to crawl on in.