The
Coming Television Revolution
by: Terry Mitchell
The revolution is just getting started and will begin to
make its mark this year. By 2010, it will begin to take
off. By 2025, it will be the standard for all TV
viewing. It's called Internet Protocol Television, or
IPTV for short. IPTV works with a set-top box connected
to any broadband interface and to a TV. It will allow
users to choose among thousands (and eventually hundreds
of thousands) of hours of programming, including movies,
sports, classic TV, etc., and download their selections
from the internet to the hard drive of the set-top box.
Initially, set-top box hard drives will be able to store
up to 300 hours of programming at a time, but capacity
will expand as the technology becomes more refined.
Also, download times will become shorter and shorter as
broadband connection speeds become faster and faster.
Eventually, a two-hour movie will be fully downloadable
in a couple of minutes. Once the programs are downloaded
to the hard drive, they can be viewed on the connected
TV at any time via a DVR-type interface provided by the
set-top box.
Besides the convenience
of an all video-on-demand (VOD) environment, IPTV will
provide a much wider range of programming than
broadcast, cable, and satellite TV, or even major video
chains, could ever provide. Because the programming is
available from the internet, it will be almost
completely unlimited and unconstrained. Programming from
all over the world will be available along with every
imaginable genre of niche programming. Also, previously
unreleased independent films that have been sitting on
shelves for years due to the lack of a distribution
source will suddenly become available to the masses via
IPTV. Films that previously could not be made at all
will become a reality and be available on the IPTV
services. Long forgotten films and TV shows will have
new life breathed into them by IPTV. To top it all off,
much of this programming will be eventually be available
in high definition (HDTV)!
Most IPTV platforms will
be divided into "channels", but not the same kind of
channels that we have grown accustomed to with
traditional TV services. In this case, a "channel" is
defined as a division of an IPTV service by individual
content provider. Each content provider carried by a
given IPTV platform will have its own guidelines for
delivering programming on its channel. Some will provide
their content for free to everyone who owns a given IPTV
product. Some will be subscription based, i.e.,
everything on their channels will be available for a
monthly or annual subscription. Others will be all
pay-per-view. Still others will provide a combination of
all of the above.
Several entrants into
this market have either already debuted or plan to debut
sometime this year. Among those are Akimbo (www.akimbo.com),
DAVETV (www.dave.tv), TimeShifTV (www.timeshiftv.com),
and VCinema (www.vcinema.com).
Please see their respective websites for more details,
as each one will offer a slightly different variation of
IPTV technology. In addition, a joint venture between
Tivo (www.tivo.com)
and NetFlix (www.netflix.com)
will be starting up later this year. Tivo plans to
eventually make the entire Netflix DVD library available
to its customers on an on-demand basis via a broadband
connection to a Tivo box and a TV. Other potential IPTV
contenders will be announcing their intentions over the
next year or two. One of these nascent IPTV services
headquartered near my home has already started placing
"help wanted" ads in my local newspaper.
Within the next 20
years, all the fuss over broadcast TV indecency will
become irrelevant, as there will be very little other
than news and live sporting events on broadcast TV. The
major networks will shift most of their entertainment
programs to IPTV to avoid all the broadcast content
restrictions currently being enforced by the FCC.
Eventually, broadcast TV will cease to exist. Cable and
satellite services as we know them will also become
extinct. Yes, there will still be cable and satellite
platforms, but they, along with DSL and wireless
internet services, will exist merely as conduits for
bringing broadband internet into homes and offices.
There won't be any more cable and satellite TV, per se.
The now 60-year-old paradigm of television schedules in
which programs air at specific times on specific days of
the week will pretty much be a thing of the past.
Everything, except what's left of broadcast TV, will be
exclusively available on demand via an IPTV platform.
These developments in no
way mean that all TV programming will become more
risqué. While there will be plenty of risqué programming
available to those who want it, there will an almost
unlimited supply of family and religious programs
available. With a veritable smorgasbord of entertainment
options at your fingertips, there will be something
available for all tastes. IPTV may not turn out to be a
TV utopia, but it's at least going to come close that
ideal.
