Internet Televison Content Coming of Age

Thomas Hawk writes "The Washington Post has an article out this morning on the assortment of internet based TV choices that are popping up providing additional and competing content to the major studios. Most of these providers are operating more as content collectors or aggregators than actual content producers."

CSPAN.org

[turnstyle]

I watched all 4 US presidential debates (1 vice presidential) live on CSPAN.org. It worked great.

tv as we know it

[to be a troll]

I believe we are experiencing the last dying gasps of the final generation of TV as we know it... personally i have found myself watching all my TV on my computer, from downloaded Simpsons episodes to streaming CNN newscasts. I havent owned a TV in years. Most the younger people i know (18-25) are pretty much headed towards the same direction.

Re:CSPAN.org

[elid]

But that's low res. Actually, I was having fun seeing how many different video feeds (cspan, yahoo, etc.) of one debate open on my desktop at the same time.

Vonage for TV

[telemonster]

It is just a matter of time before Vonage style services for television start appearing. TV over IP.

Now is the time for Multicast...

I think it would be cool to have an opensource set top box that pulls content from something like bittorrent. Each box could serve and play, as an appliance. Let people publish content on the network and wala, true television revolution.

Could make them out of Tivo units, after replacing Linux with NetBSD.

RSS + Divx = No More TV

[tobes]

For me, the joy (if you can call it that) of tv has always been that it's a somewhat passive experience. Sometimes you just want to sit back and not "search" for content. Of course, lately tv has been failing to provide this experience. The lack of quality programming means that I spend more time channel surfing than I would like.

Anyway, I think there's a big potential for tcp/ip video to replace the current distribution methods. The only hurdle is replicating that passive viewing experience. I think things like RSS go a long way towards achieving this. Instead of surfing/searching for video, by tying it to RSS you could just subscribe to "channels" and have the content pulled down to your machine (or links to it) almost immediately after it's published. Tie this in with some sort of search engine or recommendation system and you have a pretty powerful product.

Re:tv as we know it

[Anonymous Coward]

I tend to agree. While I still own TVs, about the only thing I do with them is play DVDs or Video from a computer on them. I also download the occasional TV show, usually a divx file in HDTV quality- which is better than the TV quality in my area by far, and has all the commercials edited right out. God bless these people who put their hard work into the Torrents I get every day!

VoD is better

[alatesystems]

I don't see internet tv replacing regular tv, because you'd have to have all these micro-subscriptions to keep the sites afloat. Advertising just doesn't do that (Think late 90's).

I really like the Video On Demand that I get from Time Warner. I can pull up episodes from just about any popular tv show. I like the G4TechTV on demand channel a lot, as well as the comedy central one. Since I have HBO and Cinemax, I can pull up any recent movies on demand from it. The cable company already has a massive fiber and copper network, and they're finally leveraging it to provide entertainment to me!

I even have a channel (999) that let's me play GAMES on the DVR/cable box with my remote like solitaire and keeps real time stats with other people playing as well.

Digital cable and VoD is the future, not internet tv, as in streaming real media or wmv or something like that. I'd rather have my relatively uncompressed(mpeg2) content from my cable company.

text/html vs video

[RealProgrammer]

We're still in the infancy of the Network Age. It's fairly easy right now for programs to operate on text (including html/xml/et al), but operating on audio or video streams isn't done much yet. Gooogle News, for instance, uses algorithmic control to 'watch' the web for interesting stories. I suppose there are certain segments of the web that do that for video, but most video editing and selection is done by people.

It won't be long (a few years, maybe) before good audio is generated in real time from scripts. You'll feed in the text of a script, select good voices and such, and stream realistic audio programs.

How to do video is something else. Animations currently take a lot of work to develop. Someday maybe they can be script-generated on the fly too.

In 15 years (following Moore's Law) everything will be 1024 times faster than it is now, 1024 times more powerful. What will that bring? It'll be fun to watch.

Quality?

[tji]

These attempts are coming at a bit of a tough time.. HDTV services are growing pretty quickly, raising the bar for quality expectations from TV viewers.

Most of the downloadable / streamable TV content I have seen is pretty much garbage quality-wise.

I don't think they need to do full 720p or 1080i to be competitive, but they certainly need to do better than the smudgey thumbnail videos I have seen.

Maybe taking an HDTV source (where available) then scaling it down to DVD resolutions (720x480) and using MPEG-4 compression could offer a good compromise between quality and size.

Re:Don't forget Bittorrent!

[FictionPimp]

Yea, I feel so guilty sending that check to the cable company every month while I'm downloading those episodes of the daily show I missed. I'm such a horrible person :-p

*Yes I know your comment was sarcastic*

TV on Demand...Not for me!

[Anonymous Coward]

I personally dont want TV on Demand. Part of what made Sunday night alias was the anticipation of the next episode. With TV on demand, I could (probably would) rush through the whole season in a day or two. I dont think that would generate near as much excitement from a fan base, and the Producer proabably wouldnt get as much money either.

I would be interested in seeing sports whenever I wanted, but that can already be done with TiVo.

On demand TV would make good content seem less. Every program that I demand can be watched instantly. When I'm done watching those programs, what else is there to watch? all the shows that I didn't demand...so then I'm settling for a chunk of second rate entertainment. which probably wont be fulfilling after I just had the best.

Here is an example. I can sit down to watch show "A" which I enjoy, show "C" is also one of my favorite shows. I might sit through show "B" while I wait for show "C". If I could watch show "A" then "C" right after, I would not go back and watch show "B".

Re:Don't forget Bittorrent!

[marcop]

I know the parent is meant for sarcasm, however is it still stealing if I download shows from the Internet for archival purposes when I have:

- am a TW digital cable subscriber - only downloading shows I actaully receive.
- Tivo my shows
- Have a VCR to archive.
- Have a analog TV to firewire device bridge that I can use to cap my analog feeds.

Since the US Supreme court has upheld that time shifting is OK, I can legally archive programs that I pay for and receive in my home. However, I find it more convenient to simply download shows instead of doing the work myself. Am I still a pirate?

This questions seems more a rhetorical question whose answer varies depending on who you ask. Anyone have any legal backing?

Re:Can someone explain?

[wjeff]

Ok, so why aren't the local affiliates streaming their broadcasts, all we are talking about is taking the same content they broadcast freely over the airwaves, and making it available over the Internet.

This should be a no brainer.

Home away from home..

[Nomeko]

Some of the Norwegean tv cannels have been streaming their shows on the net for a long while now.. Exept for using them to review certain shows I never gave it much attension.. Now however having moved to the other part of the globe it is Oh so refreshing to watch a lokal show again... This doesn't apply to you amarikans anyways, as you litter the world with your.. hmm.. Quality shows :D I happily welcome TVoIP (Does that read like twoip?)