TV times
By Matt Cooney,
Will Xbox usher in a golden age of television?
[New Media]
In early January, Bill Gates delivered his traditional ‘pre-show’ keynote at the CES gadgetfest in Las Vegas. By now, Gates must be used to being upstaged by Steve Jobs, who headlines the Macworld Expo in San Francisco at about the same time.
This year was no different: two days later, Gates’ speech was overshadowed by the euphoria surrounding Job’s introduction of the iPhone. The iPhone looks cool, sure—and no doubt Auckland mini-movie maker Andrew McKenzie can’t wait to see his films on its hi-res screen—but Gates too has some technology that could shake up an industry. Jobs says Apple is reinventing the phone. Microsoft might just reinvent television.
To do that, the company has to get into living rooms. It’s been trying to do this for years with its Windows Media Centre software but that will only win over the geeks—most of us don’t want a keyboard (or, ahem, Windows) in the living room.
Many of us like to play video games from the couch, though, and that’s the tack Microsoft is taking. At CES, Gates announced the Xbox 360 will have some new features added. One is IPTV—television delivered over the Internet. Did your kids demand an Xbox for Christmas? Perhaps you should have listened.
IPTV is digital television, but we already have that. It allows high-definition broadcasts, but TV over the airwaves can do that too. However, IPTV is a great choice for delivering video-on-demand telly, so you can watch what you want when you want. Like the Internet, IPTV can be interactive. And there’s the opportunity down the track to integrate IPTV with other services like email, the web and Internet telephones.
As always, Microsoft is promising a lot, but there’s some way to go. Gates announced a swag of partnerships with telcos like AT&T and British Telecom, and said IPTV will be available on the Xbox in the US sometime this year. There’s no hint that the service is coming to New Zealand anytime soon.
We will get free-to-air digital TV soon, but it will be delivered over the airwaves. TVNZ, TV3, Maori Television and Radio New Zealand are planning to roll out a digital service this year called FreeView. FreeView will give viewers a much better picture and TVNZ has announced plans to launch two new commercial-free channels on the service.
“Gates too has some technology that could shake up an industry. Apple is reinventing the phone. Microsoft might just reinvent television.”
But a better picture isn’t enough. YouTube videos usually look like crap, but that hasn’t discouraged people from using YouTube. There’s a fundamental disconnect between the bottom-down, commissioned, scheduled, mass-market world of broadcast television and the bottom-up, give-it-a-crack, watch-it-anytime world of video webcasts and YouTube.
Traditional broadcasters focus on production values, demographics and personalities. Webcasters want to realise an idea, spread a message or show off, and they’re not overly concerned about production values. This isn’t a strict amateur/professional split; even The New York Times and National Business Review are webcasting. And the production values of webcasting will rise, too, as Moore’s law continues to impact on network and computing power. Already I can edit high-definition video on my laptop (badly).
The most critical person at a TV channel is probably the programmer. The closest online equivalent is the fans who spread the word about the funniest, most enlightening or cleverest clips on the Internet.
The days of the TV programmer are numbered; at some point we’ll watch what we want, when we want, and we’ll choose to watch the programmes recommended to us by friends or trusted sources. TVNZ says it will start offering video on demand in March, but it faces serious challenges from IPTV and emerging Generation C webcasters that FreeView doesn’t help solve.
The broadcasters have time, however: IPTV needs reliable, high-speed broadband to homes. Telecom once promised juiced-up ADSL2+ broadband would arrive in 2005 and it’s not here yet.
So can Microsoft actually reinvent television? If the Xbox IPTV service isn’t tied down, it could kickstart a revolution. Early indications are good—Microsoft is working with network providers, not broadcasters. The Xbox’s online system, Xbox Live, already has five million active users who would welcome the addition of on-demand programming.
But perhaps most importantly, Microsoft has already opened the Xbox to user-created content. If you’ve got a hankering to create your own video game, you can upload it to Xbox Live and millions of people can try it out. Sometime this year or next someone will upload a game that makes the industry sit up and take notice. An open IPTV service could do the same thing for television.
Better get that TV script out of the bottom drawer. This could be your moment.
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