Skip to main content

In an IPeal world

Discussion around IP is already steady and high, VoIP is popular and IPTV is a recent and so far has low volumes but still a reasonably consistently ranking in the blogosphere. There are all the same a method of access that is finding new uses all the time.

Living in a country of limited choice for television I welcome the dawn of IPTV as the low infrastructure cost (the customer buys most of it themselves) means that there should be more programming choice as the provider (publisher) can invest more in buying the programmes (content) and delivering to me (the subscriber)

I use the terms
  • publisher
  • content
  • subscriber
for the generic tone that it requires. We could equally be refering to games for your phone or ring tone, TV programmes, Pay Per View films the applications are fairly limitless the delivery framework is the same. The uses are personal and/or commercial and are centred around IP Access.

Having already mentioned the impact on non-traditional media channels with respect to the BBC it made me think on how the borders of coutries (and by default their control) is blurring and shrinking.

For instance SlingBox opens up non-US people [potentially and possibly not legally] to the US cable cloud, OK maybe not a nice thought but a thought. Now being a "brit abroad" I would probably like to choose to see some programmes from home, not necessarily the ones that Thailand's UBC wishes to show me.

That was IP ultimately allows me; choice. Choice of what, when and where. Channels as we see them should collapse, the niche media sectors (UK's Food Channel) will become more popular and dictated groups of schedules (e.g. BBC 2) should become less popular.

The revolution within the TV Media industry could be alikened to what we are starting to see in the MVNO trend. Strong brands packaging content (films, programmes, radio stations etc) and delivering through IP channels.

Deregulation needs to start, if necessary driven by the publishers themselves, if they are to survive. As the borders blur; and grey channels open up to meet the "it's available here if you want it now rather than wait for your network" demand, the players will have to accomodate the market that bitTorrent pushes the edge of every day.

The rollout will have to managed in order not to pressurize the current hardware out there today. Check out Paul Jardines ramble on the subject for more insight.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PC over IP - The Teradici Effect

Teradici are hoping to blur the lines between PC and Data Centre. Their solution allows a use to view multiple screens and control the blade PC over IP. This is kind of like the dumb terminals with a new edgy deployment. The intention is that all of the computing power is performed offsite in a centralized area, the Data Centre, and this will save on power and maintenance costs as the engineers are co-located with the hardware and therefore don't have to go out to the client site for basic maintenance. The Teradici Company Article found in the Wall Street Journal
Post a Comment
Read more

e-Olympics

This year's Olympics should be the best ever for coverage. Fring are looking for onsite commentators and as a means to encourage people are offering a 3.5G phone as your reporters tool. I hope that this will be the games of the micro blog. The potential for services like Twitter or Jaiku to open up access to the games in a way never seen before is encouraging. Essentially there are three dimensions to the games: Nation Event Athlete Typically broadcast of the games ha content defined by the nation. The USA channels closely follow the USA squad, the same for UK, NZ Australia etc. This is targeted at the national pride. For those people who are actively engaged in an event themselves, marathon, it's the event that is king. There will still be an element of "my country" but this is equally balanced by "my sport". The final element is the followers of a specific athlete. Friends, family and fans may elect to follow all of the events surrounding a person. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cashless Society? Micropayments up for disruption

New Zealand, although small, is a long way ahead in many aspects compared to the UK. Some of their new schemes are being adopted by the UK government. What I remember from my first trip here 6 years ago was the impact of the EFTPOS system. Long before the UK was using Chip and PIN New Zealand was moving towards a cashless society with the ubiquitous EFTPOS (Electronic Funds Transfer Point of Sale) cards and terminals. The system is good and robust. But the one place you can't find it for some of those micropayments is on the public transport system. Buses would benefit from some form of electronic payment system. There is one drawback of the system in it's implementation today, the time taking to pay. For small payments, say a Moro (think Mars) Bar at the local dairy (corner shop) is the time taken for the system to recognise the card and for the user to select the account (Cheque, Savings or Card) and input their PIN. This would certainly slow down the boarding process...
Post a Comment
Read more