Internet as Tomorrow’s TV Screen

68 years after its invention, television still hasn’t fulfilled its potential consider the future of the humble box and how emerging technologies enhance your viewing pleasure.

Compared to the massive leaps forward we regularly witness in computer technology, the world of television could be accused of being somewhat slow to adapt. In fact, the fundamental idea behind television hasn’t changed that radically since the very first transmission was beamed into the ether back in 1936.

OK, so we got colour in 1967 and TV signals are now piped into houses via cable, satellite and, more recently, digital satellite and Free view. And we’ll happily admit that technologies employed to make, watch and record TV programmes improved a great deal during the 68 years of television’s existence.

But is there a place for the clumsy cathode ray tube among the adv technology of tomorrow’s living room, and how will the notion of tra broadcasting hold up in the face on increasing downloadable internet and online media distribution?

We decided to investigate TV’s precarious relationship with the web digital technologies in order to help us understand how TV will deve future.

Thanks to the digital music revolution, home entertainment has already quite a way down the computerised path. With hard disk-based vide recorders, portable video jukeboxes and Windows Media Center PCs popularity, it looks as if television could be next.

Computer technology and the internet have the potential to liberate from the limited range of time-specific programming forced on us by schedulers of small selection of channels. The telly of the future co gateway to a virtually limitless choice of your favourite programmes present – all available for you to download and watch whenever it is.

That might sound incredibly futuristic, but something very similar ha been going on for several years. Home Choice is a broadband-base that distributes a wide range of on-demand television content to its.

“Home Choice is an all-in-one entertainment and communication pac brought to you in one set-top box, through a BT phone line,” says R Chairman and chief executive of Video Networks, which delivers the I brand.

“Home Choice provides a range of high quality, on-demand television programming, including comedy, drama, music and documentaries, range of pay-per-view films, and an exceedingly fast broadband inte service.”

Although currently limited to the London area, Home Choice has play its service across the UK and, with a phone socket in almost every the country, the service has the potential to go far.

“We believe video-on-demand is set to become a major new form of entertainment,” continues Lynch. “It will change the way people want television.”

Home Choice represents an interesting model for how on-demand te downloadable from the internet, could work on a large scale. In pra however, it is very difficult to tame the web – a fact to which many company bosses will bitterly attest in light of the ongoing digital mu controversy.

The trouble is that the online community has a knack of finding new capitalise on technological advances and loopholes in copyright law distribute media of all kinds (particularly music) over the internet. It becoming abundantly clear that the faster technology expands, the difficult it is for the relevant laws to keep up.

The courtrooms of the 21^st century are bursting at the seams with legal disputes involving anything from operating systems and web digital media rights and copyright infringement.

It’s likely that judges and juries will be soon be hearing from a lot of and movie executives, since the same online file-sharing services been blamed for falling CD sales are fast becoming the places to go to download the latest episode of your favourite TV show – often bet even been broadcast in the UK.

It’s very easy to copy a TV programme to your computer’s hard disk need is a TV tuner card or a video capture device along with some (personal video recorder) software and you’re away.

Once you’ve made a digital recording on your PC, it’s even easier to with, well, just about anybody on the planet. Sign up with Kazaa, o other file-sharing services to be found online, and your digitised TV is suddenly available for millions of other users to download direct computer.

Naturally, the same theory applies in reverse. If you can’t wait for the episode of your favourite TV show to be shown on telly, it’s entirely that somebody somewhere has made a digital copy of it and made it on a file-sharing service.

Up until now, the speed of a standard 56K connection to the web made such a thing very impractical, since video files are notoriously take ages to transfer from one PC to another.

But several new technologies have emerged to make it faster and upload and download large files such as these from the web. Broadband example, has helped to speed up online data transfers, while clever technologies, like the aforementioned file-sharing services, have to share big files online.

Then there are new video compression techniques (such as DivX) the squash down file sizes to yet more manageable proportions, while much of the original picture and sound quality. Just as MP3 reduces to about 10 per cent of their original size and makes them easier to over the web, so these new formats perform an equivalent feat for video.

Even then, you can still spend a whole day downloading a full-length film, only to discover that you are now the produce owner of a barely handheld camera version of the latest blockbuster.

Quality issues aside, it’s not difficult to see how the practice of swap release feature films online could have the potential to adversely and possibly even endanger future movie production.

Apply the same theory to episodes of popular American TV shows the been broadcast in the UK (such as brand-new series of Frasier, Fried Feet Under or the West Wing) and this translates to falling ratings expensive, imported shows and lower returns on sell-through DVD r.

It’s unsurprising, therefore, that the practice of copying and swapping programmes online is considered a breach of copyright. According to Garnett, consultant at The Simkins Partnership, one of Europe’s lead and entertainment law firms: “The UK Copyright Designs and Patent) 1988 makes it quite clear that the copying of copyright materials such programmes is illegal if done without the permission of the copyright.

