As the old story goes, a kid was found whooping and hollaring in the stable when mucking out the stalls. When asked why, the child says “With all this **** around, there must be a pony in here somewhere.”
One wonders if Internet service providers might just want to whoop and hollar at some point about net-connected TVs and online video in a broader sense, despite the obvious business model challenges the applications now provide.
The number of online video viewers will grow from 563 million at the end of 2008 to 941 million by 2013, according to ABI Research. Ways to watch online video on standard TVs will be a key enabler of that growth, which explains why firms such as Cisco, not in the past associated with such consumer technology, will be entering the market for devices that allow watching of online video on standard TVs, rather than PC screens.
While today’s consumer is most likely to watch online video on the PC screen, over time more and more consumers will watch over-the-top video delivered to the living room, ABI projects. That's one reason Netflix will be introducing a net-connected HDTV from LG Electronics at this year's Consumer Electronics Show. The device will connect directly to the Internet, without the need for a PC or other device, a Wi-Fi or other hard-wire connection from the PC or similar intermediary box to the TV.
Netflix will tailor the TV to access the Netflix online service offers 12,000 movie and television titles. Yahoo and Intel Corp. separately plan to announce support from several major consumer-electronics companies to sell TV sets that come with widgets that make it easier to call up Web content on TV sets using ordinary remote controls rather than computer keyboards. Yahoo's Widget Channel is an example of that.
It seems unlikely such net-connected TVs will be a major mass market success any time soon, though. The additional hardware cost will be as much as $300 initially. And then there is the obvious challenge of user experience. Not many broadband connections will have the latency performance--nor assured bandwidth--to deliver large pictures on HDTV screens.
On the other hand, such devices are a perfect example of an application that really would benefit from quality assurance of the sort ATM was designed to provide, and that traffic shaping, edge caching and other forms of assured content delivery also provide.
Real-time services require traffic shaping and network management. Net-delivered video to HDTVs is going to prove the thesis. Right now, ISPs are mucking out the stalls. Someday, they will find the pony.
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