IPTV the Future of Television

The idea of IPTV has actually been around for a while. I remember going to the Manchester Science Museum about 10 years ago and saw a presetation from the BBC that said they were working to make their entire catalogue available on demand (10 years ago!), a little like the iPlayer today!



I started thinking about this last night, you see soon the anylog signal will be turned off and at the moment the only freeview i can recieve is Dave and Virgin 1. Yes i could get sky or freesat and if IPTV doesn't come of age then I probably will, but i have reasons for not getting either of those services so far and the advantages of IPTV are a 1000 times fold that of traditional TV services.



My vision of the future of TV and how I would like it to evolve has been inspired by my use of spotify in recent weeks. This is a fantastic service, precisely because it provides music that you like when you like. Okay it has adverts (free version), but when it's providing song after song that you enjoy without the woeful banter of commercial radio you don't mind the ads so much!



I'm not sure if Hulu provides this already (as it's not available in the UK yet), but I see IPTV as service that streamed channels such as BBC1, 2, Sky News etc as they are programmed by the schedulers as you get now, but you could then mix up or build you own schedule made up of programs past and present from all the content providers. The service would be funded by having a minute or two of adverts every 15 minutes, but this being the internet means that you may not mind those adverst as much because web 2.0 doesn't necessarily have a one to many relationship (as normal TV does), it can be a one to one. By this i mean that by telling the service about your tastes and preferences (and even from monitoring what types of programs your watching) you will be delivered adverts that you may actually want to see.



These adverts may even bring in more revenue. Because they can be targeted and because (in some cases) you'll be able to interact with that advert the space becomes more valuable to advertisers! You can then use the advertising system to then ensure that quality programming created. If you simply say that the profit from every advert at the beginning and during each program goes to the content provider. This means that if you make a TV program that people like and want to watch, you make more money!



This type of service then lends itself to integration with the social networks, perhaps sharing user created schedules and rating and reviewing programs - watching the content together! By making the APIs to the service open you encourage this sort of invention and activity, but it would also encourage manufacturers to create compatible set-top boxes / TVs for the service.

For me this is the future and from what i've seen its not far away