“Unlike US law, this is so even if the copy is made for personal use. Accordingly, any online trading sharing of an illegally copied TV programme would be subject to the provisions of the same law. It makes no diff whatsoever that a TV programme is of US origin [the Berne Covern US copyrights are protected in the UK] or that it is not available legi the UK.”

Tackling the problem of piracy is not immediately obvious, either. A bill in the US, backed by the Motion Picture Association of America, sentence convicted internet movie pirates to up to five year sin prison unclear as to whether this will extend to those posting TV shows rat feature films, or whether a similar punishment will be eventually ext UK offenders.

“The big question, of course, is whether people engaged in unlawful kind can be traced,” continued Nic Garnett. “There has been a lot of in the US of late as to the methods used for identifying offenders”.

Hollywood is calling for better copyright protection technology and simultaneous worldwide theatrical releases of feature films. In terms television, the new high-definition television (HDTV) standard in the incorporates copy protection that prevents direct digital transfer of premium broadcasts

Some critics have been quick to blame the implementation of this protection technology for the slow take up of HDTV. In the UK, mean HDTV broadcasting is still a pipe dream.

This is not how the world’s big broadcasters and programme makers the future of television. Their hope was to harness the power of digital television and build on the platform’s high-quality, multi-casting and potentials.

To be fair, the internet did come out of nowhere, taking virtually even surprise. As little as a decade ago it would have taken a great deal as to predict that the web could be a potential threat or even – dare we successor to the mighty television.

One thing’s for sure, TV isn’t going down without a fight. While most television company representatives we spoke to remained tight-lipp subject of file-swapping, many, like Chris Pressley, head of business development at Channel 4’s 4 Interactive, are keen to discuss how and traditional broadcasting could work side by side.

“This is a question of convergence. I don’t think this will happen very not because of any technology issues – that’s all relatively straightfo the rights and commercial issues will make it hard and ensure it take long, if it happens at all,” says Pressley.

“What’s more likely is a new model of TV; one developed specifically broadband and that is highly interactive, which challenges the tradit TV model – much as the advent of pay-tv on digital platforms challe advertising based TV model.”

Savvy broadcasters are already attempting to embrace the web, show downloadable, on-demand content alongside their regular channels’.

The BBC, for example, has announced that it is to post its programme online, while Channel 4 has launched 4 Broadband in conjunction with Player, where a monthly subscription (£5) gets you access to exclus of some of the station’s most popular shows (like Big Brother), alone current affairs and a smattering of back catalogue, such as the celel Swap series.

And the current selection is only just the tip of the iceberg, according to 4 Interactive’s Chris Pressley. “The plans for 4 Broadband are to broad range of content offering and go back into the archive [‘Channel 4] ultimately to commission a new show that is developed entirely for he explains.

Ashley Highfield, director of BBC new media & technology, agrees the togetherness is the way forward for television and the internet. “The combination is broadband together with digital TV and PVRs, plus the share this video in the same way in which music files are exchanged internet”, he says.

It really doesn’t matter if this solution is built into a PC as with Micro Media Center, Sony’s new PlayStation or a set-top box. It all adds up same solution: a box and a screen – offering unparalleled video, TV, and games content.”

So, rather than disappear altogether, it looks as though television is share an uneasy alliance with the internet and other computer appliance have in your home – for the immediate future, at least.

Doubtless there will always be a big screen in your living room but provides the programmes we watch on it in years to come, and quit will watch them, is another matter entirely.

If the ‘TV-on-demand’ model is the future then it certainly seems as Beeb has her finger on the right pulse. In a rather surprising announce last August’s Edinburgh Television Festival, BBC boss Greg Dyke Spoke Corporation’s intention to make a considerable amount of its programme archive available online.

“The initiative will predominantly focus on the BBC’s educational out make a variety of educational clips from the BBC archive available on BBC representative told us.

“BBCi also has another initiative, again in extremely early stages, ca [interactive media player], which will, in the future, allow some BBC programmes to be played through a PC for a limited time after broad.

Details are, at the moment, a little sketchy, but it would appear that will be attempting to do for its TV output what it has already success achieved for many of its popular radio programmes – that is to say available online once they have gone out on air.

If you miss an episode of The Archers, for example, you can catch up the Radio Four website at your own convenience. The same sort could soon work for East Enders fans too.

The BBC’s Ashley Highfield also believes that these initiatives will help combat online piracy: “We are exploring legitimate file sharing mode our users to share our content. And as an industry, we should be creating legitimate content download products. We need to help con leapfrog the illegal downloading issues that have wreaked havoc on industry.”

The establishment of an on-demand ‘Creative Archive’, as it has been is certainly a bold move and one that seems to capitalise on both the broadcaster’s rich resources and the unique distribution power of the.

Quite how such a scheme will work, or when it will officially launch, be seen but, according to Dyke’s speech given in Edinburgh, the ser free to license payers rather than charged on a pay-per-view basis.