Digital v Analog: It's so over — except in everyday life

As I gear up to create my treadmill workstation it occurs to me that entertainment — that is, enjoyment emanating from elsewhere as opposed to from within my brain case — is by far the most difficult and expensive thing to configure.

Consider:

1) I'm going to have to have both the cable guy and the satellite TV guy come to my house, drill holes in my living room wall, and snake in fat black cables connecting the media to my TV–to–be.

2) For my computer workstation I won't need a single wire: the laptop I'll be using (an Apple 15" PowerBook running OS X 10.3.9) works via Bluetooth anywhere in my house and around the property — the back yard, the side yard, the front yard, up the street — and the wireless keyboard and mouse also run on Bluetooth.

3) After the upcoming installations I will have a total of 9 wires running through 9 separate holes drilled through the walls of my house to support all the places where I might watch TV: upstairs there are 3 cable and 2 satellite TV holes/wires; downstairs there will be 2 of each. (3 + 2 + 2 + 2 = 9.)

4) Contrast this with 1 hole/wire for my cable modem yielding "All Access" to my high–speed wireless internet.

Like I said in the headline above, regardless of whether the government decrees, as a draft of new Senate legislation reported yesterday dictates, that analog TV in the U.S. will cease on April 7, 2009, from that point forward being broadcast only digitally, the whole media business is living in the Paleolithic era.

What do you want to bet that in the spring of 2009 one cable brings in all my TV to anywhere in the house — and out in the yard as well, if that's where I choose to watch?