I bought a wireless mouse and keyboard on Jellyfish the other day. The purpose was two-fold:

1. I wanted to try out the Jellyfish “Smack” auction-type-thing that was featured on TechCrunch. Sounded like an interesting idea, and I think best way to grok a service is to try it, so I did.
2. I wanted a wireless mouse and keyboard so that I could hook my laptop up to my TV and play videos, like YouTube, on my TV from the couch.

I believe that the future of everyone’s living room will have a computer (no cable box, video game system, DVD player, stereo). So, I thought I’d try to jump forward in my own living room before the appropriate software and web services have been built to support such a vision.

The keyboard/mouse from the couch setup works pretty well. My TV is not big enough to write emails from my couch, but I can certainly watch videos and play games in a manor more suited to leisure than sitting at my desk.

In light of my living room experiment, I resonated with the current meme started by the BBC about the dent that YouTube is making into traditional TV.

In the BBC article Ricky Gervais was quoted as saying that online video like YouTube would never replace traditional TV, but TV will come to embrace online video. Ricky says:

You can’t knock up an episode of The Sopranos or 24 on a little handheld digital camera.

I think Ricky underestimates the power of online video. It’s true that prosumers cannot produce content like The Sopranos on their digital camcorders but they can certainly produce content equally as entertaining to certain niche audiences as The Sopranos. If the content wasn’t equally as entertaining, then why are people migrating away from TV viewing and towards online video viewing?

As I write this post, the my TV is on with the Green Bay/Seattle game in the background, so I’m clearly not evangelizing for the end of traditional television. However, I am eager for the future of entertainment and the changes in media in which it will be delivered.