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Gates Proclaims Internet to Revolutionize TV in 5 Years
adamlazz writes "With an explosion of online video content on sites like YouTube and Google Video, Bill Gates believes that the Internet will revoloutionize the television within the next 5 years.
'I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had,' Gates told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum. "
...the blue screen of death on my TV set.
Television is just a passing fad... : p
This guy's the limit!
In other predictions... people will still be downloading music and movies... the RIAA will still be crying... most TV shows will still be craps and the most secure version of windows yet will be just around the corner
We all know that without QOS, IPTV is completely impossible. Net neutrality is ruining the net! (youtube does not exist).
I was shocked and amazed to see this video showing how to get in on the googleTV Beta, but after I did (regardless of how much bullshit the video is full of), I realized just how big a part Google and Microsoft could play in the next few years. It's going to be an interesting time for TV.
Your sig(k) has been stolen. There is a puff of smoke!
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. (me ducks chair).
My prediction is: Bill will tell us that the next version of Windows after Vista is going to be really secure this time.
When did Gates predict that we were going to beat spam?
I've had Microsoft's attempt at whatever they think they're doing for a couple years now. Not only does it fault more, and perform less responsively that what Comcast deployed to their cable boxes before. It has significantly fewer features. Sure it looks prettier, and it has a crappy capability to deliver poorly rendered news blurbs, but it's slow, craps out more, does less. I'm sure that people in the future will laugh at the kind of TV Microsoft delivers to me (in fact I've considered recording hours of it crapping out and malfunctioning then sending it to satellite providers). But me, I'm not laughing. Fucking 120ft trees immediately south of me.
We have known this for a while now.
..I doubt it. Also the remote controls are crap right now .. no click touchpad and sucks for scrolling thru content.
Ok, how does M$FT expect to be in on this? Is there a version of windows for HDTV manufacturers to integrate? Also, we have a mess when it comes to content DRM. Zune, Itunes, and PlaysforSureExceptOnZune.
Now is M$FT supposed to contribute a rock solid smooth & responsiver for buying tv shows online
... I reckon it's more likely to be Apple-TV rather than Xbox+extender, or 'media-PC'. MS do a wonderful job in the world of business, but they haven't got a clue when it comes to consumers (witness the 'zune' fiasco).
Repeat after me: "complexity is the enemy". MS just don't seem to be able to help themselves - they include every possible switch to toggle in their UI's. The consumer wants to turn it on, hit the channel, and watch TV. Reliably. Without expert (IT) help. Anything more than that is a problem you have to work really hard at solving (and you *need* to do more than that to make it a useful DVR, for example). This sort of industrial design just isn't their forté...
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Bill is leading the charge again. Where does his vision come from? It's like he can see things that nobody else can. It's lucky thing that google and youtube have him to thank - again.
Those of us who use bittorrent are laughing at TV right now.
This would have been a prediction ten years ago, perhaps. At this point, it's merely pointing out a market trend that even a blind man could see. These knuckle-dragging tech "journalists" need to stop treating the man like Miss fucking Cleo.
Good old time when we had much less commercials and targeted advertisement.
Not to mention the tiny amounts of spam.
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
Excuse me if I don't put too much stock in Gates' predictions.
Okay, so Gates hired dozens if not hundreds of developers in the 80s and early 90s who were very familiar with the value of the Internet, yet they missed the bandwagon in incorporating TCP/IP features and protocols until it was already commonplace in the market? And all the while, Gates was smugly declaring that he didn't own a television set and had completely disconnected from the Joe Sixpack culture of sponging in front of a boob tube like the rest of America. Yet, somehow he feels he's adequately informed to see the way that the television culture will shift to an Internet culture in a given timeframe? The only reason that this sounds at all plausible is because Apple and Sony and TiVo and Google and other companies already have been working in that direction. Welcome to the 2000s, Bill.
[
As a non-US resident, all the good US and UK shows get here with a delay of at least a year. And then there're all the crappy advertisement breaks.
Screw that, I'm downloading all the TV shows I watch. I get it not 24 hours after it's shown in the US/UK, easily spoiler-free (which is important when it comes to high-profile shows), ads free, and with the added benefit of watching it whenever I choose (no TIVO here) and without issues of missing an episode.
I've gotten to the point of not watching TV for nearly 5 years now. I have no idea what's on, and I don't care. I get everything I want. Cable is around $50 here. If I could pay that to do what I do--completely legally--I'd sign up in a blink of an eye.
I can definitely see what Gates is talking about; but I'm afraid the the legality of this will never catch up, as world-wide distribution is still not feasible from an advertising point of view.
There isn't enough bandwidth. If it did become big, ISPs would have a heart attack and choke it all like they do with bittorrent.
In one Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, Data states that television, as the form of popular entertainment as we know it, did not last much beyond 2040... could this turn out to be remarkably accurate?
I don't really see why he is "stunned". If anything it must be because he has just found out. Set-top boxes have been around for years supplying information over the wire that accompanies the programming with info about the show and the actors. Broadband suppliers are pushing internet, phone, tv and movies over the same fiber line. The convergence is already happening. That Windows media Center wants to take a big piece of this action is no surprise, but spare me the sensation.
Here's exactly how he'll do it: He'll piss off enough people with Windows that they will be driven to Apple, where they will be watching TV shows purchased on iTunes on their iPod, iPhone, computer, or iTV. People will laugh at more than just "what we had..."
_______
2B1ASK1
SPAMTV! (adds, adds, adds, adds at infinitum)
Ooops... sorry that's already done. :(
What's in a sig?
Your TV will have to be manufactured by Cray.
1 in 4 Maine children in struggle with hunger.
A lot of people have paid a lot of money for bigscreen TVs. Do you really think they're going to give them up on a whim because Gates says so? There's a ridiculous amount of money in the TV industry right now- you can't block ads on live TV. People wouldn't be happy if their 50" widescreen plasma OMGHDTVOMGDLPOMG is rendered useless.
TV is here to stay. I'm fine with that. It gives me something to plug my Wii into.
