Akimbo and Internet TV
February 16th, 2004 | Published in Out Loud
So, Internet TV is going to be almost-on-demand. And it’s going to be niche programs, almost an exact mirror of the kind of voices we get to see today, thanks to the Internet. This is very good news. It points to an entirely new channel-space: the indie films, public access shows, amateur porn, etc., that never got wide distribution by the big networks or cable operators. And that channel-space is going to need a lot of new navigation and search tools.
I looked at the Akimbo Internet TV press release today, and my first thought was, ‘Wow, the programming on this kinda sucks.’ If you’re expecting Internet TV to be the same as regular TV, you’re going to be disappointed. But why would you? Regular TV sucks, so why not do something different?
Regular TV will go on-demand. The big nets huge investments in their archives, bandwidth and CPU power keep increasing. HDTV’s a beast to transmit and process, but a better encoding format should minimize that. (Besides, for all the hype, there’s going to be very few true HDTV shows in your immediate future.) Once they go on-demand, they can put their entire archives online and create some pretty interesting programming packages or highlights shows (NBC did something like this awhile back on MSNBC).
While that’s a good move, the big nets’ reliance on traditional revenue models and traditional copyright law to protect those revenues, will probably leave little room for real innovation, despite the zero marginal cost involved in distributing programming once it’s digitized. So don’t expect much.
However, we see glimpses today of the mass of content that doesn’t fall under the big nets’ purview. Oscar-nominated short films, foreign animation, foreign TV shows, video clips if every shape and size downloaded off the net. IFilm has built a business off this, as has CinemaNow and others—and let’s face it, the Internet video industry is clearly in its infancy.
The recipe for Internet TV is pretty simple: digital video production and bandwidth are getting easier and cheaper, p2p/swarming download technologies are gaining popularity, RSS/ATOM/XML will allow you to subscribe to feeds that deliver video content, and aggregators/search engines will help you map and navigate these feeds.
I think Internet TV will work best as an extension of regular TV, not a replacement. I hope these companies see that.
Combine Internet/on-demand TV with an integrated broadband wireless network, a big digital TV with HD storage and multiple touchpad LCD screens used for remote control/web surfing/personal video/etc.and you’ve really got something.