will.pimblett
an engineering student with an interest in the web, independent media & software
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The Future of TV
Sunday 1st May 2011
In the UK, BBC One (then the BBC Television Service), began broadcasting in 1936. ITV, the UK’s second channel arrived nearly twenty years later. At this point if you didn’t like what was on you could adjust your TV set and see what was on the other side.Today we live with services that allow us to flick through hundreds of channels, this allows for much greater capacity of programmes that can be simultaneously broadcast but does it improve the value of the TV? The lowest offering after the digital switchover will be from Freeview (50 channels plus 24 radio stations), after that comes Freesat with over 140, BT Vision has around the same as Freeview but comes with on-demand features too.
We have Freesat on one TV set at home and we do watch quite a few of the extra channels. However it is tricky to find something you feel worth watching when you have time to watch it. Missing something you want to watch is a problem and attempts have been made to rectify this notably BBC iPlayer and other online on-demand services.
Now we have a situation where you can watch a limited subset of programmes live on your big TV, or watch entire seasons back to back on your laptop - with its small screen and crappy speakers.Google have brought attention to this and plan to relase their ‘Google TV’ product. What this and other services offer is a way to put what’s on the web onto that big screen TV, hopefully in a usable manner. So now we can catch whats on live, or watch it later using this set top box, wow. From my my perspective though I see redundancy which isn’t needed, with this new capability to demand any content at any time can we not do away with traditional live broadcast methods and just receive programming as it’s posted online?
Yes obviously there are shows that have to be shown live: sport, news, events etc.. But that is still possibile with the ‘internet TV’, if not with a better service. Modern broadband connections can quite easily achieve HD (720p) streaming, so again: is broadcast TV needed?
Who Am I?
Will is studying Mechanical Engineering at Nottingham. He loves the internet, gadgetry and generally anything else with buttons on it. The stereotype of the kid who was fascinated by wires and used to take everything apart definitely applies here (most things broke, but let's not dwell on that here).In 2010 he was the MD of the only under-18s run radio station in the UK, OSCAR Radio, and is looking to bring his knowledge of conventional broadcast to partner it with a very different medium: the web.
He also adores writing in the third person, this does seam a bit silly.
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If you want to contact me, send me a question through the Tumblr 'ask a question' form, if you need me to reply I'll need an email address or phone number.