Care about privacy? Read this!
I think it slowly going on since we can publish video on the web, not long before we see more peoples watching their computer screen instead of television, witch is my case now.
it's 'lame-predictions-by-our-glorious-MS-leader'. One of my favourites include:
i n595595.shtml
A spam-free world by 2006? That's what Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates is promising.
"Two years from now, spam will be solved"
e.g. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/01/24/tech/ma
As a matter of fact, the amount of spam is now bigger than ever before. And there's no seeming end to the trend. However, as Blue Security's Blue Frog clearly displayed, the solution is there and a super powerful company like MS could stop spam if it really was interested. Talk is cheap. The world's richest man can afford it nicely...
...is how much Bill sounds like Tim Robbins who was trying to be Bill & Steve in Antitrust.
I also second the 2040 remark, wouldn't be surprised if it turned out like that.
Wow. I bet if Bill Gates were to stand on a railroad track and watch a train approaching in the distance for several minutes, he could also conclude that in several minutes more, the train would pass by.
Any high-school kid could also have 'predicted' this, but I suppose they don't get invites to Davos.
Why anybody would want the man's predictions after the embarrassment of "The Road Ahead", I don't know. I think it's the only book to predict the next 30 years of IT history ever to have to be re-released just a year later with major corrections...the second edition mentioned the Internet more than twice.
If it's available to the networks, it's available to me on the internet, for free. I'd call that a revolution.
What that "TV" thing he is talking about? Is that thing where you can't select what you watch and is also contaminated by unstoppable stream of commercials??
P.S. Frankly, I have bought my first TV three month ago (LCD one), but it would be too optimistic to say that I watch it even once per week. Even state-supported channels here in Germany are infested with ads/etc. And finding something decent to watch on TV now is as complicated as it was decade ago - when I still lived with my parents. Bookshelf, PC with games and internet - replaced the antique in my life completely long time ago.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
This is why you don't see a company like Microsoft doing much that is ground breaking. If you look at Apple's strategy, you get the feeling that they already understood this some time back. The existence and popularity of sites such as YouTube confirms this direction.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Microsoft, Disney, etc. have been trying to turn the internet into Cable TV for years.
I believe TV, albeit in a different form, will continue to exist for a long time. What a lot people dont seem to realize is that the lack of interaction and choice with TV can be an advantage. The passivity of the watching experience is actually its best selling point, the ability to arrive home tired from work(and likely to have been in front of a computer) and just sit down and watch mindless junk for a couple of hours. TVs role will diminish but I would be doubtful if pre-programmed channels(even if over the internet) will ever disappear.
Gates lucked into an OS deal where he wheedled and dealed and even tried to shut out a partner.
Then he tucked together pieces he plucked to form Office, where creative MS programmers put it all together.
But then listen to all the BS that came out of BG since and between Cairo, ME & CE, etc & the constant use of similar adjectives used to describe the next MS product or version, and what floats high on the surface of the water?
"S--t", thats what.
Why does ANYONE take this guy seriously? At this point all he is, is a rich philanthropist!
Sheesh.
as in payper liesense hypenosys stock markup FraUD felons are on their way out? what a revolutionary concept.
from previous post: many demand corepirate nazi execrable stop abusing US
we the peepoles?
how is it allowed? just like corn passing through a bird's butt eye gas.
all they (the felonious nazi execrable) want is... everything. at what cost to US?
for many of US, the only way out is up.
don't forget, for each of the creators' innocents harmed (in any way) there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/US as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile will not be available after the big flash occurs.
'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi life0cidal glowbull warmongering execrable.
some of US should consider ourselves very fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate.
it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc....
as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis.
concern about the course of events that will occur should the corepirate nazi life0cidal execrable fail to be intervened upon is in order.
'do not be dismayed' (also from the manual). however, it's ok/recommended, to not attempt to live under/accept, fauxking nazi felon greed/fear/ego based pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking hypenosys.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
Here Gates goes again, talking to clueless business persons as if he's got a crystal ball or something. There has already been a good amount of debate on if HD DVDs will really take off or if downloaded content will make the new DVD format far less 'interesting' than its predesessor, STD DVD. The debate tends to be short lived since the conclusion is obvious. But, the timeframe might be up for debate.
So there's really nothing here except THE modern-day snake oil salesman is at it again. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
If it turns into something thet's merely a different delivery method, with the same small number of people that currently control 90% of the content, it's not a revolution - it's merely a medium shift. Youtube got *started* on a revolutionary path, but now that it's getting deeper into bed with commercial interests, and even offering to pay members for their content, it will eventually become the same thing all over again - just a different method of delivery.
OURtube. We own it.
This is SO Friday. Isn't Web 2.0 suppose to be faster?
I guess Gates finally caught on to that whole YouTube thing? Someone showed him MythTV? Glad he finally woke up!
This from the man that called the Internet a passing fad? Glad he's finally jumped on the band wagon after 15 years. Oh, even better he's leading that band wagon.... we're doomed.
Want to find other gamers to play board and role playing game
I'm already laughing at what he had five years ago!
I already do the 'IPTV' thing with a couple BBC programs. And the only reason I'm not paying for them is because they're not available on iTunes in the US, and my wife is completely addicted to Torchwood and Dr. Who. My Powerbook and iPod dock both support S-Video out, so hooking them up to my TV is trivial. An AppleTV (and a faster Mac for converting from DiVX to MPEG) would make it even easier.
The only problem I've run into, and this is recently, is that BitTorrent consumes a lot of upstream bandwidth so people I call with Vonage sometimes get choppy audio on their end. I worked around this by doing some QoS filtering in my router and writing a couple shell scripts to turn Torrents on and off on my Mac Mini home server. A better broadband connection, with >1Mbps upstream, would allow me to use BitTorrent all the time.
Really, the only reason I even have cable is because it costs just as much to get cable broadband with cable TV as it does without. If I could get fiber or DSL at similar speeds with no server restrictions (as in, port 22, 5600 and an http port open) I would probably drop cable altogether and get all my media and phone service over the internet.
