Saturday 4 June 2011

The future of tv

Well, I think the way we traditionally see cable companies and satellite tv providers days are ending.  Cable companies have already made a majority of the switch from analog to digital which not only heralds better quality for the end user, but also opens up the competition for any company that can send 1's and 0's down the pipeline.  And some very big players are very, very interested.

The biggest game changer is that companies such as netflix, google, Microsoft, Nintendo, and various others I'm sure I'm forgetting no longer have to have their own connections out to your house, and they already have their set top boxes in your home in the form of a pc, gaming console or a tablet/smartphone. 

The challenges that stand in the way are licencing for content, where the isp gets a cut of the money, the actual capabilities of the pipeline and lastly, getting users used to the idea of what you want, when you want tv.  

As far as the licencing goes, it's a cumbersome, restrictive process that has the hand of private corporations and governments in it.  I do think it's a system that requires significant upgrading before we can even think of tackling the other three issues.  The only thing I can think that may work for the broadcaster is that it'd be based per show and different cost levels for how many users you want to so to rebroadcast a popular show to 0-1000 people, you pay $2 per subscriber, 1001-5000 $1.90  a subscriber and so on, also with a ratings system, sort if like the iTunes store but for broadcasters.

In this model ISP's would have significant more bandwith to churn out.  I'm guessing that user based billing will become more common if/when the content is available just from the middleware provider.  That's already happening for a lot of ISP's in Canada and America, I'm assuming the trend will continue.

As far as the capabilities of the pipeline go it's very dependent on the ISP, there are large swaths of rural populations still out there that'll have to rely on satellite, but I'm guessing the cost of running new cable wouldn't make it very feasible or easy.  Outside of that another issue is that analog cable is quite a simple beast, digital services, while very flexible, require a concert of devices all communicating harmoniously to make the whole thing run.  As more companies get involved though it's as good as the traditional tv services in some serving territories and will probably also continue to expand.

As far as the last issue of getting users switched over, well, Hulu has shown us the way and youtube is slated to have pay per view services in the near future.  No matter what companies fight it out, or who are the winners and losers, in the end, the customer would benefit greatly since flexibility is the name of the game and if you just want to watch one tv show a month, that's what you'll pay for.. maybe, in another 5-15 years.

No comments:

Post a Comment