The last decade of TV as we know it

[Fritzo]

Let's face it- Network TV is dying. People have short attention spans now due to instant access to any information anytime, anywhere. I see all the major networks going to a streaming format within the next decade, where you will see a "Tivo" style menu on your screen when you turn to a particular channel, and you choose what show you want to watch. Scheduled shows will be replaced with libraries streamed right to your TV. Adobe is already trying to make deals with TV manufacturers for Flash TV's.

I'm pretty sure this is going to make the Blueray format short lived. You can buy a license for a movie and watch it anywhere, anytime in hi-def without being tied to a disc + player. Streaming is where it's at man!

Thank you for reading my blog.

 

[TwiceOver]

Maybe some day. The infrastructure isn't ready for it yet though.

 

[PepePeru]

i agree with your assessment blog and am forwardly looking to future endeavors.

 

[darkxshade]

Only $55 for 40GBs... order now!!!

 

[LordMorpheus]

hint: This isn't a bad thing. If hulu had all the shows I cared to watch I'd never watch "normal" TV again.

 

[Titan]

Blu-ray is still cheaper storage per GB than any hard drive, and dvd-r's even more-so.

 

[ric1287]

Originally posted by: Fritzo
Let's face it- Network TV is dying. People have short attention spans now due to instant access to any information anytime, anywhere. I see all the major networks going to a streaming format within the next decade, where you will see a "Tivo" style menu on your screen when you turn to a particular channel, and you choose what show you want to watch. Scheduled shows will be replaced with libraries streamed right to your TV. Adobe is already trying to make deals with TV manufacturers for Flash TV's.

I'm pretty sure this is going to make the Blueray format short lived. You can buy a license for a movie and watch it anywhere, anytime in hi-def without being tied to a disc + player. Streaming is where it's at man!

Thank you for reading my blog.

yeah, and the ISP's are fully behind streaming by constantly upgrading infrastructure, lowering prices and providing high quality, honest service.

 

[BrokenVisage]

...and I feel fine

 

[Vageetasjn]

Originally posted by: Titan
Blu-ray is still cheaper storage per GB than any hard drive, and dvd-r's even more-so.

Really? What kind of price/GB can you get with blu ray? Hard drives are around 7-8 cents/GB these days.

 

[Barfo]

Such groundbreaking thinking, I want to subscribe to your newsletter.

 

[effowe]

Originally posted by: ric1287

Originally posted by: Fritzo
Let's face it- Network TV is dying. People have short attention spans now due to instant access to any information anytime, anywhere. I see all the major networks going to a streaming format within the next decade, where you will see a "Tivo" style menu on your screen when you turn to a particular channel, and you choose what show you want to watch. Scheduled shows will be replaced with libraries streamed right to your TV. Adobe is already trying to make deals with TV manufacturers for Flash TV's.

I'm pretty sure this is going to make the Blueray format short lived. You can buy a license for a movie and watch it anywhere, anytime in hi-def without being tied to a disc + player. Streaming is where it's at man!

Thank you for reading my blog.

yeah, and the ISP's are fully behind streaming by constantly upgrading infrastructure, lowering prices and providing high quality, honest service.

:laugh:

Yes, with all this Hi-Def content coming down the pipes, people will be reaching their ISP mandated bandwidth cap in no time. Something has to give before streaming will be a viable option for everybody.

 

[Fritzo]

Originally posted by: ric1287

Originally posted by: Fritzo
Let's face it- Network TV is dying. People have short attention spans now due to instant access to any information anytime, anywhere. I see all the major networks going to a streaming format within the next decade, where you will see a "Tivo" style menu on your screen when you turn to a particular channel, and you choose what show you want to watch. Scheduled shows will be replaced with libraries streamed right to your TV. Adobe is already trying to make deals with TV manufacturers for Flash TV's.

I'm pretty sure this is going to make the Blueray format short lived. You can buy a license for a movie and watch it anywhere, anytime in hi-def without being tied to a disc + player. Streaming is where it's at man!

Thank you for reading my blog.

yeah, and the ISP's are fully behind streaming by constantly upgrading infrastructure, lowering prices and providing high quality, honest service.

