One of the enduring frustrations of would-be TV innovators, famously voiced by Steve Jobs back in 2010, has been the inability to integrate live, linear and on-demand content into a single, easy-to-navigate platform. “The problem with innovation in the TV industry is the go to market strategy,” the late Apple CEO told the AllThingsD conference that year. “The TV industry has a subsidized model that gives everyone a set top box for free. So no one wants to buy a box..The only way that’s going to change is if you tear up the set-top box, give it a new UI, and get it in front of consumers in a way they’re going to want it.”

As discussed here in previous posts, the Federal Communications Commission is currently considering a number of steps to promote greater integration, from redefining who qualifies as a multichannel video programming distributor to mandating downloadable security for set-top boxes, but none of those steps — or even all of those steps together — would solve all the problems or resolve all of the commercial and technical conflicts that make seamless integration so challenging today, and in any case could be years down the road.

There is one corner of the media business. however, where the integration of live, linear and on-demand content is actually happening today: games.

Over the weekend, the hugely popular site for live-streaming game play, Twitch, announced a number of new features during its first annual TwitchCon in San Francisco, including the ability to upload videos directly to the Twitch platform. Up to now, Twitch channel owners have needed to stream content first and then incorporate the archived stream into their channel as on-demand content. Now, users will be able to upload video directly to the platform without having to stream it first. Read More »