Sponsor's Message

Within the next two years, most non-FTA TV material will be delivered to Kiwis homes through broadband internet connections.

And Sky TV will need to be very careful or it's going to find a lot of folks turning off pay-TV and turning on to video-on-demand (VOD) over the Net.

About the same time, the "hot" bit of consumer electronics kit will become the internet TV tuner.

I'm talking about a box that plugs into your ADSL connection and, through the use of a simple onscreen menu system, allows you to log into VOD services and select from a massive range of available programme titles.

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Some of these titles will be available via streamed delivery so you can watch them "right now", but most content will be delivered overnight for viewing the next day, having been stored temporarily on the device's hard drive.

Think about it -- an almost infinite range of material without repeats -- unless you choose to watch stuff again.

Even better, the quality and resolution of the material can be dynamically tailored to the customer's needs: low res for instant streaming, broadcast res for regular TV sets and HD for those with HD-capable sets.

Just as CD stores have felt the pinch of online download services (in countries where such things are available), the local video shop will also need to be prepared for a massive change in the market.

Of course who stands to make the most profit out of all this?

Telecom of course!

Since they have total ownership of the delivery mechanism (the DSL network), they'll effectively be clipping the ticket of every download that takes place. What's more, folks who take advantage of Net-based VOD services will want the very fastest speeds -- so as to enjoy the best quality and shortest download times -- so Telecom won't want to give up its control. If it did, upstarts with faster gear could steal away the most lucrative part of that market.

And, if you doubt that this is the future then just take a browse of the newswires and you'll see that today alone there are a raft of stories about video and the Net.

Some companies are already offering VOD and have found that user-created content is in high demand. Others (the MPAA in particular) are deeply concerned about the amount of illegal VOD that's going on through P2P networks.

Then there are those planning to make an entry into the VOD market, using the Net as their vehicle.

I also know that there are growing number of Kiwis who have already forsaken free-to-air broadcasts for the convenience and other benefits of downloading the latest episodes their favourite TV series from the Net. No ad-breaks, no waiting months or years for TVNZ/CanWest to buy the programmes and no need to waste tape recording them.

Yes, although email and web-browsing are currently the number-one use for the Net, that's going to change. Pretty soon we'll find a huge percentage of our bandwidth is being consumed, not by spammers, but by couch-potatoes.

Is this what the government means when it claims that hiking broadband speeds will improve our competitiveness and productivity?

Tell us all and see what others have to say in The Aardvark Forums

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