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RSS feedsCompared to the massive leaps forward we regularly witness in computer technology, the world of television could be accused of being somewhat slow to adapt. In fact, the fundamental idea behind television hasn't changed that radically since the very first transmission was beamed into the ether back in 1936.
OK, so we got colour in 1967 and TV signals are now piped into houses via cable, satellite and, more recently, digital satellite and Freeview. And we'll happily admit that the technologies employed to make, watch and record TV programmes have improved a great deal during the 68 years of television's existence.
But is there a place for the clumsy cathode ray tube among the advanced technology of tomorrow's living room, and how will the notion of traditional broadcasting hold up in the face of increasing downloadable internet content and online media distribution?
We decided to investigate TV's precarious relationship with the web and other digital technologies in order to help us understand how TV will develop in the future.
Prime time
Thanks to the digital music revolution, home entertainment has already headed quite a way down the computerised path. With hard disk-based video recorders, portable video jukeboxes and Windows Media Center PCs gaining popularity, it looks as if television could be next.
Computer technology and the internet have the potential to liberate viewers from the limited range of time-specific programming forced on us by the schedulers of a small selection of channels. The telly of the future could be the gateway to a virtually limitless choice of your favourite programmes past and present - all available for you to download and watch whenever it suits you.
That might sound incredibly futuristic, but something very similar has actually been going on for several years. HomeChoice is a broadband-based TV service that distributes a wide range of on-demand television content to its customers.
"HomeChoice is an all-in-one entertainment and communication package brought to you in one set-top box, through a BT phone line," says Roger Lynch, chairman and chief executive of VideoNetworks, which delivers the HomeChoice brand.
"HomeChoice provides a range of high quality, on-demand television programming, including comedy, drama, music and documentaries, a huge range of pay-per-view films, and an exceedingly fast broadband internet service."
Although currently limited to the London area, HomeChoice has plans to roll out its service across the UK and, with a phone socket in almost every household in the country, the service has the potential to go far.
"We believe video-on-demand is set to become a major new form of home entertainment," continues Lynch. "It will change the way people watch television."
Courtroom drama
HomeChoice represents an interesting model for how on-demand television, downloadable from the internet, could work on a large scale. In practice, however, it is very difficult to tame the web - a fact to which many record company bosses will bitterly attest in light of the ongoing digital music controversy.
The trouble is that the online community has a knack of finding new ways to capitalise on technological advances and loopholes in copyright law in order to distribute media of all kinds (particularly music) over the internet. It's becoming abundantly clear that the faster technology expands, the more difficult it is for the relevant laws to keep up.
The courtrooms of the 21st century are bursting at the seams with complex legal disputes involving anything from operating systems and web browsers to digital media rights and copyright infringement.
It's likely that judges and juries will be soon be hearing from a lot of angry TV and movie executives, since the same online file-sharing services that have been blamed for falling CD sales are fast becoming the places to go if you want to download the latest episode of your favourite TV show - often before it has even been broadcast in the UK.
Swap shop
It's very easy to copy a TV programme to your computer's hard disk. All you need is a TV tuner card or a video capture device along with some PVR (personal video recorder) software and you're away.
Once you've made a digital recording on your PC, it's even easier to share it with, well, just about anybody on the planet. Sign up with Kazaa, or any of the other file-sharing services to be found online, and your digitised TV programme is suddenly available for millions of other users to download direct from your computer.
Naturally, the same theory applies in reverse. If you can't wait for the next episode of your favourite TV show to be shown on telly, it's entirely possible that somebody somewhere has made a digital copy of it and made it available on a file-sharing service.
Up until now, the speed of a standard 56K connection to the web would have made such a thing very impractical, since video files are notoriously large and take ages to transfer from one PC to another.
But several new technologies have emerged to make it faster and easier to upload and download large files such as these from the web. Broadband, for example, has helped to speed up online data transfers, while clever new technologies, like the aforementioned file-sharing services, have made it easier to share big files online.
Then there are new video compression techniques (such as DivX) that can squash down file sizes to yet more manageable proportions, while retaining much of the original picture and sound quality. Just as MP3 reduces music files to about 10 per cent of their original size and makes them easier to transfer over the web, so these new formats perform an equivalent feat for digital video.
Even then, you can still spend a whole day downloading a full-length feature film, only to discover that you are now the proud owner of a barely watchable, handheld camera version of the latest blockbuster.
The bill
Quality issues aside, it's not difficult to see how the practice of swapping pre-release feature films online could have the potential to adversely affect profits and possibly even endanger future movie production.
Apply the same theory to episodes of popular American TV shows that haven't been broadcast in the UK (such as brand-new series of Frasier, Friends, ER, Six Feet Under or The West Wing) and this translates to falling ratings for expensive, imported shows and lower returns on sell-through DVD releases.
It's unsurprising, therefore, that the practice of copying and swapping TV programmes online is considered a breach of copyright. According to Nic Garnett, consultant at The Simkins Partnership, one of Europe's leading media and entertainment law firms: "The UK Copyright Designs and Patent Act of 1988 makes it quite clear that the copying of copyright materials such as TV programmes is illegal if done without the permission of the copyright owner.
"Unlike US law, this is so even if the copy is made for personal use. Accordingly, any online trading or sharing of an illegally copied TV programme would be subject to the provisions of the same law. It makes no difference whatsoever that a TV programme is of US origin [the Berne Convention ensures US copyrights are protected in the UK] or that it is not available legitimately in the UK."
