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However, love it or loathe it, TV and methods of delivering its content are changing, and yesterday's column was just one indication of how.

While content delivery by IP is most definitely in our future, traditional RF (terrestrial and satellite), along with DVDs, are the only real options for the next year or two -- but where are they headed?

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Sky's satellite service is already in digital format and it's only a matter of time before we see terrestrial broadcasters also switching to this format.

In the USA it has already been mandated that all TV broadcasts will shift to digital format within a few short years, at which time there will be no analog commercial broadcasting allowed.

Over in the UK, a free-to-air UHF digital TV service seems to be going great guns, offering a raft of new content for the price of a $120 set-top box without additional monthly fees.

One of the biggest faux-pas that the state broadcaster TVNZ made a few years ago was not to move into the world of digital broadcasting and now, it would appear, they're paying the price.

One of the big benefits of digital broadcasting is that you're not just limited to video and audio. Because the stream is a series of bits, there's really little to stop any data being included in the data-stream. A good example of this is the way that Sky updates the software on its set-top boxes by downloading the new code as part of the data-stream.

Now it strikes me that if Telecom are going to play whackamole with the Commerce Commission, the rapid roll-out of digital TV, complete with general-purpose datastreams might be a great way to deliver large lumps of binary data to the average household.

The switch to digital would also allow TVNZ to totally fulfil its charter obligations without compromising its commercial operations. All that worthy and sometimes compelling content that would never interest the average "Big Brother" or "Survivor wherever" fan could be made freely available to those who want to watch it.

Yes, there's obviously a cost to setting up the infrastructure for a national digital TV network, be it terrestrial or satellite based -- but can someone remind me how much we spent getting Maori TV off the ground again?

There's no point denying the fact that TV has become a very important part of most people's lives - but if this is going to be the case, please leverage a bit of modern technology to give us access to stuff other than the drivel that passes as commercial programming these days.

We're already way behind the eight-ball when it comes to broadband penetration, please don't leave us with an antiquated analog TV network as well!

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