Something I think interesting with the iTV story is: as the video on the web wave turns into a tsunami, there has been a lot of talk about how it (web video) is a new and different 'art' form. There was going to be (and I think is developing) a different sort of thing that play well on a computer screen in a little window...3 hours of Lord of the Rings in a 320 X 240 window? No thanks. Lonelygirl15 at 320 X 240 for 3 minutes? Looks good. But conversely, lonelygirl, or karate-chopping monkeys, will not look appropriate on my big ole Sony TV screen. And not just because of resolution...it's because, conceptually, the two things (LOTR and lonleygilr) are completely different. Shot and framed differently for one thing. Prodution values don't matter at 320 X 240 (or thereabouts) Intimacy value does, and interestingly, conceptual value matters. If it's a good concept, that fits the constraints of the medium of web video, it renders production values obsolete. So...if everything video gets ported to the iTV, will people start to conflate web video with say, Desperate Housewives and say "gee, this web video looks like crap...why does that persons head fill up the whole screen?"
And the video market turns back into a market that can only be served by big media companies that can afford the glossy production, and the intimacy of the new web video is lost, and that whole new paradigm of web-only video goes away, as iTV, rather than leveling the playing field, stacks it more in favor of big money, as the computer turns into just a delivery mechanism in a chain, as opposed to a different viewing experience.