That's a two way street. The cable companies are making a bad name for themselves by being over-reactive. However, I don't think their business has another 10 years of life in it. Everything is going to go to wireless, probably carried by the cell phone network. It makes sense as there's less infrastructure you have to support, there's no installation, and bandwidth and expansion are virtually unlimited.

Cable has a limited amount of bandwidth they can deal with because they backed themselves into a corner by offering hidef TV AND Internet over the same cable. They screwed themselves. Phone companies all have a wireless division, so DSL will probably become like dial-up, and high speed wireless will become the affordable standard to feed houses. I could even see houses being prewired with antennas for better cell reception.

 

[spaceman]

llive sparts are live sparts
muney on the line so people will watch

 

[spidey07]

Originally posted by: Fritzo

That's a two way street. The cable companies are making a bad name for themselves by being over-reactive. However, I don't think their business has another 10 years of life in it. Everything is going to go to wireless, probably carried by the cell phone network. It makes sense as there's less infrastructure you have to support, there's no installation, and bandwidth and expansion are virtually unlimited.

Cable has a limited amount of bandwidth they can deal with because they backed themselves into a corner by offering hidef TV AND Internet over the same cable. They screwed themselves. Phone companies all have a wireless division, so DSL will probably become like dial-up, and high speed wireless will become the affordable standard to feed houses. I could even see houses being prewired with antennas for better cell reception.

It's not going to happen like that. Wireless is what is so limited in speed. hybrid fiber coax networks and docsis 3.0 mean there is plenty of bandwidth at the access layer, it's everything else that would need to be overhauled.

Right now the move is "do we push the content to the set top box or do we cache it in strategic locations closer to the core/aggregation layers".

It's going to take longer than 10 years to get to a full anywhere ondemand HD service with good quality and no compression. Heck in 10 years we'll probably have 2000p video.

And you're leaving out broadcasters and over the air where a large percentage of people get their TV.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Fritzo
Let's face it- Network TV is dying. People have short attention spans now due to instant access to any information anytime, anywhere. I see all the major networks going to a streaming format within the next decade, where you will see a "Tivo" style menu on your screen when you turn to a particular channel, and you choose what show you want to watch. Scheduled shows will be replaced with libraries streamed right to your TV. Adobe is already trying to make deals with TV manufacturers for Flash TV's.

I'm pretty sure this is going to make the Blueray format short lived. You can buy a license for a movie and watch it anywhere, anytime in hi-def without being tied to a disc + player. Streaming is where it's at man!

Thank you for reading my blog.

Perhaps, maybe, eventually. The system you describe requires millions of times more bandwidth than the current broadcast model. To be efficient, the content would have to be delivered from as close to the customer as possible.

Streaming and DRM are great for subscription services. Not so much when you want people to buy something to own it. I don't see Blu-Ray dying so quickly, because so far DRM hasn't given people the ability to "buy a license for [content] and [use] it anywhere, anytime without being tied to [physical media]." The opposite is true - you buy content, and it's tied to your device, or at least devices from the same manufacturer or that use the same DRM.

 

[darkxshade]

Originally posted by: spidey07

Originally posted by: Fritzo

That's a two way street. The cable companies are making a bad name for themselves by being over-reactive. However, I don't think their business has another 10 years of life in it. Everything is going to go to wireless, probably carried by the cell phone network. It makes sense as there's less infrastructure you have to support, there's no installation, and bandwidth and expansion are virtually unlimited.

Cable has a limited amount of bandwidth they can deal with because they backed themselves into a corner by offering hidef TV AND Internet over the same cable. They screwed themselves. Phone companies all have a wireless division, so DSL will probably become like dial-up, and high speed wireless will become the affordable standard to feed houses. I could even see houses being prewired with antennas for better cell reception.

It's not going to happen like that. Wireless is what is so limited in speed. hybrid fiber coax networks and docsis 3.0 mean there is plenty of bandwidth at the access layer, it's everything else that would need to be overhauled.

Right now the move is "do we push the content to the set top box or do we cache it in strategic locations closer to the core/aggregation layers".

It's going to take longer than 10 years to get to a full anywhere ondemand HD service with good quality and no compression. Heck in 10 years we'll probably have 2000p video.

