Digital TV is a hotzone for technology weirdness. It's not because TV is particularily exciting: I don't think I've ever seen a TV show that can match fooling around online minute-for-minutew for interestingness. But decrepit regulators are convinced that they need to "protect" TV in the 21st century or the heartland will rise up with pitchforks (and nevermind that kids in the heartland are just as into PSPs, Japanese comix, and LJ as the kids in the cities are).
So digital TV, and TV programs delivered by traditional TV companies over the Internet (IPTV) are considered important policy priorities by senators, congresscritters, MPs, and regulators, who are willing to throw up dumbass regulations like the Broadcast Flag in order to try to ensure that the Internet doesn't render TV obsolete.
Meanwhile, all the video I eat online comes from swarming downloads and cool, open source players like Broadcast Machine, technologies that not only don't need regulation to protect them — they don't even really need much money.
This latter is what Om Malik calls "TV-over-IP." Not branded Time-Warner IPTV, top-heavy with rules, standards and laws, but TV-like material, delivered over IP, by the same dirty hackers who brought you the Web in the first place.
Now compare this with Television over IP, or broadband video. Television over IP, on the other hand is the high quality streaming video, that is made available over the fast pipes, without a set-top box. This is a (comparatively) fairly low cost, and perhaps a simpler model. This simplicity is one of the reasons, it might actually gain traction in the market. While I am not willing to put a lot in the “long tail” video efforts like video blogs and efforts of start-ups such as Bright Cove, I do think there is a lot of hope for branded content online, especially if content owners can create a superior experience. I have seen some of the video-over-broadband efforts of folks like Comcast and News Corp., and that looks promising. Other content owners are also cooking up broadband channels.
Today launch of mtvU Über, a network that allows aspiring student broadband creators to create broadband content is a step in the right direction, but not the final answer. The bottom line is that, the television over broadband needs some sizzling new kind of content in order for folks to go back and click. My feeling is that MTV should have done their MTV Desi channel over broadband, and perhaps used it as a learning experience for other niche channels over broadband. If done right, television over broadband has the potential to pip IPTV to the post.
(via Hack the Planet)
