Television Reloaded

theodp writes "The TV times, they are a-changing. Over at Newsweek, Steven Levy offers a serious tome on the future of television, including time-shifting ("people will follow schedules only for real-time events like sports and election night"), space-shifting ("Now that you've stored your show on a TiVo, it's only logical to take it with you on your laptop, hand-held viewer or PSP game player") and the move from broadcast TV to broadband TV. Meanwhile, Conan O'Brien lightens things up with his own vision of the TV future ("Toddlers' bowls will have a television at the bottom, and children will be encouraged to eat all of their mush so they can see Morley Safer.")."

Comments

The Future is Now.

[Vorondil28]

In the /. tradition, our commuity has been riding the crest of this digital wave with our BitTorrent clients for some time.

Re:The Future is Now.

[bheer]

Nothing stops TV companies from offering Janus/Fairplay encoded content (with ads) via BitTorrent. I'm pretty sure they'd get quite a few viewers too because the official seeds would be far more reliable than the unofficial ones operating out of Eastern Europe/someone's crappy home connection.

Any home that has a 2Mbps+ connection is a prime candidate for this sort of service.

On-demand is the future, today.

[Sheetrock]

The broadcast industry is fighting it every step of the way, but the future is in on-demand television. I argue the success of TiVo and other DVR devices demonstrates this; people want to be able to watch what they want when they want, without wasting time on things like commercials.

The best thing the industry could do would be to figure out a system where you select what you want to watch from a menu, give you a VCR commandset (play, pause, rewind, forward, stop), and offer a meaningful guarantee of retention or recordability. And figure out how to make money off of it without breaking the people who want to use it.

They're working so hard on figuring out how to make you watch commercials that they're missing the larger picture. If you charge for access to a service like this nobody can 'steal' content by fast-forwarding through commercials because there won't be any.

Re:On-demand is the future, today.

[NanoGator]

Part of the problem here is that television is ad based, and time-slots are a VERY important factor in their pricing. By doing away with the time-slot (as DVRs basically do...) they feel they're going to lose big.

There's probably some truth to it, but I see an alternative. Base advertising on the show instead of the time slot. I mean, seriously, who in their right mind thinks Star Trek is a great time for a tampon or birth-control commercial? Television shows often develop a strong following. Unfortunately, musical time slots often kill well loved shows. (Futurama...) Dedicated viewer base, homeless. With DVRs, they could show new eps at 3am in the morning and they'd still generate revenue.

Unfortunately, this begs the ugly question of whether or not commercial skip should be allowed. Frankly, I think there's a compromise here. Get rid of commercial skip and add fast forward. I know this option won't go well with a lot of people. Sorry. But it's a sticky situation. If ads aren't being watched, the main source of revenue for these shows suddenly disappears.

Another alternative is something like iTunes for tv shows. A buck or two buys you an episode of your favorite show, ad free. Unfortunately, though, this could result in ridiculous monthly expenditures on TV. Conversely, lots of people are buying TV series DVDs. So... eh.

Frankly, I understand why this is contraversial on both sides. The solution isn't likely to make the customers or the television networks completely happy. Right now, I'm paying a pretty heft amount per month for digital cable. If I could funnel that money into an on-demand service instead, somebody could end up with a nifty sized subscription fee per month. Figure out how to make a profit on that, and they'll get my business.

Re:On-demand is the future, today.

[hansbleep]

Yes, the broadcast industry is fighting it every step of the way. But over the long-term the preferences of the content distributors have had very little sway on the ultimate delivery mechanisms for the content they distribute. We're always going to need some level of business apparatus surrounding the delivery of content, but the businesses themselves are basically just a means-to-an-end, with profits and success redistributed according to market need.

Think about it: the RIAA was dragged kicking and screaming into distribution models like iTunes Music Store, etc, which has ended up being a popular and heavily used option for a huge number of consumers. The MPAA originally opposed VHS and Betamax.

