Tech Jealousy and Korea

Thursday 23 March 2006 - Filed under Internet

Meet my mother in law. She’s here on sabbatical from Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, Korea. She’s been hanging out in Boston, enjoying a few less daily responsibilities away from Professorship. Now that she actually has spare time, we’ve been driving into Allston to go to the Korean video store to rent video tapes of Korean dramas that are broadcast twice a week in Korea. It’s all the rage in Asia.

Driving in is a pain in the butt. $1.50 a tape for 2 hours of television is also not that fantastic. She mentions we can just download the episodes if we want. Whaaa? Sure, I’ll get to that sometime here Real Soon Now.

So, she goes onto the SBS web site (the channel she watches), signs up for online viewing (VOD – Video on Demand), drops 5,000 Won ($5) into her account, and starts watching the show right there on the computer.

No need for me to walk her through it — it’s simple and safe and she can figure it out herself. Why can’t I have this? Sure, I have a TiVo, but it gets almost less cool each day.

The shows can be streamed at 100Kbps or 300Kbps bit rates. You have three hours from first click to watch them before having to pay again. The shows are 50 cents per episode for the 100K/300K feeds. They also have a crazy 900Kbps super-high-quality version, but that’s $1.

They play full screen in the browser on my TV anytime. They put up the episodes almost as they are aired, no waiting. The quality is pretty damned good for TV. And they have pretty much all their shows available. Old and new. Most stations have this, so I can watch pretty much any show on any channel, without a television. Click, click, click… done. Again, why can’t I have this?

Is there DRM? I have no idea. Can I download them for later viewing? Don’t think so — but I haven’t checked. Why not? Because it costs 50 cents for a TV show and you can just click and be done with it. Sigh.

Combine that with 20Mbps+ broadband to the home, 26,000+ internet cafes, it is a seriously wired culture that makes things so easy for the end user.

Jealous? I am.

2006-03-23  »  mark