What IPTV could do to make their service rock
As a follow-up to why IPTV potentially sucks I wanted to point out a few things that IPTV providers could do to make their service not only rock, but things that they could do that would be revolutionary to how we watch TV.
1. Place shifting with no additional hardware
I am still fairly amazed at how few people know about Slingbox and what it can do. The idea of placeshifting is not really new but it has never broken into the mainstream market. Maybe that is because Apple hasn’t had any placeshifting hardware of their own. In any case, what if you could watch live TV on your cell phone because all your IPTV provider had to do was give you web access or install a program that can decode their encrypted channels based on your subscription username. When your TV content isn’t tied to hardware like a coax cable or plastic dish there are so many possibilities. If all you needed was a internet connection and screen to be able to watch your TV, cable and satellite would never be able to compete.
2. Any computer recorders
Renting DVRs from your service provider usually sucks. That is all there is to it in my opinion. That is exactly why I have always spent more money and built my own DVRs. The main reason you have always needed a dedicated box in the past has been because of hardware limitations. Either your computer didn’t have a coax jack, or your processor/video card were too slow to display decent video. With IPTV all you need is wireless or ethernet. Once you have that why can’t you just use your own desktop or laptop as a portable TV anywhere in your wireless range? At most the provider would need to install a program to let you watch live TV and maybe a plugin to allow Windows Media Center or even a AppleTV to record all the TV you want. That way the shows are even stored where you want them to be. If you want to watch them on your TV, let the providers STB stream the show from your laptop or just use whatever you want plugged into your TV to display your recorded shows.
3. Internet content
I actually really liked this idea in Windows 7 media center. They had a channel for online content that shows up right in the TV guide. If I wanted to watch MSN videos all I had to do was go to the media guide with all the rest of my live TV shows. I will admit in Windows 7 media center the execution of this was done very poorly, but the idea was fantastic. But really why couldn’t a IPTV provider give you access to YouTube, vodcasts, and other online free video services. Well I know why, THEY DON’T MAKE ANY MONEY!! Boxee has been making leaps and bounds in this area and I hope they can partner with enough companies to actually force providers to have to pay attention to what they are doing and offer similar services or lose customers.
4. No recording needed
This really is the holy grail of what IPTV should be working toward. If only one of these ideas was to be done, this would be the one that would win. Imagine if all of your TV was on demand. Shows still “air” at certain times but that just means you can’t get the show before that time. The idea is you basically have a program guide of every show available (or every channel available) and you pick what you want to watch when you want to watch it. There would never be recording shows, unless you wanted to save the show to a different device like a laptop (although that would be more of a download than a recording and that isn’t a bad thing), and there would never be missing the beginning of a show because you got home late. I really hope that media distribution is heading this way because with lives as busy as they are and schedules as different as they are this is how entertainment should be delivered in my opinion.
Let me know if you have anything else to add to my list and what you think of the future of TV distribution.