Tackling the problem of piracy is not immediately obvious, either. A proposed bill in the US, backed by the Motion Picture Association of America, could sentence convicted internet movie pirates to up to five years in prison, but it's unclear as to whether this will extend to those posting TV shows rather than feature films, or whether a similar punishment will be eventually extended to UK offenders.
"The big question, of course, is whether people engaged in unlawful acts of this kind can be traced," continues Nic Garnett. "There has been a lot of controversy in the US of late as to the methods used for identifying offenders."
Hollywood is calling for better copyright protection technology and simultaneous worldwide theatrical releases of feature films. In terms of television, the new high-definition television (HDTV) standard in the US incorporates copy protection that prevents direct digital transfer of certain premium broadcasts.
Some critics have been quick to blame the implementation of this copy protection technology for the slow take up of HDTV. In the UK, meanwhile, HDTV broadcasting is still a pipe dream.
Situation: comedy
This is not how the world's big broadcasters and programme makers envisioned the future of television. Their hope was to harness the power of digital television and build on the platform's high-quality, multi-casting and interactive potentials.
To be fair, the internet did come out of nowhere, taking virtually everybody by surprise. As little as a decade ago it would have taken a great deal of foresight to predict that the web could be a potential threat or even - dare we say it - a successor to the mighty television.
One thing's for sure, TV isn't going down without a fight. While most of the television company representatives we spoke to remained tight-lipped on the subject of file-swapping, many, like Chris Pressley, head of business development at Channel 4's 4Interactive, are keen to discuss how the internet and traditional broadcasting could work side by side.
"This is a question of convergence. I don't think this will happen very quickly, not because of any technology issues - that's all relatively straightforward - but the rights and commercial issues will make it hard and ensure it takes a very long time, if it happens at all," says Pressley.
"What's more likely is a new model of TV; one developed specifically for broadband and that is highly interactive, which challenges the traditional linear TV model - much as the advent of pay-tv on digital platforms challenges the advertising based TV model."
Online and on air
Savvy broadcasters are already attempting to embrace the web, showcasing downloadable, on-demand content alongside their regular channels' output.
The BBC, for example, has announced that it is to post its programme archive online, while Channel 4 has launched 4Broadband in conjunction with RealOne Player, where a monthly subscription (£5) gets you access to exclusive footage of some of the station's most popular shows (like Big Brother), along with current affairs and a smattering of back catalogue, such as the celebrated Wife Swap series.
And the current selection is only just the tip of the iceberg, according to 4Interactive's Chris Pressley. "The plans for 4Broadband are to broaden the range of content offering and go back into the archive ['Channel 4 Gold'] and ultimately to commission a new show that is developed entirely for broadband," he explains.
Ashley Highfield, director of BBC new media & technology, agrees that togetherness is the way forward for television and the internet. "The killer combination is broadband together with digital TV and PVRs, plus the ability to share this video in the same way in which music files are exchanged on the internet," he says.
It really doesn't matter if this solution is built into a PC as with Microsoft's Media Center, Sony's new PlayStation or a set-top box. It all adds up to the same solution: a box and a screen - offering unparalleled video, TV, interactive and games content."
So, rather than disappear altogether, it looks as though television is likely to share an uneasy alliance with the internet and other computer appliances you have in your home - for the immediate future, at least.
Doubtless there will always be a big screen in your living room but who or what provides the programmes we watch on it in years to come, and quite how we will watch them, is another matter entirely.
Brought to you by the BBC
If the 'TV-on-demand' model is the future then it certainly seems as if Auntie Beeb has her finger on the right pulse. In a rather surprising announcement at last August's Edinburgh Television Festival, BBC boss Greg Dyke spoke of the corporation's intention to make a considerable amount of its programme archive available online.
"The initiative will predominantly focus on the BBC's educational output and will make a variety of educational clips from the BBC archive available online," a BBC representative told us.
"BBCi also has another initiative, again in extremely early stages, called iMP [interactive media player], which will, in the future, allow some BBC programmes to be played through a PC for a limited time after broadcast."
Details are, at the moment, a little sketchy, but it would appear that the BBC will be attempting to do for its TV output what it has already successfully achieved for many of its popular radio programmes - that is to say make them available online once they have gone out on air.
If you miss an episode of The Archers, for example, you can catch up with it at the Radio Four website at your own convenience. The same sort of system could soon work forEastEnders fans too.
The BBC's Ashley Highfield also believes that these initiatives will help to combat online piracy: "We are exploring legitimate file sharing models to get our users to share our content. And as an industry, we should be more active in creating legitimate content download products. We need to help consumers leapfrog the illegal downloading issues that have wreaked havoc on the music industry."
The establishment of an on-demand 'Creative Archive', as it has been termed, is certainly a bold move and one that seems to capitalise on both the broadcaster's rich resources and the unique distribution power of the internet.
Quite how such a scheme will work, or when it will officially launch, remains to be seen but, according to Dyke's speech given in Edinburgh, the service will be free to licence payers rather than charged on a pay-per-view basis.
See also:
As watching telly on a PC gets easier, the choice of devices gets wider. Let our guide help you find the best TV tuner for you. 25 Jun 2004All Desktop Computers
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