We will look back on the years from 2006 until the end of this decade, as the remake of television into Internet TV. I know people who have cancelled their cable TV contracts and exclusively watch TV on the Internet. We see better and better quality user-generated content too.
Big Cable vs. Ma Bell(s)
Time Warner, Cox, Comcast, and ilk are holding onto their hegemony for as long as they can, lobbying politicians and FCC officials, while Verizon and AT&T lay the fibers for a truly amazing high-definition experience (or so they promise). When there's a TV program I want to watch, even if it's not on Fox or ABC, I can go to Hulu (soon to YouTube too). However, I’m not a Hulu acolyte and use it only as a starting point when I need to find something I want. Hulu does well enough today, but it doesn't get me to YouTube.
Building the infrastructure is a tricky business
Quality streaming over varying connection speeds has now become a reality. Thanks to companies like Move Networks, we've got technologies like adaptive bit rate adjustment; now even the CDNs are starting to build this in. Watch something on Hulu and you'll see that the quality is pretty superb.
Monetizing content and paying for the infrastructure have proven to be even trickier.
At the end it all comes back to how everyone will make money, a subject upon which there has been hardly ant agreement, and relatively little success.
The experiments are fun to watch, though - especially from the receiving end. How is yours?
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