IP Democracy: Allaire on the Transformation of TV

Brightcove Founder and former Macromedia chief technologist Jeremy Allaire has a cogent essay that encapsulates the multiple forces at play in the new digital entertainment world and describes the new era of television on the Internet.

We’re in a period of dramatic change within the media and television industry, with a range of macro forces helping to force a collision between the Internet and the world of video and television distribution. This coming transformation—one we will not feel in full force for several years, but which will progress over the next decade-promises to reconfigure the video industry in the image of the Internet. Indeed, the Internet’s forces of openness, global reach, consumer control and participation, and Long Tail economies of scale will create a multimedia universe that no one can fully comprehend.

While Jeremy outlines a host of changes — from content creator to consumer — a few of the key factors driving the new world of TV-over-the-web are worth noting:

A range of technology and business process drivers are forcing this opportunity. These include the following:

• Global broadband reach, with hundreds of millions of users worldwide now on broadband connections and the number expected to reach nearly 500 million people in the coming years, a footprint that no single carrier or operator could ever conceive of matching.

• Home and wireless networks that make it possible to move high-quality video media over open networks.

• Powerful and open media formats that deliver rich, interactive media experiences that have not been possible on television (e.g. Macromedia Flash), and compressed and downloadable formats that deliver DVD-quality experiences that can be secure and portable (e.g. MPEG-4, Windows Media).

• The convergence of the consumer electronics (CE) and personal computer (PC) industry, with an emerging explosion of open, consumer media devices (TVs, game consoles, DVD players, media center PCs, portable video players) that can acquire media from the Internet and personal computers.

• Patterns of distribution on the Internet that are disruptive, decentralized, and favor massive new economies of scale for any size Web site or content owner (e.g. Long Tail economics enabled by search, social software, recommendation systems, and new forms of syndication).

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on October 12, 2005 7:22 AM to IP Democracy