IPTV@IBC2010 special report
As IBE presents the Armchair Revolutionary conference sessions at IBC2010, Neil Nixon (editor of IBE) and Joe O’Halloran (editor of sister publication C2M) take a look at the emergence of the Connected Home, and consider the role the viewer is taking in shaping its development.
The Armchair Revolutionary Calling the tune in the Connected Home
everywhere around the home, delivered to set top boxes and other receivers and delivered at acceptable levels of quality to state of the art TVs, PCs, laptops, netbooks, media tablets (such as the iPad), mobile phones, games platforms and portable media players of all description. Homes, particularly those in Western Europe, are enjoying not only the mass availability of such exciting platforms (at mass market acceptable prices let’s not forget) but also the mass availability of high bandwidth TV network infrastructures - of which, in definition, one should say now encompasses satellite and cable as well as the relatively new DSL, fibre and 3G/wireless networks - that are capable of supporting the delivery of the enhanced and enriched TV content.
A
s we move into the second half of the first year of a new decade, the TV industry may not be aware of the cultural revolution that is
happening in its midst. Without doubt, the industry has been hit hard by the full and deep extent of the global economic downturn. A general reigning in of leisure spending in homes across the world has been accompanied by a crisis in the advertising industry driving plummeting prices for TV spots. Furthermore, evidence suggests that transaction activity was down significantly in 2008, mainly due to the economic environment. In 2009, the number of deals was similarly affected. And yet given all of that - and some pretty savage but essential cost cutting in media organisations - the
The Armchair Revolutionary sessions at this year’s IBC will set out to examine this new and challenging landscape in greater detail, showing exactly how it will be users, and not the providers, who will set the agenda in tomorrow’s
broadcast industry.
industry has not only survived, it has come out inspired. Service bouquets are now capable of delivering TV content in new and exciting forms - encompassing SD, HD and, increasingly, 3D - and delivered to platforms that transcend the traditional small screen. And even if the number of deals in the industry has shrunk compared with traditional levels, the average value of the deal has skyrocketed, perhaps higher than during the boom days of the mid part of the last decade, due mainly to a number of very large deals that drove that large dollar value per deal. Enabled by the mass availability of high bandwidth network
infrastructures - including satellite and cable as well as DSL, fibre and 3G/wireless networks - TV and video content is now being consumed
S16 l ibe l OFFICIAL GUIDE TO IPTV@IBC2010 september/october 2010 l
www.ibeweb.com
Yet despite the best efforts of the industry to fashion a business model according to their needs, the consumers are firmly in the driving seat of this armchair revolution. Nobody told the millions of teenagers who had been bought laptops and netbooks on which to do their homework that they should, could, or even would use them to watch TV anywhere around their homes that an Internet connection was available. Nobody told iPhone users in 2006 that they had to side-load video content onto their new devices in order to watch content wherever and whenever they wanted to. They all just did.
Although times of severe market disruption and dislocation are fraught with challenges, these also present opportunities to breakaway from the pack. Historically, the best in innovation has taken place in
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