If you equate money and brains, Mark Cuban should be a pretty smart guy. But then he writes this:
Rather than Hulu sending its video directly across the net to your PC, and let the end user figure out how to watch and distribute from there, it should send it to a box hosted by your cable/telco and possibly even satellite provider, which then transcodes the video and places it on the existing TV distribution system and sends it across a channel branded with your name and the name of the file to your TV.
(Please ignore the suggestion that Internet video needs “saving”).
Video is just another data stream, and there’s absolutely no reason why this data stream needs or deserves a specialized distribution infrastructure. Historically, it’s had a specialized infrastructure because analog video distribution pre-dated the Internet. That arrangement will continue for a while, because of entrenched vested interests in doing things the “old way”.
When the core infrastructure and last-mile bandwidth became sufficiently fast, the Internet happily absorbed the task of audio (MP3) distribution. Accordingly, CD sales declined and on-line sales of audio content rose (and iTunes is now the #1 music retailer).
As bandwidths continue to increase, the exact same thing is happening right now with standard definition (SD) video, and will happen soon with high definition video.