And you're leaving out broadcasters and over the air where a large percentage of people get their TV.

That's a little optimistic, the analog to DTV transition won't even be complete in 10 years.

 

[alyarb]

i don't see how streaming television content is going to replace bluray. they are just totally different. BD is a totally different realm of quality compared to HDTV. movie watchers know what video quality is, and there is demand for it. the only reason people aren't loading up on blu ray content is because not everybody can just dump $1k into their television set.

 

[Kev]

Yes, I love streaming shit quality video to my expensive hdtv. F blu ray.

 

[bobdole369]

bandwidth and expansion are virtually unlimited.

Untrue. Bandwidth is a function of (technology * frequency allocation) / users.

As users grow the frequency allocation must increase. As much as I'm a fan of fast always on internet - I don't see forking over the entire spectrum to AT&T as viable. We still need police radios and business band and pagers, and amateur radio, and broadcast radio. We've already upgraded our TV stuff and come summertime a good chunk of that band is going to the cell phone companies. It can't go on like that forever. Sure as tech marches forward more and more can go in the pipe, but even that has limits. There will not be a shortage of users.

 

[zinfamous]

you forgot bout the all-important advertisers. seeing as how the networks depend on them for revenue and not the shows that they will produce, I don't see this happening anytime soon.

crappy video downloads killing Blu-Ray, which is currently way cheaper at this point in its lifetime than DVD was?

 

[Ns1]

Originally posted by: zinfamous
you forgot bout the all-important advertisers. seeing as how the networks depend on them for revenue and not the shows that they will produce, I don't see this happening anytime soon.

This.

 

[zinfamous]

Originally posted by: LordMorpheus
hint: This isn't a bad thing. If hulu had all the shows I cared to watch I'd never watch "normal" TV again.

you shows broadcast on hulu depend on the actual networks that provide those shows.

the networks depend on ad revenue.

It's the same as how bloggers depend on actual journalists as the primary source of their information. Once the newspapers die, the bloggers are fucked. Or we are simply forced to deal with un-vetted "news" pulled straight from the ass of Joe the Blogger.

 

[destrekor]

I think to stream whatever someone wants at any particular time, wouldn't be so demanding on the current network, but quality wouldn't be there that's for sure.

And no way in hell will it even compare to Blu-ray. As of now, regular streamed HD content cannot even touch Blu-ray. And that's just for video. Then there is compression of audio, which would eat up a lot of the available transmission data as well.

Blu-ray will have the same lifespan as between as DVD did in-between VHS and BD. Of course its still around now, same as analog reception is still around. Some people just don't care.
So, basically 10 years, which at the progression rate of technology, is perfectly feasible and acceptable imho.

As for the infrastructure of the US? Well... we have problems. There is the capability to have much higher speeds if the cable companies fully adopted DOCSIS 3, and upgraded some of the nodes.
But the underlying issue is, our expansive territory. It's huge compared in comparison to every country with higher internet speeds. We cannot really offer the same services Japan and the EU countries offer, as their land is much smaller, able to provide that service with far greater ease.
I won't say its impossible, but it'll be awhile because the costs are prohibitive for the major cable providers to upgrade the services to the same capability, it was far far cheaper for those small countries.

As far as Fritzo's concepts of wireless or internet provided by the cell companies... don't bank on that. Wireless by some companies may prove to be an attractive option, but coverage and reception is going to be the same hurdle it has always been. It'll be the starting gun though for cable companies to upgrade their services far beyond what they offer today. But things like WiMax and the other 4G wireless services, service from the cellular companies will be cost prohibited for real home internet replacement, unless they change that approach.

 

[dainthomas]

Originally posted by: Vageetasjn

Originally posted by: Titan
Blu-ray is still cheaper storage per GB than any hard drive, and dvd-r's even more-so.

Really? What kind of price/GB can you get with blu ray? Hard drives are around 7-8 cents/GB these days.

Blank BRs are about $5, so 10 cents/GB there. I just paid $110 for a 1TB drive, about 11 cents/GB there. I'd say they're even.

 

[ViviTheMage]

and you know what will kill your theory...bandwidth caps.