People are used to on-demand entertainment and television and radio are the only formats that don't widely support this consumption style. We like being able to pause our DVDs, skip past the songs we don't like in our CD/MP3 collections, browse what we want when we want to online, and so on. It's becoming part of our relationship with media. Any format that doesn't support this usage is going to have to evolve or die. It's simply the way things work, and it doesn't matter whether the broadcast industry doesn't like it, fights it, even wins a few legal battles in the short-term. Consumer demand will invariably be met by market forces.

Re:On-demand is the future, today.

[Sheetrock]

I'm betting this will surprise you, but the work and social schedules of most people are growing to preclude their ability to plunk their ass in front of the tube for hours at a stretch. As television has cut into reading time, so too the Internet has cut into television time. iTunes is demonstrating the feasibility of delivering paid-for digital media over the Internet, technology companies are gearing up digital rights management, the broadcast flag for consumer video equipment is on the horizon (delayed, maybe defeated, maybe not), and Microsoft is pushing Windows Media Center. Satellite companies are offering DVR as part of their services and a ton of content is being released on DVD -- at the same time, broadcasters are doubling- and tripling-up the same shows on their schedules each day and delivering some considerably lousy content (Reality TV, one- or two- star movies, home improvement and crime shows are all I can tune) while explaining that the problem is that they aren't getting the money they need from commercials.

Anybody in the pay-per-view industry will tell you on-demand television works. Details such as whether you pay per watch, per episode, or per 'channel' of content are certainly up to the implementors, but if you don't believe this is coming soon you're not properly interpreting the signals. I don't have to sing its praises to the broadcast industry; they're simply waiting for the various pieces that make up the technology and legislation necessary for such a scheme to fall into place.

Re:On-demand is the future, today.

[Dragoon412]

Believe it or not, Comcast already does this.

They have this on-demand feature built into their digital cable boxes. The selection's a little lacking, but in effect, you can play any TV show or movie they have any time you want, it just costs a few bucks. They even have a fair amount of free content (no doubt to get people using the service), and the selection's not too bad. It seems most HBO shows are on it, and a lot of major cable networks seem to be on board; Discovery, Comedy Central, the History Channel, and quite a few others.

I'm no big fan of Comcast, but I've got to say, they really nailed this one.

Re:On-demand is the future, today.

[sleeper0]

"I'm betting this will surprise you [...]"

sure no one has heard of people recording video programs for later watching, thank you for your time and insight!

"iTunes is demonstrating the feasibility of delivering paid-for digital media over the Internet"

True. I'm not sure anyone has argued that it is technically possible for it to be done. However, you might be interested in the fact that ITMS has been explained by apple as being no better than break even. They are unable to make a profit with the service. As far as apple is concerned it exists solely to promote sales of their iPod hardware device. Content interests have repeatedly protested that ITMS sales perform poorly compared to retail sales. So literally there is no corporate interest in ITMS barring sales of the portable. Not really a great example for on demand television unless you sell a portable video player.

"Windows Media Center [...] offering DVR [...] released on DVD"

Some good examples of the PVR/DVR market. Let's explain why PVR works now while on demand may not.

98.2% of households own a TV (US 1990)
74.9% of households have some kind of Internet (US 2004)
45.2% of households have broadband (US 2004)

obviously broadband on demand delivery has a major hurdle to take care of before it could replace broadcast + PVR timeshifting

Even if broadband penetration was 98.2%, which could take decades, could current digital infrastructure support each television household consuming 2-6 hours of on demand 1mbps-6mbps video content? No. While it may work for you to download a show or two, it would all fall apart if all of your neighbors were doing the same thing. Infrastucture can't support it (yet)

"If you charge for access to a service like this nobody can 'steal' content by fast-forwarding through commercials because there won't be any."

Broadcast television revenues: US$54.4B (US 2004)
Premium television revenues: US$8.5B (worldwide 2002)
PPV television revenues: US$2.4B (worldwide 2002)

I'm not sure I'd like to explain to shareholders how the only answer to sustaining my business is to abandon a $54B market to chase a $2B-8B market (at best) with higher costs.

