IP Democracy: What is Television 2.0?

OK, Mitch and I have been slow to blog over the past four days because we’ve been putting the finishing touches on a new report that seemed impossible to finish because there is just too much material to cover.

The report is “Television 2.0: A Comprehensive Analysis of Emerging IP-Based Video Services” and it’s a whopper — over 140 pages that describe the new era of IP-based video delivery. (You can download a Table of Contents here.)

The big question is what is Television 2.0? Unlike Tim O’Reilly’s masterpiece definition of Web 2.0, our definition is relatively short.

What is Television 2.0? It is video transmitted over new and more flexible platforms than the traditional, linear one-to-many model dominated by, first, over-the-air TV broadcasters and then later cable and satellite multichannel providers. Television 2.0 is also a new mode of interacting with, personalizing and modifying video content in a way not possible cable, broadcast, satellite, VCR or DVD.

But Television 2.0 is also about a new revolution in video programming creation and production. The advent of inexpensive consumer electronics capable of generating, recording, storing and transmitting content, has broken through a century-old barrier to video content creation erected by the high-cost of making video programming. And the rise of the Internet, and other platforms based on Internet protocol technical standards, has posed competitive challenges for the well-capitalized and concentrated entertainment and information corporations that traditionally controlled the distribution of video entertainment, news and sports.

All of these developments, moreover, have occurred in an astonishingly short time period. From 1995 to 2005, the percent of U.S. homes subscribing to any form of any Internet access rose from 9% to 68%. On a worldwide basis, Internet access climbed from only .4% to 14.9% of all residences over the same time period.

More importantly, it is the rise of broadband Internet access that enables the creation of new video services for the Internet, mobile platforms and other IP (Internet protocol)-based delivery mechanisms. Without broadband, the high bandwidth-intensive video streaming, sharing and downloading that constitutes a large part of Television 2.0 is virtually impossible.

Broadband Internet access, which was virtually nonexistent a decade ago, will by yearend reach more than 40% of all U.S. households and more than half of all U.S. Internet users. Although comparable data are not available on a global basis, broadband penetration has soared around the world, with countries such as Korea counting a year-end 2004 broadband penetration rate of 24%, based on the number of subscribers per 100 inhabitants. Among developed nations as a whole, per capita broadband penetration at year-end 2004 was slightly more than 10%.

In ten years, if not sooner, virtually all U.S. households will be broadband capable, and with that ubiquity, a universal foundation for the creation of Television 2.0 services and applications will be in place.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on October 25, 2005 11:18 AM to IP Democracy