He’s at it again. One of the few people to really cash in on the first internet boom is back on the road telling everyone else they’ve missed the party:
“The Internet is dead. It’s had its time; say goodbye,” said Cuban, who helped launched HDNet in 2001 and remains its chairman. He bolstered his claim by saying the Internet and popular sites such as YouTube can’t provide high-definition programming like cable and can’t offer the interactivity that cable programmers can.”
Look, I think Cuban is a smart guy, but he just isn’t making sense. What does HD have to do with social networking? Does Twitter need HD? And if HD is so important to people why is YouTube, the single worst resolution video site on the planet, still the most successful? Blip is far better to watch but that doesn’t seem to sway most people.
Is the internet going to be the epicenter for entertaining video? Maybe not. Maybe that will migrate to my HD TV but I think it is going to be more about the internet going HD than TV/Cable going internet.
(link)
Mark Cuban has always been viewed as a bit of a renegade, an image he seems pretty committed to maintaining and growing at all costs. Sometimes he comes off sounding like an idiot (i.e. “The Internet’s dead. It’s over.”) but he often gets ahead of the curve to positive results.
One example is his desire to explore different ways of releasing features, including putting them on TV and then into a theater, as his doing with his latest film, Flawless. (via TechDirt)
“Flawless is actually debuting on Cuban’s HDNet TV channel two days before the theatrical release. Slowly, but surely, perhaps theater owners will recognize that they can’t rely on artificial scarcity to get people into the seats. They’ll have to start innovating and offering a better experience. Perhaps it’s worth noting that Cuban is also a theater owner… and appears to actually be working hard on making the theater experience better and experimenting with unique business models. If he, as a theater owner, isn’t scared of “competing” against home theaters, why are other theater owners so afraid?”
Personally, I have found my theater-going experiences to be a series of diminishing returns. It is expensive, I’m bombarded from the moment I set foot in the theater to a stream of unwanted advertising, the food selections stink and cost too much and the audience tends to be less than attentive at all times.
For theaters to survive they need to look at what makes us want to leave home and partake in a social experience. How can they make that experience as positive and possible?
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March 28, 2008 9:18 pm | 
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