by on 29/07/2008
In 15 years, broadcast television will only be useful for high-profile live events like the Super Bowl, awards shows and programs like “American Idol, Ben Silverman, co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, said during a keynote interview at the TelevisionWeek Upfront Summit in New York.
I think he’s too pessimistic. Web-to-TV will happen in 10 years, and American Idol certainly won’t last that long (one can only pray). The web will subsume regular TV broadcasting for 95% of what people watch. Of course the “pipes” must get bigger – and they will; the consumer electronic industry must integrate internet access and embedded browser-player functionality into television sets – and they will; and users will need new techniques for finding content in an infinite span of long-tail channels – and they will.
by on 22/07/2008
WebTV, founded in 1995 and later acquired by Microsoft, was the first attempt at bringing web media to the television. As described in PC World “getting the Web to display on a typical TV in 1995 was like watching an elephant tap-dance–you were amazed not that it could do it well but that it could do it at all. With the WebTV, Web pages looked horsey, some media formats didn’t work at all, and using the remote control to hop from link to link was excruciating.”
Today’s Web-To-TV solutions are more robust though limitations in control persist. Do people want to stream the PC to their TV – or do you just want to turn on the TV and easily search, select and share web media with your family and friends? How do you type in a URL with a one button remote? Which hardware solution / media restriction do you want to live with? Is YouTube really worth watching on your 54″ 1080p display?
A byline in the Financial Times today offered an interesting definition – Web 2.0 is a world dominated by user-generated content, while Web 3.0 will be a world where professional content dominates. The Web-To-TV evolution is poised to make the same transition – from today’s YouTube cats-on-a-treadmill to professional actors, lights, camera and action – all on your big screen TV in full HD. Now where did I put I put the remote?
by on 17/07/2008
Slide’s SuperPoke is coming to VH1
CNET News – San Francisco,CA,USA
Who said you couldn’t bring the Web to TV? Slide’s absurdly popular social-network application “SuperPoke” is coming to a new platform…
CNET News
Time Warner Cable: Web to TV Coming
By Gary Kim
Time Warner Cable plans to offer subscribers an easier way to port Internet-delivered video to their television screens, says Glenn Britt, Time Warner Cable CEO, reported by Reuters news service. The future move, with no definite …
IP Business News
News Bytes: June 3
By Lauren(Lauren)
While web-to-TV technology is still in its early stages, similar models are offered by APPLE’s AppleTV and TiVo, however, neither are capable of surfing for Web videos, which the Time Warner Cable box would be able to do. …
Digital Media News
Programmer, Technology Provider and Analyst Comments]
PR Newswire (press release) – New York,NY,USA
This in turn will speed up the prospect of a Web-to-TV fully interactive experience. It is the reason we at ComedyNet believe that ActiveVideo is a front …
ActiveVideo Networks Unveils First Platform To Bring Web 2.0 …]
PR Newswire (press release) – New York,NY,USA
“The enormous market fragmentation in Web-to-TV solutions makes it difficult for us to author interactive and timely content for many diverse platforms,” …
See all stories on this topic
by on 17/07/2008
A Web-to-TV solution can use a variety of 3rd party components, typically built around a PC capable of running a browser and the most popular codecs (Flash, Windows Media Player, Real, Quicktime, etc.) and a home network.
The hardware components required for Web-to-TV can be categorized as Media PCs, Media Extenders and Video on Demand. All of these solutions provide A/V outputs for a TV and Ethernet and Wireless network adapters.
Entertainment PCs
Some examples of stereo-cabinet friendly PCs can be found here.
Media Extenders
Several companies provide media extenders including
Netgear and Dlink
Advanced game consoles
XBOX 360 from Microsoft, PS3 from Sony, and the Nintendo Wii – can be configured to stream or view content delivered from a PC on the user’s home network. A new entry from ZeeVee utilizes the home wiring to stream content from a home PC/server.
Video on Demand
Examples of video on demand solutions include AppleTV and The Netflix player by Roku
and the movie service from Vudu.