A few days ago I wrote a post entitled “Channel Surfing Internet TV“, where I outlined the direction television is going with the advent of IPTV. Today I wondered about the technologies that currently exist and will probably resemble the way we watch television 10 years from now. We’re living in a a time where different technologies and service providers are competing to bring us television through our computers. People do not seem to have a problem watching television on their computers, and the market is just waiting to be taken over.
As I mentioned before, physical distribution of media is taking its final breaths. We had, phonographs, cassettes, VHS, CD, DVD and we’ve all wondered: what’s next? (forget Blu Ray and HD-DVD) Well, the internet, right now, seems to be the obvious and doesn’t have any clear competition. But right now the internet is a big mess! If we’re going to start getting our content solely from the internet, then how are we going to make sense of all the different service providers, distribution methods (streaming or not streaming?), media formats, retrieval applications, and media players? We’re living in a period transition and for that reason we’re also in a period that is extremely fragmented.
Today, I found something that might bring some order to all this. It’s called Democracy, and it’s developed by a group called Participatory Culture. Participatory Culture hopes to lay the ground work for Internet TV and seems to be doing it right thing by taking the approach of collecting content from other service providers. Below is a description of the services they provide:
Democracy player Desktop application for watching internet TV. Intuitive interface. Free and open source. The centerpiece of our platform.
Video Bomb Website for sharing videos, creating personal video channels, and filtering up the best videos online. A democratic playground for internet video.
Broadcast Machine Software for publishing channels (RSS feeds) of video from your website. Installs easily, supports BitTorrent, creates a browseable gallery.
Channel Guide It greets you when Democracy starts up. The Channel Guide is an open listing of internet TV channels– video podcasts, vlogs, and much more.
What I think is great about this model is that it allows us to organize our programming by channels, who in themselves by have different categories. Now, with this application you’ll be able to subscribe to many different video providers, which in themselves provide a variety of programming. Channels (or website, or video providers, or broadcasting stations) will no longer be limited to one type of content, they will in themselves provide a vast collection, while applications like this will be the aggregators, the NetNewsWire for you television.
What I think is exciting with this concept is that it can be applied to a television, where you’ll be able to subscribe to online content through your cable television
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