sneets

What kind of arrogant news article is this...? If you think you don't have readers from outside the US, don't even bother posting the LG story. Or was it meant to specifically upset non-US readers?

I really love Engadget for its up-to-date-coverage, but that kind of arrogance doesn't suit you well, guys...

I wish it was the case. The problem here in Europe is that every country has its own regulations and laws, and every media content owner has different marketing strategies in each country. So it's almost impossible to bring things like pay-per-view-IPTV on the market without making seperate contracts with the dependencies in all the countries one by one. The US have a huge advantage there, because it's only one country you have to deal with as a content provider.

Best example is Apple and the iTunes Store. It took ages for them to bring the music store to europe back then. Recently, it took ages again to bring their pay-per-view tv content to us. And I don't even know if HD Movies are accessble here already.

Maybe europe might have more of those sophisticated service-providers trying to be bring cool new hardware and technologies to their subscribers, but the overly complicated laws are a gigantic hurdle to be taken every time.

Here in Germany I can't even watch most of the free tv-channels over the internet, because they have only licensed their material for broadcast in germany, and putting it on the web would mean that you COULD watch it anywhere (yeah, you can install IP-based filtering, but explain that to the guy making decisions up there..). So there we have the law-trap again.

I think as always the grass seems to be greener on the other side ;-)