BradFuller

There is no shortage of opinions about the fate of television – be it professionally created or user generated content (UGC.) Views range from the misguided “UGC has changed TV forever! Power to the People!” to the pensive “TV ain’t what it used to be… where’s Milton Berle?… I want my MTV!” To say that the future lies somewhere in-between these two extremes is to say you’ve been resident on a dwarf planet for the past year. No one knows the future of television with any certainty. Period.

Online video has seen major changes since the appearance of inexpensive video editing tools in the hands of the common man. Some are even free to use online. And there are plenty of places to store your masterpiece. World-wide distribution of your Citizen Kane is inexpensive, and viewers need only a PC and broadband connection to experience your masterpiece. I won’t rehash what many have yarned endlessly in the past several months, re: the video aggregators such as YouTube and Grouper.

But, I do want to discuss the technology and some interesting products deployed for video. There are several online editing tools (checkout FORscene by Forbidden Technologies and try Jump Cut.) Some pretty darn good content too (Current TV .) Interesting technology such as Hypervideo (see View Magazine and the Economist article: From hypertext to hypervideo.) David Battino recently discussed a new product to cleanup of your consumer-grade, highly compressed video (see David’s blog: Amazing Video De-Grungelizer)
Still, what has really changed for the viewer? Be it PC or television, not much besides content: the few good shows on the web and this season’s wonderful television lineups and their on-line re-broadcasts. Hey. I’m pleased the TV networks have remembered that good content sells. But, the vast majority of online video, especially UGC, is ho-hum – why waste my precious time? Some would say that the advantage of online content is that you can view at your leisure. I contend we accomplished this capability in the 70s with the consumer video tape player and then the PVR of the 90s. There’s not much difference.

That gets me to the crux of this post. The US is in the midst of switching from analog to mandated high definition digital by 2009. But the technology to deliver and display isn’t all that new. MPEG2 has been around for a while. At least displays are becoming cheaper. What has technology done for us lately? Any new technology pushing the envelope to help creators tell a story in a different light?

What about interactive TV? BSkyB is a leading broadcaster of quality interactive TV programming and they are doing some cool things (check out their website.) Likewise in other parts of the world, interactive TV is still going strong. In the US, Dish Network deploys OpenTV interactive TV services and the major cable companies have iTV deployments coming out “soon.” (embarrassing that the US is behind in several deployments. We’ve been slow to adapt iTV that’s been around since the late 90s. We’ve also been slower than some to adopt high-capacity broadband. Several countries already have fiber to the home. I know of only two deployments in the US.) But to answer my own question: I haven’t seen any top production companies utilize interactive TV to it’s fullest. Does Lost or 24 have iTV deployments?

Unfortunately, to take advantage of interactive TV on your television, consumers are bound by the use of a digital settop box. According to Larry Gerbrandt of Nielson Media Research, 66% of US households have cable but, of those, only 41% have digital cable. What’s that, about 29% of households that are capable of receiving iTV content? (I don’t know the numbers, but I bet a lot of those are the underpowered DCT2000. I’ll guess over 20 million.) That severely limits the possibility of interactive TV penetration. In contrast, Pew Internet & American Life Project reports 42% have broadband Internet connections, twice that of digital settop boxes. And WebsiteOptimization.com reports that of those US households that use the Internet, 70% are above dial-up speed today (which is not really “high-capacity broadband”.)

The TV networks know these stats well. What are they doing to enhance video deployment technology on TV. Well… nothing that I’m aware of. It’s tough to change hardware in the field. What about the Internet? Ah… it’s easier to change software.

OK, let’s talk about the PC. Is there anything new here? Nothing earth shattering, that I’ve seen. Although more and more households are becoming broadband connected. Adobe Flash has given the user the ability to jump around within the Flash app. That’s cool. And, there are some good examples of it. The Indianapolis Museum (my hometown) has an interesting production on African Art. Weyth developed an interesting clip if you’re a women, and Philips if you’re a man. But, we really still have linear video, there is little in the way of arbitrary interactive control like that of a video game.

What new technology will be embedded in the television in 5 or 10 years? It’ll be HDTV for certain and most likely have an RJ45 and an IP address. But, will it have the processing power to do anything cool? Will it have a PC built in? Will it download software? I’d like to hear your predictions for the future of television technology. Who’s innovating and moving beyond linear video? I’d like to know what’s going on out there!

Technorati Tags: iTV user generated content

mythtv, television, tivo, tv

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