Watch Cable TV on Your Computer
While free TV was the only way to watch video content in the earlier 20th century, this was replaced by Cable TV. And while cable TV used to be the only way to avoid boredom from a limited number of freeview channels, today you can entertain yourself with downloads from the Web or DVDs.
Watching videos or even TV through computers is increasingly becoming popular, and is especially popular among households and individuals who would rather not spend extra for . This can be done either by installing a TV tuner on your computer via PCI, PCI express or USB 2.0 and plugging in directly to the cable TV outlet, or downloading from the Internet. Today’s proliferation of Broadband connections makes it easier and less costly to stream videos thru the Internet. Hence, if you don’t have an actual CATV connection, you can now ideally view TV shows online as long as there are content providers that are willing to do so.
One such content network is TVU networks, which has made available a freely downloadable player that lets Windows XP users watch several cable TV channels online.
I’ve tried it on my laptop using a 384 Kbps connection and the video and audio quality was decent enough for casual viewing. There’s not fullscreen mode, though, and the resolution is about half that of regular NTSC TV (which is about 640×400). I’ve experienced some choppy streams every now and then, but I’m not complaining since I do have an actual CATV subscription, anyway, and I only use TVU so I can monitor TV channels while working at places without TV (say, at the WiFi-enabled cafe).
Channels include Star TV, CNN, Al Jazeera, CW, ESPN, ABC, CBS, NBC, Disney, Cartoon Network, and the Animal Planet, among others.
IPTV to Surge by 2010
Analysis by research firm eMarketer suggests that IPTV has the potential to shake up the broadcast television and Web-based video industries, but still has a long way to go. At present, IPTV isn’t much of a threat, with about 300,000 subscribers in the United States as of 2005. This figure could go up to 8.7 million by 2010, the study says.
According to IPTV: The Global Picture (via Media Post Publications),
“While the first incarnations of IPTV in the U.S. are likely to be extremely underwhelming, this should not undermine the long-term potential of IPTV,” states the report, by senior analyst Ben Macklin. “The combination of high-quality video content (both user-generated and professionally produced) with the search and retrieve capability of the Web has the potential to radically disrupt the existing TV model,” noting that this effect is already being seen from other video-content distribution models online.
eMarketer estimated that the number of IPTV-capable households worldwide will climb to 139 million in 2010, up from just 14 million last year.
IPTV is defined as a television system whereby digital content is delivered via a network infrastructure. IPTV is often delivered in conjunction with Video-on-Demand (VOD) and other non-television services such as Voice-over-IP and other Internet services like Web and email. While IPTV is still in its infancy today, the widespread residential uptake of broadband Internet has paved the way for IPTV to be a viable (and inexpensive) solution in the future.
Broadband Content on This Year’s Emmy Awards
The organizers of the Emmy awards–or more accurately, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Interactive Media Peer Group–have signified that they have started to include online, interactive content on their roster of nominees. This is great news for independent content producers and developers, as inclusion in the Emmys would give some sort of legitimacy to the medium, not only being confined to the geek and tech subscultures, but now raised to the mainstream status.
The announcements of the finalists represent the growing connection between television and interactive capabilities.
“This is monumental–that any TV distribution over broadband will now be eligible across all categories for the Primetime Emmys” … content created exclusively for the broadband platform now can compete against network content.
Finalists in the category of enhanced or interactive programming include AOL Music On Demand from AOL/Time Warner Cable/Zetools, CNN Enhanced, DirecTV Interactive Sports, and TiVo service.
The winners of this year’s Emmy Awards will be announced on July 26th, and shall be awarded on August 19th. While it’s still more of the established media outfits that are included in this year’s list of nominees, we do hope that independent producers and creators would also get the chance at being recognized for their new media/internet-television efforts.
Lots of Popular TV shows online
If you’re fond of watching series like 24, Charmed, Lost, The Simpsons, and even MacGyver, you can check out peekvid.com. The site hosts a handful of episodes from among the most popular of television series. Of course, given the nature of the videos (copyright issues, anyone?) and the popularity of video downloads (the site had just been DUGG), the site is likely to go offline once the owner runs out of bandwidth or the authorities issue some sort of restraining order. It’s just a matter of who causes the site to go offline first!
Note that a whois query would tell you the site is US-based. Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion gave the site until yesterday to stay online. Hey, it’s still up!
In the meantime, I’ll go on watching some episodes of 24, Charmed, and the Simpsons, bandwidth-permitting. Or proably not, lest MPAA reps and FBI agents come knocking on my door with an arrest warrant.
“Idol” Contests via Google Video
Here’s something celebrity-wannabes might be interested in: Google Idol. This is a set of contests that involve Google Video as its multimedia platform.
