Gates Proclaims Internet to Revolutionize TV in 5 Years 314
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. "
We need an obvious tag (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Oh, just what I needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Museum of Bill Gates Proclamations (Score:5, Insightful)
My prediction is: Bill will tell us that the next version of Windows after Vista is going to be really secure this time.
Spam (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:We need an obvious tag (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know if you can access CurrentTV, but if you can make sure you sit down and watch a couple of pods. This is what he's talking about when he mentions that it's going to revolutionize TV. Viewer submitted content (that they're paying for) that appears on TV is amazing to watch.
You get a first hand account of newly reported news items but without the lame over-processed and practiced "Live Eyewitness News Reporter" feel. Some of the shit on CurrentTV blows my mind and some of it is viewer submitted advertising for products that you would have probably never heard about on the mainstream media.
Now, with archived content available online, we will finally get to see the Tubes be used for part of their potential.
this from the guy who doesn't own one? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Huh? I'm already off TV (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
No chance (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:We need an obvious tag THE END OF SPAM!!!11 (Score:1, Insightful)
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...
Oh, great sage and seer (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
TV will prevail (Score:5, Insightful)
Why Listen to a Has-Been? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:"640K ought to be enough for anybody." (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No chance (Score:5, Insightful)
In processing power terms, that's like saying 'Nobody will be able to play these 'nextgen' video games because the processing power isn't there.' (Yes, people said that. We have gone FAR beyond that point now.)
In data storage terms, that's like saying games will never look real because you'd have to distribute too much information. (Yes, people said that. CDs came in and kicked this idiocy to the curb. Then DVDs. Then HD-DVD/BluRays.)
The market will be there to provide what we want as soon as we have a use for it. You can count on it.
Well, duh... (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:Oh, just what I needed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Y'know, I still don't see flying cars anywhere near. On the other hand, it will be a cold day in Hell before I start paying attention to what Gates has to say about the Internet. His company almost missed it. MSN, hah.
Re:Why Listen to a Has-Been? (Score:4, Insightful)
Bill Gates does NOT have a track record of coming up with innovative, cutting edge, next gen products. In fact, he doesn't have a good track record coming up with better products others already have done, & shall we go through them?
1. Zune...rhymes with doom, and it is not a game
2. IE...still going downhill after giving us malware-virus heaven
3. CE...mobile world does not know it exists
4. Cairo-Longhorn...time moves on, with less features
5. Media Center PCs...oohh a geek's delight
6. MS's Search...Uhhh Bill is too busy to use Google, and his secretary finds what he needs on his hard drive
Bill Gates and "The Chair" Ballmer are strictly into techniques designed to lock their OS & Office monopoly down tighter.
I seriously doubt Bill gates is even interested in TV personally...and that is probably an indication of how little Microsoft will do in that arena.
The only thing that will stand a chance of allowing shareholder value growth is breaking Microsoft up into pieces and letting all the brainpower in each division go wild in search of new products, because Bill & Steve are not going to do it.
Re:No chance (Score:3, Insightful)
High speed Internet connections only recently became available where I live. The local telephone lines in my neighborhood were only good for 26.4K even though I had a 56K modem. I was unable to get cable, but recently the telephone company finally made 1.5 Mbps DSL connections available here (7 Mbps DSL is also now available). What will the bandwidth requirements be for watching this future on-line video content at an appropriate resolution? What resolution will I need for my 13 inch television when watching from my usual chair 14 feet away?.
With Windows Vista, Microsoft seems to have made a huge effort to re-engineer Windows as a secure DRM delivery mechanism that Hollywood and the music studios can trust. Bill Gates is probably hoping that we will all soon be using Windows to watch high-definition protected content on HD-DVDs or to watch online video content. He may eventually be right about that, but personally, I would rather use a separate small dedicated box for that purpose, not a Windows PC. It is doubtful that my Linux PC will be trusted by Hollywood to download their highest definition video content anyway, so for me a small separate box of some type would probably be the way to go.
Here are two links that show the extremes that Microsoft has gone to in adding digital rights management to VistaRe:The Museum of Bill Gates Proclamations (Score:5, Insightful)
He isn't telling us what he thinks will happen so much as he is telling us what he wants to happen so that he makes a lot of money. By forming it as a prediction he gets the masses to start looking in that direction and expecting what it is he is intending to sell them, thus making it easier to sell it to them, because now they think that's what they "want."
It's similar to telling someone that their neighbor has already bought the widget you're selling; with the implication that if you don't buy one too you've missed the boat. The psychology of the herd. What are "they" going to be wearing next year? Ok, give me some of that.
Thus you cannot embarass Bill by pointing out his failures at prognostication, because he views them as failures to manipulate.
But here's the Gatesian twist: He blames you for it.
KFG
Re:Oh, just what I needed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Museum of Bill Gates Proclamations (Score:5, Insightful)
My TV is fine, Gates. Get back to work fixing my inbox--it's overflowing because of all those shitty Windows computers you put out that are now spam zombies.
Re:No chance (Score:3, Insightful)
No its not. Your average broadband connection floats around 600-700 kbps. [pcworld.com] There isnt enough last-mile bandwidth for these schemes and big telcos have very little incentive to roll out huge and expensive infrastructure upgrades, especially when regulators keep giving them sweetheart deals.
>Are you saying that business will be unable to cope with giving the customer what they want to pay for?
Yes. First off, the demand for iptv will evaborate because no one has ever see one. And theres tons of competition that its in demand like cable and satelite.
>'Nobody will be able to play these 'nextgen' video games because the processing power isn't there.'
Thats a lousy analogy. CPU manufacturers are constalty producing fast chips, see moore's law. Telecom companies are not constantly producing faster last-mile solutions.
>The market will be there to provide what we want as soon as we have a use for it. You can count on it.
I've been waiting for a
100mbps connection to my home for a decade. Lets not be too naive here. Businesses would love to get off the t1 system. etc.
Re:TV will prevail (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly. Too many geeks and 'futurists' think everything will be like the current incarnation of the web and email because these things are currently popular. All these cries of 'interactivity' is just silly. People like relaxing, sitting down, and watching a story unfold. If they didnt we'd all be reading Choose Your Own Adventure books nowaways and movies would have a special remote to vote on what happens next. The technologists dont understand the art form, theyre not even close.
Sometimes you just want to chill out. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh, just what I needed... (Score:3, Insightful)
M$uck (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Any show, any where, any time (Score:2, Insightful)
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.