Also ratings would fall drastically:
highest rated show 5/9-5/15: CSI (CBS) 26.4M viewers
highest rated premium tv show 5/9-5/15: below public reporting threshold, below 3.1M viewers

So in summary:
* no example of profitable major on demand broadband video delivery
* infrastructure does not support it
* penetration is less than half of broadcast
* current market revenue is 5%-20% of broadcast

I dont think broadcast will be going away anytime soon.

Future? How about Present.

[EtherealStrife]

Really.

"It'll be a cosmic video jukebox where you can fire up old episodes of "Cop Rock," the fifth game of the 1993 World Series, a live high-school lacrosse game, a ranting video blogger and your own HD home-movie production of Junior's first karate tournament. While it's playing, you can engage in running voice commentary with your friends, while in a separate part of the screen you're slamming orcs in World of Warcraft. Then you can pay your bill on screen. And if you ever manage to leave your home theater, you can monitor the whole shebang in your car, at a laptop at Starbucks or via the laundry-ticket-size screen on your cell phone."

I can do that now. What's so "futuristic" about that? Each of my bed posts has a surround sound speaker mounted to it, and I have big screen tv precariously situated on top of my dresser (don't ask), so I can just wake up and commence brainrot without leaving bed. Video output from computer to tv and bam! Stick the feed tubes in me, I'm set to go!

Driving hard or hardly driving?

[The Angry Artist]

What I'm surprised about is that there aren't yet televisions in car dashboards so we can watch our favorite programs during the boring drives on the road. C'mon, what do the car manufacturers expect us to do when we aren't talking on our cell phones, drinking coffee, eating, reading a newspaper, or sleeping in the car? Drive?

MythTV + PSP

[Jack Porter]

I'm already watching most of my TV on the subway on my way to work using my PSP. MythTV records what I want and then I use PSPvideo9 with avisynth to transcode with just a few mouse clicks.

License

[antiaktiv]

I believe an on-demand system could work very well the way state-subsidised public service television works in a lot of european countries.

Here in Sweden, anyone who owns a TV set (or, nowadays, a computer with a TV-reciever, or a television mobile phone), has to pay a TV-license of a couple of hundred kronors per year ($30-40). For this we get two channels with excellent quality content and no commercials. Most people add on to this with paying for cable channels that cost a lot more, and include commercials. But imagine a system where you could have just a large number of the public service channels for a proportionally higher price. There would be the traditional time-dependent broadcasts, without commercials but any old programming (that has already been aired) would also be available on-demand, perhaps by a bittorrent-type distribution network, that has proven very effective.

By the way, I've been wondering about the legality of downloading shows that I have payed for with my TV-license. A lot of american sitcoms, that are normally shown in America with commercials, for example, is shown on one of these channels. Would it be illegal for me to download an episode that has already be shown on Swedish television, since I have technically paid to see it, commercial free?

I'm already doing it

[skinfitz]

In the UK where we actually need a license to watch TV (no, seriously I'm not joking) I refuse to pay for it so I don't watch TV in the home. (However I do get hassled to DEATH by the TV Licensing Nazis)

For the odd thing that I do occasionally want to watch (Dr Who for example) I have a Mac G5 installed at work with EyeTV (a PVR) set to record the things I want from the digital broadcast (MPEG2). From there I export it as MPEG4 to get the size down, then scp it to a share on the Linux server at home from where I watch it on my PowerBook.

Perfectly legal (as I'm not 'receiving broadcast services') and much more convenient for me - I'll watch things when *I* want to watch them thankyouverymuch.

No time limits...

[isny]

On the internet, there are no time limits. You could have a real 60 minute tv show if you wanted. Or a 61 and a half minute tv show. And you could have advertisements every minute. Or 3 hours of ads before the show started. Or just broadcast "clever" ads. Why does everyone insist that internet tv has to look and fit the shape of broadcast tv? See podcasting for further details.