I think monthly fees are ludicrous, and refuse to pay them if there's an alternative. I'd rather use the iTunes model: Pay $2 for an episode or get a season pass for a discount of, say, $30 for a 26 episode season. That way I can check out new shows for cheap and get the shows I like for less. And, even better, without commercials. And my money could go directly to the group producing the show, not through a network of middlemen all taking their cut. If a show's cheap enough to produce, as few as 10,000 people, scattered across the globe, could keep episodes being aired.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Thank you, Bill, for that Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious., Or, to quote the illustrious philosopher Ren Høek, "Stimpy, I'm completely astounded by your wealth of ignorance."
It's amazing that this guy is the richest man on Earth. Here he is, offering punditry that is, really, at the very least five years behind Apple in terms of his thought patterns on technology. As early as 1996, the writing was on the wall when Progressive Networks (now RealNetworks, Inc.) and Apple were developing multimedia streaming and THAT should have been the first signal that IP networks were capable, in principle, of carrying full television programming in the near future.
Unfortunately, nobody listened... Well, almost nobody. While Gates is touting this technology as something five years down the road, it's interesting to note how this article comes just one week before Apple's AppleTV, which was announced months ago. Apple had to be researching this for at least the past three years and developing working prototypes as early as five years ago or as recent as two years ago. Sure, Microsoft has their hands in this game... but they're taking a different approach to the model. Their idea of a leap ahead is to mimic the fee-based cable subscription model. Apple has gone in the other direction, toward an a-la carte ownership-based model. This is important because, while it doesn't encompass all the options a customer wants (maybe they want to rent some, and buy others), it does differentiate their product more drastically from cable than does Microsoft's concept... and it demonstrates, more importantly, the kind of forward thinking that Apple is known for... Re-arranging and re-defining the way we use existing technologies. There's nothing fundamentally different about a fee-based model over the internet versus over cable. But there is something radically different about a-la carte programming in a way that underscores a dynamic service that IP can facilitate easily which cable companies can not or will not.
This is why Microsoft continues to lose the battle for brand dominance in multimedia to Apple... and why Apple, not Microsoft, will be the key player in determining the future of how we buy, access, receive and experience our home entertainment. But rest assured, AppleTV and the upcoming iPhone are only tactical products in a much larger strategic vision at Apple. As I've said in other posts, while Microsoft is barely catching up with Vista and XBOX Live and (only in brand diversification if not in sales) Zune, Apple is already focused on the next five years during which they will set out to completely redefine the user interface they popularized 22 years ago.
The computer was once argued by Apple to be the "digital hub" in their appliance-based strategy but they have since moved on to a bigger picture in which the computer is only a host or nodde in the NETWORK, which is becoming the backbone of home entertainment and productivity. iPhone, AppleTV are just devices that tap into these networks for their distributed computing power... Microsoft has several disadvantages here.
First, Microsoft's philosophy confuses the ability to do complex tasks with the appearance of complexity. As a jazz percussionist once told me, an average drummer takes something simple and makes it look complex. A great drummer takes something seemingly impossible and makes it look effortless. Microsoft's other hindrance is that they have little control over the myriad hardware systems on which their software resides. They have very little experience at developing completely integrated products and services. Last, Microsoft seems to begin all their ventures with the question, "How can we make customers like what we have to offer?" Look at it... They spend eons developing some "major" software upgrade, which is little more than rearranging the parts to make it look different, not necessarily better, and then they figure out how they're going to market it. In other words, Microsoft finds ways to convince others t
"and the Oscar for best picture goes to.." *BZZZTTTTT* -Your TV is not up to date. Would you like to update now? NO! -Would you like to be reminded to update later? Yes yes.. -Your Antivirus is not turned on, would you like to switch on your ant.. NO! GOD! -You have unwatched channels in your TV, click here to have unwatched channels removed from your channel listing OH FOR CHRISSAKE! *Enter crappy looking paperclip* -Hi, i'm TVBuddy! I see you've stopped viewing your program to do maintenance, so I took the liberty of saving the place for you. To continue viewing where you left off, press CTRL+WIN+TV+7+D, to just view in realtime press TV, to go off on a wild goose chase, click HELP. Finally some good news, yes! CTRL+WIN..... -TVKRNL.DLL has experienced a Fatal error, please contact your IT support with error details found in tvcrash.dmp *Windows box flies out of the window*
The Internet is going to revolutionize everything in five years. Again. Every five years. And again.
What's the story here? That Gates has little more to do than repeat the obvious?
http://www.bit-tech.net/bits/2006/02/08/road_ahead _billgates/.
I found this using Google, of course. ;)
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
...but, as always with his predictions, it will not be better for the consumer... it will be better for the media companies. Beware... we will end paying 10x of what we pay now for the same pile shit... but without the ability to record and skip past commercials. That is the future media companies will like to see... and that is the future Bill Gates is talking about, it is of course wrapped in some nice words ("pay only fot what you see", "watch when you want", "see it in HD" etc. etc.).
This is the same song they sang when they changed to digital broadcast from satellites... and now when the weather is bad you can't see anything instead of having a little distortion on the screen... and you don't have more and better channels and you don't pay less... They do however pay less for the satellite links, because they pay pr. used transponder and they send usually 6 tv channels on one transponder instead of one... net saving 60%.
If he said "Internet will revolutionize TV in 10 years" 5 years ago, that would have been something. Today's statement is nothing new, everyone and their mom knows that the net is about to revolutionize TV.
Silly me...
Similis sum folio de quo ludunt venti.
5 years?
Did he considered lots of comuntry aren't covered 100% even by adsl link?
speaking of Italy, there are lots of country without adsl, just with 56k... don't think that is enough.
and beside that, HDTV is coming out in these days. how much bandwith does a full 1080p(1920×1080) require?
'cause I don't think people like to see tv on a 800x600 window, when they'll have a full 1080p in tv.
and again, how much bandwith would a tv-internet-server with lots of client (let's say like a medium tv-channel) require?
anyone has data?