Gidol is a new online competition for the many talented (and not so talented) people out there who have been waiting for their moment of fame. The competition places publicly submitted videos from Google Video in a head-to-head knockout tournament of 4 heats and 2 semi finals leading up to the grand final when a winner is announced.
Winners are selected by popularity–the site asks the audience to vote for their favorite music videos or webcam videos (all played via Google Video, of course). To me, this is a precursor of how TV will be in the future, with the onset of IPTV. I envision television to be more interactive, not only by taking in feedback from watchers via external mechanisms such as email, telephone, or letters. I’m hoping that once all TV is coursed through some form of Internet connection, television sets and networks would accept live feedback from the audience itself, right as the show is running!
Korean IPTV to use Sun DRM
Sun Microsystems is developing an open source Digital Rights Management (DRM) system it intends to license out to IPTV operators. Dubbed DReaM (for DRM everywhere available) seems to have bagged its first client in Korean IPTV provider Alticast. While the conditional access system is still more than a year away from being finalized, the Korean firm is already displaying enthusiasm for building the system into their IPTV service.
Sun … plans to create a royalty-free, interoperable DRM technology, independent of any specific hardware or operating systems which focuses on the concept of a user being given access to content, rather than one specific device being authenticated. This is something that may come more easily to Sun, since it can rely on the Liberty Alliance initiative which is was also behind, for allowing a single copy of a persons identity to act as a trust source for other services, without having to reveal identities to other services.
At present, DReaM will only work on streamed content, and has no mechanism for protecting content that’s already recorded on enduser media (such as PVRs).
Fox TV to give affiliates a cut of online revenue
With Disney and ABC TV’s jumping into the Internet TV bandwagon, it seems they left their affiliates hanging in the air, in their rush to launch their Web TV portal. With Fox, however, it seems they want to keep a healthy business relationship with their affiliate stations, who run the risk of losing revenues to new media.
Direct-to-audience presentation of TV shows via the Internet would surely eat into the revenue streams of traditional stations, but the owners of the content still get good business from displaying “unskippable” adverts online. But with any business deal, it pays to keep goodwill across business partners, as Fox is doing, in this case. Otherwise, arties would keep bickering about getting ripped off or getting the losing end of the bargain,
Green.tv - A Promising Launch
The Register reports on the successful launch of Green.tv, the broadband channel dedicated to environmental issues. The site garnered 250,000 views during its first week online. The Internet-based channel will regularly feature shows, commentary, and general resources on everything concerning the environment, such as climate, wildlife, and pollution.
ABC to offer shows online
Related to our earlier post on Disney’s publishing video content online, ABC.com is likewise about to launch a new version of its website, where readers can view shows online. Akin to Disney’s system, ABC will publish its archives, and shows will be available the morning after broadcast. Shows are ad-supported, and users have a choice of plain ol’ ads or the more interactive ones.
Do note that the Disney and ABC websites are both published under the “go.com” banner, which is a web portal owned by the Walt Disney Internet Group, and contains content from ABC News, ESPN, Movies.com and Familyfun.com.
A new version of ABC.com will launch April 30, featuring episodes of several popular shows that users can watch online. They’ll be able to pause, fast-forward and rewind — but won’t be able to skip the three built-in ad breaks. They will, however, be able to choose if they want to see a normal video ad, or a more interactive one, like a game. Shows will be available the morning after they’ve aired, and eventually ABC will store archives of episodes so users can watch an entire season.
Of course, this is still a step behind IPTV–as this is more aptly considered under “Web video.” But it’s a good step towards eventually showing everything via the Internet.
Disney to offer free TV shows on the Internet
Disney Entertainment has announced that it will offer certain titles in its lineup of popular TV shows on the Internet for free. The two-month trial will involve shows such as Desperate Housewives, Lost, and in the following months, Commander in Chief and Alias, which have cult followings in traditional TV. While Disney already has deals with other online distribution outfits, such as on Apple’s iTunes Store (versions for the iPod video are available for download), the company intends to venture into other revenue and distribution models.
The shows will be available for viewing/downloading on the Web a day after broadcast on the ABC network. Archives will be available, so that viewers can watch past episodes of the shows. However, users might be disappointed with the inclusion of advertisements, which cannot be skipped nor deleted. Also, viewers outside of the US will be unablet to access the shows online due to copyright restrictions–in some countries, Disney either licenses out the rights to some shows to other companies, or do not own the rights to shows that it puts up on its cable and TV networks in the States.
Along the lines of this new venture, Disney is also launching Soapnetic, a high-speed Internet TV service, on April 17th, for Verizon broadband subscribers.