Television and the internet keep rubbing each others legs under the table. What to make of it?

Back To Basics
With a near decade of hyping the ‘convergence of television and the internet’, including another wave of it recently ( youtube related speculations, Joost, Apple TV, Windows Media Centre etc ), it’s worth returning to some basic definitions. Television, as various dictionaries will reveal, is ‘the transmission and reception of moving image’. In the past this has meant a ‘one to many’ broadcast model, which has served those at the top of the media ownership pyramids very well. The internet however, as a vast ‘electronic network of computers’, is more suited to a ‘many to many’ model of distributing media. And the internet is increasingly where people prefer to find their media. Even television companies understand this, but prefer to keep everything within their own giant dedicated transmission and reception systems. A range of third-parties however, recognise that audiences want net-delivered content on demand and are clamouring to provide this. More on this below, but merely using the net to shift around large chunks of popular entertainment is only a fraction of what is becoming possible. The internet completely levels the playing field for ‘the transmission and reception of moving image’, and effectively allows anyone to become their own interactive television station.

The Third-Party TV Circus
First up – the timeshifters, who recognise that being forced to watch a television program only at one particular time, can only go the way of the dinosaurs. Which generally means dedicated recording hardware like the Tivo, which enables recording of television programs for playback at a time that suits. Software and a computer with a capture card can do the same thing ( see the range ). Then there is the Slingbox is known as a ‘placeshifter’, which records television to a hard-drive but lets you watch it remotely with a net connected computer.

Next we have the home media centres jostling for attention – windows media centre and the upcoming ‘apple tv’, which are essentially storage hard drives, but importantly are tied to related software which facilitates the download of purchased media, but also allows media files stored on a local computer to be played back in a central television environment. Nothing that can’t be done already, but riches perceived for those who can streamline the flow and become the dominant provider of media into the lounge room. It’ll happen, but nothing to get excited about.

“Media is changing from entertainment into utility. Media that can’t be manipulated is almost useless,” writes The Hollywood Reporter’s Steve Bryant,“Those tiny transactions I make online make a greater imprint on my psyche than any single media event inside a theater — or inside a DVD — could have. It’s simple reward/response psychology. Online, I can track who watches my clips, who reads my posts, who liked my mash-up. The Internet flatters us with attention in a way Hollywood no longer can.”

Most interesting are the recent various uses of internet technologies that focus on how software might better deliver television via the net, which means a whole bunch of other opportunities for both creators and audiences. The founders of phone software Skype have released Joost, a peer to peer based television delivery system which uses shared bandwidth of the users to help transfer high resolution images. Although focussed on delivering packaged media from major players, it also allows communication between viewers in chat channels that can be overlayed. No word on whether independent media will be able to utilise it. There are plenty of other options freely available though.

Transmitting Tonight
The difficulty and expense with publishing video online has traditionally been to do with popularity, bandwidth costs quickly soaring if a video becomes a viral hit and watched by millions. Today we can transcend this problem in two ways – firstly through the use of free hosting, there being over 200 different online video hosters competing for our uploads. Secondly, we can use peer to peer technology such as Bit Torrent to ensure that even a video file hosted on a small server can reach a large audience, because as the audience grows – it shares the downloading bandwidth between themselves. Broadcast Machine is free software which facilitates a relatively simple way to set this up. A step further along that path, Ning.com offers software which allows the creation, customization, and sharing of your very own you-tube style Social Network for free in seconds.

Great Reception
RSS – enables easy subscribing. This might be to a blog, an mp3 blog, a video blog, a news site, an Ebay auction or much much more. Totally worth understanding, and is what enables the applications below. Read more here.
www.fireant.tv – an application dedicated to subscription, downloading and watching of internet video.

www.getdemocracy.com – video playlists, subscribe to any video RSS feed, podcast, or video blog. Explore over 1,000 free channels with the built-in Channel Guide, download and save videos from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, and other sites, watch free HD videos in gorgeous fullscreen and easily download any BitTorrent file. Fast. Then watch it in the same app. Simple.

Hat tip to Mark Pesce, who writes well about the above terrain.