The changing face of TV

For the past few weeks I’ve been without the using of my Sky HD box as the signal is being intercepted by some trees/leaves in a neighbouring property. That’ll be resolved shortly by way of a mast that will rival Jodrell Bank but in the meantime, I’ve been enjoying a summer of sport via the web.

I didn’t occur to me immediately but my two screen setup at home has come in to play a lot with email/web on one and live TV on the other. Remember a few years back when all the web big cheeses were saying that future of the web is online video and TV? I didn’t think too much of it to be honest as the TV has always come to me via, well…the TV. That screen in the corner of the room that we’ve gathered around for generations. This may sound slightly odd coming from someone who spends an inordinate amount of time in front of his PC but the online TV era has just dawned on me.

Over the last month I have happily watched the following events in pretty decent quality on my PC

• Wimbledon coverage
• German F1 Grand Prix
• Tour de France
• The Ashes

Okay so they’re all sport but I’m starting to branch out – I’m sort of watching Harry Potter as I type this, mainly because I can rather than genuine desire to watch it.

Anyway, the point of this post is that sometimes the future really does just creep up on you.

The future of TV really does lie on the web in both live and catch-up formats and I applaud the BBC, Sky and other broadcasters for embracing it so quickly. From a personal perspective it’s great to see several of the broadcasters using smooth streaming for this but even if they were using Flash I’d be watching. With 8mb broadband in to my house I get an incredibly good experience and recently sat and watched a decent amount of the Tour de France on the web in HD quality. When Virgin puts fibre outside of my house and I move to 50mb I’ll get watching this stuff simultaneously in HD and will need a few more PC screens :)

It’s made me wonder a lot about the value of the subscription I pay to get TV through my set top box. Do I really need that any more? Will Windows 7 and Internet TV change things or will it just shift my subscription to one I can view across multiple devices?

One thing is for sure, the TV revolution they promised is happening and I expect in 2 years time it’ll be just a normal thing in many households, especially those with children – they’ll just expect it and assume it’s always been that way. What surprised me most is as a digital native (okay, almost) it crept up on me in no time…it makes me wonder what else will.

Comments

• Anonymous
  July 19, 2009
  Now stream multiple shows to different rooms Tv's simultaniously on demand  via  XBOX360s controlled with a remote just like "normal" tv.  It's great.  I cut my TV subscription over 2 years ago.  During that time the content available and delivery methods have really blossomed.  I even have my mother set up this way. cheers