"Cord cutting" is what the cable TV industry says when people stop their cable TV service and go exclusively to the internet to watch television shows. Watching on a laptop is a solitary experience, and it's not much more social watching on a desktop, and many of us have been caught dragging laptops over to our televisions and connecting them up to watch internet streamed shows on a larger screen.
There are several problems with this approach. First, you need a laptop that has a video output connection. Second, you need enough internet speed to stream the show (see trailer for Bandwidth Blindness to learn more about that problem).
So, with the iPad, and now, more importantly, Amazon's Kindle Fire, can you just park a tablet next to you TV, leave it connected to the TV, and power it up whenever you want to watch a show? With tablets, you need to make sure the hardware and software can support what you want to do. Does the tablet have a Netflix App? If it doesn't, can you use the tablet's browser to stream the show?
Secondly, does the table have a video output connection? Apparently, the Kindle Fire's USB port doesn't allow direct connection to a TV, whereas the BrilianTab has a HDMI connection that allows direct connection.
In the case of Amazon, they seem to be actively promoting Netflix for now, which is a good thing. Does their proprietary browser allow streaming of Hulu, Comedy Central, and other sites? Either way, if you can't connect it to a larger screen, your viewing will mostly be by yourself as opposed to with your family or a loved one.
So, it's unclear if the Kindle Fire will contribute at all to replacing "over the top boxes" used to stream cable TV (and hence contribute to the cord cutting phenomenon). One concern is speculation that Amazon's Kindle Soft web browser remotely tracks every single page you visit. Ah, so maybe the $199 price tag isn't so cheap anymore!
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