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981 Spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time. -- Bill Gates, BBC News (24 January 2004)
We're talking about the guy responsible for a company selling software at four times over its cost and at least ten times over its value, nevermind all the associated lying and monopolizing — the first anti-trust case I've seen to fail because it had too much of a monopoly.
Altough this is to be expected of slashdot and its readership, it still poses an interesting question: Why does slashdot and the world give its attention to the inane blatherings —cue: the book— of the chief thief of micros~1? Having seen his previous works, I don't care whether he might be right. Do you?
Even if we compulsively must give our hard-earned cash to them, why do we still care to listen? Don't we have better things to do? Things like, oh, I don't know. Protest drm. Find ways to make the alternatives acceptable to the great unwashed. Educate the poor souls stuck with supposedly droolproof software so they drool less and can do more with less padded and far better solutions. Make them see the path to improvement and teach them to want to walk that path.
I think that we, the self-declared technosavvy people —whether that be true or not— must do more to make technology useful to everybody and that starts with not listening to other self-declared technosavvy people. The chief thief fits that description and is more one of us than we like to admit. We must do better. We can't do that if we care about what he says because he's not there to advance our case, but only his own. Get on with it already.
I'm still waiting for the end of spam and passwords.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Gates is rich, he can repeat the obvious and seem like a god.
However, if you repeat the obvious, only no-life geeks on an obscure website will listen.
...an end to spam?
Whoa there Bill!
Now that the trails been blazed, the highway built, and the road well worn, you've noticed the last short bus headed to the beach. Better jump on if you want to find a spot of sand that's free of dog poop, cigarette butts, or aging flatulant nudists and their unruly Wii slinging grandchildren.
"640 channels ought to be enough for anybody."
The idea is that the ISP's would not be able to deal with the traffic if the users actually started using a significant fraction of the bandwidth they are paying for. The lines connecting the ISP's are not wide enough.
Some teenagers downloading movies is not a problem, but if average Joe started to use the net as a replacement for TV, then the ISP's would no longer be able to deliver on the bandwidth they have sold.
Or so the theory goes.
What would probably happen is that the unlimited use rates would increase a lot, and normal subscriptions would limit how much you can download.
I probably have slashdot posts to prove it. I emailed Google that I wanted a job and that video was the next big thing on the net. They don't hire me, but they aquire YouTube. When I meant its the next big thing, I meant it to be more of an ON DEMAND sort of thing. You click on what tv show/movie you want to watch and its streamed to your computer and even possibly via a TV out to your TV. Theres no doubt in my mind that people will be linking their computers into their TVS to watch ON DEMAND shows streaming from the net in the future, I said this in the past.
God spoke to me.
I'd like to thank you for playing the captain obvious role. I'll also caution you that your company's proprietary codecs and DRM aren't fucking welcome on any of my equipment. Overall, it would be better for humanity if your criminal monopoly would wither and die within the next 5 years. I'm sure you'll agree.
What Gates didn't say is that one of the most important devices to bring about this change in viewing habits is going to be Apple TV. I would imagine that Jobs would agree with most of what Gates says in TFA.
IMHO online delivery will obviously have a huge effect on video watching habits: 5 years? 10? It'll vary depending on how much of an early adopter you are (or your country is), but it'll come for sure.
BT Vision, recently launched in the UK, has a quite interesting hybrid model, where one interface gives you access to digital broadcasting-through-the-air (for watching news, sports, etc) as well as to VoD and the stuff you've got on your PVR. Could solve a lot of the obvious issues around live broadcasts watched by millions crashing IP networks.
Moving on slightly -- the interesting question, I think, is whether it will change the nature of film and TV: i.e. is digital, networked video just a distribution method, or is it a new medium.
A further quote from BG, from a conference a couple of years ago...
Bill Gates: "the difference between watching TV or film and playing a video game won't be the black and white difference that it is today; soon, there will be a spectrum of shades of grey".
Now before you write this off, note the following from Peter Jackson about six months ago...
Peter Jackson: "what's interesting is...conveying stories using (digital) technology which will allow an interactive component - but they're not movies and they're not games... there should be another form of entertainment... what's interesting is the crossover"
And Guillermo del Toro (director of "Blade II" and the amazing "Pan's Labyrinth"): "in the next 10 years, narrative media will shift to a hybrid of video games and movies"..."like the shift from silent movies to talkies; some movie people will be able to make the jump, but many won't."
There's a possible parallel with the development of film: in the early days, some filmmakers thought film was basically like theatre: so in their movies, the camera didn't move, the scenery was theatrical flats, the actor's whole body was shown, there were few cuts. With time, people realised film wasn't a distribution medium for theatre -- it was a whole new medium. And with it came close-ups, moving cameras, outdoor locations, etc.
IMHO we're at a similar stage now, where people are starting to see that broadband (and possibly digital cinema, later) is not just a distribution method for traditional linear film and video, it's a whole new medium with its own unique characteristics. Like any medium, it rewards those who understand and work with its characteristics.
This does NOT mean naive (and doomed) movies where you "choose-the-ending". In broadband, it means creating pieces where, within the limits of the technology, you can converse with stars, explore artworks, listen to talks customised to your interests and level of knowledge, play beach volleyball, etc. There are a number of interactive video pieces online demonstrating that this sort of thing works.
What Gates and Jobs see as the future of video devices is just the beginning of opening up the creative possiblities of video with interactivity.
I can't wait until I can get pr0n, spam and viruses over the TV, just like on a PC. I can't wait until I have to constantly upgrade my TV, requiring more power and producing more heat, every few years so I can continue to watch programs.
What a brave new world!
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
The book that famously failed to predict the importance of the internet, even though it had ben fairly mainstream for a couple of years by the time. And the man whose company failed to consider any GUI innovations until after the release of the Apple Mac. He predicted that there would some version of basic replacing command.com, that there would be more non-PC devices that PCs connected to the internet. Even the best, most successful businessmen aren't that good at guessing what will succeed. They're just very good at maximising the success of the good ideas and minimising the cost of bad ones.
