Weekly rewind
Caavo review: Over at Fast Company, I wrote about Caavo, a $400 box that combines up to eight TV devices into a single HDMI input, and offers a universal remote and interface to control them all. The device is sophisticated, and lets you do some neat things that technically shouldn’t be possible, like controlling an Apple TV with Alexa voice commands, but it also has numerous flaws. For instance, it introduces 60 milliseconds of input lag, which makes gaming unbearable, and it doesn’t support HDR video.
Caavo isn’t planning to sell more than 5,000 of these devices, but it’s hoping that it can learn from consumers through the limited launch and evolve its products over time. The ultimate goal is to serve as a neutral party in the living room, breaking down the barriers between ecosystems that tech giants seem so keen on building. It’s a noble idea, at least.
Netflix’s “good enough” problem: I enjoyed reading this piece about Netflix by New York Times TV critic James Poniewozik, who casts the service as a sort of alternative universe of television. As Poniewozik sees it, Netflix is building a vast business by figuring out what people like through algorithms, then spending massive amounts of money to create new approximations of those things.
The concern is that Netflix ends up being good enough to serve every concievable taste, but seldom creates material that transforms what those tastes are in the first place. Essentially, Netflix is giving everyone their own hyper-targeted version of broadcast network TV, pushing comfort and familiarity instead of boundaries. We can only hope that as Netflix expands, it gives itself room to experiment beyond what its algorithms dictate.
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