Reporter's Notebook: Television and the Web are poised to come together, with rapidly climbing broadband data rates and high expected revenues, industry executives say."I want my IPTV" was Tuesday's theme at the second day of the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas. An expert panel and a flurry of new product announcements all reflected the seemingly inevitable and imminent convergence of television and the Web.
"The time is right, that much is clear," said Jeff Weber, vice president of IP Operations and Services at SBC Communications Inc., speaking on a panel of IPTV experts. His company's Project Lightspeed initiative will use a closed IP network to deliver television and video on-demand services to its base of over 50 million customers.
"The economics look dramatically different than they did ten years ago," said Weber, who expects broadband services to become a major growth driver for SBC over the next few years. "When we dig a trench, we don't put in copper anymore, we put in fiber," he said, describing the switched video system that the company is setting up to serve digital television services to residential neighborhoods.
SBC hopes to offer programming for mass audiences as well as more specialized fare that can take advantage of "mass niching" such as foreign-language programs for widely dispersed ethnic groups that would otherwise be too small to make up an economically attractive audience in a single community.
"Fear and greed" are behind the urge to merge IP and TV, according to consultant Steve Hawley of Advanced Media Strategies, another panelist. "The stars are in alignment" to create new opportunities for cross-purposing and repurposing content for delivery through new media outlets.
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Hawley said he expects the IPTV business to generate revenues of $7.2 billion by 2008. Right now 136 North American telephone companies are planning to roll out IPTV services, along with 45 European telecom companies and 21 Asian telcos. Electrical power utilities are planning to get into the IPTV business as well.
"Make it simple and fun," was the advice of panelist Dick Anderson, general manager of Media and Entertainment at IBM. He observed that the critical factor driving IPTV is that video programming is now created, distributed and delivered in entirely digital form from start to finish and that broadband penetration in U.S. households is high enough to create a viable audience.
In addition, some experts are claiming that typical broadband data rates will climb from today's 1M- to 2M-bps speeds to 30M or even 50M bps in the next few years, creating even richer possibilities for IPTV. But Anderson cautioned that IPTV "can't be a 'me-too' cable system," but will have to take advantage of the two-way interaction that broadband makes possible.
Announcements from the exhibit floors reflected the trend toward convergence as well. For example:
MCI Inc. announced its acquisition of the Interactive Content Factory, a U.K.-based media services company. The purchase will extend MCI's business line into the media-services space and leverage its existing strength in networking and storage.
VBrick Systems Inc. released the VB6200, a video appliance that includes high-performance MPEG-4 encoding and decoding that complements the company's existing line of video storage, streaming and distribution products.
Narrowstep Inc. launched the first municipal broadband television station, www.glasgow.tv, which will offer international event programming, tourist information and outreach for its expat community.
Other NAB announcements included:
Sony Media Software released Vegas 6, the latest version of its Windows-based nonlinear editing system, featuring native HD editing and advanced DVD authoring tools.
iBiquity Digital Corp. celebrated the "tipping point" for HD Radio, announcing that over 300 radio stations now support advanced digital radio services, and that over 2,400 others expect to add those services within the year.
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