He's a good marketting man but I don't see him as a fortune teller.
The internet and media delivery are typical examples of Microsoft innovation, surely?
'I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had,' Gates told business leaders and politicians at the World Economic Forum.
"Five years from now?"
Hell, people are laughing at what we've got right now, right now!
-kgj-kgj
Even the mainstream doesn't buy the "Visionary" crap anymore, so why persist? Let's check: He's failed with every major prediction he made. His books had to be revised several times to catch up with the facts, and that's in addition to being almost certainly being written by ghostwriters.
MS is the WalMart of computing: Zero innovation, but they sell to the mainstream and are so big that they crowd out others.
Really, why? Has he entered the spheree of the powerful who are so removed from reality that they couldn't tell it from a donkey anymore?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The internet will AUGMENT the TV (which will become TV over IP via cable companies etc) with various erm augmentations such as services...
It will not "replace it".
Hey Bill, you also promised that the spam problem would be solved by the end of 2006. How about you live up to your old promises first, before making new ones? Or is this just a cheap stunt to draw attention away from the fact that quite contrary to your "prediction", spam is worse then ever before?
So, how about the end of spam? How about living up to your words, just this once?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
720x576 ought to be enough for anybody...
Honestly, I think Gates takes advantage of the fact that people look to him to foretell the future. The futures he predicts are those that are the most equitable to Microsoft's vision of the future of tech.
"Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM"
"The Internet? We are not interested in it"
"Two years from now spam will be solved."
If you want to listen to a real soothsayer of tech read to Cingely.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
... out to be enough for anybody.
+0 Meh
"In the next 10 years, I, William Gates III, will fail to find an appealing hairstyle."
"Microprocessors will get even faster in the next few years, making today's versions of Windows usable."
"Steve Ballmer will go bald."
"My famous book, 'The Road Ahead', will enter a third edition in which the Zune will be predicted."
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
The Internet changed the face of television the instant Bram Cohen released the Bit Torrent protocol. Every TV show is available for download, usually within a day or so of initial broadcast, and usually have the commercials stripped out. Besides, if Comcast and the other big boys released an open PVR with swarming capabilities at a reasonable price, bandwidth issues would probably disappear since all that video would stay on their own backbone and they wouldn't be paying peering charges for it.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Cheers: to the internet for revolutionizing TV
Jeers: to the advertising industry for "devolutionizing" the internet.
What?
and it's called bittorrent.
"I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with TV, in five years from now, people will laugh at what we've had,"
He's stunned that people aren't seeing what they'll be laughing at 5 years in the future.
It's the 21st century and we can't even time-shift. Microsoft, lead the way! I believe their ultimate plan is to go back and make Vista come out earlier, like back when it wouldn't been obsolete.
Forgive me for piggybacking on the top comment, but speaking of Bill Gates and TV, Gates is scheduled to be the guest on tomorrow night's Daily Show. Don't forget to set your TiVos or whatnot.
comma
If it were just a technical problem, spam would have been solved already, however, it is not.
Reminds me of something William Gibson said about the opening line to Neuromancer:
I don't have an exact quote, but his comment was that a change in the way TV manufacturers dealt with dead channels completely changed the meaning of that sentence.
I digress; back to your regularly-scheduled comments.
Find environmentally and socially responsible products on http://buy-right.net
can we ban gates' posts from the front page until he regains some street-cred? or at least until he stops singing this "the internet will revolutionize x in 5 years" song. note to microsoft: huge difference between talking and walking.
Anyone who reads Bob's blog knows he has been talking about these interrelated subjects for quite some time, e.g., TV networks/P2P/ISPs/bandwidth/Google Data Centers, and his most recent post is particularly relevant to this subject and Bill's statement. I guess Bill thought it was time to make it seem as thought it's his idea.
Microsoft has an immense history of missing the boat, then copying, improving and selling a competitor's product to amke a fortune.
they've had NINE years to revolutionize TV: http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,2987,00. html
what ever happened to that?
This "prediction" is already manifesting itself today. The only way that it will take five years to come to fruition is if MS is again successful in stifling technological innovation long enough to allow MS to catch-up and develop some crappy software standard to try and monopolize internet entertainment to their platform. This time the cat is already out of the bag and it just ain't gonna happen. Both the entertainment industry and tech players other than MS are moving in other directions. Good luck stopping the train long enough this time Bill.
Every experimental "interactive" tv service has failed despite being wildly popular with the participants for the first few weeks. After that interest fails. Much of the time people want animated wallpaper not something that has to be attended to at regular intervals like a demanding pet.
you would think the guy could buy a hair brush
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
I just want to know: does this mean that the revolution will be televised?
We heard this before in about, what, 1997? WebTV worked out so well didn't it? Give up, Bill, and go back to copying Apple.
I'm an almost retired broadcast engineer with over 40 years in the field.
:30 in a bowl game at their current rates. And inevitably, the ratio of editorial to commercial time would become even more commercial at the expense of editorial allthough this is supposed to be regulated by the FCC. Insert laugh track here...
For most of these years, our biggest expense after payroll and related expenses is the power bill. We have, by way of charging the seller to advertise his product, called a commercial, been able to survive, and even pay our better employees fairly well.
To bring enough bandwidth into being to do this for all the broadcasters, and there are around 800 of us, sufficient bandwidth buildout will be a major expense, and will of course be charged for accordingly.
Our power bills range from say $5k/mo for a vhf operation, going up to maybe $10k for a full power digital running in parallel, and back to maybe $7k/mo once ntsc is turned off in 2009. For UHF broadcasters, multiply those figures by about 3x.
We would need up to 30MB/sec per channel transmitted this way in full HD, and at todays charges for bandwidth, would make our power bill look like pocket change. That of course is a CODB.
Now, while its going to be technically feasable at some point in the future, I detest people who are only passing fans of a dog in this fight, with little of their own money invested yet, making predictions as to when this will happen.
