Cliff Edwards recently wrote an article for Business Week which brings up some important questions about the future of Internet TV, and how money, as always, is at the root of the sometimes slow progress.

In it, he cites companies who “are unwilling to let go of their control in the way things work” so as not to jeopardize their power and revenues until the business of iTV is figured out. Which has missed an important point and over-simplified the landscape.

No IPTV Governing Body

Unlike the television standards set by the National Television System Committee (NTSC) in the U.S. in the 1940’s, there is no specific roadmap or governing body for Internet television integration, let alone IPTV over closed providers or even mobile devices.

If a CEO of an internet software or hardware company is making money with their product, it is naive to think they are in a position to open their code or share their technology in the hopes of creating an industry standard for that market segment; only the Government under the FCC could mandate such a process. 

After all, a company that makes a software encoder cannot be equated with Facebook, which recently opened its platform in hopes of creating a community standard towards mass adoption. 

In addition, no one product can “complete the picture” as it is currently far too diverse and fragmented an audience to know how even to tackle the problem.

Social and Monetary Implications

Aside from the technical challenges there are many other social and monetary implications which were not mentioned either. For example, in the current writers strike, members want a share of the revenue from programming destined for Internet delivery. 

The problem, however, is that most of the current ventures by large media outlets have yet to make any money, which makes it veritably impossible to assign profits on non-existent or future revenues. 

It is questions like these that will require a new set of definitions as to what is iTV programming, how are people compensated, what do consumers want and on what platforms and what will they pay, let alone the technology challenges.

Conclusions

Those of us who have been in the business since the mid-nineties when postage-stamp-size streaming media was just being deployed understand the industry is in a time of fast-moving change, not unlike the Wild West.

That we are faced with a myriad of technical and social questions as to how people will use Internet television over fixed and mobile platforms requires patience, perspective, and not misrepresentation.

[Content in whole or part adapted from IPTVe and is licensed under Creative Commons, no addition derivative works may be copied from this article without prior permission from IPTVe and Web TV Wire]

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