IP Democracy: Will the Web Replace TV? Nah.

Slate’s Séan Captain has this essay about how the laptop won’t replace the TV set, not for a long time. He makes some good points, but once again, folks who insist that it’s either TV or the PC are missing the fact that the rise of web-based video is a new phenomenon that really can’t be compared to traditional TV.

Captain points out, correctly, that the Internet isn’t a good medium for high-definition video and then touches upon, but doesn’t directly raise, some of the issues at the heart of the network neutrality debate. He says that without some kind of prioritization, fat content can’t make its way to viewers easily.

Money is a better motivator than technological idealism. A more likely scenario is that the Internet will eventually prioritize traffic based on the customers who send and receive the data, with those who pay more getting faster service. (Network providers like Verizon may also give preference to their own video services.) This would improve video delivery for big players like the TV networks but would probably shut out low-rent sites that distribute unique, Web-only offerings.

Although Captain notes that the popularity of web video proves that viewers are willing to trade off quality for convenience, he ultimately decides that TV will win the day.

But given the choice between the Web and traditional broadcasts, most people will pick the higher performance (and instant gratification) of traditional TV. And don’t just assume that the Web will catch up in a year or two. While Internet bandwidth and video quality will improve, so will our standards. There’s already talk of increasing the color gamut and resolution of HDTV. Television quality is a moving target that the Internet already fails to hit.

Well of course TV will win the day when it comes to traditional delivery of video programming. Viewers that want to sit back and zone out with an HDTV version of CSI aren’t going to hunt the web for weird video mash-ups. That’s not the point of Internet-based video.

The web has given rise to a new kind of entertainment, a new kind of video, and it’s this newness, this user-generated, not-on-TV programming that is exciting. Besides, compression technology and bandwidth expansion might very well lead to the day when the Internet, when PCs, are just as capable as TVs of delivering high-def content.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on May 9, 2006 9:47 AM to IP Democracy