There are all sorts of regulatory hurdles to contend with, starting with the market access exclusivity that the designated ADM's the FCC has setup, preventing to a large degree, access to our local market by outside stations. I personally am a bit ambiguous about that, but it goes a long way toward keeping our broadcast material flavored with the local area culture, and this is a Good Thing(TM), while at the same time effectively keeping ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX/WTBS/KTLA's time peddlers from walking the streets in our market and effectively stealing our income.
OTOH, folks would like to be able to grab the network signals without all those local commercials and the clamor for exactly that is being heard about the land and in our governments reactions to that in the form of the SHVA acts. But, stop and think about the downside to that too if there were no SHVA. If CBS, whom we are an affiliate of, were to be allowed free access to 'our' market, a couple of things would happen, one because of their networks construction, they would have the power to hit several differnt locales around the country with commercials taylored to that locale and they do that right now, sending a dog food commercial to the deep south and a toothpaste commercial to the west coast, etc etc. They would have to do that because there is not enough time to do all of what they could sell if they used our rate card unless they could resell that time slot several times. They'll have to use our rate card or lose the sale as in this market there is no one that could afford a
The other thing is that because we could not realisticly compete in that un-limited access scenario, we would have no choice but to fold our tents and go away, leaving maybe 10 super powerfull 'stations', all of which will be at the governments mercy and be fed pablum for news and we would then be no better off than the russian people were at the height of Stalins power. You could be summarily shot if found in possession of a radio capale of picking up the VOA broadcasts.
Because there are now many of us, maybe as much as a third with full time 10 or more employee news departments, supporting in our own case over 3 hours of local news a day, we can shine a lot of sunshine on things that aren't always as they seem, and we make it a point to do just that. If one of our reporters is denied access to a city council meeting, its on the 11 oclock news because its a blatant violation of the sunshine laws here in WV. Yes, that local news is a cash cow to us, but still, where would this co
If your portable DVD player is running WinCE, you already have what you are asking for. He managed to push .WMV onto all of them, so you might not even need WinCE.
Gate's is focused on expanding his computing monopoly into entertainment and what he wants was the focus of his keynote speech. The point of treacherous computing is to give M$ the keys to everything, regardless of cost.
Vista offers the best chance of convincing hardware makers that DRM won't sell. The music industry is learning, now it's time to teach the holdouts in the computer industry. With it's slow sales, XP showed up the upgrade train six years ago. Vista is going to blow it apart. There's real hardware improvement out there but the only way to really enjoy it is through free software that the industry is fighting tooth and nail. It's hard to sell stuff while you are busy thwarting your customers with buggy and paranoid shit instead of giving them what they want.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
From http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/docs/HOWTO/Advoca cy
the problem with TV is lack of anything worth watching.
I don't see that gates is going to be able to improve the content available.
what we'll get as "innovation" is a more expensive, less reliable and much more annoying version of TV. see FOX tv football with the sound effects and dancing robots. that is what these leaders think is "innovation"
Does this come before or after I get my flying car?
And so on. It's really nothing more than commercialism interfering with content. You want to watch something, so people use that as leverage to try and force you to listen to their sales pitch. The reason that it works is they can slip in under most peoples' tolerance level which is set by how badly they need a mindnumbing experience (e.g. "Oh, GOD. I'll listen to this stupid commercial because I'm tired and I don't want to go to the video store or read a book and fine the commercial will end in 60 seconds and by the next one I will have simmered down and be willing to tolerate it again in exchange for my mindnumbing.")
I'm not sure how any advertiser can be a good person, since they realize they are deliberately finding the maximum level of push that the average person can sustain before they become annoyed enough to shut out the marketing mechanism completely. (In other words, TV has evolved to provide the maximal amount of "tell you what to do, what you need, and how to spend your money" possible without losing the majority of the audience. That's not a pleasant thought. But back to M$, that's the same thing they do. Lace the maximum amount of "buy our $hit into each product" that you will tolerate. "Oh, wouldn't you like to use this integration feature with our other product?" "Wouldn't you like to do this which requires only just a tiny bit more money for a Professional upgrade, and so on." It's all crap.
I'm stunned how people aren't seeing that with personal computers, today, people aren't laughing at Microsoft products. Yet they don't, and Bill Gates has profited handsomely from this kind of stupidity.
Is it the same guy who didn't see Internet coming? Are we talking about the same bill Gates that didn't see the iPod taking over the DAP market? The same one who didn't see Search and online services becoming important?
Wny TF would anyone even listen to this guy anymore?
how can anyone not see this already? every tv show is already on bittorrent now, and many shows are legally streamed or downloadable. yet for some reason main stream media think this turkey is some kind of genious?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
His prediction is about 10 years too late.
I'm 40 and I don't remember this, other than people talking about it years later on the internet. It may be true he said it; if it is I'm sure someone can dig up a quote. Here are two quotes where he specifically responds to this and claims he never said it. I wouldn't be surprised if he had said it - as he says in one of the quotes, 640k was a lot of memory in 1981 - but he claims he has never said it and I have never seen an actual citation.
the earliest mention of this quote I can find on usenet are as a signature line in 1992 -- http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=&num=100&scor ing=d&as_epq=640k+ought+to+be+enough+for+anybody&a s_oq=&as_eq=&as_ugroup=&as_usubject=&as_uauthors=& lr=&as_qdr=&as_drrb=b&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny= 1981&as_maxd=28&as_maxm=1&as_maxy=1993&safe=off
The three major innovations that have transformed broadcast TV in the last several years are: (1) PVRs; (2) DVD sets of TV series; (3) iTunes. There are very few first-run TV shows that I watch in real-time broadcast anymore, and not many that I keep up with during the season (such as it is).
..bruce..
We have a couple of Panasonic PVRs (one with an 80GB hard drive and ethernet port) for standard time-shifting and protection in case of interruption, but I even use those less and less. Typically what I have done is watch the first few episodes of the season, then once I get behind, I simply wait for the DVD set to come out at season's end.
However, even that is now shifting to buying episodes from iTunes -- and that's the real innovation. And now that my wife has a 30" cinema display on her Mac, it's not as though there's any real loss of quality. And, as with the DVDs, it's so nice not to have to even use the 'CM SKIP' button to jump over commercials.
