When it comes to TV, I’m not fussy. I just want access to all the channels and shows I pay my cable company a princely sum for each month, whenever and wherever I want to watch them, on all the gizmos I own. Is that too much to ask?
Apparently so. Lots of us have moved on from the quaint era when TV watching was something you did in front of, well, a TV. Sure, we still do that some of the time. But we are spending fewer hours in front of the tube and more of them with laptops, tablets, phones, and other devices that are perfectly capable of receiving and displaying video. And we’d like our favorite shows to follow along.
I don’t mean to come off as an ungrateful wretch. The online situation for TV lovers is infinitely better than it was a few years ago, and given that the modern era of tablets began just thirteen months ago with the iPad’s release, Hollywood isn’t hopelessly behind the curve in figuring it out. It’s in the interest of everyone who makes, distributes, and watches TV that this stuff gets resolved — and I look forward to the day when “TV everywhere” is the standard state of affairs rather than an elusive, tantalizing fantasy.
McCracken blogs about personal technology at Technologizer, which he founded in 2008 after nearly two decades as a tech journalist; on Twitter, he’s @harrymccracken. His column, also called Technologizer, appears every Thursday on TIME.com.
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