Coming Soon to TV Land: The Internet, Actually

Coverage Type: 

[SOURCE: New York Times 1/7, AUTHOR: John Markoff]
What would a world with television coming through the Internet be like? Instead of tuning into programs preset and determined by the broadcast network or cable or satellite TV provider, viewers would be able to search the Internet and choose from hundreds of thousands of programs sent to them from high-speed connections. At the International Consumer Electronics Show here this week, a future dominated by Internet Protocol TV, or IPTV, seemed possible, maybe even inevitable. Potentially, IPTV could replace the 100- or 500-channel world of the cable and satellite companies with millions of hybrid combinations that increasingly blend video, text from the Web, and even video-game-style interactivity. the advantage of IPTV is that it can potentially be deployed at lower cost than current cable television systems and can offer consumers features like the ability to record several programs simultaneously without having to add costly additional tuners. But critics charge that the telephone companies are intentionally crippling the Internet capabilities of their services to appear much like traditional closed cable offerings. "They're trying to construct their own separate world to keep their walled garden," said Robert Frankston, a personal computer industry pioneer and former Microsoft researcher. The growing tension has begun to show in the objections of existing D.S.L. and cable providers that are threatening to create surcharges for Internet content providers as well as the prospect of the deployment of a two-tiered Internet in which favored customers would in effect have special high-performance lanes reserved for their use.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/technology/07video.html?pagewanted=all
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* After long wait, line between PCs, TVs blurring
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* Google to launch online video store
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* Yahoo expanding Web on TV, phones with Go service
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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/07/technology/07video.html?pagewanted=all