I'm less convinced about the future of streaming video over the internet. We already have streaming video into homes: it's called cable and satellite. They have the bandwidth. The internet, as yet, does not, particularly at the final mile. While I'm a Netflix subscriber and fan, I haven't tried their streaming video service yet, and probably won't; if there's a movie I want to watch that badly, I'll order the DVD from Netflix (or simply buy a copy) and watch it on my living room TV.
The major innovation I'm waiting for is for a series to be financed in part or all by advance subscriptions. For example, suppose that SciFi decides not to pick up Battlestar Galactica for a fourth season. Then suppose that the production company offers to create a fourth season if enough people subscribe in advance, each paying, say, the combined cost of an iTunes 'season pass' and a complete DVD set. Those funds are held in escrow until the necessary amount is reached, and then the season goes into production. All subscribers get a season pass, a DVD set, and their names listed as 'associate producer' in a special credits feature on the DVD set. The production company could throw in some other perk as well; e.g., each subscriber gets a pass for two people to an end-of-season wrap party (yeah, it's a big party, but so what?). The next step would be for a production company to do this for a brand-new series and bypass broadcast TV altogether.
There was a brief, unsuccessful (and unauthorized) effort to resurrect Firefly this way, but that was pre-iTunes TV.
I think that within a few years, iTunes (and its competitors...does it have any competitors?...) will be selling first-run episodic video content of quality matching current TV shows but not appearing on TV (or only appearing after a delay -- sort of the reverse of what happens now, where a given TV episode becomes available on iTunes a day or two after initial broadcast). However, even that will require some bandwidth enhancements along the way; right now, with a solid broadband connection, it can take anywhere from 45 to 90 minutes to download an 'hour-long' (typically 43-minute) episode. If iTunes is releasing first-run content on a weekly basis, then we can expect massive download spikes each time that occurs.
So, as per my title: if Bill Gates is just now saying that "internet will transform TV within 5 years", he's merely making an obvious statement rather than a perceptive or unexpected prediction. The net is already transforming TV.
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
In 10 years, the concept of "channels" as we know it will be supplanted by "shows" and "collections of shows."
95% of Americans who pay for the privilege will be able to watch "Any show at any time" on their TVs, and will get a listing of shows they are likely to enjoy. The channels that do remain will be "playable on demand" for up to a week or more through your cable system or DRM-controlled DVR box, unless the DRM restrictions say otherwise.
Video rental will be dead: Almost every movie or TV show ever pressed to DVD will be available for watching "on-demand." Disney and its famous "Disney Vault" may be an exception.
You will be able to watch "local" community-access shows from anywhere in the country, for a fee. High school sports will be the first to smell the bucks but eventually everything will be available.
In 20 years this will be worldwide among open, internet-connected countries.
The one missing piece:
You still won't be able to legally get blacked-out NFL football games due to DRM.
The one major flaw:
The "big boys" will make sure this only happens once they find a workable DRM.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
No Shit! It's already happening. Once I got a stand-alone DVD that plays DivX, I can now watch all those movies I DL'ed without converting them into a DVD format first. I simply burn the .avi files directly to a DVD and away I go. Isn't that revolutionary???
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
Always remember that any enthusiasm he shows about a 'new technology' he is evangelizing is only to control it, monopolize it, leverage it, and squeeze it for every buck he can.
He sucks.
Microsoft will "revolutionize" internet television in about 8 years.
Yes folks, MS will completely turn the current paradigm around. It will be called metube.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
People have been talking about how TV will be revolutionized in the next 5 years for at least the last 10 years.
sort of TV via the internet, based on a Mozilla platform, ready for interaction
Is this _before_ or _after_ all spam is eradicated? Your last bold internet prediction didn't pan out so well..
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
TV revolutionizes Internet.
Seriously it'll happen. Don't expect Cable and phone companies to just play dead.
revoloutionize revoloutionize revoloutionize revoloutionize revoloutionize revololutionize revoloutionize revoloutionize revoloutionize revoloutionize revoloutionize revoloutionize revoloutionize revoloutionize revoloutionize
Of course, Vista will eliminate spam. Just like XP eliminated hackers. Chalk it up to another typical Bill Gates prediction gone bad.
CDi as in CD Interactive?
Well I do. I believe it was an early attempt to do exactly what you're mentioning here with interactive movies/television with video games mixed in. I suppose one could argue the many reasons why it didn't catch on. One could also argue that it paved the way for the Sony Playstation to catch on during a time when Nintendo was king.
He's not much of a tech guru. He's a billionaire because he is an excellent business manager.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
> He's not much of a tech guru. He's a billionaire because he is an excellent business manager.
No, he is an excellent ruthless wheeler and dealer.
If he were an excellent business manager, we would be getting innovative, well-tested, high-quality products from Microsoft!
Gates has clearly stated that content consumption primarily what computers are being used for. What he says is part of that strategy to gain dominance in that market.
Luckily Gates and company have never been good at services so we shouldn't see much from them in terms of them controlling our TVs, etc. What Gates and company are good at is strong-arming vendors to pre-install their OS on your new computer.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
I dont think Bill Gates has learned from his mistakes, 640k, and is still prophesizing about the future of technology advancement. Well I guess if you make enough prophesies youll eventually get one right, right?
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
In Star Trek the prediction is that at around 2040, TV broadcasting as we know it will cease to exist. That's a good prediction for me, because in 30 years the problems of networking we have could be resolved.
The telephone network has incredible bandwidth. The copper wires allow for 256 bands of 4 MHz each. The ADSL technology only uses the 1st band. Coupled with multiplexing, copper wires can curry a tremendous amount of data, perhaps not enough for everyone in the neighborhood to watch a different movie at 60 FPS in hi res, but enough to cover the demands of most people in most cities. And let's not forget copper wires may be replaced with optical wires for even bigger bandwidth.
