The race is on to turn your TV into an open content platform. This will bring more programming to your set and much of it won't come from the traditional networks. Conspicuously absent from the game are your local cable and satellite providers. Should they fail to act, they all run the risk of turning into commodity services.
If you wanted to, you can already ditch your cable or satellite provider. Wired news ran an experiment a few months back showing that it is possible to get a lot of content on your set without them, though there are still lots of caveats. As the big technologies players continue to refine their IPTV strategy, the need for cable TV programming will diminish.
Already, some of the highest quality content created by users is finding its way on to your set. Rocketboom, for example, has long been available on your TiVo. Further, there's a lot of new gizmos that will hit the market this year to bring even more stuff to your TV. Microsoft, an Edelman client, is turning the Xbox 360 into an IPTV receiver. Every TV set sold from Sony will be able to connect up to "the cloud" through home wireless networks. And of course, Apple has their own solution - Apple TV.
No matter which of these solutions (or others) prevail, one thing remains certain. TV is going to open up to the masses. It will no longer be controlled by the big cable or satellite players. Just like with the web, TV will become a much more efficient medium by turning itself into an open network where everyone can participate. Your dependancy on the cablecos will decline once more professional and amateur content becomes available on your TV a-la-carte and through the Internet.
So will the cable/satellite companies wither and die? No. But they definitely will need to evolve as these technologies gain critical mass and the networks start going direct to consumer - as they already are. Witness, for example, the rush to put TV programming up on iTunes. Here are three potential scenarios....
1) The Cablecos Embrace Change and Re-address the Economics
Right now cable and satellite TV are very inefficient. If you hate sports, you're out of luck. You still need to pay for it since it sits on your deck. The smart cable/satellite companies will begin to experiment with a-la-carte pricing. Further, they will make sure their set top boxes can connect to the Internet, allowing you to choose what goes on your set from a virtually limitless choices.
2) The Cablecos Simply Become Plumbing
Cable and satellite companies are not exactly known for their speed. The tech players mentioned above and others, such as Google and Yahoo, could rush in to provide subsidized boxes for your TV if you were to subscribe to their so far non-existent IPTV services. They will deal directly with the networks and reduce the value that your cable company offers to just pipes. This will turn their services into plumbing - commodity bandwidth.
3) A Hybrid Scenario
Under a third scenario, both IPTV and cable co-exist together in your living room. They are used for different purposes. Cable recognizes that they offer the greatest value in serving up live and local and leave the canned national content to go the way of IPTV carried by others.
No matter how it turns out, it should all be very exciting to watch,
