Was reading today how ‘traditional’ TV could be ‘dead’ by the end of the year.
This rather startling prediction was based on the attempt of the founders of Kazzoo and Skype (Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis) to launch what can only be described as Internet TV. Seems they have 150 channels all ready to roll and funded by the US$2.6 billion sale of Skype to eBay.
They aren’t alone of course, there are many other companies out there with similar ideas, but these seem to be closest to a full launch.
Seems a good idea on the face of it but I can’t see it taking off here in Oz. Why?
Well obviously, transmission over the net requires bandwidth above all else. Now free-to-air TV, for all its faults *is* just that… free! Well free to the individual consumer who pay only indirectly through advertising. Bandwidth on the other hand is usually bought and paid for by the individual consumer.
The difference is one of both cost *and* perception. For example, this month I used up all 12 Gb of my allowance on one account, and nearly 18 Gb on the other one… and there’s still a week to go. And that was just for stuff I wanted to use/watch/look at. Remember *this* is with the kids watching TV as well! Can you imagine the bandwidth we’d *all* need to watch TV all day, let alone get the full surfing experience!
Internet TV might well be the way of the future but there will need to be a quantum leap forward in bandwidth provision and an equal and opposite movement in costs before that has any chance of succeeding.
The Eclectic Interweb 
The BBC and Channel 4 over here in the UK are both about to go live with web TV also.
I suspect the main use will be for “Catch Up” T.V. on an ad hoc basis, with a sprinkling of “first chance to see t.v.” for the word-of-mouth publicity.
I doubt if the service will be designed to go mainstream until everyone is on cable broadband, not copper-feed ADSL. That won’t be for a while here!
Enjoy your Pottering about. See you on the other side!
Over here cable is also ‘a thing of the past’. The costs associated with the roll out made it far too high for most companies to carry. Far easier to pump bits down the copper wires. As bad as they are, they’re cheap and already exist and can carry above 20Mb/sec, though admittedly they need serious amplification to cover any distance.
I reckon the next ‘big thing’ for Internet access for the masses will be full wireless transmission once the technology has improved a little… and costs drop dramatically :).
Of course, I’m saying that having got a 1Mb fault wireless connection already which works fine. 🙂
Roll on Saturday… and the post Potter review.