What everyone does not realize though is that the TV resolution will not come through the computer, but through dedicated TV sets that connect to the networking infrastructure and are rid of problems plus they can not easily be hacked. In 2040, I will be able to select which movie to watch from my TV set, and not from my computer.
In the U.S. however you will be forced to pay more when you can get it and you will not be able to time shift. Or was he talking about some other network?
Gil Scott-Heron already told us The Revolution Will Not Be Televised...
They are called DVR's and they've already changed TV for those of us who have them. The only real difference is that in 5 years I'll likely be able to cancel my subscription to my cable provider and download and pay for only the content that I want to watch. Be it movies or TV shows. I'll probably also be able to stream most live sporting events. Although I've got to say, mainstream TV isn't going anywhere anytime soon. To many people aren't technical enough to do the setup that's required for this kind of thing today. My money is on Apple being the first company to really make an easy to use set top box with lots of available content for download. Although there is something to be said for being able to click through the various channels and find some random show you wouldn't otherwise think to look for or watch. If studio's were wise they'd make the first several episodes of new TV shows available for free with ads to allow viewers to sample the content before deciding if they want to subscribe to the rest of the series. Another issue is HD content and the bandwidth that will be required if you want to download existing content and to stream live content in HD. I love football and I especially love to watch it in HD. I'd need enough bandwidth to stream games in HD before you could really convince me to cancel my cable subscription and go the download / stream only route. I don't know if I see that happening in 5 years. I'm thinking it will be more like 7 - 10.
Isn't that what I'm already doing when I use MythTV to watch a few minutes of local Hi Def "news" and weather broadcast, menu to the South African Broadcasting Corporation for a few minutes of their half hour stream of taped video news M-F and then menu to BFM's live stream for a little video news from Paris? Once it's set up, it's all just menuing with the remote whether it's hi def broadcast, music file server, DVD, web surfing or internet stream.
In which he describes using current TV methods to distribute content for "computers" (I put it in quotes because this would include Tivos and the like which to consumers are different but to cognescenti are nothing more than computers with a TV-viewing-focused UI). Between Cuban and Gates, what I think we're hearing is that television will morph from its current broadcaster/cable-company- controlled state to a state where viewers of video content control when and where they view it, and what devices they use to view it. Most of the technological challenges are already solved, the main issues remaining to be resolved revolve around financial aspects, and they're not simple: if you control the viewing, you also control the ability to skip advertising. If there's no advertisng, who pays for the content? Subscription models probably won't work, at least not currently, because there is enough free content out there to fill someone's available viewing time (and don't start on the quality argument; free content on the 'Net is demonstrably superior to say, 'Dancing with the Stars!)
and did he perhaps see Apple TV?
tone
The man's not an idiot, no matter what you might think.
For certain definitions of "idiot," he is an idiot.
He presents himself as a visionary computer geek, when in fact he is simply a ruthless businessman who happened to be in the right place at the right time: at the beginning of the personal computer revolution (which started in the Altair days, not the IBM PC days), he was one of the few people with a business bent who understood that PCs were the next big thing.
The other person at the time with a fair knack for business: Steve Jobs.
Bill Gates has been making predictions and promises for years. Very few of either the predictions or promises come true. Very few. Did you read the first edition of The Road Ahead? Even at the time it was published, it was out-of-date. His concept of the future was pretty much like the past, only with racing stripes.
He missed the Internet, focusing instead on MSN: he thought the AOL model was the way to go.
He missed the DAP market.
He didn't even see the social aspect of the internet until it was too late.
He basically missed out on every single major revolution in computers, coming in only after the market has been established. So, as a computer geek, he is an idiot. As a business man, he's a fucking great big hungry cat, say of the lion variety. But as a geek, he's a fucking idiot.
As far as his philanthropy goes: back in the day, not long after he became the world's richest man, there were a bunch of articles describing what a tightwad he was. He gave almost nothing to charity, especially with respect to his immense wealth. The clincher came when he was outspent by almost 2 to 1 by Larry Ellison, who had half (or less) of the wealth of Gates. I don't know if you noticed, but Gates doesn't like being outdone by anyone. That's part of what makes him a ruthless business man. So, I suspect those negative articles kinda stuck in his craw.
It was also around the time that Gates got married.
There's a reason they call it the "Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation."
And it doesn't really matter anyway. He has a lot of making up to do before the good he does outweighs the harm he has already done.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
He's Louis, Balmer's Marie. Viva La Revolution!
Cake or Death? Cake Please!
That's him. The Zune guy, right?
Some other people already replied to you about this, but the point deserves clarification and repetition.
If you got some good engineers together and gave them a few million dollars, they'd be hard pressed not to invent a decent flying concept-car. Then it'd be a half decade away from mass production and being cheap enough for Joe Retard to buy two of them. It's just not a very good idea.
Ignoring the fact that you don't want Joe Retard flying over your house, or over your world trade center for that matter, it's just not economically viable to do that. It might seem great when you're stuck in traffic to have a button that you push to rise above the congestion and zip to work with the full three dimensions of space newly available to you, but the massive energy and even more massive decrease in safety it takes to liberate your vehicle into that third dimension far outweighs the benefits of saving you fifteen minutes on your commute.
We don't have the often-predicted flying cars because they're a stupid idea, not because we can't build them now.
The Internet is a send me one now media.
,or TVo, for time shifting
the broadcast media. Rather then spending all that money
on unneeded bandwidth. It not like your going to miss
anything. Right now most shows are broadcast twice a week
and there are marathons to catch you up with shows like 24.
Even with peer to peer file sharing getting TV over the net will not be the way to go, unless you want to pay to the nose to the TelCo's and CabCo's for the bandwidth.
We all are better off with http://sourceforge.net/projects/mythtv> MithTV
The bandwidth we need is for playing World of Warcraft.
Then my favorite show will be Buffering.
qz
If I could buy "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" as soon as they're broadcast; I'd cancel my cable subscription NOW.
No, I will not work for your startup
Actually in some unspecified time in the future when autopilot is perfected there would be no problem with flying cars. We're already working towards that end with things like the DARPA competition.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.