“Broadband television will ultimately adopt the attributes of the web, providing access to an almost limitless selection of programs,” said Dr. William Cooper, a convergent media specialist and co-author of the report released Monday.
Cable TV, the study asserts, can only offer a couple of hundred stations because it is limited by the fact that it broadcasts all of its channels over its network all the time. IPTV, on the other hand, delivers one channel at a time to viewers’ homes, using various video compression formats.
The report, “IPTV: Broadband Meets Broadcast —The Network Television Revolution,” concludes:
- Within a decade, video services delivered over broadband networks will be firmly established as an alternative platform to digital satellite, terrestrial and cable transmission.
- The real competition will come not between operators of rival platforms, but between closed and open networks.
- Television will become more like the web, as scheduled broadcast channels are displaced by the choice of millions of download and on-demand programs.
- Broadcast television services will be challenged by an open source TV distribution model, offering a much more diverse choice of free and pay programming over the Internet.
Radium owns Interactive Television Networks, which offers XTV using IPTV to deliver nearly six dozen adult content channels.
“We already have experienced phenomenal growth,” Prast said. “XTV is light years ahead of New Frontier [Media], Playboy and Spice. We offer 70 channels for the price of just one of those channels, and our customers are delighted to experience them uncensored.”
Interactive Television Networks, or ITVN, sells a $100 set-top box to receive XTV and charges $30 a month for a package of channels.
Now ITVN is expanding its offerings with more mainstream fare. The first new package is Silver Screen, a $5 collection of nine channels featuring old black-and-white movies. It also plans to roll out a Russian and Ukrainian news channel for $10.
Verizon is currently testing its own IPTV service in Texas, and other companies, such as TiVo and SBC, are also experimenting with IPTV.
The 200-page report on IPTV includes 25 case studies and provides an assessment of the fast-emerging landscape.
