Making Technology Work

I overheard part of a conversation at work this week that reflected some of my own experiences, and seemed like a suitable blogging topic. The conversation went something like this:

Person 1: So have you purchased any Video On Demand content on your SA8000 at home yet?

Person 2: Well, we've tried a bunch of times. Usually there's an error, and then we'll try again. I guess we've actually been successful once or twice, out of about a dozen tries.

Person 1: And then you worry about getting billed, even when it didn't work, right?

Person 2: Oh, for sure...

As I mentioned above, that pretty much mirrors the results Vicki and I have had. The one or two times we've managed to get it to work have been for free content, so I haven't yet successfully purchased any VOD content. But when you consider how much more technologically-savvy and willing to try new stuff out the employees in our company are compared to the average cable subscriber, it's a wonder Video On Demand has managed to catch on at all. Our company knows how complex VOD is, and how difficult it is to make it work reliably, so I'm not diminishing the challenge involved.

And yet. This really makes me think that cable companies, and their development partners, need to start focusing a little more on improving the stability of their VOD products before expanding the content or offering nifty new bells and whistles. It needs to be something that, once you've made the decision to spend a few dollars on a movie rental, it just works. To draw a comparison: if changing channels was as prone to failure as starting a VOD stream always seems to be, there'd still only be 13 channels! (12 really, but who can forget Pink Floyd's immortal "I've got 13 channels of shit on the TV to choose from!" line from The Wall?)

Anyway, the irony of this isn't lost of me, as I move back into a Feature Lead role at work that just happens to involve Video On Demand. Not that I'll have anything to do with the technology, but still.