Earth Walker
September 1st, 2001, 02:26 PM
Changes in the TV world have only just begun.
Britney Spears is a middle-aged mom, Madonna's a senior
citizen and Justin Trudeau is beginning his second term as
Prime Minister of Canada.
After docking your hover-car in the motorport of your high-
density compartmentalized urban living unit and ingesting a
delicious meal-in-a-pill, it'll be time to sit down and feast upon
what Canadian television has to offer in the year 2020.
It's a radically different experience than the one delivered to
homes in the primitive early days of the 21st century.
While the above scenario may be equal parts science fiction
and flights of fantasy, the last sentence will undoubtedly hold
true. Twenty years from now, television will be totally transformed, the experts say.
Sure, there will be so-called high-definition television delivering
picture quality with roughly twice the resolution of the current
525 line standard, but that is just the beginning. Everything
from video-on-demand to preferred point of view to choose-
your-own endings are on the table in the future world of TV.
"It's definitely up for some pretty major changes," says Charlie
Tritschler, vice president of marketing for Liberate Technologies,
a Silicon Valley-based company that makes software platforms
for the next generation of television hardware.
Ask Tritschler about the future and he lists the possibilities as
if they've already happened. "Watching NASCAR [stock car races]
and being able to pull up any of the dashboards of any of the
cars that I am watching on screen," he says with growing enthusiasm. "I can now pick from five to 10 cameras there at the
facility. The ability to play along with game shows, actually
becoming a virtual participant....It's only up to the limits of the
people designing the creative content."
Tritschler also envisions a world where the home shopping
network comes to television programming. If a viewer wants to
look just like Rachel on FRIENDS, with a simple pick and click the
same stylish sweater or mini-skirt will be on its way to the
viewer's home. Another marketing vice-president, Steve Shannon
of the consumer electronics company SONICblue, says the
biggest change will be in content and its delivery.
Prime time will cease to exist as a concept, Shannon says.
Television hard drives operating as digital "tapeless" VCR's,
recently released in the Canadian market, and video-on-demand-
-- services that sell shows from a central server -- will make the
notion of broadcast schedules obsolete.
"What will happen is people will have a big hard disk next to
their TV," Shannon says, "and they'll subscribe to things, main-
stream stuff like HBO or CNN or MSNBC, but there's also going
to be really super niche stuff, independent films or Brazilian
football. You'll just subscribe to these various channels and [they]
will just dump shows over the Internet on to your hard disk.
You'll have content that matches your desires and preferences."
In Shannon's converged world of the Internet and television
programming, where the latter feeds through the former, the
oligopoly of service currently enjoyed by satellite and cable
service providers will disappear.
Britney Spears is a middle-aged mom, Madonna's a senior
citizen and Justin Trudeau is beginning his second term as
Prime Minister of Canada.
After docking your hover-car in the motorport of your high-
density compartmentalized urban living unit and ingesting a
delicious meal-in-a-pill, it'll be time to sit down and feast upon
what Canadian television has to offer in the year 2020.
It's a radically different experience than the one delivered to
homes in the primitive early days of the 21st century.
While the above scenario may be equal parts science fiction
and flights of fantasy, the last sentence will undoubtedly hold
true. Twenty years from now, television will be totally transformed, the experts say.
Sure, there will be so-called high-definition television delivering
picture quality with roughly twice the resolution of the current
525 line standard, but that is just the beginning. Everything
from video-on-demand to preferred point of view to choose-
your-own endings are on the table in the future world of TV.
"It's definitely up for some pretty major changes," says Charlie
Tritschler, vice president of marketing for Liberate Technologies,
a Silicon Valley-based company that makes software platforms
for the next generation of television hardware.
Ask Tritschler about the future and he lists the possibilities as
if they've already happened. "Watching NASCAR [stock car races]
and being able to pull up any of the dashboards of any of the
cars that I am watching on screen," he says with growing enthusiasm. "I can now pick from five to 10 cameras there at the
facility. The ability to play along with game shows, actually
becoming a virtual participant....It's only up to the limits of the
people designing the creative content."
Tritschler also envisions a world where the home shopping
network comes to television programming. If a viewer wants to
look just like Rachel on FRIENDS, with a simple pick and click the
same stylish sweater or mini-skirt will be on its way to the
viewer's home. Another marketing vice-president, Steve Shannon
of the consumer electronics company SONICblue, says the
biggest change will be in content and its delivery.
Prime time will cease to exist as a concept, Shannon says.
Television hard drives operating as digital "tapeless" VCR's,
recently released in the Canadian market, and video-on-demand-
-- services that sell shows from a central server -- will make the
notion of broadcast schedules obsolete.
"What will happen is people will have a big hard disk next to
their TV," Shannon says, "and they'll subscribe to things, main-
stream stuff like HBO or CNN or MSNBC, but there's also going
to be really super niche stuff, independent films or Brazilian
football. You'll just subscribe to these various channels and [they]
will just dump shows over the Internet on to your hard disk.
You'll have content that matches your desires and preferences."
In Shannon's converged world of the Internet and television
programming, where the latter feeds through the former, the
oligopoly of service currently enjoyed by satellite and cable
service providers will disappear.