The review by Techcrunch describes an innovative method to achive what is essentially not a unique application. I’m not trying to lecture about building a better mousetrap, as clearly PhotoShow has taken aim at its market.

Rather, the “photos on TV” application has been done before, though probably not to this level of fit-and-finish. I’m personally working on a similar type of end-game (”application”) where real, actual Flickr (et alia) and media sharing, collaboration and social sites exist on your TV, via your set top box. And many others are chronosynchronously doing the same.

Essentially, having a forced or artificial delineation between “local” media (on your camera, your USB stick/drive, computer, or on your PVR) and “hyperlocal” or “global” assets will become less and less meaningful for consumers. They will just identify the media as “mine”, “yours”, “someone’s” or “ours”, and the locale of the file or asset will be meaningless.

Consumers of media via, but not necessarily on, their computer already make this leap-of-disambiguation. Does the actual logical or physical location of the file matter? As long as a URI can be obtained, a .torrent linked to or stored, or a stream link shared, people shuffle media at hyper-speeds amongst devices, boxes and networks.

Making it easier, or crafting an automagic leap-of-faith and suspension of disbelief, will uniquely stamp your service. Media assets will flow, be issued, be ingested, be traded or become available via some type of guidance or choice. No-one wants push technology to wake itself up from its 1996-era slumber and start spamming your Set-Top-Box. (Conversely/obliquely, nor do people probably appreciate that Caller-ID on your TV is better achieved via a SIP stack in the TV/STB).

But via choice, demand, learned behaviour or inference, the media may just appear or become linked into your other assets. In an interface that makes sense for televisions. I don’t want my photo library actually inside my TV, but a representation or subset of it would be nice. And a squillion iPhoto-esque manipulations of the photo won’t help me show my family my newborn child; the right tweaks, via the remote rocker button, will.